Akaela (5 page)

Chapter Seven

Akaela

Today it’s raining ashes. They
pelt softly against my face and clutter my lashes. I like to pretend
it’s
snow, even though it’s dry and doesn’t melt away.

Even though I’ve never seen snow
.

The wind
blows in the smoke and hides the sun, making everything look gray and colorless.
I pat Taeh’s side and prompt her to a gallop.

I need to
be by myself, just Taeh and I, by myself and away from the people, the
dullness, the monotony of the days spent at the Tower listening to Mom complain
about the world.

I miss Dad.

Another
Mayake has died, a young girl this time. She was only ten and had outgrown her
mechanical heart. By the time they were ready to implant Skip’s heart in her
young body, it was already too late. The girl died as they were performing the
surgery. Both Skip and she were mourned today. Wrapped in white sheets, the
bodies were released down the Bridal Veil waterfalls and into the Kawa River
Bend, where the currents grow faster and fiercer. The water will carry them to
better lands and better lives.

That’s
what we, the Mayake people, believe.

What
I
believe, I no longer know. Right now,
I feel only emptiness and it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever felt before.

I press my
heels into Taeh’s stomach and make her run faster, tears melting the ashes on
my face.
 

The procession
has dispersed now, the echo of the flutes and drums lost in the river together with
the two bodies. The melancholy notes of the music still ring in my ears. I ride
to the bottom of the cliffs and listen to the water chant its way through the
bend, hoping to glimpse the flap of a white sheet or a whiff of red hair as it
moves on to the next life. But by the time I reach the bottom, the two bodies
have already vanished, claimed by the brutal strength of the currents.

The
waterfalls used to be more massive and fiercer, I’m told, before the Gaijins
built their wall of fire. More water came down to our land, the riverbanks
wider and fuller. Despite what I’m told, they’ve always looked big to me. And
now they look cruel. They took my cousin away.

I rub my eyes
and wail, the river a blur as I smear ash-dirty tears on my face.

*
 
*
 
*

Athel’s horse Maha is still in her
pen when I get back. I feed both Taeh and Maha, clean their pens, and tidy up
the stables. The wind draws swirls of ashes on the ground and piles dust
against the floorboards. Smoke has been marring the horizon ever since the
Gaijins’ firewall went up on the other side of the mesa. The Mayake people
never protested. The Mayake people are born to obey. We accept the ashes, just
like we accept the fact that some people die and some live on, the fact that we
are born crippled and we rely on implants and artificial wires to survive.

We, the
Mayake people, believe in acceptance and obedience. When the wind blows in
ashes, we sweep them away. When our people die, we toss their bodies in the
river and move on. And when our people leave, we wait patiently until they come
back.

To hell with that
.

Normally I
wouldn’t care, but today I take the broom and start sweeping—small chores
that keep me from thinking about my cousin Skip’s body tumbling down the river
rapids.

When I’m
done, I wash my face at the faucet and use my fingers to brush the ashes off my
hair. I’ll need a long shower when I go home, but the mood I’m in makes
everything seem hard and meaningless, even a stupid shower. The only thought
that cheers me up is seeing Ash again as soon as I get back. I didn’t dare take
him with me this morning, fearing the Kiva Members at the procession would see
him and question his implants again.

I close
the pens for the night and line the bales of hay against the wall.

A loud
clonk from outside makes me startle.

It’s too late to ride now, Athel
, I think,
but as I walk out it’s not Athel I run into. It’s the Metal Jaw kid, Yuri, with
his brother Cal. The brother looks almost normal until he opens his mouth and
smirks, flashing two rows of metal teeth and a gold stub at the tip of his
tongue.

Gross
.

I close
the stable and pretend they’re not there. They don’t return the courtesy.

“Hey,
Freaky Freckles!” Yuri says, because it would be too nice of him to call me by
name. “Did you lose the cat?”

I walk
away and don’t even look at them. After blanketing the solar panel fields in
white ashes, the wind has finally subsided. The sudden stillness makes the
landscape look spectral and beautiful, the Tower like a gray ghost staggering
against an overcast sky.
 

“No use if
you’re hiding the cat,” Yuri says. “My brother can find it in a snap, right
Cal?”

Cal snaps
his teeth together—they sound like sharp scissors snipping the
air—and guffaws. “I sure can!” He braces himself and then adds in
falsetto: “Would make such a nice coat for the winter.”

“Don’t you
even think about it,” I snarl to his face, balling my fists.

The two
guffaw out loud. I shake my head and start back home, determined to ignore them
this time.

“Where’s
your bro?” Yuri presses me.

“Don’t
know,” I say. “I’m not his keeper.” I’m not good at determination, either.

Truth is,
Athel has been acting weird all day. He hasn’t said a nice word about Skip or
anything comforting to me or Mom about the loss. He took off as soon as the
procession was over, and if it weren’t for me, Maha, his horse, would’ve
starved today.

