Rocco's Wings (17 page)

‘We see you, Py. We see you.’ Vesta plucked a feather from her wing. She brushed it until the yellow shone out again and tucked the feather in between the rocks. ‘You will always be our hatch-mate.’

Death was behind Rocco, nudging his back, trying to make him fall into Pyroxene’s grave.

‘It was all for nothing,’ said Magma. Bending over, he stuck a green feather into the rocks.

‘At least Py didn’t give up his wings,’ said Iggy. ‘That’s something. He was himself right to the end.’

‘But he’s dead now, isn’t he?’ said Magma, standing up stiffly.

No one said anything. Was Magma going to lose his temper again? His jaw was rigid. His eyes were stormy.

Defector

Rocco shuffled back. Magma wasn’t going to start hurling rocks, was he? The River Gang boys did that whenever they were angry, or trying to make a point.

‘I - I’ve decided. I’m going home,’ said Magma.

What was he saying? Was he serious? Rocco glanced over at Basalt. He hadn’t expected it either, nor had Vesta, judging from their expressions.

‘You can’t! We have to find Belarica!’ Iggy cried.

‘Belarica lost the war, remember?’ said Magma. ‘She couldn’t even save herself.’

‘But she’s got help now from Shale.’ Iggy threw a desperate look at Basalt.

‘Why doesn’t she swoop in and reclaim Krakatoan then? Surely she knows about the wing-cutting, but she’s not doing anything to stop it, is she?’

‘I don’t know!’ Iggy splayed his arms and wings open wide. ‘Maybe she wants to but she can’t.’

‘Exactly! I’m not waiting around, clinging to some thread of hope. We’re not going anywhere out here. Every step we take just keeps pushing us back. I’m not going to try any more. It’s too hard.’ Magma jerked away. He flew into the burial tree, the forever green tree. He jostled around agitatedly.

What was the matter with him? Was he trying to fight the tree?

Rocco flew up. ‘Come on, Magma. Let’s talk about things. We just have to keep trying. Feldspar and the others are counting on us.’

‘What do you know? You’re not one of us.’

The words stung, but people said all kinds of unexpected, sometimes nasty things when they were delirious or sick. So his mother said. Perhaps urvogels were the same.

The limbs of the burial tree were thick. For all his struggling, Magma couldn’t seem to find his way into a branch. Grumbling loudly he flew to another tree. Rocco approached again.

‘Stop following me,’ snapped Magma.

Iggy and Basalt flew up.

‘If you go back now, Harpia will take your wings,’ said Basalt.

‘So? It’s better than dying out here,’ said Magma.

‘She might do worse to you,’ said Basalt. ‘Harpia might decide to make an example of you. She could punish you terribly.’

‘I’ll just say you forced me into it.’

‘You wouldn’t!’ Basalt’s eyes flashed. He was angry.

‘Come on then, if you want to fight me.’ Magma leaned down. One side of his hair was a mat, but the other side hung wildly around his face.

Iggy hadn’t said anything so far. Now he pleaded. ‘Oh Magma, do come down.’

‘We need you, Magma. We’re your friends, your hatch-mates. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’ Vesta had flown to the branch above Magma. She leaned down.

Glowering up, Magma rubbed the side of his head. The stain on his neck was red again. It matched the splotch on his wings.

‘It’s stinking awful out here! I don’t feel like myself,’ said Magma. ‘I can’t stand it. I didn’t really want to come in the first place.’

‘It’s not going to be like this forever!’ said Vesta, her voice steady. ‘As soon as we’re strong again, we’ll find Belarica. She’ll make everything right, you’ll see.’

They didn’t even need to win the war against Harpia in the time that was left. They only had to start the war, thought Rocco, counting the days again.

‘The trials won’t likely go ahead, not if there’s a war on. Think about it, Magma,’ Rocco said. If only they could get Magma talking about something else. He was always so bleak. He had nothing to hang onto, not a shred of hope. No wonder Py’s death had tipped him over the edge.

