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Pigeons slept on roosts inside the coop. I looked about, trying to understand Meera’s charge that a bird would show me the way. Then sparks glimmered in the eyes of a gray-headed bird that was otherwise white. The sparks seemed to course through the pigeon. Its breast breathed with subtle light.
The bird fluttered into my open palm. Cold to the touch, I could feel the thrumming mechanics of its body. I carried the pigeon outside and scanned the roof and the world beyond, the building isolated by a highway interchange empty of traffic.
The bird flew free from my hand, guttering against the wind to flap off over the building’s crown. I launched after the pigeon, flying high above the city lights to the north, over the open roof of the soccer stadium, over the streets of tenements and the transit center, until we arrived at that night’s designated dam, the spillway dry but for long streaks of damp down its slanting concrete tongue.
I found the four-foot-square opening that was the weep hole. I set the white box on the ledge and drew in my wings and pulled myself inside. Flashlight in my teeth, box gripped with both hands, I wriggled deeper into the dam’s face to a sloping chute, down which I slid like a child on a playground slide.
A round hole no bigger than my head was covered in a grating that opened onto the hissing innards of the dam. I untied the box’s golden string. The Pain d’Alethea wasn’t baked bread, but like a loaf of dough. I could feel the hardness of a canister within.
The loaf of dough murmured its vibration through my fingertips. What was nestled inside? My instincts tingled with doubt. I questioned that such a small and crude package could disarm a defense system. How prescient I was. How naive.
The canister’s magnetism clasped the loaf to the grating’s metal plate. Then my work was done, and I crawled back out and flapped from the spillway to rejoin my pigeon guide high above the dam. From this avian vantage, I peered beyond the valley’s rim and over the gleaming expanse of the black and boundless sea.
THIS WORLD OF STORMS AND WAR required time no longer be measured in years or months, the calendar marked instead by increments of change. A week could be a season, a day a different life. After the execution of Whit Miller, the change in the meadow was unnerving and absolute. At the first amber light, I stepped onto the veranda and heard not a shout or cheer, the Novae kneeling prostrate in the high grass, hushed like monks of old.
Acts of deception have a way of pitting the mind against the mind. The house in the tree was a replication, the tree not a tree, the meadow and the manufactured silo of light all created by human hand. Meera was not Meera, and I was not an angel. How does one account for decisions that don’t seem like decisions? How does one parse conspiratorial thoughts born from manipulated will?
Had I become nothing more than Seraphine, a myth built to deliver the pious into obedience? Was I only Private Goodwin, a soldier enacting missions of shrouded intent? Did anything remain of Mazzy, the young woman raised on a mountainside?
I was haunted by what might’ve been. What if I’d cared more about my marks in school? If we’d had money for college? If I hadn’t had to watch after Ava Lynn while Mama worked? If the quakes and storms hadn’t destroyed everything, or if we’d lived somewhere safe and temperate?
If and if and if: trajectories mired in if.
I’d give away my wings if I could. I didn’t ask to be a savior, had only wanted to find my sister. Let me have Ava Lynn and Dewey, to live humbly in our stone house atop the mountain, to work and hunt and garden and someday maybe start a family. Are you hungry? Are you warm? Do you know that I love you?
I didn’t want a mansion in the valley of the golden city. I didn’t invite glory to my name. Each day, I offered communion to the Novae in the meadow. Each night, I flew with the ornithopter drone and placed the bread into the dams. I did so in the belief that I was warring for decency, and to help us through this confounding moment and return us to a world of simple lives and modest dreams.
Despite the purity of my prayer, an omnipresent concern grew like a tumor inside my brain, for I knew the history of our world was a history of monsters who saw themselves as righteous, blind to the malevolence of their deeds until the ink was dried, their legacy written, too late to be revised.
* * *
AT THE EIGHTEENTH AND FINAL DAM, I secured the dough that was not dough, then crawled back up the chute and peeked out from the spillway weep hole. I didn’t see the pigeon in its typical pattern of hovering. In my periphery, I caught the faint blush of the bird’s breast cut across the sky, pursued by the red eye of a security drone.
