Magonia(37)

I interviewed some farmers (I claimed I was reporting for small newspapers that actually exist, in case they checked) and they talked about it like, well, the world is ending and all I can do is try to harvest when I can. When I asked about the whereabouts of the damaged crops, they kind of didn’t have an answer.
“Well, they’re ruined, son, that means they can’t be sold.”
Most of us don’t notice waste, so if all the corn blows off the cobs, or gets trampled, what we notice is that it’s no longer edible, not that, hey, a lot of it is straight up gone.
There is a pattern. The events, the sightings of the odd lights, the weird white clouds, they’re all moving in a straight line.
There is a destination. I just need to find out where it is. I stare and plot the course. I stab virtual pins into a virtual map.










Amina Pennarum is a fishing boat, I decide, except not, because we’re fishing not in an ocean, but on earth.
A launch loaded down with apples waves a flag to ask us if we want to trade. The robins in its crew lift the boat to our level, and Zal comes out on deck to offer them a sack of dry corn from our hold in exchange for the fruit. We trade for a pig from a small tug. Our Rostrae haul it aboard and it totters past me, heavy and determined. I feel vegetarian just looking at it.
We fly over a field, and a swarm of bees appears over the rail. The cook tromps up from pig butchery, wiping blood from his knife, and barters with them for honey. (Yeah, with them. The bees themselves. They speak to the Rostrae. I don’t know how that works, but it’s a kind of humming whirr from both parties.)
Midafternoon, Amina Pennarum goes low, in a hailstorm created by our squallwhales. The blue jay girl does some of that twitchy lasso work along with a couple of other Rostrae, and the ropes swing out of a little cloud, slipping around something down below, which gives a disgruntled moo.
I stare. Are they pulling up . . . a cow? Our rustlers attach the ropes to the big crane jutting over the edge of our back deck. Its engine runs and we haul the creature up. You’ve never seen surprise until you’ve looked into the eyes of an ascending bovine.
So. Those legends about UFOs stealing cattle? Right, apparently the cause was not UFOs, but Magonian ships.
Mostly it seems we just milk the cows and let them go. The poor girls sit around in a pressurized hold, until they get grumpy for lack of grass. Which is more quickly than you might imagine.
It’s like we’re on a floating farm. Except we don’t grow anything. We just take it. We’ve got corn and wheat, animals that rotate in and out, and animals that end up meals for the Magonian crew.
For a week, the sun rises and sets. I’m put to work, I’m put to bed. Every morning I wake up expecting my room, my comforter, the life I knew.
Every morning, instead, I’m greeted by Wedda’s clucking, scouring, dressing and braiding. And then Dai’s stern face as he lectures me about finding my voice—and gives me something new to scrub until I do.
I feel like I’m in a book written by George Orwell.
Except that this is nicer than Orwell. This is Animal Farm plus Peter Pan, plus . . . squallwhales and bird people. And, somehow—somehow it’s real. I have to keep reminding myself it’s real.
I know it is, because I’ve attempted to determine my aliveness or deadness in several ways. Be she alive or be she dead, I’ll grind her bones to make my bread, fee, fie, foe, fum, and no, that doesn’t help me, but it’s what I mutter when I’m at a loss these days, even though I didn’t climb a beanstalk to get up here. Most of my tests have involved infliction of medium amounts of pain. Vital signs, modified. Each of my experiments yields the same result: alive. Alive and presumably sane, yet completely and utterly messed up.
Because Logical Aza, Rational Aza keeps wanting to wake up—to shake someone by the shoulders and scream ships can’t fly! You can’t sing something into happening!
Except that they can. Except that Magonians do.
I’m trying hard to stay calm and deal with all of this. All things considered, I’m doing reasonably well. Practice gained from years of dying. Credit due.
This morning, I’m in a harness, trying not to look down at earth while I’m carefully washing the figurehead on the ship’s bow: a patchwork bird carved and painted. One crow’s wing, one thrush’s, half of its head an owl’s, half a parrot’s. One heron’s leg and one flamingo’s, and a bird of paradise’s tail. Apparently the mascot of Amina Pennarum is a messy hybrid creature, which makes me feel sympathetic toward it, given that’s exactly how I feel.
“I’ve heard we’re embarking on a special mission,” Dai says. He’s agitated, as usual.
I stare at him, awaiting the further explanation that I know is coming. Dai loves nothing so much as the sound of his own voice. It’s the only reason I know anything about this place.
“Before we got you, we were on field duty, sending Rostrae down to net crops. It was dull. Feed the capital. Send our forage off to them. This new mission, on the other hand, is what Zal’s trained this crew to do.”
I lean forward, but he shuts up, because the golden eagle Rostrae lands on the deck rail, and with a shrieking stretch transforms into a shining woman, her hair to her waist, her eyes yellow.
Another Rostrae lands with her, the girl I keep noticing, the blue jay girl with the electric-blue mohawk. She considers me for a moment, her black eyes with white streaks beneath them, and a yellow stripe on each of her cheekbones. She’s more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever seen, though she also makes no sense with her combination of human features and beak.