‘Who cares?’ snapped Magma. ‘We don’t even know the way to Shale. We’re out here in the Badlands where everything is wild. There aren’t any rules. It’s chaos. I hate it. Anything can happen. No wonder Dolerite and the others didn’t want to come.’

‘Oh Magma! Please come down!’ Iggy fluttered back and forth at the end of Magma’s branch.

‘Rocco will make a fire and I’ll – I’ll heat some water for tea,’ said Vesta, pushing in a bit closer. ‘You’ll feel better then.’

‘I want to go home!’ Magma screamed.

If Magma left, maybe they’d all want to go back, thought Rocco. Sort of like Magma’s stack of bones: pull one lever and the whole thing might fall apart.

‘We haven’t got a home any more. It’s just us.’ Iggy hovered, pleading.

‘I want to eat what the cook makes and sleep in my own bed. We’re nothing but a steaming pile of dung out here!’ Magma’s voice rang loud and tight.

Iggy flew into the tree. He said something softly, and Magma answered him back in an equally quiet voice.

After a moment the talking stopped.

‘He says he needs to be alone for a while. He’ll come back later, when he’s feeling better. Come on. Let’s leave him be.’ Iggy’s feet were pointed. His wings clapped shut as he glided down.

‘Want me to come with you, Magma?’ said Rocco. ‘I can tell you some stories about goats and living out on the plains. Once I stole a slab of meat off a lion. A whole pride of them were eating, and I flew down with my knife. I almost got killed.’

Magma cracked his wings. ‘I don’t want to hear your stupid stories. I’ll be back when I feel like it.’ He flew off.

Rocco followed Basalt and Vesta down.

‘There’s other kinds of ailments than the ones you can see,’ said Basalt. ‘It’s his head. He’s not himself.’

‘What are we going to do if he heads for home and doesn’t come back?’ asked Vesta.

‘It’s not really safe here.’ Rocco looked around ‘Air Marshals are probably scouring the area.’

Rocco, Basalt, Vesta and Iggy returned to the pinnacle. As soon as they touched down, Basalt vomited.

Was he getting sick again? Would he fall asleep and not be able to fly?

‘It’s only my nerves,’ said Basalt, slumping near the entrance of the cave.

‘You wait here,’ said Vesta. Motioning to Rocco and Iggy to follow, she flew down to the forest. The three carried armloads of soft boughs up the rock face and laid them in a pile on the floor of the cave. Basalt sank into the bed of pines. Returning to the forest, they gathered up leafy bushes, which they organized in clusters around the top of the pinnacle.

Vesta, Rocco and Iggy sat down behind their leafy lookout. ‘Maybe we should go and find him,’ said Vesta, parting the branches for a better view.

‘He’ll come back. He said he would,’ said Iggy.

Magma still wasn’t back by nightfall. They waited on the ledge until the moon came up. The next morning it was drizzling. Rocco got up and walked outside. He stared at the treetops below.

‘We can’t wait any longer. It’s not safe. They’re going to find us,’ he said, when Vesta came to stand beside him.

Basalt emerged. ‘Any sign of him?’

‘No,’ said Iggy, who’d been standing silently beside Rocco. He reached up and slid his hand into Rocco’s.

‘What if he just went back, without telling us?’ asked Rocco.

‘He wouldn’t do that,’ said Iggy.

‘I don’t know, Iggy. He said some pretty crazy things yesterday. Didn’t you hear him?’ Basalt frowned.

‘He didn’t mean it. He was just mad because – because we weren’t able to save Py,’ said Iggy.

Vesta adjusted her flying belt. ‘Rocco and I will look for him while we’re gathering food. You stay with Basalt, Ig.’

Iggy kicked a stone. It bounced over the edge.

‘Iggy, I know you want to wait for Magma, but Rocco’s right,’ said Vesta. ‘It’s not safe, this place. As soon as Rocco and I get back, we have to go. We have to think of Feldspar and the others.’

Rocco and Vesta jumped off. Iggy must have kicked another stone. Rocco heard it clattering down.

The trees were wet. They pushed their way into the foliage, coming to rest by Py’s grave. The feathers they had stuck in between the rocks were full of dew.

