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Aleshka steadied the light and fired her gun. Something low and fast dashed away toward the woods. The shepherd howled Slavic curses at the predator, blasting away.
* * *
ALESHKA STEERED THE WAGON, clucking her tongue at the mule. The two large dogs, both with trenches of skin gouged from their backs and faces, strolled like sentinels ahead of us. The old woman held the pistol in her lap, scanning the tree line.
My broken wing had torn in several spots, the skin beneath the feathers darkening from dirty white to purple-gray. Aleshka helped splint the wing between two shims tied with cord. I wore my new fleece cloak, my wooden wing flopped behind me, as I pitched hay from the wagon to the ramble of mewing sheep.
* * *
THE DOGS YOWLED from the darkness. I grabbed the rifle and burst outside to find Aleshka already deep in the moonlit pasture, shining her flashlight over a sheep quivering on the ground, its heart quaking in its torn throat.
One of the mastiffs was sprawled slick with blood. The other dogs savagely snapped at a large cat that shimmered with rage, swatting the dogs with its splayed claws, blood sparkling in its frothing maw.
I rushed past the old woman and into the beam of her light, then screamed to gain the cat’s notice. When it turned from the dogs, I fired my rifle. The cougar bucked and shrieked and scampered into the trees of night.
* * *
ALESHKA’S EYES hung darkly over her breakfast. The old shepherd was dragging the night into the morning. I told her I was going to work, and I marched up the frosted pastureland to where blood yet darkened the matted grass.
The cougar was difficult to track, a bit of a heel, a smear in the mud, gaps of twenty feet with nothing. Up and around, I passed into the steep and stony side of the mountain. I followed the path that disappeared into the landscape of jagged black boulders.
I studied every stone, every limb. For half an hour, I traced the surrounding land and found nothing. At first, I thought the sound was the wind. Then I heard it again. Chirping little cries. I cupped a hand around my ear, and followed the sound behind a scraggly mop of juniper. The cries came clearer, the whining of cubs.
I crawled into a crevice scarcely wider than my body. I wriggled back through the darkness, wincing as my splinted wing clacked against the rock. The tunnel dipping and turning deeper into the hill, the whimpering of the cubs grew louder.
A wedge of light marked the den’s entrance. I gripped my rifle and whistled, hoping to draw the big cat into view. No matter how much noise I made, the entrance remained clear.
I urged myself forward. The gun’s muzzle broke the light, then my face, and I burst into the cavern and hopped into a squat, my wings to the wall and my rifle drawn.
Three cubs whined padding over to me. They were so small, nipping at my fingers, their spotted fur so soft.
Crystalline light seeped into the steepled cavern and over the big cat that lay on her side, one ear mangled from a rifle shot, her face and neck tarred with blood.
I nudged the cougar with my boot. She didn’t move. I looked at the cubs at my feet, and sank heavily to the ground. A cub clambered onto my lap. I clutched the cat against me and watched its siblings suckle at their dead mother’s teats.
I laid back my head and peered at a scene painted high up the cavern wall. Drawings in red ochre, what looked like bison with the tines of a buck, snakes dancing on their rattle tails, and human figures stacked one atop the next all the way up the rounded rock ceiling to a gap, like an oculus, and the gray whorl of sky.
Had this cavern once been a home? Perhaps a sacred space? I considered the artist who’d painted the glyphs and thought if I could decipher their meaning I would live forever.
Then I heard the whoosh of engines overhead. The floor’s dirt wildly stirred, and the cubs wailed and skittered. I squinted up through the roiling dust and the oculus in the rock to glimpse the fuselage of an aircraft slowly passing.
* * *
I WAS HURRYING through the woods when I heard the shouting and then the shots. The Army Ranger was young, but older than me, and had a scar between his eyes that curled down the side of his nose. He pleaded his case, saying Aleshka ran out screaming gibberish and waving her pistol. The old woman didn’t comply when ordered to drop her weapon.