I hid back in the chute, and heard a sound like paper torn. When I peered out again, a puff of smoke hung in the sky and the bird was gone. The red-eyed drone drifted to the top of the dam. Its laser grid deployed, the orb slowly descended, scanning the gates at the top of the spillway wall.
I’d be found if I remained in the weep hole. I felt I had but one option, and held my breath and let gravity take me. The plummet was long before I spread my wings and glided over the flood canal’s frothing water, then down a residential street where I banked to hide in an alley between apartment buildings.
I’d felt sickly all day, my body taken by chills, my mind scattered. Huffing, sweat beading my hairline, I watched the dam from below. The drone had not spotted me, the red of its laser grid spanning the breadth of the spillway, scanning over the weep hole and continuing down without pause.
I’d not been discovered. My mission was complete. I fled on foot back into the darkness of the alley, ducking from building to building as to not be seen, searching for a place to hide until I could safely make my escape back into the city.
I crossed a street and made my way to a little park that was under construction. I crawled into a half-built play structure meant to resemble a castle. I crouched in the castle’s shadows, studying the sky to be sure no drones had followed.
A drizzle fell. Through the patter of the rain, I heard someone approaching, then the creaking of the swing set only a few yards from where I crouched.
Carefully, I glanced out. A woman in a gold housecoat sat on the swing. Head down, she was crying. I watched her, hoping she’d gather herself and leave, but her weeping only intensified.
I found myself moved by her despair. When I could no longer resist the siren of her tears, I stepped out into the open. Upon seeing me, the woman abruptly stood from the swing as if to leave, but I called for her to stay.
In the light from the streetlamp, I saw she was young, maybe only a few years older than me. Her dark hair glistening, she squinted in the rain, not knowing where to lay her eyes.
“I heard you crying,” I said.
She wiped rain from her face, and wagged her head like she couldn’t bear to speak.
“Are you okay?”
“They’re dead,” she muttered.
“You’ve lost someone?”
She curled her lips over her teeth, as if trying to restrain her answer. “The children.”
Not knowing, but only wanting it to be true, and to offer her comfort, I said, “The children are safe.”
She pressed a knuckle between her eyes. Her fingertips red with cold, her nails were bitten to the raw. “They’re gone. Gone.”
“No,” I told her. “They’ve even built this playground. Why would they build a playground, if not for the children?”
She crumpled weeping on the ground at my feet. I set an anointing hand to her head, and asked if she had family here. She nodded, and I told her to tell her family the angel Seraphine ensured the children would be here soon, and for her to tell all her neighbors, too, and tell them to tell others, and to not lose faith.
The woman left without so much as a glance, slinking off out of the park and down the rainy street. By the tightness in my chest, I knew the woman’s doubt as my own.
I madly flapped up into the cloud cover, and soared through the clinging mist back toward the golden city. I moved to dive to the crown-topped building and return to Dewey through the underground tunnels, but the rooftop was surrounded by red-eyed orbs, with Pearl soldiers rummaging through the coop.
The rain fell harder as I reentered the clouds. I flew above the streets and buildings of downtown, then over the barricaded road that marked the dignitary sector. I circled at height above the plaza to be sure it was clear, then quickly descended into the puddled alley behind Bistro Novum.
Soaked and shivering, I hid under a fire escape’s metal stairwell. Soon the restaurant’s rear door banged open. I was hoping it would be Dewey, but it was a woman lugging out sacks of garbage.
As she lifted the dumpster lid to throw in the sacks, I dashed through the bistro’s door and down the red-lit hall. I slowed to a stroll through the steaming kitchen with its workers eyeing me. I pushed out into the dining room, where Donta sat alone at a table, eating a bowl of mandarin oranges.
A slice of orange balanced in her spoon, she looked up at me. “Why are you all wet?”
Dizzy, my head throbbing, it was the first thing I could think to say. “A game. We were playing a game.”