No sign of Magma.

They continued south, in the direction they had last seen him, searching for footprints in the soft areas of the forest floor, or bits of hair or robe that might have become tangled on the branches. They covered lots of ground, dropping down finally to gather some nuts that lay thickly at the foot of a tree.

Vesta hadn’t been talking much. She started gathering chestnuts, stuffing them methodically in her flying belt.

‘Where do you think he is?’ asked Rocco.

‘Don’t know.’ At every noise from the trees, Vesta’s eyes darted up.

It was like that day he met her, sitting beside her in court. She didn’t like to talk when she was worried.

When their belts were full of nuts and some wild garlic that they’d happened upon, they came to a stream. Vesta dropped her gear and walked out to the middle. The water was almost up to her waist. She flung out her fishing line.

They needed the fish, no doubt about it, but Vesta was biding her time. She was hoping Magma would arrive at the cave before them. Vesta didn’t fool him for a minute.

Rocco wove some reeds into a basket. He waded out, dipping the basket into the stream. Maybe it was better to fly at night and sleep during the day. If they left this evening, they’d get a good head start.

A blue feather had come loose from his wing. He watched as it floated down to Vesta. She pulled the feather out, rubbing the filaments between her thumb and forefinger.

‘Do you think that maybe the colour of things isn’t fixed?’ she asked, looking back.

He’d never really thought about it before. Picking up another one of his loose feathers floating in the water, he held it up to the light. The water made it darker.

‘Did you notice Py’s wings?’ asked Vesta.

‘Yeah.’

‘They were brown.’

‘He was dying.’

‘Maybe you’re right and there is something in Harpia’s wing dust that made our wings turn white,’ said Vesta.

‘The dust isn’t just regular old wing dander. It’s powerful stuff,’ said Rocco. ‘It made you partake of that frenzy. You lost your will.’

‘I feel bad about it now,’ said Vesta.

‘What’s it feel like?’

‘It’s a powerful buzzing and vibration, pulling us all up, and we don’t even think of anything except going with the flow. It’s only after, when we’re coming down again, that I think, I’ve been up in the dome and I don’t even remember going.’

‘Aren’t you angry? If it were me I’d be furious. I hate it when I’m pinned down or someone’s forcing me against my will.’

‘It makes me angry now,’ said Vesta. ‘Before, my head was in a haze. Feels like I’m remembering it all by looking through a – a tinted glass.’

A long-legged water bird flew down and landed metres away. It tucked up its wings, and began to dart its pointy bill into the bottom of the stream.

The three fished in silence. He could tell Vesta to hurry up, but she’d probably just take longer.

‘We should go.’ He couldn’t hold his tongue any longer. Vesta had two fish and he had three. Vesta wrapped up her gear. Soon they were on their way, flying through the understorey, looking for signs of Magma again, on their way back to the cave.

They cleared the first long slope on the approach to the rock face. Vesta had been lagging, but Rocco pushed ahead. Midway up the slope Vesta passed him. Her wing strides had become rigid.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Rocco, pulling up beside her. Vesta’s face was white. She sprinted forward.

Rocco sniffed. Something was burning. It was different, more pungent, than the faint odour of Death he caught occasionally. No signs of brush fire in the trees behind them. He soared up. Wisps of fog were roiling over the edge of the precipice, odd-looking at this time of day.

He landed on the ledge beside Vesta. The bushes they had arranged so carefully the day before were green no more. Smoke, not fog, swirled around their blackened, skeletal stems.

‘What happened?’ He spoke the words softly, taking Vesta’s hand.

Something awful had happened. Vesta’s fingers tightened around his.

‘Basalt? Iggy?’ Vesta called as they approached the cave.

Something dark was lying in the entry. Rocco stooped to pick it up: a glove with clawed fingertips, and still in the shape of its owner’s hand.

‘Oh, Rocco, no! Air Marshals have been here already!’

Their wings went stiff. Inside, Basalt was lying in the same place, on the mound of pine boughs. The light was dim. Rocco squinted. Basalt’s head didn’t look quite right; it was oddly angled.

