Magonia(29)

My knees are shaking, and my head is spinning, but I stay upright. Zal’s hands are on my shoulders.
A hummingbird the size of a bee buzzes up to me and hovers, turned sideways, considering me with one eye at a time. Next to my face, a robin, but not an American robin, a European one. Even here I know things from Jason. Such as, European robins are smaller than ours, and much fiercer. This one looks at me, with a black, gleaming eye, and makes a judgmental chirp.
Then all the birds shift.
They stretch their wings and their bones crackle and groan as they expand, gaining height and weight. Their beaks open and open until faces appear around them, heads bowed with feathers. They ruffle up their plumes and then, with a shiver, a new thing where the bird was standing.
All of the birds have shifted into people.
There’s a tiny, beautiful man where the hummingbird was, his nose a beak, his fingers fluttering, a giant woman where the eagle was, her hair golden feathers, her arms muscular. The robin morphs in ways I can’t even remotely describe into a man with orange-red tattoos on his chest and dark eyes lined in white.
All these imaginary things look at me. All of them salute me, a fantasy made up by some little kid—like the little kid I was, the girl who read every book of Audubon, the girl who cut ships out of paper, and got harassed by the classroom canary.
“Captain’s Daughter,” the bird people shout, all in one voice. Twenty-five different songs, but they agree on who I am. There seems to be no doubt.
Everyone feels certain of my identity but me. They stare, waiting.
I look at the captain.
“I want to go home,” I say as politely as I can. This feels like my last chance at something I’ve already lost. “Something’s confused, okay? I’m not actually your daughter. I was born in a hospital on earth. My dad made the whole staff margaritas in a blender he’d brought in the car. He had four hundred limes. There are pictures of me being born, bloody ones. I’m not adopted. I’m not who you think I am. I want to go home. My parents are going to think I died. Please, let me go.”
Another memory surfaces—Jason, oh god, Jason, holding my hand, telling me he’d find me. How can he find me if I’m here?
The blue-skinned boy from my cabin, the beautiful, rude one, is suddenly right in front of me, and he looks at me directly.

“Permission to speak?”
Zal nods. “Granted.”
“As predicted, she wishes to return to her situation. Perhaps we should listen when she says she doesn’t belong here. Perhaps she’s right. We can’t afford to waste any more time.”
Zal turns me around to face her. “The drowners didn’t know you needed Magonian air. They didn’t know you needed your ship, your canwr, your song, because they know nothing about how we live. There, you were dying. There, you died. Here, you thrive. This is your country, Aza Ray. We’ve brought you home.”
“But,” I say. “I’m not what you think I am.”
“Look at yourself,” she says, and smiles, holding out a little mirror. “See who you are.”
My reflection’s blurred at the edges, dark and tangled, and for a moment all I can focus on is the hair that moves and twists as though it’s made of snakes. It whips around and everywhere, and then it moves away from my eyes and—
I see my face, kind of, the face I’ve always had, angular and weird, huge eyes but—
But this girl has wide, full indigo lips instead of my skinny, grimacing ones. And—my eyes—I recognize them as my own, but there used to be a dark blue over the colors I see now—gold and reddish, like fish deep under water.
This girl has high cheekbones, and when I open my mouth, her teeth are sharper than mine.
I’m looking at her skin, at her hair, at the echo of my face, then the forever bone-thin-weakling-no-boobs Aza body I’ve always hated, and my body, too, is converted into something else entirely.
I don’t know what to say I don’t know
what
to
do.
I want the old me. I want her pale skin and gaspy voice, I want her skinny arms.
I don’t even notice that I’ve dropped the mirror until glass splinters all over the deck.
I look up at the captain, my jaw slack. Zal doesn’t flinch. She regards me steadily.
“You are my daughter, Aza,” she says, and her voice softens. “Your life here is better than it could ever have been below. The undersky is a shadowland, and the drowners are a shadow people. You were kidnapped and placed below as a punishment for my sins, not for your own. None of this was your fault. It was mine.”
Another black tear on her face.
“It’s been sixteen years since you were born to me, and fifteen since you were taken. You do not know the pain of it, Aza. You do not know the effects it’s had on Magonia.”
She straightens up and smiles, shaking her shoulders.
“But tonight, as is fitting, we celebrate. The time for mourning is done. Tonight we glory in your birth and your return. Dai—”
She turns to the black-haired boy, who still looks at me, grudgingly, judgingly.
“—the drowners will be celebrating her birthday with a burial.”
I jolt.
“We’ll do something finer. You’ll give Aza a taste of Magonian song, the first she’s heard in fifteen years. The one she’ll join in for the deliverance of her people.”
He hesitates, but nods, and then closes his eyes for a moment. The skies have gotten much emptier than before. I can’t see any other ships around us now. This ship is moving very quickly, and I feel the wind kick up as, in his chest, he starts singing a complex song full of beats and trills.