Magonia(69)

I didn’t expect these. A chamber full of twitching root babies in pots. Mandrake roots. A vegetable lamb. Pumpkins fed by blood drips. Those, and more.
THERE. The things I’m looking for: the Magonian epiphytes. The plants from myth. They’re as real as Magonia is.
The drowners have been hiding them.
My voice falters again, but Milekt, Svilken, and Dai are there, singing to me, singing hard into me, forcing me not to stop.
The plants are drifting in the air. They float like seaweed. Their leaves are long and silver. Their roots twist. They’re rooted—in nothing.
Lost Magonian crops, still growing in midair. They’re so beautiful I can barely believe it.
The hook plunges straight through the rooms of drowner crops. The crew moves fast, swiveling the hook. It oscillates in the room of eddying airplants, snags one, two, more on its teeth.
“Bring them up,” Zal shouts.

They crank the handle of the pulley and the rope begins to ascend. It tugs the plants. They shake themselves loose of the air they’ve rooted in. They start to rise through the vault.
We only need enough to start a crop. This will change everything.
It’s almost finished. We have the epiphytes. We can take them and go. I don’t know how afraid I was, of what I don’t know, until the relief starts washing over me.
It’s done, I think. I did it. I’m still singing, but it can ebb.
I glance at Zal for permission to stop, but she’s not looking at me.
“Now,” she says to Dai. “It’s time.”
There’s a hunger and an anger in her voice that makes me feel frozen.
There’s something wrong in the air suddenly. A hum, far away, a sound. My head jerks up to look around, but I can’t see anything, only mist and clouds. Squallwhales.
What’s happening?
I can’t read Dai’s expression. He steps back from me, but I still have his heat, the comfort of him next to me. Then Dai and Svilken join their song entirely to mine, at their peak volume. Our song surges up, pouring out of me.
It’s as though I hit a trip wire. The need to sing is overwhelming. It’s the only thing.
Dai’s notes blast into me. It’s too much. More than I can handle. I have no control. I try to silence my vocal cords.
I can’t, I discover. I can’t.
Power’s pouring out of me, but I’m powerless. I’m being used as a tool in someone else’s hands.
I scream and the scream is my song, Dai’s notes are in my throat and roaring into my ears. In a moment, the song changes.
And what they’re—what we’re singing is Flood.
This isn’t the plan. The plan was the seeds. The plants. But the island starts breaking into pieces. Water rushing into and in from the sea.
Glacial ice collides and batters against the edge of the island. The repository entrance shakes hard. The ice I’ve made from the hill’s stone is shattering, turning into water, and starting to gush.
Zal stands beside me. “We will have our revenge, Aza Ray, on all who’ve wronged us, and all who’ve hurt you. Drown them. Rid the earth of them. When the floods recede, we begin again with the true Magonia.”
I blink, but I can’t stop. My mouth is open and my voice is flying from it, like I’m Caru, like I have wings on every note.
Zal wants this, I realize. She’s wanted it all along.
Below us, the rock island starts turning to ocean.
Flood, Milekt sings now, betraying me, acting against me, and Dai sings deeply with him, harmonizing, focusing the notes that Milekt sings into my whistling melody.
The corridors below are shaking and liquefying, and suddenly, from one of them, sprints a line of humans, uniformed. Soldiers running from somewhere in the building, so many ants, and Amina Pennarum’s hook is rising through the water I’ve made out of solid ground.
No. There weren’t supposed to be people here.
Uninhabited, they told me. This wasn’t supposed to happen—
The hill is shaking. The whole of Spitsbergen is trying to turn to water. I see the men running and I try to stop, but Dai’s song won’t let me.
“Keep going,” Zal shouts at him. Dai looks as terrified as I feel, but he’s still singing.
Flood, screams Milekt, this tiny demon of yellow feathers; from my own body he screams, and I scream the song with him, helpless. Drown.
Zal is using me. As Ley warned, as Jik warned. I’m as much a slave as the Rostrae. I fooled myself with the thought that I was special. I have no agency. I have no choice.
I calculate frantically, quickly. A few tons of matter is all it’ll take. An island here, a mountain there, the seas will rise, and earth will flood.
Dai’s song is right in me, moving with my own heart, my own lungs, my own body. I try to tell him no, try to appeal to him with my eyes.
I can see his fear, but he’s loyal to Zal. He warned me that he’d do anything she commanded. I didn’t know this was what he meant.
A new sound mingles with our song. First a hum but soon a deafening roar.
Rushing downward from out of the clouds, I see it. Something huge moving through the sky, something surrounded by wind. It’s so huge I can’t see the size of it. Whirlwind. Oh god. Oh my god. I see clouds and spinning, and ropes dangling from it.
Maganwetar.
Zal barks, “Bring the plants up now! Stations!” The pulley turns, and the rest of the crew starts whirling ropes and chains.
We’re surrounded, out of nowhere, by the capital city and its twisting borders. And I’m still singing with Milekt in my chest—
The epiphytes are still rising up, and—
I’m losing myself. The song is singing me. I’m drunk with it, and some part of me thinks I don’t care anymore.