Burial tree

Rocco and Vesta walked deeper into the cave. Was Basalt sleeping? He was lying face down with his arms flung straight out. No one could relax like that.

‘No, Basalt. No!’ Running forward, Vesta threw herself on Basalt, tugging his shoulder as she pulled him towards her. Rocco watched from the side of the bed. He was numb.

Basalt was missing his wings. They’d been torn off, cut with a jagged knife or sword, the bloodied root stared out grimly.

The blackness was back in Rocco’s head, the same blackness as when he’d been standing on the palace platform with Harpia. His knees went weak as he seized the arrow sticking out of Basalt’s back.

Had he at least been dead when they cut his wings? And where was Iggy? Rocco scoured the cave’s interior.

‘Oh, Basalt, what have they done to you?’ Vesta cried. She drew Basalt’s half-turned shoulders into her arms. She brushed back his hair, kissing his cheek.

An invisible wall went up around Rocco as he fell on his knees beside Vesta. He could hear her crying, but the sound seemed to enter his head from somewhere far away. As if in a dream, a nightmare, he was being attacked by a pine bough – only he looked down, and it was Iggy. Dear sweet Iggy.

Rocco grabbed Iggy’s hands and pulled him out of the mound.

‘Air Marshals killed him,’ exclaimed Iggy through his tears. ‘They’d have killed me too, but Basalt made me get under the trees.’

Vesta pulled Iggy into her arms.

‘We didn’t even hear them coming. Basalt was asleep and – and –‘ Iggy choked. ‘They rammed their swords – I had to roll.’

He trembled, jerked to his feet and ran outside. Vesta ran after him.

Rocco stared down at the body that had once been Basalt. It was still him, but he’d never speak to him again, never look at him with his steady brown eyes. Rocco’s chest began to heave.

He couldn’t get any air. He reached down and yanked the arrow again. This time the shaft broke off in his hand: it was almost a metre long, with short black guide feathers. It was the same type of arrow that had struck Jafari in the back.

Rocco took Basalt’s hand in his. It was heavy, like stone, cold to his lips.

Rocco pulled himself up.

This was all his fault. He was responsible for his mother’s death and Jafari’s. Death had stalked him, but he had spurned it, challenging Death to take their lives. Now Basalt was dead.

The air was crushingly thick as Rocco stepped outside.

‘We can’t stay here.’ He struggled to breathe. Birds were dipping in and out of the trees. He half expected an arrow to come flying through the air and hit him in the neck or better yet, his heart. He deserved it.

‘He’s hurt.’ Vesta pointed at the blood oozing from Iggy’s side.

‘I don’t care if I’m dying! Py’s dead! Basalt’s dead! Magma doesn’t care about us!’ Iggy’s eyes swelled with tears.

Rocco took out his knife. Crouching down, he cut off Iggy’s left legging.

‘Here. Hold it like this,’ he said, pressing the cloth into Iggy’s wound.

He stumbled back inside the cave. In a daze, he picked up his belongings. If he left now he just might be able to save Vesta and Iggy. He could fly south, and draw the Air Marshals away. They were bound to follow. They were vultures after all, and he – he was a rotting carcass.

Iggy’s small frame appeared in the opening. He made a sputtering sound.

Rocco leaned forward. He still couldn’t breathe. He fell on his knees beside Basalt. Pulling Basalt’s body over his shoulder he stood up. They had to bury him first.

With Basalt in his arms, Rocco flew down to Py’s grave. Vesta and Iggy were behind him. Working together, they removed the rocks and laid Basalt to rest beside Py.

Vesta set Basalt’s sword on his chest. Iggy tucked in Basalt’s flying belt and waterskin. They gathered more rocks until the mound had become a double grave.

‘At least they’re together,’ sobbed Iggy. His knees were bleeding from where he’d been leaning in to place more rocks. Holding the bloodied, scrunched-up legging against his wound, he pulled his other arm across his face.

Rocco felt around the bottom of his tunic until his finger touched the sharp end of the needle. It was still there.