“Liar,”
Cal snaps. He grabs my arm and pushes me, making me stumble backwards. “The
bird’s
up there. Your brother can’t be too far.”

He points
up to the sky and I spot Kael’s black silhouette gliding over the cliffs. Yuri
shoves his ugly face in front of me and snarls, “Tell your brother we’ve got a
message for him.”

“You’ve
got a tongue. Go tell him yourself,” I reply.

I try to break
away, but they grab my hair and pull me back. I scream and kick Yuri in the
shins, flailing my arms at them. Kael yelps in the sky and comes swooping down.
At the sight of the falcon diving nose down, Yuri trips and falls on his bum.
Cal doubles over and covers his face.

Kael dips
and then rises up in the sky again, creating enough of a diversion for me to
run away. They don’t come after me this time. They throw rocks and yell, “It
doesn’t end here, bitch! We’ll get you next time!”

I run all
the way back to the Tower without ever stopping to catch my breath. Up in the
sky, Kael veers west and makes a dip toward the riverbanks. I slow down to a
brisk pace and follow him. Yuri and his brother were right.
Athel’s
standing by Skull Rock, holding up his gloved arm for Kael to land.
His
friend Lukas is with him, seated on top of the rock with his data feeder
propped on his bony knees.

I stomp
all the way there and glare at my brother, fuming.

Athel
barely acknowledges me, his attention on Kael. The falcon flaps his broad wings
and lands gracefully on Athel’s arm.

“Good
boy,” Athel says, rewarding him with a piece of meat.

“Two
hours, seventeen minutes and forty-two seconds,” Lukas calls. “But I’m not sure
he went all the way to—”

“Shh!”
Athel interrupts him.

Lukas
looks down and suddenly notices me. “Oops,” he whispers.

“What are
you two up to?” I snarl.

Athel
gives Kael another morsel and then pets him on the back. “Training,” he says,
pretending to sound casual. “What do you want, Dottie?”

“I fed Maha.
You’re welcome.”

He winces
at me then fluffs Kael’s feathers. “One more time, big boy.” He raises his arm
and rotates his wrist outwards. On cue, Kael takes off again.

I watch
him rise up in the gray sky, so elegant and beautiful in his own element, and
suddenly I feel small and wistful. I’ll never be able to fly like Kael, no
matter how badly I want to. I can only jump and glide, let the currents show me
the way. Rising up against the winds and choosing my own path is an impossible
dream for me, achievable only through technology denied to the Mayake people. As
I watch Kael’s silhouette rise and grow smaller, my anger dissipates like the
ephemeral ashes that the wind blew over from who knows where. So I scuff the
ground with the tip of my boots, turn away and go home.
 

Whatever
they’re up to, I decide I no longer care.

Chapter Eight

Athel

Day Number: 1,531

Event: Another death, Alina, age 8.

Number of Mayakes left: 431.

Goal for today: Record a map of the mesa.

The open hall on the sixtieth
floor looks haunted at night. Back when the Tower was a fully functioning
hospital, this was the psychiatric ward. The north and west walls are
completely gone, replaced by a loose curtain of vines dangling from the upper
levels. The wind makes them sway and howls inside the hollow cavity of the
remaining walls. I swear it carries the voices of the ghosts who once lived up
here.

“Ghosts
don’t exist,” Lukas says matter-of-factly. “If they did, we’d be able to
measure their magnetic field with something as simple as a compass app on our
data feeder.” He sits cross-legged on the floor and empties his satchel.

I don’t
believe him. Lukas doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know how many times
Akaela and I have climbed up here and listened for ghosts.

It’s not a
pitch-black night. The moon is out. It winks through the vines and weaves
silvery shadows on the floor. I stand on the ledge along the open wall and look
down into the emptiness below. The smoke on the horizon casts a yellow glow
over the mesa. I wish it didn’t. I wish the night were so dark I could count
the stars and see the Milky Way sweep the whole vault of the sky. I lift one
foot and for a moment I leave it hanging, dangling in the void while balancing
on the other foot.
My heart races.
I imagine the
plunge, and the thought alone sends adrenaline rushing through my veins. I’ve
watched Akaela jump from this exact spot so many times. She has a gliding sail,
I don’t. Yet I could never master what she does.

She
perceives fear for others—though it feels as though she’s angry—but
not for herself. Dad says her implants messed up something in her brain. Both our
parents are convinced this glitch will kill her some day.

I don’t
get why they’re so protective of her.

I’m
jealous. Why didn’t I get the same implants Akaela got?

A dark
shadow crosses the sky and squawks.

Kael
.

