Rainbird (13 page)

Outside the circle stood the eiree male who’d come to her prison—Rainbird recognized his scent right away. He had no eyes for Rainbird. He watched Diamada with a fixed intensity that Rainbird would’ve called hopeless adoration on a human male.

So that’s how she was able to get him to come free me.

Wing-rustle, silver-ripple. An eiree approached her, an old one, though she couldn’t tell how she knew. Eiree didn’t age in the ways that humans did. Perhaps it was in the color of skin and eye, the thinning of bones in his frame, the mustiness of his scent.

Rainbird resisted the urge to drop her eyes or make obeisance, as if to an elder of her race.
I have no race. I belong nowhere.
And then she thought of Petrus, and her heart squeezed.

“You hear the music?” said the eerie, without preamble. She recognized his voice. He’d been the one on the wire.

For answer, Rainbird closed her eyes and started to dance. She felt them make a space for her, a widening circle. Heard the other eiree falter in their singing, stop one by one until only Diamada was left, singing with a high pure clarity. Rainbird danced, as they matched note to step, and thought,
This is the only time my mother and I will ever do anything in harmony.
And again, her chest tightened.

She danced and Diamada sang for seconds, for eons. When Diamada’s voice died away, Rainbird kept up the dance, soundless, for a time longer. She came to a stop and said, eyes still shut, “I hear.”

A snort, a puff of air as if wings swept in a shrug. “Strange for the halfbreed to be the one who hears best.”

Rainbird opened her eyes, looked the elder full in the face. “But I’m not halfbreed, then, am I? I hear—doesn’t that make me true eiree, truer than some of the others?” Bold and impudent words, but the seriousness of her expression and tone robbed them of their sting. She didn’t look for Diamada, but she thought she heard her mother let out a sigh amidst the indrawn breaths of the other eiree.

She did see her eiree rescuer. He stared back with mingled disgust and wariness. A young one, not yet used to turning his face to a mask.

“You claim the eiree wings?” The elder let a wingtip rise in surprise (
if only I had the same facility with mine
, thought Rainbird, with a stab of envy). “Why?”

“Use me. I woke the dragon. Help me to put it back to sleep.” The tremors under her feet increased; the beast’s misery was a vast ocean that rolled over her soul in waves.

Did they speak? Consult? No visible communication, but Rainbird felt—something—go through the group, like electricity. She felt their assent like a tingle in and under her ears, but she could make out no words in it.

“Diamada?” said the elder.

Now she had to look. Rainbird turned, steeled herself for Diamada’s expression. The eiree woman watched her, with an odd expression, too alien to be called gentle, yet not entirely pitying either. “The humans’ signals are broken, the air free of their noises for once.”
Sanders
, though Rainbird, with a pang.
Thank you.
“We can leave the Perch at last, but it is fitting punishment for the waker to stay and be guardian to the beast, to soothe it to sleep again, lest the rest of its kind take notice.” Rainbird shuddered, remembering that great voice in her head. “Little worm,” Diamada addressed Rainbird. “It is time for you to grow up. Are you ready?”

They were looking at her. Waiting for her to make the choice. Would they tear her to shreds and throw the remnants over the sunway if she refused?

She couldn’t, though. She’d given her word. Put herself into their hands. Promised to submit to their justice.

She nodded, head down, then thought that she should face her future—since she had one—with more dignity. Rainbird squared her shoulders, looked at Diamada, though she spoke to the elder. “I am ready.”

“Then be transformed.” He threw back his head and his wings rippled behind him. There was a ceremonial ring to his words, and a shiver of anticipation went through the rest of the eiree.

Rainbird stood there, wondering what she had agreed to, as groups of eiree broke out into chanting. It was a surprisingly vigorous and martial a music for such a race. They tossed eiree lyrics back and forth, till they were tattered and ragged.

An eiree knelt—knelt!—before Rainbird and offered her a tiny bottle. It was made of bone and delicately-carved and she tipped it to her lips. Silver liquid burned as it went down, closing her throat. Rainbird coughed and spluttered, hand up over her windpipe, panicking as the ache grew. Were they…what…? She couldn’t speak and her sight went blurry.

Eiree crowded her, wings and arms outstretched. Their claws ripped slits in her clothes and their hands were cold as they slid the tatters off her. Rainbird resisted the urge to grab the fabric and clutch it to her. Her clothes. They had been her disguise and her shield. She shivered in the night air.