‘Come, Iggy.’ Rocco motioned. Iggy followed him to a tree. He cut off Iggy’s other legging. Rolling it up, he pressed it between Iggy’s teeth. Iggy’s eyes grew large as he looked at the needle in Rocco’s hand.

Vesta had disappeared. She returned moments later carrying a handful of leaves. Ripping them into tiny pieces she mixed them with water and poured the liquid into Iggy’s wound.

‘It’s sepia. It will dull the pain,’ she said, pulling Iggy into her lap.

Rocco yanked a long thread out of his wing hole. It was the same long thread the minionatro had installed there to keep the edge from going ragged.

Iggy’s wail shattered the dead calm of the forest. Were there Air Marshals around? They’d probably think it was a wild animal, in pain – so much pain that Rocco couldn’t bear to look into Iggy’s face.

Vesta gripped Iggy’s arms.

He had to be quick and efficient like his mother when she was acting as the village healer. It wasn’t all potions. Sometimes a knife came out.

One. Two. Three stitches and the wound was sealed.

Rocco sang a song his mother used to sing. Iggy closed his eyes. They talked and wept, remaining under the trees into the night.

* * *

Rocco stood up. He had to go, clear out for good. Vesta and Iggy were lying on the ground, fast asleep, completely innocent of the danger they were in. Death was stronger now. It was feasting on Basalt. It would come for Vesta and Iggy next. Maybe he could draw it away.

‘What’s wrong?’ Vesta’s eyes were sleepy.

Rocco pushed his heels into the rock-hard ground. No matter how stupid it sounded, he had to tell her something.

‘Do you believe in Death?’ he asked.

‘What? Like I believe the sun’s going to rise? What kind of question is that?’

‘Death is real, it’s around me now. It’s been stalking me ever since I was kidnapped. It wants to kill me but I – I avoided it, so far anyway. It – it took Basalt instead.’

‘What –?’

Vesta was looking at him like he was crazy. What did he expect?

‘I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I know it’s real. I’ve been feeling a dark presence around me ever since I was kidnapped by the Air Marshals. It’s all my fault, you see. I brought the Air Marshals into the village, and I should have told you and Basalt that I was infected with Death, but I thought I could manage it, stuff it down in my mind spirit. I thought it might – it might go away. I have to go now, to protect you and Iggy.’

Vesta jumped up. She seized his arm. ‘No! You can’t go! Iggy and I will never make it on our own.’

‘I killed them,’ said Rocco lowering his head. ‘My mother, Jafari and Basalt. It was me that set these awful events in motion. You’re not safe with me. No one is.’

Vesta shook her head. ‘The Air Marshals killed Basalt. Iggy was there. He told us what happened. And Air Marshals killed your mother and Jafari, too. You just said it yourself!’

‘But things would have turned out different if I hadn’t been there, don’t you see? I infected them with my stinking rot.’

For a long moment Vesta was silent. Finally she said, ‘You’re rather full of yourself, aren’t you?’

What was she saying?

‘You think you’re the centre of everything. You’re the eye of the storm. The fire in the pit of a smoking mountain.’

‘I didn’t say that!’ Rocco marched away.

‘No, but that’s what it means. You think you’re controlling everything, making everything worse.’

‘I didn’t say that either!’ His face was hot. He whirled around, glaring down.

‘Is Death here with us now?’ Vesta craned her neck around, peering into the dark.

‘You won’t be able to see it. It’s not attached to you. It’s attached to me.’

The trees were dark and the rock grave, which he could see through the understorey, appeared larger, swollen as if Py and Basalt were fighting to get out. Was it the nightshade or was he slipping into madness?

‘Tell me what it looks like,’ said Vesta, jumping to a pile of rocks. ‘Maybe I’ll be able to see it.’

‘It’s black, smoky. It pulls after my tail wind. I can’t see it straight on, just in my bird eye vision. But I know it’s there, I know like an antelope knows to run away from a lion.’

‘Does it say anything?’