I whistle
and he veers elegantly in the air. I step back, pull the vines out of the way, and
wave at him to come over. Kael swoops inside, flapping his wide wings, his movements
stilted and awkward as soon as he touches the ground. He hops toward the back
and then looks at me with his beak half-open.

Lukas is focused
on the screen of his data feeder, blue light outlining his narrow face. “We
need to make a map,” he says.

I whistle
to Kael. “Fancy some dinner, buddy?” I pull a dead rat out of a plastic bag and
drop it on the floor. Kael rabidly jumps on it, tearing off pieces of flesh
with his sharp beak. “That’ll keep him busy for a while.”

“Good,” Lukas
says. “Because I need some time.” He slides a cloth pouch out of his satchel
and carefully unfolds it: inside are tiny little tools like tweezers,
screwdrivers, and a bunch of RAM and circuit modules.

I sit
across from him and watch as he thumbs the screen of his data feeder. “Where’d
you find all that stuff?”

“Around.
Mostly at the landfill.
I told you I can find stuff out
there, you just got impatient the other day.” He slides a pair of pliers out of
the pouch and threatens me with a stern look. “Pop your eye out.”

I stare at
the sharp looking pliers and wonder if this is such a good idea. “Are you sure
about this?”

“Of course
not,” Lukas says. Sometimes I wish the kid wouldn’t be so annoyingly rational
all the time. “I told you we should ask Uli or my uncle to do this.”

“We can’t.
They’ll never approve of any of this. We could get killed, and adults don’t deal
well with that. Messes up their birthday calendar.”

Lukas
smirks and shows me his empty hand. “Well then, what’s an eye when you could
lose your life?”

Can’t
argue with that logic. I pinch my right eyelid, lift it and pop the eyeball
with my other hand. Lukas grabs the wire and helps me unwind its full length.

“We’ll
include a transmitter,” he says. “I would deactivate it for now. Just in case.”

“Hell, Lukas,
stop reminding me how wrong this could go and just tell me you know what you’re
doing.” I flip open the flap on my forearm and deactivate the eye, cutting in
half my field of vision.

“I do know
what I’m doing,” Lukas protests. “But I can’t guarantee—”

“Just do
it,” I say.

He snips
off the wire that connects my right eye to my brain and then works on
assembling the transmitter.

“See
this?” he says, proudly showing me a little silver cube. “I got this from an
old radio. It’s a 30MHz crystal oscillator. The images won’t be perfect, but
it’ll be good enough.”

“I’m used
to perfect vision.”

“Well then
use your other eye.”

“You’re so
funny, Lukas.”

“I wasn’t
trying to be funny.”

Together,
we encase my right eye into a little camera box, and then solder on top the
transmitter he’s made with the oscillator from the radio. After we connect both
the receiver and his data feeder to my USB ports, I reactivate my eye and test
the camera. Satisfied that both my brain and his data feeder can visualize the pixels
coming in, we move to the next part of the plan, which Lukas happily leaves to
me.

Kael’s
been sloppily banqueting on the dead rat. When he’s finished, he hops over and
lets me ruffle his tail feathers. I croon softly to get him to cooperate as I
pin the makeshift camera to the ring around his right ankle.

“Now don’t
you go and lose this, Kael, or I might kill you.”

I’m not
even sure he gets my words, but the bird bobs his head and squeals. I rub his
head with the tip of my index finger, then don my training glove and let him
hop on my arm. Back on the ledge, the night sky looks silver bathed in the
moonlight. My heart starts pumping faster, as if I were the one about to take
off. A piece of me
is
.

I inhale.
“Ok, buddy,” I say, moving the vines out of the way and lifting my arm. “Just
like we rehearsed yesterday, ok?”

Kael bobs
his head.

“Good boy.
Go!” At my signal, he spreads his wings and takes off. I watch him delve into
the night, the pale rays of the moon glinting off his black feathers.

“Whoa!” Lukas
shouts, holding up his data feeder. “This is awesome!”

“Let me
see!”

I try to
grab his data feeder but he whisks it away from me. “Dude! Just reactivate your
eye.”
 
 

I hadn’t even
thought of that. Heart pounding, I reach for my arm flap and hit the control
key. My head spins instantly. I sway, as if somebody has suddenly yanked the
ground from under my feet, and drop on my ass, the view before me fantastic and
terrifying at the same time. I see the river, narrow and silver, as it wiggles away
from the Tower and then vanishes inside the forest. The rocking, dictated by
Kael’s flapping, makes me nauseous, yet I cling to every pixel the transmitter
delivers to my brain.

Kael drops
a few feet down, making my stomach churn.

“Whew!” I
yelp.

“What’s
wrong?” Lukas asks.

“Nothing. This
is just… fantastic.” No way I’m
gonna
tell him I’m
terrified.

Lukas
doesn’t seem to register my emotional turmoil. “He’s going toward the forest. It’s
the wrong direction.”