I could barely look at him as I explained the woman spoke a foreign tongue and was deaf and they were trespassing on her land. To that, he just said she was wearing white. She could’ve been Pearl. What choice did they have?
He told me they’d tracked me by the chip the Army had implanted under my collarbone. The chip had a radius of one hundred miles, and it’d taken them time to locate me despite deploying a search team the moment news came about my mission’s success.
“My mission?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. The termination of Jo Sam’s command.”
* * *
I MADE THE RANGERS DIG A GRAVE, the sheep milling about as they lowered the shepherd in a body bag into the hole. I said a prayer over Aleshka and tossed down her tobacco. The troops quickly filled in the plot and covered the dirt with stones.
The shuttle hung in the air not one hundred feet above us, its triangular fuselage casting a shadow over the land. The dogs barked at the aircraft, but soon lay in the grass beneath the ship where its idling jets let off warm and gentle vapors.
I worried about the dogs and about the sheep. I forked hay out into the corral, and left open the cabin door and meat locker, hoping that would keep them going for a time.
I took an arrowhead from the cabin wall, a chip of flint sharp enough to cut flesh, then headed off with the soldiers. As the aircraft rose, I peered out the window at the dogs running circles around the scattering herd. The roofs of the cabin and barn grew small, nothing else around but woods, until I could cover the entire homestead with my thumb pressed to the window’s glass.
THE MOUNTAINS became foothills became a marshland dotted with sagebrush and the occasional remnant tract of a road. The shuttle bumped through a turbulent sky that churned white in brown like cream in broth.
The ranger in the seat across from me pulled a tube from his vest pocket and smeared a dash of liniment beneath each nostril. Then I smelled it, too. The rancid scent of my decrepit wing.
I unbuckled myself and leaned forward to relieve the aching pressure I felt from the seat back. Slouched forward, the pain persisted so I lay myself belly-down on the shuttle’s floor.
The floor rattled cold and I hid my face in my folded arms, the stink from my wing smothered by the woodsmoke trapped in my woolen sleeve.
* * *
RADIO CHATTER from the cockpit, the soldier with the liniment beneath his nose told me I’d better get buckled. I took my seat and saw the caravan surrounding us, fighter jets at our wings, war copters below, the shadow of a bomber looming above.
Through the clouds, I eyed the black water of the Pacific far below. An armada twinkled in the near dark like approaching a city on the sea. In the center of the perimeter of smaller ships shone the bright lights of an aircraft carrier.
The planes and copters peeled away. The shuttle circled the carrier, then slowed and rocked in the air like a boat on water. The shuttle settled into its landing chute and lowered into the flashing lights to touch down on the flight deck.
The rain whirled thrashing as I exited the shuttle. A woman in a red vest saluted and hollered for me to follow her. She held an umbrella over me, and we hustled from the ship’s deck and down a flight of stairs and through a series of narrow halls that all looked the same. The woman flashed a badge to pass a sentry post. She punched a code into a door marked Spear Room A.
The room was small and filled mostly by a long blue table with pearl stars inset in its surface. The crew-woman left, and a paunchy man in naval tans asked if I’d like a drink or some snacks. I didn’t feel well from the flight and shook my head, but the man still set out pretzels and a can of warm cola.
A flurry of uniforms entered the room, rear admirals and colonels, director of operations, representatives from all branches smiling and saluting.
A woman in a blue pantsuit shook my hand and said her name was Miriam and that she was a senior adviser to the president. She said the president was en route and sent her congratulations and welcomed me aboard.
I was about to tell Miriam how the old postman had claimed the president was dead, when I heard a girl’s voice calling my name from the hallway and the footfall of a child running. Ava Lynn dashed into the room and fell crashing into my midsection.
She was alive. She was here with me. I could barely believe she was real, and lifted my sister and kissed her face, and she kissed me back.
“I told the others you could fly,” she chirped. “They said I was lying, but I wasn’t.” Then her nose wrinkled, and she pulled away and groaned. “You stink, Mazzy.”
