Windrunner's Daughter (36 page)

She unlocked her wings and closed them around her. As Chayton cried out his surprise, Wren spiralled downwards; then she forced her wings out again. The wind snapped them into place and she flew up to meet him.

His face smoothed out and suddenly he whooped and they were racing the sunset back to Avalon. Light played over silver graphene and the fluttering material sang alongside Wren’s laughter.

As the platform came towards them her father grinned up at her, a challenge in his eyes. He started in for a landing, but before his feet touched down, he yawed forwards, tucked his legs into his chest and closed his wings. He turned a somersault and landed unmoving dead centre in the middle of the platform. Had he missed, he would have crashed into the net.

Wren gaped. Then she calculated. She had seen how he had done it. Raw had copied her all this time. It was her turn to show her father what she could do.

She tucked her legs beneath her.

The Women’s Sector hunkered low to the ground. Lines of laundry were drying outside and an avenue of dresses led them to the door.

Before Chayton knocked he dragged Wren out from behind him. “For the sake of the
skies
,” he snapped. “You stood up to the whole Vaikunthan colony.”

Wren snarled under her breath, but moved to his side and straightened her mother’s skirts, which hung in an unfamiliar way and tangled around her ankles.

When he knocked, the door opened as though someone had been waiting on the other side. Wren blanched.

“My daughter is a woman grown.” Her father propelled her forward. “And I should like her to enter the Sector.”

Wren shuffled her feet as Tee glowered down at her, black and white pendants swinging beneath her pendulous breasts. Then the councillor took her arm and Chayton stepped backwards, abandoning her in the doorway.

“Follow me -” Tee tugged Wren into the house. As soon as Chayton was out of view, she finished her sentence “-
Runner
.” Then she dropped Wren’s arm with disdain.

She suppressed a sigh. It was going to be a long few days.

Wren was used to sharing a room with her family, but not with so many other girls. They twittered and giggled until long after lights out, and the nearer the time of the choosing came, the more twittery and giggly they became.

Not one of them had said a word to Wren since her arrival. She sat on her mattress in an island of silence, but because she was the only one quiet, she was the only one who heard the shutter rattle. Curious, she slipped out of bed.

Gravel continued to patter on the slats. Wren reached for the latch and a shriek stopped her.

“What are you doing?”

It was Cara, she of the shiny blonde hair and falsely pink cheeks.

“I’m opening the shutter,” Wren explained patiently.

“You can’t!” Cara snatched at her hand.

“Is it a rule?” Wren groaned; she seemed to be coming up against a lot of those.

Cara stared at her in confusion. “Of course not. We don’t need a rule to tell us not to open the shutters.” She looked at the other girls who were all nodding and gaping at Wren as if she had two heads.

“I don’t understand.” Wren shrugged and raised her hand again. “If there’s no rule -”

Cara’s impressive bosom swelled. “
Nice
girls don’t open the shutters at night. It’s the
Designers
law, to protect us.”

Wren rubbed her short curls. She really wanted to know who was on the other side. Her lips tingled and her heart beat faster. Somehow she knew who it was.

Ignoring Cara’s whining, she unhooked the latch and pushed the shutter open. Fresh air rushed into the stale room.

“I thought you hadn’t heard me.” Raw grinned.

Wren forced a scowl. “I’m not speaking to you, remember?”

“Can you come out?” Raw held out his hand. Buoyed by the horrified gasps from the girls behind her, Wren climbed through the window.

Wren glanced back. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

Female faces clustered around the window, obviously torn between slamming it shut and watching Wren committing yet more sacrilege.

“Then you certainly shouldn’t be doing this.” Raw trapped her in his arms and claimed her mouth with his own.

This time there was no-one trying to take Wren’s life, no raging fire and no illness to steal her breath, yet her pulse still raced and her stomach tied itself in knots.

Raw’s mouth was hot and Wren held on tightly to stop herself from drifting away.

Finally he pressed his forehead to hers. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too … I suppose.” Wren clutched his shirt between her fingers but then an image of the blonde Cara flashed through her head. Raw had once said to her that his disease had cost him his chance to Choose. Had he really wanted Cara, or someone like her? She had to know.

“Raw.” Her voice sounded foreign to her ears. “You don’t have to pick me.”

He shook her shoulders. “You still hate me? Because it didn’t feel like that a moment ago.”

“I know you feel that you owe me because I saved your life but … you don’t have to go this far.”

Raw’s eyes flashed and he stepped back from her. He twitched his hair back over his face as he retreated. “Is that what you think? That I’m here tonight because I owe you one?”

Wren couldn’t look at his flushed face. “I don’t know.”

“Was none of this real for you?” Raw snapped. "Nothing that we went through?"

Wren gasped. “Of course.”

“How could it be, if you think that about me?” He turned his back and Wren’s gut lurched as he prepared to leave. “You don’t want me, that’s the truth isn’t it? I saw how you looked at Orel. I’ve seen how you look at my face.”