Donta set the spoon into her bowl. She gazed at me, puzzling it out. “This game? Is it over now?”
“Yes.” I could feel myself swaying. “I believe so, yes.”
FOR DAYS RACKED WITH FEVER AND CHILLS, Donta kept me going with a spicy tea of ginger, honey, and clove. On the hour, she’d leave her post at the base of the tree to pour me a cup of the pungent brew and help me off the couch, straighten my clothes, and tell me one more amber light, one more trip to the veranda, which I knew brought me one hour closer to Ava Lynn.
Then one morning, I woke squinting against the whorl of light sluicing through the tree’s golden leaves. The window was raised. Two white birds slept perched on the sill. Donta kept vigil in a chair beside my bed.
“What time is it?” I asked, my throat swollen and raw.
“I let you sleep.”
“The Novae? Are they here?”
“Rest,” she said.
I told her I was well enough, and couldn’t keep them waiting. I pulled my feet from under the covers and moved to sit up, but Donta set a hand to my shoulder.
“You’re done with that,” she said.
“Done?”
“With the Novae and the meadow. But you still have a big day ahead of you, so get your rest.”
“Big day?”
The corners of Donta’s lips curved into a smile. “Nalli Sandoval sent word. Your sister’s arriving tonight.”
* * *
IN THE CERULEAN TINT OF TWILIGHT, the white birds stirred from the branches above me and flew out over the meadow and the line of Pearl marching in through the aspen. The troops remained at the edge of the clearing, letting Nalli pass through them.
I looked for Ava Lynn, but Nalli was alone. Nervous fear bubbled in my gut as the actress neared the tree. I waved down, but she didn’t wave back. Donta met her at the bottom of the stairs. Nalli spoke quietly to her, then slowly climbed the veranda steps.
Nalli didn’t smile in greeting. She said we should talk inside the house. In the front room, she sat beside me on the couch and took my hand. I was relieved when she assured me Ava Lynn would be here shortly.
“She’s fine, but General Özdemir has concerns.”
“What concerns?”
Nalli tucked stray hairs back behind her ear. “They’re worried you’ll fly away.”
“Why would I fly away when Ava Lynn is coming?”
“It’s silly,” the actress said. “But they won’t let you see your sister unless they’re certain you won’t fly.”
I told Nalli they could cut off my wings if that was what it took to see Ava Lynn. To that, Nalli grimly smiled.
We exited the house in the tree. Donta close behind, and me carrying Mr. Otter to give to my sister, we hiked out through the meadow. Pearl soldiers stood near the gate in the aspen. White masks covered all but their eyes. A soldier stepped toward me, holding up what looked like a white corset, with buckles and long dangling straps.
“What’s this?” I asked Nalli.
“It’s nothing. Just a precaution.”
“I have to wear that?”
“Only for now,” Nalli said.
“If I wear it, I get to see my sister?”
Nalli wouldn’t look at me. “It’s just a little thing.”
The soldier helped me with the corset, which was made of heavy canvas, was large enough to pin my wings to my back, and had leather straps that wrapped twice around my middle and a clasp that fastened in the front.
My bound wings pushed against the canvas, but the straps offered not the slightest give. The soldier nodded to Nalli, who motioned to another faceless Pearl. I watched the soldier hurry out of the meadow, thinking Ava Lynn would soon be walking up the pathway. But then everyone’s eyes lifted to the sky.
The circle of sky above us was the blue-black of the burgeoning night. At first I saw nothing. Then a fiery light winked high in the stratosphere. A moment later, I heard a muffled boom, and behind the light blazed a sparkling trail that shortened as the light slowed in a spew of icy gas.
The glittering vapors quickly dissipated, revealing a golden sphere that dropped at deliberate speed down into the silo. As it neared the ground the pod drifted, as gentle as an autumn leaf falls, to hover just above the white swaying heads of the meadow’s wildflowers.
The pod was windowless, maybe ten feet in diameter, and emitted a glow like a child’s nightlight. Nalli stepped as near to the pod as one would to knock on a door. She peered into the light, and I stood beside her, looking and waiting.
