Windrunner's Daughter (8 page)

When she knew it was too late, she closed her eyes.

Chapter five

There was no sound.

Surely Wren should have heard the rustle of ferns being crushed, the snap of wing and bone as Raw drove into the desert?

She risked cracking open her eyes and peeped towards the ground. There was no sign of a crash landing; no broken body or twisted wings poking from clusters of greenery. Holding her breath, Wren turned her head. Was it possible that Raw had flown?

She was too low; all she could see were long scarlet rock formations. Smoothed by millennia of abrasive storms and with no water to add grooves, each was so organic that Web could imagine the breath that would make them rise and fall. Looking away from the bubbles of rock she wheeled into a warm gust but, even circling slowly, she could see no sign of Raw.

Then, as she searched upwards, a spot appeared in the centre of the lowering sun. It darkened and grew until she could see Raw, finally flying upwards, whirling just as she was, in the centre of a thermal.

For a single inhale Wren allowed herself to feel a wave of relief that almost washed away the strength in her limbs. Raw had lived, but more importantly, the wings had survived his crazy impulse. If she could just get him to land, no-one need ever know what had nearly happened.

“
Raw
!” She flew up behind him as fast as she could force the wind to lift her. Automatically he turned his head and yawed alarmingly. Immediately he turned back. He was holding his body stiff as thin ice, ready to shatter at the slightest pressure. He had to relax. “You’re all right,” Wren called. “You won’t fall.”

Either he didn’t answer, or the wind snatched his reply away.

Wren circled until she flew on his right flank and then looked at him. His eyes were watering badly. His jacket was dark with crescent shaped stains and there was blood smeared on his chin.

“Can you hear me?” she called.

Raw nodded tightly.

“I’m going to help you land.” Wren tried to catch his eye. He’d crunch on the runway if he didn’t loosen up.

She could hardly hear his croaked response. “Are
you
going back?”

Wren snorted. “No, but I’ll guide you in – tell you what to do.”

Raw stared ahead and the muscles on his jaw stuck out like struts. Then he shook his head. “Then I’m not landing.”

It took a moment for Wren to absorb his reply. She almost choked. “What do you mean?”

“If you’re not landing,” he yelled, “I’m not. I’m coming with you.”

Tears of frustration pricked Wren’s eyes, threatening to mist up her goggles. “Why do you want to follow me - to get me in trouble? I won’t help you if you come after me. Go back.”

Raw risked a slight twitch of his head and wobbled as his body jolted into the wind.

“You have to,” Wren raged. “You don’t know how to fly.”

Raw said nothing; he simply set his face into the wind.

Furious, Wren narrowed her eyes and pointed her toes. She’d gained enough height, so she could leave the thermal. She should leave Raw right here, circling endlessly upwards into the cooling air until she returned. Or until exhaustion overtook him and he fell.

“Burn you.” She glared viciously through her goggles, wishing she could force Raw to obey her. “I’m not going back to Avalon. I have to find a cure.”

He continued to ignore her, but Wren noticed that the longer they circled the less terrified he looked.

If he followed her, she would have no choice but to help him. The wings were precious, one day they would belong to her son. She couldn’t risk their loss. “If you’re coming, you’ll have to keep up,” Wren growled. “I’m not waiting for you.” Then she dipped left and the thermal released her into the cooler air.

For a while Wren burned with a fury so hot and deep that she could hardly see anything through her goggles. She paid no attention to the landscape below, simply headed in the direction of the Mons, kilometres lower than Elysium, but still visible against the horizon, which she knew would steer her to Vaikuntha.

Her mind raced with the problem of her hanger-on. When he crashed, the Runners in Vaikuntha would instantly see that he was not one of them. Even if he watched her and managed to pull off a landing, he knew nothing of etiquette and then, if he still escaped notice, he would give Wren herself away. Why else was he following, if not to ruin her mission? She clenched her fists. “Just because his mother almost died …” she muttered.

Her wings rustled louder as she shuddered. But as the afternoon wore on, and her arms began to ache, rage burned itself out and Wren was filled instead with quiet awe.

