Magonia(31)

I can see, even from this far away that Jason Kerwin’s faking fine. The alligator head’s in his hand, and I can see his chapped lips through the spyglass. Chewed. I can see his eyes, red rimmed. He looks like something attacked him and won. Again that sound, that pitiful wail, from somewhere deep in the ship. I look up at Zal, but she’s not reacting to it. No one else is either.
“You see?” Dai mutters, suddenly next to the captain. “It’s the drowner she cried for when she came aboard. Maybe he’s her ethologidion, not—”
“He’s only a drowner,” the captain says, and snorts. “She can have no bond to that. He’s below even the feathered class.”
I don’t know what the thing Dai said means, and I don’t care. I’m watching my own funeral procession.
Jason’s car leads the students and teachers out of the parking lot. They’re honking their horns in rhythm. He has them honking a message. I catch some of it. Not all, but enough.
Dai’s still muttering, judging the tears on my face as weakness, but everybody else—except for that wailing bird—has the good sense to shut the hell up.
At the cemetery my parents get out of the car, looking ten years older than the last time I saw them, and I feel a horrible surge inside my heart. The captain has my arm. All I can do is watch.
Eli stumbles out of the car behind them. Her hair’s not in its usual straight line. She’s given herself more than a trim. She’s cut her hair off, and the bottom is insanely ragged.
On purpose. It must be. There’s no other explanation.
I finally get why people are scared of dying. I finally get why no one wants to talk about it. Santa Claus in Reverse is carrying everything about my life away with him in a big sack, and I’m supposed to be fine with it.
My dad’s carrying a wooden box, the size of a shoe box.
I accidentally whimper.
“Is that me? In that box?” I ask the captain. My chest feels too tight, but it’s not because I’m dying anymore. It’s because I’m missing them. I can see my mom’s sweater cuff, unraveling. I can see my dad limping, because stress makes his back go out.
“Of course not,” Zal says, impatient. “You’re here beside me. They have only the ashes—from the skin,” she says, like we’re talking basics.
“The skin?”
“The Breath left it when they brought you up here. Surely you recall your liberation? From the report, it was an unpleasant thing, and close, but you were dying. I’d never have let one of them near you had we not been out of time.”
Again, the Breath. I keep hearing that term, in that strange tone.
But down there, my family’s left a gap where I’m supposed to be. I’m a ( ) in the middle of the people who love me, an emptiness in their sentence.
I feel sobs tsunami-ing up. I can’t move. I can barely see, because now I’m watching black tears drop from my cheeks. I’m feeling my mouth contorting around terrible sounds and the muffled bird below, whatever it is, echoes my lamenting cries. Zal’s head snaps up, and she listens, but says nothing.
My mom stumbles, and my dad catches her. Jason is between them now, holding them up. How can this be what we’re doing? How can I be dead to them—and alive up here?

“I want to go home,” I hear my mouth saying, and apparently I don’t care that at home I’m in a box, that at home, my family is carrying me toward a hole in the ground. “Please let me go home.”
No one on the ship has anything to say to that. Home is where they think I am.
“Home,” I whisper, but no one cares.
Jason’s passing out balloons and people are attaching envelopes to the strings. Jason’s the last to let go of his, a big green one. He lifts his head as he does it and for the first time I get a real look at his face.
He clearly doesn’t see anything, no ship, no sails, no me. He lets go.
The green balloon is rising, closer, up, up, and I run toward it, stretch for it. I reach, but I can’t get it.
“Enough,” says Zal, as though anything could be enough. “This is the proof you desired. Now it’s time to begin again. You have much to learn, Aza Ray Quel, and little time.”
She motions to Dai, who takes the wheel.
“Rise,” she says. I look at her in horror. She can’t take me away.
“JASON,” I scream. I hurl the spyglass over the rail with all my strength. “JASON, I’M UP HERE!”
The ship explodes with shrieks and cursing and feathers; Dai is spinning the wheel hard.
“LET ME OFF THIS SHIP!” I scream, trying to get my voice down to Jason. “I’M NOT LEAVING THEM! LET ME GO!! JASON!”
“Retreat!” Zal shouts. Her arms circle my body and she tackles me to the ground. I bash my head on the way down with a sickly crack, but she doesn’t seem to notice. The ship pushes up, away from earth and home.
All the Rostrae whoosh and shift back into birds, grabbing ropes, and hauling us higher. The batsail’s wings are wide and beating.
My head feels like it’s detaching from my body.
My heart feels like it’s still down there. I can’t scream, but I’m sobbing, gasping, and the bird belowdecks is screaming, too, an eerie siren call.
“May the Breath take you and tear you with their teeth and claws! May the Breath consume you!” Dai growls. He’s taken Zal’s place containing me while she’s back at the wheel. “You think the drowners love you, but you’re wrong. They care for nothing but themselves. They’d kill you if they knew what you are.”