“What’s that?”
“Someone who has a compulsive need to show other people his attractiveness,” I say. Primly.
Then I curse internally.
I’m awkward because of exhaustion. Because of the insanity of yesterday coupled with the captain’s ghost bird calling me in my sleep—calling for the sky, calling for freedom.
But it’s dead, I remind myself. A dead thing is already free.
Something else kept me awake as well. Want. I felt the power of my song and there was no doubt it could go further. That it could be stronger. There was more to it.
Whatever more there is, I want it.
“You’re the first mate,” I say. “You’re supposed to be professional.”
“And you are beautiful, Aza Ray Quel, Daughter of Zal, singer of sky into stone,” he says. “Even if you do need singing lessons. And lessons in everything else too.”
Then he’s past me and out of his cabin, up the ladder before I can say anything at all.
I climb the ladder behind him. The inside of my skin is too hot, and my brain is too small. My ears burn, and my heart pounds.
I hoist myself up on deck, and distract by looking at an airplane, far down, underneath our squallwhales. Aza Ray, I think. Aza Ray, your life is so gigantically not what you thought it was going to be. Your life is awesome, in the old sense. As in, full of awe. Though, um, the old word for “awesome” was actually . . . “awful.” A factoid from a certain person creeps in. I shake my head fast to rid myself of things I can’t think about.
“You have to play by the rules,” Dai tells me, sitting down on the deck beside me. “This isn’t about you. This is about Magonia. You’re just a piece of it.”
“Then what are the rules?”
“We’re bonded to sing together. I’m your ethologidion.”
“You know I don’t know what that word means,” I say, because he uses it with a tone meant, I swear, to drive me crazy.
“Your partner. You have your skills and I have mine, and they’re compatible. I’ve never heard of anyone singing the way you can, except for Zal, and that was before I knew her. I was trained—she trained me—to complement your strengths.”
I can’t decide if this is creepy or cool.
“I don’t need a partner. Zal doesn’t sing with one,” I say.
He snorts, like I’m completely clueless.
“Zal can’t sing at all anymore,” he says. “But I’m here and alive only because of her. I’m loyal to her. If she breaks Maganwetar’s laws, I’ll break them with her. We’re all on the same mission. Are you?”
“Yes,” I say, my voice wobbling for reasons I can’t quite figure out.
“Then we have to learn how to sing together. I think we’re halfway there.” He runs his fingertip down my cheek, and I turn away. “Tell me you don’t want to sing with me, Aza Ray.”
“What if I said no?” I ask, just to check.
“Things aren’t disposable here the way they are undersky. There, they throw things away. Here, we keep them forever.”
I consider him for a moment and think—
(Forever.)
Then—
(I { } you more than [[[{{{ }}}]]].)
I stare out at the sky, the way I made it hold me up yesterday. I wasn’t flying. I was floating.
“I conquered an invading ship,” I say.
“You did,” he says. “But were you sure you could? I wasn’t. You need to learn how to control it. I’m a focus for you. A magnifying glass in front of the sun. My song will make yours stronger.”
“So in this analogy I’m the sun?” I say.
He doesn’t smile.
“Yes,” he says. He takes my chin in his fingers and looks at me. I look back.
His eyes are long-lashed and very, very dark. He leans in and I want to laugh because it’s so ridiculous, it’s so stupid.
(The last time I was this close to a boy’s face I—I don’t think about that. Nope. I don’t.)
“Like this,” Dai says and sings a note into my mouth, very quietly, more of a breath than a note.
I pause for a second, shaky, and then sing a note back. We’re both without our birds, so it’s not official, what we’re doing.
It is, however, totally enough. I sing my note in Magonian, the note that means “rise.” Dai joins in with this low note, this undercurrent, which is part “rise” and part “more.”
I feel my heart start pounding again, and I can see his pulse in the side of his neck, beating nearly in time with mine.
His note gets louder, and mine does too. We increase our volume together, and as we do, I notice that my hand is on his chest, where his heart is, near where Svilken should be, but isn’t.
I yank my hand back, feeling scalded.
I’m blushing severely. I don’t know how that looks on Magonian skin. Dai smiles at me, and hums a different note. He puts out his fist, and knocks once on my breastbone. My chest opens for Milekt, which startles me totally. It feels intensely intimate, Dai initiating this. Milekt flies down and in.
I rap as coolly as I can on Dai’s chest, and it, too, opens like a window. His canwr flies down from her perch, too, and into his lung.
He’s as awkward as I am, suddenly.
“We’re in this together,” Dai says. “Zal’s plan. There’ll be consequences if we fail.”