Below her, the Martian delta stretched out, seemingly endlessly. A vast orange desert pocketed with patches of green, seeded from Elysium. Rock formations like giant sculptures dotted the emptiness, smooth as sanded wood, shadows growing black as the sun sought its nadir.

Then she saw an arrow moving in the sand, following her own shadow as it wove over rocks and dipped in and out of crevices. It persisted with her, keeping pace as she sped through the sky.

Wren shivered as one trail became two, then three. She saw nothing of the Creatures themselves. As far as she knew, no-one ever had. Generations ago early colonists had tried to modify the Creature’s antecedents, which had been woken from dormancy by humanities’ terra-forming efforts; they thought they could use the burrowers to loosen soil and release more greenhouse gases. But they had grown at an alarming rate even as rivers began slowly to form in empty beds and the dampening sand filled with Martian bugs. As far as the Originals had been concerned the Creature was relative to the sand snake; some kind of serpent. But who really knew what they had turned into since man’s modifications?

The Creature’s persistence as they waited for Wren to make a mistake reminded her to check on Raw. He too was on her tail, waiting for her to fail, a scavenger no less than the Creatures below. She glanced back. Her enemy remained in sight, silver wings glinting in the reddening sunlight, but she was drawing further ahead of him. Soon he would be nothing but a mote. Wren sighed and tilted into the setting sun, looping in lazy circles as she waited.

The joy of feeling the wind against her cheeks sent from her mind the Creatures, Raw and their hunger for her demise. At some point her hood had blown back and her shorn hair streamed into the currents. The sheer speed of flight amazed her. In mere hours, she had travelled so far that Elysium’s massive peak was barely more than a bump in the landscape. She imagined that if she had no O
₂
mask, the wind would have long ago whisked the air from her lungs, but instead she had tamed it and forced it to carry her in its currents.

When Raw began to catch up, Wren swung towards Vaikuntha. He could stay at her back; she did not want him at her side.

As she flew, Wren started to think of the wind as a solid, living thing and gradually became adept at choosing the gusts that were strongest and longest lasting.

As she did so, she began to see that the shape of the ground affected the character of the embracing wind. Where the desert was smooth and flat the wind rushed in a straighter path; where the ground gullied and rolled, it swirled and bounded in flurries that took her up and around more often than forward. So Wren started looking at the ground ahead to anticipate where the wind would be kindest. It meant that she veered from a straight path more than once, but she flew even faster.

Behind her Raw grew tiny and, with a strange lurch in her belly, she found herself wishing she could share her discovery with someone, even if it had to be him.

Despite her resolution to leave Raw to himself it was as if Wren’s head was on a string and although her loathing of her partner burned as brightly as ever, she was drawn to keep checking on him.

The wind’s whisper in her ears was comforting, but somehow desolate. The silence which filled the air above the wind pressed in on her like a weight.

Wren was coming to know the Runner’s truth. Flying was freedom, but freedom was lonely. And so each time Wren saw Raw dip into the wind, she had to fight the upturning of her lips. She did not know what would happen once they landed, but at least she wasn’t alone any more.

Hours of flying meant that Wren’s wrists felt burdened as if by ballast and the sharp arrow of her flight was beginning to sag. To the East the bright star that was Deimos began to burn, brightening the heavens. She looked to the West as Phobos faded into view, pallid against the bronze sky. For a while the battered asteroid hung in balance with the setting sun and Wren poised between them on a thread of air.

Finally the desert quenched the sun. The sky smouldered and gold-edged wisps of clouds changed to grey as twilight descended in a cloak decorated with mirrors and stars. Now both moons were in the sky together, the orbital array between them, reflecting the last of the sun's heat back to the surface. Moisture from her breath started to freeze in Wren’s mask and cold ate through her clothes as the air cooled. She flexed her stiffening fingers and exhaled shakily. They had to be close to Vaikuntha now, simply because night-Running was not an option; particularly for a beginner. Already she could feel the thermals wilting; flaccid and unable to bear her weight.

Although Wren pitched her torso desperately into the wind, trying to turn upwards, her flight tilted into a gradient and she began to descend.