Kael draws
a wide circle and picks up speed, rising again. I know he’s going with the
thermals, the currents of warm air that rise from the ground. “He’ll get back
on track,” I reassure Lukas. I keep my doubts to myself, as I watch the
landscape expand below me. From up here, the mesa cliffs look like fingers looming
over the expanse of the solar panel fields. Beyond them, the upper branch of
the river snakes all the way to the edge of the mesa and then drops into the
sheer veil of the waterfalls. Maybe he does it on purpose to make me squirm again,
but Kael dives nose down along the waterfalls and into the mist of sprays, like
a kid playing at a waterpark. He veers when he reaches the bottom and follows
the surface of the river, the water so close to me now I scream again.

“Don’t
drop the camera in the water, you fool!”

“He can’t
hear you,” Lukas points out.

I groan. “Always
so sensible, are you?”

And then
Kael lifts off again, the river growing smaller before my one eye. The cliffs
loom in the distance now, and the forest gets smaller and smaller at the edge
of my vision.

Here we go
, I think.
Now he’s getting into unknown territory
.

I spot the
black scar of the gorge that splits the mesa in two. Kael lowers and follows
it, a flat horizon opening ahead, smeared by yellow smoke. Tied to his right
ankle, my eye swings at the rhythm of his powerful wings. At times he sinks
even lower, making me cringe at the sight of pointy shrubs and rocks coming at
me. But then he catches another thermal and rises again, and the view of black
trees shimmering in the moonlight becomes mesmerizing.

“One mile
in,” Lukas says.

I’m too
focused on my missing eye to see what he’s doing, but I can picture him next to
me with his legs crossed and the data feeder on his lap. “Are you recording
everything?” I ask.

“Sure
thing.”

“Detecting
anything?”

“No radio
transmissions so far.”

No signs of life, whether artificial or not
, I
translate in my head. So far, Kael’s flight has been steady and uneventful, the
only exception the occasional dips that make my stomach squirm. The mesa seems
plain from above, covered by shrubs and the occasional tree. I spot a swift
movement and suddenly a pack of
rats
bursts from a
shrub and scatters in all directions. Kael seems distracted by the movement. He
wavers but then presses on. The smoke on the horizon becomes thicker and yellower.
Down below, the black scar of the gorge widens.

“Five
miles in,” Lukas announces.

The
movement becomes a lull, the sight before my eyes so monotonous it disorients
me. Every now and then I ask Lukas if he’s detected anything. He shakes his
head, tells me how many minutes in flight. We get past the ten-mile mark and
Kael’s still resiliently flying forward. At some point I doze off, victim of
Kael’s hypnotic swaying. The mesa keeps careening before me as if it were a
short movie looping over and over again: the same rocks, the same trees, the
same gorge zigzagging through the land like an open wound.

When Lukas
speaks again, I realize I’ve been dreaming. The landscape below has changed
dramatically. There’s smoke everywhere, thick and yellow. Kael’s flight is more
erratic now, as he jerks in and out of dense patches of fog.

“Twenty
miles in and I’m detecting something now …”

“Twenty?”
I drawl. “Wow, that last stretch went fa—Whoa!” Kael makes a sudden dip
then jerks to the right. His wings feel unstable and I find myself wobbling and
swaying with him. I want to throw up yet the adrenaline rush has me glued to
the ground, watching through my right eye. The smoke is much thicker now, so
thick I can’t see where Kael’s going. A flash and Kael swerves again. Something
zips past my field of vision.

“Bullets!”
I yell. “Damn, he’s being shot!”

“He’s
getting to the end of the gorge!”

“The hell
with the gorge, did you not see the bullets?”

“Yes.
Sniper droids. But the gorge—”

“Damn it, Lukas,
they’re gonna kill him! Since when do the Gaijins’ sniper droids open fire on
animals?”

“Maybe… I
think the transmitter gave him away.”

I jump to
my feet but can’t hold my balance because the ground below me is tilting. I
stagger and hold onto the wall, realizing there’s absolutely nothing I can do
to get Kael out of trouble.

“On the
plus side,” Lukas says, “I’ve registered the droid’s position.”

“You don’t
get it, Lukas,” I say, failing to convey my enthusiasm at the news. “If Kael
gets killed, there is no plus side to this.”

Kael on
the other hand—my beautiful, brave Kael—keeps pushing forward
despite the attack. He rides a thermal up, putting greater distance between him
and the bullets.

Good boy, Kael
, I think.
Good boy
.
Now come back. Please come back
.

The smoke gradually
dissipates, and tall, wide towers emerge through the mist. The yellow glow
shapes into a grid of lights delineating a network of pipes and metal
scaffolding. Kael circles around the towers. He dodges a thick column of smoke,
and suddenly I see it, the mouth where it all comes out from, like an open
volcano, except it’s made of cement.