Magonia(71)

Cannonballs, arrows.
My vision goes in and out.
Blink. Blue sky.
Blink. Ship battle.
Blink. Clouds.
Blink. Cloud city.
Blink. Skysharks and skywhales.
I wave my arms.
“AZA!” I scream and the water rises around my ankles. I look up at her and shout her name again, and I see her standing there, frozen, staring down at me, still singing.
I don’t know anything. I can’t tell anything.
Except that Aza is here, and she’s alive. I might not be for much longer, but maybe that is okay as long as—the first part.
“AZA!” and I’m crying, but my tears are freezing, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here, because up in that sky is her, and down here is me, and I’m without any kind of backup.
“3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286,” I shout as though it’s magic, as though pi is enough to summon her down, as fast as I can shout the numbers, the basic numbers, waving my arms frantically, and then, suddenly, she stops.
She sees me. I feel it happen. The whole island shakes. And something comes flying fast out of the sky above her.










NO!! I cover my mouth with my hands, clamping it shut, and Milekt screamsings inside my lung.
It’s Jason! It’s JASON.
Alive, alive alive!
Every note I sing is making the sea rise. Every second I sing is two hundred years of climate change. I stop my song,
But
I’m
Not
S
T
O
P
P
I
N
G
NO.
The sea is rising
and the song
is pouring out of me
WHY CAN’T I STOP?!

I look at Dai. He stares back at me, and he has no mercy. He and Zal are making me dissolve the world, and I won’t do it. I won’t sing the world into a flood. I won’t lose Jason again.
But I’m singing as hard as ever.
I’m looking down at Jason. I’m going to drown him. I’m going to drown everyone, and Dai is beside me magnifying my voice, and Zal is screaming at me, and Milekt is inside my chest, when everything—
Stops.
Out of the air above me, I hear a cry like only one thing I’ve heard before, a damaged opera, a sweetness so high and bright it hurts, discordant and ferocious, desolation and love twined into a song.
CARU.
He shoots down, black feathers and red wings. He doesn’t land. He hangs in the air above me, and there’s fighting all around, ships and planes, and arrows and I—
SING, Caru screams. SING.
I take a huge breath from the bottle and then rap hard on my own breastbone.
You will not! Milekt shrieks. She’s mine!
Caru screams back at Milekt. Never yours!
I open the door in my chest, open it to lay my lung bare to the cold and there’s the bright yellow thorn inside it, shrilling at me.
This is my nest! whistles Milekt, and then he tries to force me back to the flood song, but he can’t, because now I can see Caru.
Caru, who is loyal. Caru who is no one’s.
She chooses, he sings. I choose.
Caru, heartbird, chooses me.
He rises from the shadow of the ship where he’s been flying, staying quiet against his own nature.
I grab Milekt, his tiny gold body, his screaming beak.
Traitor! he shrills, and I pry him out of my lung, where he’s anchored his claws. I pull him out, and close the door. The yellow bird stares at me, his eyes glittering like jet.
TRAITOR!
But I’m not the traitor.
I hurl him out into the air, and he hangs there, shocked and enraged.
Caru’s been here all along. I’ve been hearing scraps of his song. He’s here to sing with me.
I know it now. He stayed for me.
She would drown the earth, Caru shrieks. She would kill all. Kill the world. Drown the fields and the trees.
Caru jabs his beak into my hand, and prods the ring on my finger. Zal’s grabbing for him, but he dodges, glances off, and he screeches at her, too, and all around us, still, there are Magonians and Rostrae screaming, dying. There are Breath dropping down from above.
Svilken’s out of Dai’s chest and dive-bombing the falcon. Zal’s now aiming something at Caru, and I can see it. She’s going to shoot him with her bow and arrow.
I look at Jason, this tiny figure on the ice. I can hear him shouting still, his voice, and I know what he’s shouting. I know that number. It doesn’t end.
Like {(( ))}. It never ends.
I know myself.
I know what to do.
I open the door in my chest again, and I place Caru’s ring inside my lung.
I hear Milekt scream a horrible scream. He shudders and tumbles to the deck at my feet. I merge with Caru.
Heartbird.
I sing.
Separate but connected. By choice, his own and mine. We choose each other.
There’s a huge quake a change in everything. Caru looks at me and I look at him.
We are stronger together, I know, than anything else. Fiercer than everything else. He’s both things, earth and Magonia and so am I.
Caru jerks in the air, those huge yellow eyes, his wings wide. He lifts up, and hangs on the wind above me, his wings out. His beak opens and he shrieks something that shifts the sky around us. I open my mouth and fling my voice out with his, and our notes wrap around each other.
I feel the whole sky respond. This isn’t the way it is with Milekt, or even Dai. Caru and I—the two of us are one thing. Caru’s voice comes out of my mouth, and mine out of his.
Caru and I sing waves of certainty. Stars blaze in the sky at our sound and fall in arcs on both sides. My voice is growing and so is Caru’s. High-pitched sonar, singing out, singing out, singing out.