“It would be unwise to remain standing,” the professor says. Obligingly, we huddle on the floor.
A pace away, Alice is holding Lex’s hands. He’s saying something into her ear while she stares worriedly at the windows. Poor Alice, still wearing a pretty dress, though its underarms and chest are darkened with sweat. Bone and bead earrings still hang from her ears. Dragged into this. All she wanted was a life with my brother. To go out sometimes. To have a child. To grow flowers in the apartment without Lex blindly clomping into them. To grow old in dodder housing, having lived a complete life. Instead she’s being forced out of her home.
Now isn’t the time to be angry with my brother, but I suppose the anger I feel for him never goes away. I cover it with love and with patience, but it doesn’t undo what he’s taken from all of us.
I’m angry with my parents, too. For not telling me. For dying.
“Breathe,” Basil says, and I realize I’ve begun to hyperventilate.
“Tell me again what you said earlier,” he says. “About the sleeping machine.”
“Sleeping?” Pen whispers.
“I said that we’re all inside this sleeping machine, and we’re waiting to see where it takes us when it wakes.”
“Good,” Basil says. “You believed it, then. All you have to do is hold on to that belief a little longer. And then we’ll be in the sky.”
“There aren’t maps of the sky,” Pen says. “We’re flying right off the page.” She looks as though she’ll be sick. But if she’s going to say anything more, she doesn’t get her chance. The bird tilts to one side and we all go sliding toward the wall. The lanterns go wild from the spill, and all but one are extinguished.
I bite down on a mouthful of my shirt and scream into it. The professor’s cursing does nothing to console.
“Keep that damned thing lit,” he tells Judas, who holds the dying lantern. “It’s all we’ve got.”
But he’s wrong about that. In an instant all of the windows fill up with brightness.
30
Free will isn’t quite the same as freedom.
—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten
I SEE NO BLUE SKY, AND NO CLOUDS. The brightness churns in a way not unlike the swallows.
There’s a terrible grating sound, which I come to realize is the side of the bird scraping against the bottom of the city. The howling can only be the wind.
The turbulence undoes a piece of metal in the ceiling, and it comes crashing to the floor with the spattering of bolts. Lex calls out for me.
“I’m okay,” I say. I try to crawl toward him, but Basil tightens his hold on me.
“Keep your head down,” he tells me.
But that’s impossible with the temptations these windows hold; I keep trying to make out shapes in the brightness.
“Is the bird strong enough to make it?” Judas asks, clinging to the professor’s chair, which is bolted in place.
“This design is superior to the earlier models,” the professor says.
“Earlier models?” I say. “You mean—you mean this isn’t the first time this has been attempted?”
“Of course not! There have been half a dozen tries,” the professor says, shouting to be heard over the wind. “People have been attempting this for generations.”
I don’t want to ask what came of those attempts. The answer is obvious anyway. The birds were destroyed, probably sent hurtling through the sky if they weren’t ripped apart by this wind. This is the wind that throws jumpers back. Escape is impossible from the surface; why should it be any more feasible from the bottom?
Then the tumultuous bird calms. And I see what no other resident of Internment has ever seen: the bottom of the city.
It’s jagged. From the outside I can now see a dome of wind that encapsulates the city, forcing clouds around and over and under it.
The bird trembles, and through the windows of the helm I can see the wings burst open, and we break into a smooth glide.
The professor punches down on a large brass button and there’s a sharp chemical smell. Judas told me the professor had been brewing his own fuel to keep us in the air. There was no promise it would work. We could be crashing to the ground right now, but we aren’t. The weight leaves my chest.
I’m too stunned to move. Beside me, Pen’s sobs have ceased. There is nothing but the howl of air and the creaking of the gears and the popping of the metal.
“What’s happening now?” Lex says, unaffected by the view. This snaps Alice out of her trance and she grabs his hands, brings them to her face.
We are sinking into the sky. Our tiny city is getting smaller. Something within me is sinking, too.
I wrap my arms around Basil because for the first time since all of this began, he looks truly pained. His parents and his brother are out of reach now. He could blame me, if he wants. I would understand. But no such words come from him now. He’s choosing me; no regrets.
“It’s just like the maps have come alive,” Pen says, streaks of tears still on her face.
Amy is the first among us who’s brave enough to stand. Basil is next, taking my hand and guiding me up from my shaky knees.