The V-shaped wake of the Creatures seemed to surge closer. Was it possible they knew she was in trouble?

“
Wren
!” It was Raw. He was only a few wingspans above her and his voice was filled with fear. Wren looked up; his wings glowed red and purple as they reflected the dying sun. “I’m sinking. What do we do?”

She offered no answer; she would just have to search the deepening darkness for a rock on which to land. It was their only chance. If their feet hit the sand, the Creatures would have them. Raising her head, Wren searched desperately for telltale shadows.

 Rocks littered the delta, but boulders large enough to land on seemed too low to the dust, Wren could imagine Creatures lunging for them out of the darkness. To her right was a high tower of stone, which seemed promising, but when she circled towards it, Wren realised that it was too narrow: they would fall off if they tried to set down. Her breath was coming in sobs now, as though her O
₂
canister wasn’t operating properly. Wren ground her teeth. She would not die like this, eaten by Creatures, not even one colony investigated for a cure. There would be somewhere safe; there had to be.

 She shook her head to flick away the useless tears that were starting to mist her vision and regular shapes: rectangles on the delta, caught her attention.

Quickly she leaned towards them. Her descent had already taken her into dust. Now the wind carried particles that stung her exposed skin and gathered in the rims of her goggles: she was too low.

The sand trails that told Wren where the Creatures lurked, seemed larger now, as though they were closer to the surface. Dust surged, showing the Creatures lunging towards the shrinking shadow of her wings, but they had not yet broken cover. Wren could no longer count their wakes as they wound back and forth, wriggling like greenbelt-worms, and she pictured them fighting over her when her feet hit the desert.

She shivered and pushed towards the rectangles: their last hope.

A shout told her that Raw was right behind her, but she ignored him. The wind brought her lower still, the rectangles developed ragged edges, and suddenly Wren knew where she was. They were flying above the CFC factory cluster.  Already Wren could see that sand had swallowed at least one of the buildings; only a rectangular shadow showed where it had once stood. Others were half absorbed, protruding from the dust like broken teeth, rotting into fragments.  

Only one still jutted unbroken above the delta, its rooftop a wide grey expanse in the titian desert. Tentacles of sand curled up its sides and boulders were rolled against its walls, hurled there by mega storms and never pushed off. But, as far as Wren could see, the sand clung only about half way so the roof was safe. Explosions had not marred its flatness, it would provide a fair Runway, possibly a little shorter than she’d like, but she had no choice.

As the light faded even further, Wren aimed herself at the rooftop and reminded herself of her father’s instructions to her brothers. “When landing, dive until level with the platform. As soon as you are overhead, drop your legs below your body. After two body lengths bring your arms together. When you feel your feet touch the platform, start to run.” His voice in her mind sounded calm and her chest loosened as she started to follow his directions.

She glanced back to see Raw copying. He was following as close to her as he dared.

Rather than dive, Wren sought to angle herself so that the wind would drop her as close to the edge of the roof as possible.   

Terror had shortened her breathing into little shallow gasps. Light headed, Wren struggled to slow her inhalations down, dragging in lungs full of oxygen, until her head spun. The rooftop seemed to move below her, shifting sideways as she dropped her legs to prepare her landing. The Creatures now surrounded the building like a besieging army, as though they knew what she planned.

A gust of wind caught under Wren’s wings and, just as she was convinced she would miss the roof altogether, it propelled her forward and slammed her toes into an uneven lip of concrete. Then it dragged her upwards again and she cycled her legs vainly in mid-air as she was carried towards the centre of the parapet.

Wren had to close her wings, or risk being pulled all the way off the other side. She bit down a cry and started to pull her arms shut, but the wind was stronger and kept them stretched out behind her, pulling them backwards and making her wings billow. She had no control.

Now she understood why her brothers had been crunching weights since they were old enough to hold them above their heads. Their shoulders were strong, Wren’s were not.

But Wren herself had been climbing up and down the side of the Mons since she was old enough to use a net repair kit. Her trapezius muscles might not be powerful, but her biceps were. You couldn’t climb the net without doing pull ups.