People of the Sky (19 page)

“Hurry,” Chamol urged, tugging at Kesbe’s arm. “The
soyoko
…”

Kesbe played the beam of her light ahead on the path, catching only rocks and small scuttling things. Then the two women were at the trailhead and running out onto the mesa where
Gooney Berg
waited. The plane looked big, solid and reassuring after a night of shadows and spirits. As Kesbe dug in her pocket for the keys, an aronan swept between streaks of low-hanging cloud and landed near the aircraft.

Once inside, she flicked on the lights and surveyed the cargo bay, wondering how many searchers and their mounts she could squeeze in alongside her load of spare parts. She shoved a crate or two aside, clearing space on one side of the aircraft. She paused, knowing she hadn’t given much thought as to how she was going to coax the child-warriors and their fliers into something that looked to them like a monstrous giant.

“Hai, I have no fear. I will go into the belly of Grandmother Aronan,” a voice piped up. Pesquit. Kesbe glanced around to see the wiry young girl already crouched on the floor-boards, coaxing her aronan, Dancing Water, over the threshold of the cargo door. She was clad only in a short kilt and sash, her upper body bare except for the strap of an arrow quiver across her chest.

Chamol laid her hand on the child’s shoulder as the girl gentled her flier and led it into the plane.

“I lead the child-warriors,” said Pesquit proudly. “Now that the older ones take the way of
kekelt
, I am the best remaining among the younger ones.”

Kesbe couldn’t help a twinge of dismay. Pesquit looked no older than fourteen and the other child-warriors climbing aboard with their mounts appeared even younger. How was she going to conduct the search with a handful of children?

Soon the C-47 was filled with the strangest cargo it had ever carried, a load of brown-skinned Pai child-warriors and their winged mounts. The child-warriors looked frightened and Kesbe couldn’t blame them, for they were disobeying the words of their elders in order to search for Imiya. The aronans settled themselves on the floorboards, fluttering jeweled wings. As Kesbe moved from one pair to another, checking that they were secure, she felt as if she had moved somehow into a dream filled with clouds of huge butterflies.

“Chamol,” she said nervously, “aren’t there any other adults who would be willing to help us?”

The Pai woman looked up in surprise. “Only the child-warriors have aronans, Kesbe-Rohoni. Even if there were other men or women who were willing, what good would they do?”

Kesbe didn’t have an answer to that. “I don’t know. I just feel uneasy taking off with a bunch of children whose parents haven’t given me permission. What if I crash?”

“Permission?” Chamol was puzzled. “These are child-warriors, not infants. If you think there is danger, explain to them and let them make the choice.”

When all the wings were folded and the children’s chatter had died down, Kesbe spoke to the group, telling them exactly what she intended to do and what the danger would be. The youngsters listened seriously, the looks on their faces telling her that they were weighing the risks as an adult would. It brought home again to her that these small beings that looked like children were indeed accomplished hunters and warriors with responsibility for their own lives. Still…

“Will you come with us?” she asked Chamol. “I know these kids can take care of themselves, but one of them might get queasy or frightened.
Gooney Berg
makes a lot of noise…” she finished lamely.

Chamol nodded. “In some ways they are still children,” she said and added, “In some ways my brother was still a child.”

“Is,” Kesbe said, clapping her on the shoulder. “He’s alive and we’ll find him.” A thought struck her. “Once all the kids are in the air, how are we going to direct them?”

“Pesquit?” Chamol looked toward the girl.

Pesquit straightened her shoulders. “We are prepared. We have carrying-slings and signal banners.” Another child handed her one and she displayed it. It was actually a flag-sized blanket, woven in a bold pattern that could be seen from a distance. “We use banners to relay messages across canyons or to those who are in the air.”

The girl’s quiet competence soothed Kesbe’s misgivings. “All right,” she said, and began explaining the search method to Pesquit while the other child-warriors crowded around and peeked over her shoulder while she drew diagrams on the back of a map.

“If and when we find Imiya, the most difficult part will be transferring him from your aronan-carried slings into
Gooney Berg
,” she finished. “You’ll have to approach from above while I fly as slow as I can. Stay away from the propellers—those whirling teeth on the front of the wing. If you get too close, you and your mount will be sucked in and shredded. Instantly.” She paused. “Is there anyone who doesn’t want to go with me?”