Some touched her in those eiree places, their sharp nails pricking, leaving fire and ache in their wake. Others spread out her torn wings and coated them with a gel. Rainbird blinked again and suddenly she could
see
with a shining clarity.

The eirees’ wings were open to starlight, to radiation and micro-particles from space. They were like sails, threaded with fine nerves, swirling with color. Rainbird looked at their faces, and they were no longer alien, but familiar.

My people?
Rainbird tried to lift her hand, to touch the faces she had now only begun to see, but her arm hung limp by her side.

They guided her, and under the influence of the potion, Rainbird could not resist. Did not even want to. They led her to a spot between two bones. A bulbous sac lay in the joint, slightly quivering. The eiree peeled away at its gelid layers, revealing warmth and darkness within, and coaxed Rainbird in. One by one, all the eiree came past, touched the skin under her ears, her wings, her sides, saying words that she had no meanings for.

Last of all was Diamada. She brushed her fingers over Rainbird’s face, and Rainbird managed to focus her thoughts into an arrowhead of lucidity, slicing through the mists in her head. “Where go…?”

Diamada understood. “Away for now, away from this world. Perhaps, one day when the humans are gone and the dragon truly dead, we will return.” She touched Rainbird’s lips. “Now, rest.” And then she was singing—not the song of the stars, but a croon, like a lullaby she would sing to a child.

Perhaps she had before.

Layers and layers of wet translucence closed over Rainbird’s face. The last thing she saw clearly was Diamada’s face. She wanted to stretch her hand out, to say, “Tell Petrus…” but her limbs were jelly and no sound came from her lips.

And then Diamada was gone and nothing was left but shapes and shadows beyond the sac. Rainbird leaned back, sank into gel and darkness, and met the dragon. Uncertain and pained, it was more like a child than a fearsome beast.

Don’t worry
, she thought to it.
You are not alone. I am with you. I will always be with you, now.

It made a sound like a whimper, and its consciousness bumped up against her. Rainbird reached to embrace it, and felt the scritch-scratch of feet and machinery upon bone, the aching hollows where its organs should be, the bump of boats on land and sea against its ribs. She saw panicked techs and wizzes fleeing from their labs at head and tail, as live wires sparked and broken tubing gushed fluid. Its heart constricted, and her own squeezed with it. Blood, the silvery dark of a dragon’s blood, ran into its nerves and muscles and brain. Already parts of it were healing, tissues stretching towards each other across gaps, twining over wires.

But it could never be completely whole. It would never fly again.

And what of her? Already the gel soaked through her skin and worked into her muscles, blood and bones. It would dissolve parts of her from within, then reform them. When she emerged from this cocoon, she would be—what?

Not just an eiree, not with her human blood which resisted the gel, resisted the undreaming sleep it would have brought to another worm.

No, she would still be herself.

She would be Rainbird. Rainbird with another purpose.

With piercing clarity, Rainbird saw herself dancing forever upon the Perch, living upon the moss and debris that the eiree left behind, sharing the music of the stars with the poor ravaged beast trapped in its brain stem and skeleton. And someday she would hear that dreaded voice upon the stellar winds—
I am coming
—and she and the beast would have to find a way to keep it away.

We belong together now, you and I
, she told it—sunway and sun, cosmic dragon and trapped carcass, all.

And in that moment, they were both comforted.

This book would not have happened without the contribution of many people. Many thanks go to Jo Anderton for her constructive criticism, cheerful support, and for reading at least three versions of this story. You rock.

Thanks also to May-Lin Demetriou and Miquela Faure for offering structural comments, and to Liana Mir and Robin Cornett for nitpicking over typos and formatting.

A big thank you goes out to David, chief cheerleader, wise reader, one-man tech support staff, exceptional husband, and co-parent of three wild and wonderful children. I love you. 

I break fairy tales and fuse fantasy and science fiction. I love to write about embattled heroes who never give up, transformation and redemption, and things from outer space. In my spare time I read, doodle, eat chocolate, avoid housework, and homeschool my three children.

A native of Pakistan, I grew up in hot, humid Karachi. I then spent almost a decade in Northern New England among the trees, mountains, and moose. I now live in Northern Virginia.

Visit me online at
http://www.rabiagale.com
or follow me on Twitter at
https://twitter.com/rabiagale
. I love hearing from readers!

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Shattered

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