I told them I’d be back and not to worry. I’m going to be explaining for the rest of my life. But hey. Some things you don’t have time to explain in the moment.
The fact that I got here before she did is a miracle.
Forged documents. Hacked computer. Claiming of consular privileges. I have called in favors. I have accrued debts that I will be spending the rest of my life paying off. And I am officially the biggest pain in the ass in the entirety of the dark side of the internet right now, but it was worth it.
I can see her there, every few seconds, a flash of her in a wet suit and a hood, on deck.
She doesn’t look like herself, but I can hear her voice mixed with other voices. It’d be hard not to hear it. Everything else is birds.
There are screaming birds everywhere, but when I blink, I can see that they’re not birds, really, not at all. Nope.
Human bird things. Some kind of hybrids.
I’m forcing myself not to pi, because I can’t do it. I have to be here.
I can see her surrounded by people I can’t understand—“Something has happened above the clouds that man has not yet accounted for”—and up in the sky right above her, there’s this city, sending ropes down to her ship. She’s right there in the middle of it.
Aza, Aza, Aza . . !
I’m running from where I’ve been hiding, and out into the open space, because if she sees me, she can’t—
She can. She keeps singing, and around me things are cracking open. The whole world is breaking into pieces.
This is some kind of earthquake, some kind of natural disaster, and somehow it’s because of her singing. I feel her notes stabbing into the ice around me.
There’s water pouring out of rock where there shouldn’t be, and a hook rising up beside me, coming up through the ground and attached to her ship. It’s minus I don’t even know how many degrees. It would be ironic, my brain informs me, to freeze to death, just after I was almost fried.
I shout her name. She doesn’t respond. I shout harder, but the sky’s full of ships now, and some kind of totally insane battle starts happening.
Cannonballs, arrows.
My vision goes in and out.
Blink. Blue sky.
Blink. Ship battle.
Blink. Clouds.
Blink. Cloud city.
Blink. Skysharks and skywhales.
I wave my arms.
“AZA!” I scream and the water rises around my ankles. I look up at her and shout her name again, and I see her standing there, frozen, staring down at me, still singing.
I don’t know anything. I can’t tell anything.
Except that Aza is here, and she’s alive. I might not be for much longer, but maybe that is okay as long as—the first part.
“AZA!” and I’m crying, but my tears are freezing, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, because up in that sky is her, and down here is me, and I’m without any kind of backup.
“3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286,” I shout as though it’s magic, as though pi is enough to summon her down, as fast as I can shout the numbers, the basic numbers, waving my arms frantically, and then, suddenly, she stops.
She sees me. I feel it happen. The whole island shakes. And something comes flying fast out of the sky above her.
NO!! I cover my mouth with my hands, clamping it shut, and Milekt screamsings inside my lung.
It’s Jason! It’s JASON.
Alive, alive alive!
Every note I sing is making the sea rise. Every second I sing is two hundred years of climate change. I stop my song,
But
I’m
Not
S
T
O
P
P
I
N
G
NO.
The sea is rising
and the song
is pouring out of me
WHY CAN’T I STOP?!
I look at Dai. He stares back at me, and he has no mercy. He and Zal are making me dissolve the world, and I won’t do it. I won’t sing the world into a flood. I won’t lose Jason again.
But I’m singing as hard as ever.
I’m looking down at Jason. I’m going to drown him. I’m going to drown everyone, and Dai is beside me magnifying my voice, and Zal is screaming at me, and Milekt is inside my chest, when everything—
Stops.
Out of the air above me, I hear a cry like only one thing I’ve heard before, a damaged opera, a sweetness so high and bright it hurts, discordant and ferocious, desolation and love twined into a song.
CARU.
He shoots down, black feathers and red wings. He doesn’t land. He hangs in the air above me, and there’s fighting all around, ships and planes, and arrows and I—
SING, Caru screams. SING.
I take a huge breath from the bottle and then rap hard on my own breastbone.
You will not! Milekt shrieks. She’s mine!
Caru screams back at Milekt. Never yours!
I open the door in my chest, open it to lay my lung bare to the cold and there’s the bright yellow thorn inside it, shrilling at me.
This is my nest! whistles Milekt, and then he tries to force me back to the flood song, but he can’t, because now I can see Caru.
Caru, who is loyal. Caru who is no one’s.
She chooses, he sings. I choose.
Caru, heartbird, chooses me.
He rises from the shadow of the ship where he’s been flying, staying quiet against his own nature.
I grab Milekt, his tiny gold body, his screaming beak.
Traitor! he shrills, and I pry him out of my lung, where he’s anchored his claws. I pull him out, and close the door. The yellow bird stares at me, his eyes glittering like jet.