Everyone laughed, and I laughed, too. By her spunk and smile, I knew the girl was well. How joyful but jarring a dimensional shift that I’d started the day crawling through tunnels to the cougar’s den and now I was on a battleship in the Pacific and Ava Lynn and I were together.
Then Dewey stepped into the room. His eyes sang as he took me in. He threw his big arms around me. My wing wrenched against his embrace, pain coursing down my spine and into my tailbone, sparks crackling through my vision. I grasped Dewey’s shoulder to hold myself upright, blinked twice, then collapsed.
* * *
I CAME CONSCIOUS ON THE FLOOR with my head in Dewey’s lap and him pressing an ice pack to the back of my neck. I sat up, embarrassed, and quickly assured everyone I’d be all right. I was just dehydrated, I told them. Overwhelmed by the moment.
I showered in my cabin. The steaming water rinsed the filth from my hair and arms. Then I bumped the splint against the wall and electric pain surged from the break in my wing and up into my armpit. I had to grasp the shower’s handrail to keep from falling.
They’d given me underwear and tan ship clothes. I tore an undershirt top to bottom and pulled the sides around my wings. I cut the back panel out of a tan button-down and painfully worked my wings through the hole.
Ava Lynn clutched my hand, leading me to the Officers’ Dining Room. The crew in red aprons gathered as spectators as Dewey sat grinning. He said voilà, and lifted a lid off my plate to reveal a cheeseburger and fries.
A rheumy glaze blurred my vision. A swelling in the sides of my neck prevented my head from turning. I tried to grin, but Dewey set the lid back over the burger and asked if I was okay.
I told him I was a little overheated, and would go splash water on my face and be right back.
In the bathroom, I stuck my shaking hands under the faucet. My eyes rolled back in my head and I caught myself against the sink basin. I eased myself down and lay with my cheek to the cold tile floor, listening to the faucet run and run.
MY TORSO WRAPPED IN BANDAGES, a man and a woman stood at my bedside. I’d hung three days in a traction harness, so heavily medicated I was useless beyond sleep. Now I lay in a bed in a curtained bay, the ache from the surgery yet echoing in my bones.
The man wore a blue lab coat. The woman in a white uniform with shoulder boards and stars. The woman was a surgeon. A commander. She said my wing had putrefied. To stop the infection from spreading, they had to amputate.
She’d consulted with a team of specialists. Ultimately, it was her decision to amputate both wings. Her voice was gentle and empathetic. She said there’d be nerve damage, but only temporarily, and nothing to jeopardize my long-term health.
The man cleared his throat. He was a geneticist. A nervous man whose Adam’s apple bobbed in his long neck. He hoped I could appreciate the unprecedented opportunity and grant them access to study the amputated appendages.
My brain floated in its opioid pond. He held out a compad and stylus. There was an authorization form. I hardly looked as I signed the pad, then asked the doctor who was also a commander when I’d be released. She said they’d observe me for one more day. If my vitals held steady, I’d be discharged.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY I was lucid, stronger, my energy returned. Ava Lynn stood pouting at the foot of my bed. I asked her what was wrong. She said when one of the kids got sick they gave them ice cream, but they didn’t have any ice cream for me.
Her tears broke sudden. I tried to go to her, but my tubes caught and my back twinged so I lay back down.
Dewey pulled the girl against him. “We’ll find her some ice cream,” he soothed.
“I don’t care,” Ava Lynn muttered. “I don’t care about that. I just don’t want to go back there.”
My heart shriveled. “Back with the Novae Terrae?”
The girl whimpered and nodded.
“You won’t,” I told her. “Not ever.”
“They’ll make me go back if you die.”
“I’m fine, silly. The doctors say I’m fine.”
She looked again to me, a tempest in her eyes. “No more fighting. You got to promise me.”
I reached for her. Ava Lynn stepped to me, and I pecked kisses up the length of her arm like Mama used to do.
As if the action transferred the thought, my sister asked, “Where’s Mama? I want to go see Mama.”