‘No… n-not out loud.’ He was sputtering now. ‘But – but I can smell it sometimes. It’s like a burning carcass.’

‘Well, Death would smell like rot, wouldn’t it?’

She wanted to know, but she was mocking him, too.

‘Maybe it’s not Death at all,’ she said from her elevated perch.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe it’s just grief or sadness that comes over you. It’s what you get instead of separation sickness.’

Rocco raised his eyes to Vesta’s.

‘Mudrocks,’ Vesta continued. ‘Don’t you – your kind – live in tribes or clans or some such thing?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Maybe you’re not being stalked by Death but by the shadow of your missing flock. That’s what separation sickness is.’

It was true, his innards ached whenever he thought of his mother and Jafari. That part made sense. He told Vesta about the River Gang boys and how the villagers never really liked him because of his wings. ‘Don’t you see? I’m
glad
to be away from them. They never liked me anyway.’

‘Urvogels aren’t permitted private attachments, but everyone knows it happens anyway.’ Vesta’s eyes darted over to the rock grave. ‘Maybe your flock isn’t the entire village – maybe it’s just your mother and Jafari. Maybe it’s just the two of
them,
the hole they left behind. Maybe that’s what you seeing.’

‘It doesn’t feel like them. Death is cold and hollow.’

‘But it’s not them, it’s the hole they left behind.’

He couldn’t stop walking over the ground, full of dips and shadows, so uneven he almost tripped. Every so often he glanced at Vesta. She was pleading with him. Her eyes were focussed and kind.

He wanted to stay, but what if she was wrong?

‘Maybe urvogels and humans aren’t that different.’ Vesta’s voice fell to a hush.

For all their similarities, they were profoundly different in some respects, thought Rocco. Urvogel bodies didn’t hold heat like a mammal’s, and they weren’t very attached to their young.

Picking up a stone, Rocco threw it hard, as far as he could. He listened for the satisfying
plop
, but the stone merely skidded into silence.

‘What are you guys doing?’ asked Iggy, staring up from the ground and the log they’d been resting against.

Vesta’s face became a blank. She wasn’t going to talk any more in front of Iggy. The small urvogel scrambled over.

‘You’re not going to leave too, Rocco. Are you? Are you?’ Iggy threw his arms around him. ‘Please. Please. Say you’re not going to leave us too!’

Rocco laid his arms on Iggy’s narrow, trembling shoulders. Vesta, so sure of herself in words, was shaking too. He pulled them close.

Had he just imagined that he was being stalked by Death? It didn’t seem possible.

Through the trees bright patches of sun were beginning to show.

‘See, there’s the sun,’ said Vesta. ‘That’s a sign.’

She was smiling, half teasing, trying to pull him out of the black hole he was in. She wanted him to come, even after everything he’d just said.

They started a small fire and cooked and ate a little of the fish that they’d caught the day before. Rocco assured Iggy that he wasn’t going to fly off. The more he promised this, the more the clench in his chest began to relax.

With their gear strapped on, they walked over to the grave, which looked normal again, and said their final goodbyes to Pyroxene and Basalt.

Vesta was the first to lift her wings. ‘Do you think we’ll ever be able to find this place again?’ she asked as they looked back through the trees.

Rocco marked the crown of the burial tree, and the surrounding slope of the hills. Basalt had been his friend. He hadn’t gawked, or mocked him about his big blue wings. Basalt had treated him as an equal – a live born human, different but not any less important than an urvogel.

The wind was hot in his eyes.

They flew on, wending their way across the forest in a northeastern direction. He was leading. Now that they were on their way, Vesta and Iggy didn’t seem to have much sense of direction. When the top of the forest began to swell with heat, they dropped into the trees.

‘What was that?’ Vesta came up short. She hovered, listening to the sound of the wood.

‘I don’t hear anything,’ said Rocco, flying up beside her.

‘Someone’s laughing.’

Rocco tuned his ear. ‘Maybe it’s a bird.’

Vesta shot up. Iggy was right behind her. Rocco trailed at the back.

Where was Vesta going? She could be awfully impulsive at times.