No. There weren’t supposed to be people here.
Uninhabited, they told me. This wasn’t supposed to happen—
The hill is shaking. The whole of Spitsbergen is trying to turn to water. I see the men running and I try to stop, but Dai’s song won’t let me.
“Keep going,” Zal shouts at him. Dai looks as terrified as I feel, but he’s still singing.
Flood, screams Milekt, this tiny demon of yellow feathers; from my own body he screams, and I scream the song with him, helpless. Drown.
Zal is using me. As Ley warned, as Jik warned. I’m as much a slave as the Rostrae. I fooled myself with the thought that I was special. I have no agency. I have no choice.
I calculate frantically, quickly. A few tons of matter is all it’ll take. An island here, a mountain there, the seas will rise, and earth will flood.
Dai’s song is right in me, moving with my own heart, my own lungs, my own body. I try to tell him no, try to appeal to him with my eyes.
I can see his fear, but he’s loyal to Zal. He warned me that he’d do anything she commanded. I didn’t know this was what he meant.
A new sound mingles with our song. First a hum but soon a deafening roar.
Rushing downward from out of the clouds, I see it. Something huge moving through the sky, something surrounded by wind. It’s so huge I can’t see the size of it. Whirlwind. Oh god. Oh my god. I see clouds and spinning, and ropes dangling from it.
Maganwetar.
Zal barks, “Bring the plants up now! Stations!” The pulley turns, and the rest of the crew starts whirling ropes and chains.
We’re surrounded, out of nowhere, by the capital city and its twisting borders. And I’m still singing with Milekt in my chest—
The epiphytes are still rising up, and—
I’m losing myself. The song is singing me. I’m drunk with it, and some part of me thinks I don’t care anymore.
I’ll drown everyone, all of us, sing until my throat tears out, sing the sky open, sing everything into an abyss—
Another human runs out from near the repository, fighting the wind, shouting into the dark. It’s snowing and hailing and I’m looking down at this person on this little island of ice, a tiny person seen from above.
We’re maybe twenty feet up, hanging in the mist of our song, pulling up the plants, and the world is turning to water, and tears are streaming down my face, from rage and powerlessness, from grief, from desperation.
He’s waving his arms.
I can’t see him through the mist and flood. A person. A drowner.
“Finish it!” Zal bellows. “Flood them.”
I see the world Zal wants. A sea made of the earth. A flash of a ship on a great sea, and of a bird above it all, a bird like Caru. Then gone. A flash of a flood rising up and covering over the world. The sea full of bodies. Drowned.
Someone near me screams. Someone above our ship screams louder.
An anchor drops onto our deck from the massive city above us.
Arrows zing by and stick in the deck beside my feet.
The whole time, Dai’s singing “Don’t stop,” and I’m singing “FLOOD,” even as Amina Pennarum tilts.
Below, that flood is surging up for the person on the ground. He shifts and the mist moves away from him, the one person, the one drowner, his face suddenly visible, and—
A giant squid on a backlit screen.
An alligator at my birthday party.
A hoodie for the hospital.
Driving a car to fetch a hoax.
Together on my front steps.
Jason.
I’m right below her. I can see her. I can see everything, at least every few seconds. It’s like a bad connection.
I see a ship. More than a ship. I see something so insane up there, so high in the sky, way above where the ship is. There’s a city in the clouds.
Mostly hidden, a huge ponderous thing, buildings with spire tops, wind whirling around it.
I’m alive. I didn’t think I would be. The lightning struck, leaving me three burns—one in each hand, and one in the middle of my back.
When I opened my eyes, the groundskeeper was bending over me and saying “Son, you been struck. Should I restart your heart?”
“I think my heart’s beating, thanks,” I said.
Then my heart stopped.
He gave me CPR.
I was in the hospital for the next week. I was pretty much unconscious for four days, with people freaking out all around me. When I finally came to my senses, my body hurt like I’d been beaten up by a gang of giants, and I had long red burns branching down my arms and legs. But I was freakishly okay. In fact, I felt better than I’ve felt ever.
Magonian lightning. I don’t know. I can see things now, no spyglass necessary.
Mr. Grimm was one of the first people who visited me, asking about the lightning, asking about how it felt, and I didn’t know what to tell him, so I described everything. He went very pale. I felt kind of bad for him.
The note un-Aza handed me, the one I’d given real-Aza, it was gone.
So I knew where she was going. And I knew where Aza was going.
Ergo, I knew where I was going.
That got me out of bed, even though I fell over when my feet touched the floor. But there was no version of my life in which I wasn’t getting my ass to Svalbard.
You don’t want to know how I got here, you don’t want to know how much it cost, you don’t want to know how gigantically in deep shit I am. I left a note for Carol and Eve. They’ll never forgive me, except they love me, so they will.