There’s something I learned from Jason last year. Sous rature. If you need a certain word to communicate something, but that word happens to have years of baggage, and you want to get rid of the baggage it comes with, you cross it out, but use it anyway. Some people do it like this: love.
With this song, I write over the place where the old Aza was. I’m not that person. I’m Aza. I scream a song, punk rock without a microphone, the kind that makes boulders fall from the heavens.
Transforming rain into rock.
Destroying all those that can hear it.
I’m avalanching the sky.
I have no idea how I’m doing it.
A rock the size of my head lands on our attackers’ deck and splinters the boards.
I sing something that unbinds my crew’s hands, something I don’t even know. I move rope and chain. I’m not doing it on purpose. It’s unfolding from the song. I don’t know how it’s happening but everything’s shifting, whirring, surging around me and Milekt.
Like I’m in a movie,
like I’m not me,
like I’m someone I never imagined—bigger, stronger, and fearless. I grab the pirate captain’s sword and twist it to point at her chest.
Milekt trills in my lung, his own solo song of triumph. I open my mouth and let loose a whoop.
I am standing in the center of the deck, this time with a sword, not a mop.
I am the Captain’s Daughter. I’m everything they thought I was, and more.
“On your knees,” I tell Ley. I nod at Jik and she ties the pirate’s wrists. My crew moves quickly to disarm the rest of the pirates, and suddenly, Amina Pennarum has won.
Zal is free of her bonds, and laughing, looking completely exhilarated. Her shirt is torn. I can see a long scar running down the center of her chest. From what?
“Surrender, Ley!” she shouts in triumph. “This sky is not yours to command.”
But Ley doesn’t surrender. She stands, bound, looking defiantly at Zal.
“Where were you heading, Zal? To the north? Breaking every vow you made? You and I both know you want a new world. Maganwetar will not forgive you twice. They’ll take you for treason, and this time you will both be executed—”
Zal looks sharply at Dai, and he moves quickly, gagging Ley with his scarf.
“Who else knows we have her?” Zal says, looking around at the other pirates. “From where did the rumor come? Who spoke to you?”
They just look at Ley. All the pirates are on our deck, bound.
“If you will not answer, you’ll share her fate.”
They remain silent. Zal nods at me.
“Sink that ship, and its pitiful cargo,” Zal says.
“What do you mean?” I ask her.
“Sing it,” she says. “Sing the sky into sand, Aza. Do what you just did, and sink them. Milekt knows the song.”
Milekt sings a new note and I join him, following his lead. We sing rocks onto the chains fastening the other ship’s bat to their mast. We can all see the links breaking until finally they’re gone.
Their batsail stretches its wings, and for the first time I wonder how batsails end up tethered to these ships in the first place. The pirate sail spreads its wings and billows out and is gone, gliding out into the dark as the empty ship sags in the sky.
When I finally turn to look at Zal, I see her standing beside Ley, staring down at her, a hawk studying a rabbit. Except that they’re both birds of prey.
Milekt and I sing heavy air into the pirate ship, and without its batsail, it drops. I sing sand until I can’t see it anymore. Until all it can do is crash onto the world below.
At this height, there will be little left when it lands. What will the humans call it? Asteroid? Meteorite? There’s so much they don’t know.
I stagger a little, because my knees have gone weak. I look around. Everyone’s staring at me, the Rostrae and the Magonian crew alike, Zal and Dai and Jik, everyone.
“Take Ley to my cabin,” Zal says, and two Rostrae carry the other captain down the ladder and into the belowdecks. She doesn’t even struggle. She just looks at me evenly, and so does everyone else, my whole crew. The rest of the bound pirates go too, into the brig.
There is blood on the deck and holes in the ship and prisoners now in the hold and I wonder if I’ve done something massively wrong, something that I can’t—that no one can ever—take back.
And then I hear it. Streaks of bird voice, long trills and screams.
Jik is grinning and Dai is shouting in triumph, and with a great noise our own batsail spreads its wings and we push out hard, our squallwhales singing us a storm.
Cheers and shouting as the crew sets about making our ship whole again. And I’m glowing with what I just did, the craziness of it, the confusion, the Aza of it.
I’m dizzy, and so is Milekt. I can feel him inside my chest.
This, then.
This is what everyone meant when they said sing. This is what they meant about power. Dai’s hand is in mine. I don’t know how it got there, but it sends a pulse through me. Zal takes my other hand in hers and raises it up. We stand there, on the deck of our ship, surrounded by our crew and I’m maybe someone who’s finally been found. Dai looks at me.
“Together, Aza,” he says.
“Together,” Zal says.
“Together,” I whisper, because this is nothing I’ve ever felt. The batsail sings out to me, and Milekt, in my chest, sings too. The Rostrae look at me, and the Magonian crew nods in approval.