The wall of gold melted into opacity, then cleared into a rounded wall of glass. Inside the globe, in a nest of white bedding, slept my sister. Ava Lynn’s hair had been cropped, her lips as red as berries. She was beautiful, and finally here. I excitedly called her name, knocking on the pod’s glass to wake her.
My sister’s eyes batted open. She seemed to see me. I pressed Mr. Otter up against the pod. “Hey, kid,” I cried. “Hey, Ava Lynn.”
Her eyes sleepily shut. The glass began to fade again into a milky glaze. I banged the wall, calling her name. The sphere returned to solid gold and the glow commenced. Then I could no longer see my sister, and shouted her name.
“I’m sorry,” Nalli said. “You need to speak with the general.”
Like a balloon lifting from a flare of fire, the sphere rose into the swirl of birds. I screamed out for Ava Lynn, pulling at the hasp on my corset, my wings struggling against the straps.
The pod ascended above the treetops, then hissed and brightened with blinding intensity. I averted my eyes against the glare, and then it was gone, only the afterimage of the sphere left dwindling in my vision.
Nalli tried to console me by taking me in her arms. I shoved the actress and sent her tripping and howled curses at her. The Pearl surrounded me, trying to detain me. I dropped Mr. Otter and swung my fists at them, shrieking and flailing.
Donta broke through them all. She grabbed me around the shoulders and wrestled me to the ground and pinned me under her weight. “It’s me,” she said into my ear. “Your friend. I know you’re mad, but this isn’t going to get you what you want. Pull yourself together, and we’ll go and see General Özdemir.”
* * *
ONCE THE PEARL HAD FREED MY WINGS from their binding jacket, Donta ushered me into the back of a limousine and climbed in beside me. As we drove into the city, she said she knew I was upset, that she would be, too, but I had to play this right. I couldn’t allow my emotions to make a bad situation worse. By words and tone, she reminded me of Sergeant Nazari, who, though gruff, insisted on strategy over feelings when confronted with a dangerous mission.
We passed through the dignitary checkpoint. High above the street and down the channel between night-lit buildings flew construction drones hooked with cables, airlifting two white elephants, their stump legs dangling, ears like rugs slapping their boulder skulls. Disproportionate to their cargo, the drones swayed like wasps hauling mice.
The limousine veered onto the curving thoroughfare around Silvesteri Plaza, where crews worked under spotlight, erecting a massive stage and tents for vendors. Several blocks down a southern spoke, we pulled in front of a high-rise of mirrored golden glass heavily guarded by Pearl.
Donta squeezed my hand, asked if I was good.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Just be smart,” she advised. “Tell the general whatever he needs to hear to get your sister back.”
I nodded, and Donta hurried out of the car to speak with the guards. The Pearl ushered us inside the building and into the golden elevator. I watched the numbered lights flash up and up. The door slid open. This time there was no greeting, no orchestral music, just an empty room of quiet.
Donta held open the elevator door, eyes imploring me to remain composed. Then General Özdemir was there, pacing out from a back room, dressed in a long white robe and with a nude stocking on his head like someone would wear beneath a wig.
The general didn’t acknowledge us, just crossed to the picture window. He peered down over the twinkling city, then finally waved for me to come. I stepped into the room. Donta moved to leave into the elevator, but General Özdemir called for her to stay.
His slurred speech told me he’d been drinking. When he finally turned, I saw the sling was off his arm. A squint of confusion folded around his eyes, he said, “Would you like a drink? I’m having slivovitz. A gift from our Czech allies.”
“No, thank you, sir.”
The general opened an ice bucket and dropped the cubes clinking into a glass. He plucked the cork from the little round bottle and poured liquor to the rim of the glass.
“Jo Sam says we’ll cast our net over Europe next,” he said. “The news every day is so encouraging. To change the world, to be a part of history.” He sipped his drink and exhaled like he’d been granted relief of his pain. Then he walked to the couch and sat heavily down. “Well, angel,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