The child-warriors gathered and spoke quietly for several minutes before Pesquit turned back to her “Imiya is one of us. If he lives, we will find him. If he is dead, we will honor his spirit. We are not afraid.”

“All right,” Kesbe answered. She showed them a light to the right side of the cargo door During the C-47’s military life, it had been used to signal paratroop jumps She was glad she’d made sure the system still worked. “I can turn this light on from the cockpit. When it flashes red, it means ‘stand to the door’, or get ready. A green light means go. Pesquit, you make sure everyone gets out safely. Any questions? No? Let’s go, then.”

The answer came back in a chorus of affirmative yells. Kesbe thought she might have heard some aronan chirps among them. She ducked away and strode to the flight deck.

All right, Grandmother Aronan, as Pesquit called you, give me everything you’ve got for this mission. We’ve got precious cargo aboard and a tough task ahead.

The Pratt and Whitneys answered without the usual sputters and backfires. With both props slicing air, and both radials snarling behind her, Kesbe pushed twin throttles forward. She felt the tailwheel lift and then came that wonderful push from below that boosted her into the sky as if she were riding an elevator. A quick throw and latch of the landing gear lever brought the main wheels up with a satisfying double thump as the C-47 rose away from the Pai mesa.

Kesbe looked back over her shoulder as someone came into the cockpit. The outline of a butterfly-wing headdress showed against the dimly lit bulkhead.

“Welcome to
Gooney’s
flight deck,” Kesbe said in English, then greeted Chamol in Pai. “Is everyone all right in back?”

“The child-warriors said it was like being lifted by a strong wind. They laughed with delight.” Chamol peered ahead into the gray dawn that filtered through the cockpit windows. “For me, it was as if I could ride an aronan once again.”

“You were a child-warrior?” Kesbe’s attention left her instruments and the sky ahead to stare at Chamol.

“Not a leader, like Pesquit,” the woman added hastily, “but I did ride.”

“What happened to your aronan? Did it die?” Kesbe found it increasingly difficult to keep her attention on piloting the plane.

“It took its own Road of Life as I took mine.”

Kesbe made a course correction. “Imiya told me he was afraid of what would happen to Haewi.”

“He also confided in me,” said Chamol. “I could tell him only that if he stayed in the kiva and trusted his teachers, he would see that the Pai way was right.”

“Chamol, what does happen? In the ceremony of adulthood, I mean.”

The unexpected silence was filled by the sound of
Gooney’s
engines. Kesbe turned toward the Pai woman, who was facing away with a set expression, “I didn’t mean to offend you, but I thought…” she trailed off.

Chamol recovered her voice. “I do not take offense. It is just that our ceremonies are sacred. The gods would be displeased if they were to be known by one from…outside.”

Kesbe let herself be absorbed by the task of flying. When she glanced up again Chamol was still there. For a moment the silence between the two of them was awkward. Chamol leaned on the back of the copilot’s seat.

“I like your Grandmother Aronan,” she said with a shy smile. “She sings a strong deep song.”

“I thought you’d find it strange. Perhaps even frightening.”

“Strange, but strange in a good way,” Chamol answered. “Not frightening.”

Kesbe checked her airspeed. “Are the child-warriors ready to start the search? We’re nearly there.”

Chamol went to get Pesquit, who stood solemnly in the center aisle while Kesbe told her how the child-warriors should depart the plane aboard their aronans. “I’ll slow
Gooney
down and you jump out one at a time. Let yourselves drop straight down to clear her tail. Remember, stay away from those propellers.”

The girl nodded once and left. Kesbe turned to Imiya’s sister. “Chamol, do you know how to use the signal-banners? Good. Go back to the cargo bay with Pesquit and make sure the child-warriors space themselves. When they’re all out of the aircraft, come back up here. I’ll need you to relay directions to the searchers.”

Gooney Berg’s
engines changed their song as Kesbe throttled back power. She added flaps a few degrees at a time, using the trim tab wheel to fly tail-low. She flicked the remote switch for the jump light to red, waited until she was holding constant airspeed and altitude, and gave a green.

