Magonia(72)

The world’s flooding. I did it for Zal. I undo it for me.
It’s overflowing, water against the vault, and Caru sings with my voice, changing it back, forcing me back to myself, making me able to sing my own song.
We un-sing the flood. Caru and I push the water back into shape, transform it back into rock.
“Up! Pull this ship up!” Zal’s screaming commands at our Rostrae, but they’re ignoring her.
I see Jik, her bright blue wings visible, her face half human. She’s at a height where she can be in between. She’s shrieking along with our song and, as I watch, the chains around her talons and ankles shatter. She’s doing it herself. It’s her own song, magnified, breaking whatever spell has been on the crew, destroying something. Working from the inside.
I see Wedda beside her. Wedda, who’s always been loyal to Zal, perched on a mast. She spreads her wings too. I watch her chains dismantle themselves and fall to the deck, a glittering collapse.
I look at the batsail and see its wings folded in solidarity. It will not take Zal up. It will not save her.
We bend the sky to our will, Caru and me. We put the earth back together. We sing to it, Heal.
Moments ago Spitsbergen was water. It shudders as if with shame, and is stone all over again. The waves splash up and freeze into earth shapes, the water goes opaque, the island goes hard.
The hook with the epiphytes is only a few feet below the surface now. What if I gave Zal the plants? It would right an ancient wrong between earth and Magonia.
But my song with Caru isn’t controlled. The earth is sealing up, and even as I think about it, it closes over the plants, locking them in the rock—the airplants, and the last few yards of line from Amina Pennarum.
The rope attached to our pulley is suddenly jutting up from the ground of Svalbard. The urgent whirring wheels aren’t pulling the crops up anymore. They’re yanking the ship down toward the earth’s surface.

We list hard. The crew screams and stumbles. Dai’s frantic voice stops as he slips across the deck. The ship veers and jostles and drops, and the crew are trying to cut the rope but it’s too late, we’ve lost control. I’m clinging on but I’m not afraid.
Our song is strong enough that Caru and I can fly if we need to, but I don’t have to try it. I know it’s true.
Now I do what some part of me knew I should have always done. This is not a slave ship, not anymore. The Rostrae are free. They freed themselves, but the batsail is still trapped.
I use my song with Caru to cut the threads that bind Amina Pennarum’s batsail to the ship. I set it free. It sings a high note at me, firefly, and then it’s gone, wings stretching out into the wind.
I watch the crew of Rostrae transform entirely, the sky suddenly filled with feathers. Wedda, an owl again, her wingspan tremendous. Jik, bright blue, rising up. Hummingbirds. The eagle.
Now I cut the enslaved canwr cote free, and the sky is flecked with gold, all of Milekt’s siblings and students swooping out from the ship like motes of sun.
Fly, they trill.
Magonians fall out of the sky into the sea. There’s gasping, and shuddering and the water takes some of the crew.
We lurch downward, and at last, with a screaming splash and a shock akin to earthquake, Amina Pennarum drops into the ocean. The real ocean, not the sky we’ve been sailing in. We beach on the shore of Spitsbergen.









It takes me a second to get my bearings after the impact. I’m surrounded by cracking wood. Magonians are gasping and screaming, choking and whimpering in the heavy air of earth. I don’t even look. I move fast.
I have to get to Jason.
I haul myself over the railing and drop a few feet onto the rock. I gasp air from my bottle.
Zal leaps over the rail behind me. Then she’s in front of me on the ice, this raging woman, my screaming mother, this warrior, my captain. But down here she’s not as strong as I am. I’m used to earth. I know how to walk here. I know how to survive on less than I need here.
The stakes have changed. I’m not the daughter who serves. I’m not the girl who came aboard Amina Pennarum, scared and delicate.
Zal reaches for my face, trying to grab my bottle for herself. I push her, and she falls backward.
Milekt flies at me and flutters around screaming ragesongs as Breath rappel down onto Amina Pennarum from Maganwetar, and seize Zal.
Zal screams and fights, but she has no power over them. She has no song. She’s struggling to breathe but she battles hard. I sing her weapons into paralysis.
I wait for them to try to grab me too. I won’t let them.
I sing a tiny note of warning, and Caru echoes it.
The Breath before me holds up a hand. Not Heyward. This is a Breath I’ve never seen before. He stares at me for a moment, and then turns back to Zal. They’re not taking me. I don’t know why, but they’re not.
The note I sang with Caru echoes in the air, and all around me there’s stillness. Protection. Strength.
Then he’s gone, hauling Zal up into the Magonian command ship. Zal shakes in the air, upended, flipped like a whale, choking on air. As, one by one, is her crew.
“Betrayer,” Zal screams as she goes.
Dai is pulled up after her, unconscious from the fall. My heart clenches and my eyes fill, watching him hauled up. We’re still attached; our bond isn’t gone. Not gone at all. Though we didn’t choose each other, we’re supposed to sing together, no matter what.
I don’t think this is the end of Dai and me.
I don’t think I’m that lucky.
I see Milekt land on him as he rises, a dart of gold on his shoulder, abandoned by me. Dai has two birds now, one on each shoulder, one for each lung. Milekt shrills maddened bird loathing at me as he ascends.