As his feet found the path, Wren leaped for his broad shoulders. “Don’t leave like this.” She grabbed frantically at him. “I didn’t want you to feel as if you had to choose me over one of the others. Any of them would have you.” She swallowed. “You’re beautiful.”

Raw stopped his headlong rush away. “That’s not true. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life looking at me if you can’t. Just say so.”

Wren forced his face round. “You’re beautiful, Raw.”

He caught her chin in one hand. His eyes had filled with tears. “You
did
save my life, Wren, but I saved yours’ right back, remember? You got me home, but I caught you when you fell. We’re even. We’re not doing this because we owe one another anything, all right?”

She inhaled air that seemed too thin. “You really don’t feel like you owe me?”

Raw rubbed his scar as if it hurt him. “Of course I owe you. Before I knew you I was bitter and vengeful. You changed that. You’re strong and brave; you’re the beautiful one. I’m going to choose
you
, not because I owe you, not because I want to, but because …” His eyes glittered and Wren gulped. “Because I
have
to. Without you I’m nothing. And if you went with someone else, I’d kill them with my bare hands.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair, nervously revealing his whole face to her. “If you still hate me, you don’t have to agree to the choosing. I betrayed your wishes and I know it.” His eyes flashed. “But I wouldn’t change anything, Wren. You’re alive.”

Carefully Wren put her arms around him. “We saved each other over and over again. I can’t blame you for doing so one last time.”

Raw tilted her chin upwards. “You’re mine, always. I’ll say so in front of the whole settlement in a few days.”

“All right.” Wren nodded, relief leaving her weightless. “Except that I’m not yours.”

“But you just said.”

“I’m not yours, you idiot.” Wren punched his arm. “You’re mine.”

Raw smiled. “That works too. I just wanted to make sure you were okay in there.” He nodded at the watching girls and Wren glanced back. She’d have to go round the front to get back in. There would be some awful punishment. She grinned.

Everything was going to be all right.

End

Acknowledgements

This book has been a long time in the making. The first time Wren appeared was as a character named Web, in a short story I wrote back in 2003. She was the one who encouraged me to give up my life and job in London and move, in 2004, to a village the Peak District, where I went freelance, so that I could spend as much time as possible writing. Writing what? Her full story, of course.

Windrunner's Daughter was the novel that taught me to write. I made mistakes - huge mistakes. But for the first time in my life, in 2007, I actually wrote a whole novel, thanks to Wren.

When I thought I had finished the book I sent it to agents and received my first raft of rejections. Being a writer means dealing with a lot of rejection!

So I went to a company called Cornerstones, to help me find out what I had done wrong.

That wonderful team led by Helen and Kathryn helped me hone my novel to the point at which they thought it was good enough to enter into a competition run by the British chapter of the international organization SCBWI. The competition was for unagented, unpublished novelists - Undiscovered Voices. They also sought to find an agent for me.

I was a winner of Undiscovered Voices 2008 and, as a result, got offers from agents.

Sam Copeland believed in Windrunner's Daughter enough to take me on. After Cornerstones, he was my first real cheerleader and did his best to sell the novel, but while publishers loved the first half, the second had problems.

So we gave up Windrunner's Daughter, put the manuscript in the back of the proverbial drawer and, using everything I had learned in writing it, I came up with another novel, Angel's Fury, which sold to Egmont, was long listed for the Branford Boase and won two other awards.
The Windrunner's Daughter taught me to write and then retired.
Or so I thought.

The reasons I had for writing Windrunner remained. I had thought it was important to write a story which showed that girls could do anything, especially those things they are told they cannot do as well as boys. In October 2005 I had given birth to a little girl and it became even more important to me that she learned this lesson. Maisie is surrounded by messages that try to pigeonhole her and I wanted to write something that would counterbalance this.

So after writing The Weight of Souls and Phoenix Rising, I went back to Windrunner's Daughter. I deleted the whole manuscript, keeping nothing but my original concept, and rewrote it all.  
This time I plotted the second half as carefully as the first and used everything I had learned from working with editors from Egmont, Strange Chemistry and Stripes.

When Strange Chemistry closed down, the lovely people at Xist asked to see Windrunner's Daughter and finally, I had a new set of cheerleaders, Calee and Michael-Ann, who also believed in Wren and her messages of courage, self-belief and equality.

I write these acknowledgements with my own message - never give up on your dreams, dear reader. Because somebody, somewhere is waiting for you to get it right.

Thanks as always to my family, who have been waiting patiently, for over a decade, to read Wren's story, to the wonderful people at Cornerstones and SCBWI who first told me Wren's story was worth telling and to Sam Copeland who first believed in it. To my new friends at Xist, Calee and Michael-Ann, who laboured to bring it to life and who suggested that I set the story on Mars, which was the final piece of magic it needed. And particularly to the daughters of my family. To my niece, Blythe, who gets up before dawn to train for triathlons and then goes to school and to Maisie, my musician, who is my greatest inspiration - she has never let anyone tell her she can't do something.

My next book will be for my son ...
With love to you all.
Bryony