She stifled an impulse to glance out her side window, knowing she couldn’t see the child-warriors as they bailed out of the cargo door in the half-light before dawn. She could only trust to their training and Pesquit’s leadership. Her job was to keep the plane straight and level, avoiding any abrupt corrections that might send an aronan and rider tumbling out before they were ready.

She eased her grip on the wheel, knowing the old bird would do a good job of flying itself if given a chance. From the corner of her eye, she saw a tiny dot fall away from the aircraft. Another followed, then a third. They plummeted like rocks as Imiya had done, then sprouted wings and swooped away from the plane.

Kesbe didn’t relax her concentration until Chamol came to the flight deck with the report that all the searchers had been safely launched. She could see three of them now, spread out in a wing formation on the right side of the aircraft. Even the closest one, Pesquit, was difficult to see against the sky, and the farthest a mere dot easily lost against the shadowed blues and purples of the Barranca at dawn.

Kesbe started her planned search pattern. To slow
Gooney
down enough to keep pace with the aronans, she flew a progressive series of horizontal loops, frequently rounding back on her course to make visual contact with the young riders. Chamol sat in the copilot’s seat with a pile
of signal banners in her lap, deploying each as needed by flattening it against the plane’s side window.

The sun rose slowly, dispersing the ground-mist that softened the hues of the Mother Canyon and painting the rocks with richer colors. The sky was clear, the scattered clouds puffy and the air smooth. Kesbe kept one eye on her fuel gauges, the other on her chronometer as an hour, then two, droned past. She switched feeder lines from the wing tanks to the engines to balance fuel consumption. As she headed into a shallow bank to double back on her course once again, Chamol sat up in the copilot’s seat, pressing her face to the side window.

“One of them has found something! Look. The boy at the far end of Pesquit’s line is doing a sky-dance.”

Kesbe fumbled for her electronic binocular, set it for infinite range and handed it to Chamol. “Here. Look through this.”

“Hai, he’s so close! What wonder is this? I can see him well, he is circling, he is waving and the others follow. We will know soon.”

Kesbe nosed
Gooney Berg
down to get a better view of the scene below. She saw Pesquit’s band of child-warriors gather like a cloud of mosquitoes. They streaked in a line toward a high broken-backed ridge flanked with rock spires and carved with terraces. Against the powder-blue rock of a ledge, Kesbe caught the fleeting impression of a clay-colored speck. The riders had seen it too, for they descended in a tight spiral toward the terrace.

Taking the binocular from Chamol, Kesbe flew
Gooney
as low as she dared, straining out the window for a glimpse of the speck that soon became a tiny figure sprawled on the rock. A boy’s figure, wearing shoulder-cape and leggings. Was that dark shadow a bloodstain beside the boy’s head? He lay so still…

One look at the terrain told Kesbe she had no hope of landing. Even a C-47 could find no refuge here. She would only be able to circle helplessly while Pesquit and her child-warriors gathered up what was left of Imiya and Haewi.

She ached to be down there with the child-warriors, to kneel beside the boy, hoping for the first stir of life while dreading the stillness that might have already claimed him. If it were her words that had sent him off on this journey to a terrible end, she should be punished. She should be the one to lift him and bear him like a fallen warrior to his people. She should be the one to close his eyes and whisper that she was sorry.

Instead she could only keep the C-47 circling over the Barranca while enduring the worst punishment of all: not knowing and having to wait.

“The child-warriors are there,” said Chamol, taking the viewer and training it out the window. “I see Pesquit. She lands, she walks to him, touches him. She jumps up, waving. She makes signs. He lives. My brother lives!” Chamois last words were shaky with tears that spilled from her eyes.

Kesbe’s eyes were stinging too, but she had to keep her vision clear and her feelings in control. Soon, she knew she would have to do the most difficult flying of her career to bring the injured boy aboard
Gooney Berg
. In order to match speeds with the aronans who would bear Imiya in a sling, she would have to slow the C-47 to near-stall speed and perhaps into a partial stall. The tricky part would be to keep the wings level. If C-47s had one notorious habit, it was to drop one wing abruptly during a power-on stall.