It was simply too horrible. She’d suffered too much. Or maybe it was me who couldn’t bear the words. I heard myself telling her we’d see Mama soon. Dewey looked away from me and down at the floor. I pulled my sister near. Though it pained my back, I let her lay atop me.
* * *
A FOG HUNG OVER THE DECK as we strolled among the fighter planes. They’d fitted me with khakis and boots and a plain gray sweatshirt. The doctor advised me to take it slow, to keep the suture clean, and to finish the full ten-day run of antibiotics.
Members of the crew shook my hand, saying thank you and bless you. They seemed to already know Ava Lynn. A muscular pilot in a blue helmet boosted the girl up a ladder so she could sit in the cockpit of an SVB Mercury.
I asked the pilot about the war. He said we’d suffered eighty thousand casualties. Mostly civilian, and mostly from drone strikes. Novae Terrae factions were actively rebelling across Europe, with major conflicts throughout the Balkans, though they’d been promptly thwarted in the Middle East and much of Africa.
“What you did was beyond heroic,” he said. “The whole world owes you a debt of gratitude.”
His words struck me as false; not disingenuous, just wrong. What I did, and why I’d done what I did, none of them really knew. Then I tried not to think about myself or the warring of the world.
We drank orange sodas and watched Dewey play basketball with the airmen. A woman in green coveralls gave Ava Lynn a bag of stale bread. Ava Lynn and I tore the bread and hurled the chunks into the air to the gulls that swooped and dove.
* * *
THE CREW GATHERED along the main deck’s railing as the setting sun glazed the sea in amber light. Dewey stood beside me, unsmiling and staring out over the water. I hooked my arm around his and gently asked what was wrong. The look he gave I’d seen before, the reluctance soldiers donned when asked about combat.
Dewey told me how they’d escaped from the Pearl. Nalli had gotten them through the checkpoints under the guise that the bears were to be entertainment at a party. Once in the redwoods, they left the bearskins as decoys, then headed for the second boat.
The second boat wasn’t there. The Pearl were coming down through the trees, and Nalli told him and Ava Lynn to hide. To draw them away, Nalli went straight toward the soldiers, yelling that the bears had gotten loose and she needed help.
“Why would she do that?” Dewey said. “We heard the shots and then we had no place to hide, so I had Ava Lynn lay in the shallows and I covered her with mud. She didn’t cry or make a peep. The water was so cold and then it was night and a light came over the shore, but I didn’t know if it was the right boat.”
Dewey turned his eyes to the smoldering ocean. “I was freezing and kept thinking about Whit Miller hanging in that bell. How that could be me. I was so scared I couldn’t even think to pray. Now here I am standing on this deck, surrounded by all these soldiers and ships and planes, and I still can’t shake it.”
I took Dewey’s hand. I told him how Mama always said you can’t remove the salt once it’s in the stew. The only thing you can do is add more broth or veggies or meat, and try and get the salt balanced right with the good stuff.
“Salt in the stew,” Dewey said, and squeezed my hand.
ON THE WAY TO BREAKFAST, the crew-woman I’d met upon landing approached me at the entrance of the dining hall. She escorted me to Spear Room A. I was directed into a chair at one end of the long blue table. All the brass were seated around both sides, with Miriam, the president’s senior adviser, at the opposite head.
Miriam had me sign a document indicating the divulgence of information shared within the meeting was punishable by indefinite incarceration. I had nothing to hide and told them everything: the dinner party at Astoria’s, the tree in the meadow, the Pain d’Alethea and the spillways, young Joseph Samuel Pfarlier’s designs to cull the adults, what I’d done with an eyeliner pencil, the explosions in the dams and the flood.
Miriam took copious notes. When I was done talking, she pulled a photo from her notebook. She passed it down to me and asked me to identify the individual. The photo showed a woman in a dark suit and tie. With her red hair pulled tightly back, and no makeup, the resemblance was faint but clear.
“That’s Meera,” I said.
“For whom did she say she was working?” Miriam asked.
“I don’t know. She said she was a baker, but was obviously more than that.”
“Did she disclose her last name?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Or the name of her grandmother?”
