Broken Wings (11 page)

["They come looking for
you?"]

["Of course—watch out—"]

Raea jumped away from a steaming vent.
["Where are we?"]

["Close to the water recycling plant.
The water is fresh when it's gathered, but we can't always depend
on the sky. Besides, the Ahben don't appreciate us contaminating
the ocean. Most of our liquid wastes can be recycled—usually
converted to fertilizer and shipped to the searoot
islands."]

["Searoot islands?"] A thrill passed
through Raea. Searoot islands—hundreds of acres of land floating in
the sky. Elis had told her about them, but to see one… She couldn't
imagine how an island could float in the sky, even supported by
massive plant roots filled with gases.

Corsa chuckled and stopped. Her smile
shone with a glimmer of hope. ["You really have spent all your life
on Earth. You poor girl. Limited by surface dwellers…but I've heard
they have some amazing machines for getting around and they've
mastered atmospheric flight."]

["Faster than the speed of sound, and
they have machines for underwater too."]

Corsa nodded her head and continued
forward without a reaction. ["Impressive. Humans have come a long
way since we started keeping a history."]

Raea stopped. She couldn't have heard
right. ["You keep a history of Earth?"]

["We have to. You of all
people should realize the necessity of blending in. It's the only
world we've found where the dominant species is so close to us that
we can hide among them, or at least that Keepers and
meistal
can
hide."]

Yeah, meistal.
She shuddered. The word meant middle, as those
given the description were. With Starfire in their genes but no
Starburst marks to release the energy, the
meistal
could only transform. All
Shirukan were
meistal
. But were all
meistal
Shirukan? That was the more interesting
consideration.

["The rest of us are stuck here."]
Corsa pursed her lips and paused. ["I'd love to see Earth, but
we're forbidden from interfering until the world is sufficiently
space worthy and ready to know the truth about Inari. Our ancestors
learned the hard way when they started exploring."] She walked off
and followed a corner of pipe.

Raea quickened her steps to catch up.
No doubt they learned the hard way. The Starfire had shown her
flashes of worlds it destroyed because of species abusing the power
of the entities. Where there was power, there was someone ready to
grasp it and abuse it. ["The Shirukan don't seem to
care."]

["No. I suppose not."] Bitterness
ground in Corsa's voice. Her wings adjusted on her back.

Raea had learned to read Elis's moods
by the shift of his wings. Part of that came from learning Buddy's
body language. Her uncle Mike's chocolate labrador used ears, tail,
body, and teeth to make his intentions clear. Her wings probably
shifted too with her moods. It happened involuntarily.

Corsa turned around a column of thick
pipes.

["Where are we going?"] The chamber
seemed to go on forever, although Raea saw ahead what appeared to
be a doorway into a low-ceilinged, narrow corridor.

["Are you hungry?"]

Hungry? For the first time, Raea
noticed the twinge in her gut. ["A little."] She lied—at the
thought of food, her middle rumbled loudly.

["We have a temporary kitchen here.
You missed the midday call, but Kallara saved you a
plate."]

Temporary kitchen nothing—no more than
a couple crates stacked as a counter with something like a
hotplate. She had expected something more impressive, like some
sort of instant cooker. She could have done more with a
microwave.

["It's not much. Down here, we don't
have the luxuries of living quarters."] Corsa shrugged and reached
for a covered bowl set aside from the hot plate, or whatever the
thing was. ["Sorry, it's cold. Unfortunately, most of what we're
able to obtain is."]

Alien food. Maybe she didn't want to
eat. Her stomach argued against skipping food, though, traitor that
it was to avoiding strange foods that might not agree with her. She
might have been meant to live on that world, but she'd grown up
eating food suitable to humans.

Raea accepted the bowl and
flipped up the hinged lid. Strange but familiar. It kind of
reminded her of sliced water chestnuts in some type of orange
sauce. ["What is it?"] She poked at it—soft and spongy. So
not
water
chestnuts.

["The best we can get here.
All our rations are dehydrated and only need water added. It's
sliced
loprol
with
seim
sauce."]

What with what sauce? On second
thought, Raea didn't want to know. She had to eat something and she
wasn't exactly going to get a hamburger and fries here. She took
the ladle-like utensil Corsa handed her and stirred the mushy
stuff.

["Not the best cold, but we thought
you'd be awake sooner."]

Great. By the sound of it, this stuff
wasn't very good cold. Just her luck. She was too hungry to wait
for it to reheat, though. Raea lifted one of the pale slices to her
mouth, detesting Corsa watching her. She wouldn't react, even if it
tasted dreadful.

The slimy piece slipped into her
mouth.

Aside from the squishy chewiness of
the solid pieces, the sauce was sweet, reminding her of lemons,
honey, and…berries, maybe. She took another bite. Sure enough.
["Not bad."] Kind of like calamari—without the fishy flavor—in a
sweet sauce. She could get used to this.

["Not too different from Earth
food?"]

Raea choked down a mouthful. ["No,
actually. I—"]

Something clattered on the pipes
behind her, but it was Cris's face popping up next to her that made
her jump. He smiled and squeezed through a couple of large pipes.
["I thought I'd find you here."] He glanced between pipes back the
way he had come, before sitting on the lowest next to her. ["So,
when you're done, you want to join me on my next
shift?"]

["Absolutely not."] Corsa crossed her
arms, the shadows of her high cheekbones seeming to darken with her
mood. ["We can't risk her running into the Shirukan. Leksel would
rip out your feathers."]

Cris shrugged, but peeked back over
his shoulder. ["I'm not afraid of him."]

As if! Raea swallowed another bite to
hide the grin tugging at her mouth. ["Then who are you afraid
of?"]

["No one. No one. Just looking out for
you."]

What a liar. Raea met Corsa's doubtful
gaze, which hinted of a smirk.

Corsa looked aside.
["Leksel."]

["What?"] Cris scrambled to slip
between pipes, his left wing joint catching.

Raea covered her mouth to keep from
laughing food all over. It served him right for lying.

Cris hesitated and looked back. The
fear gave way to narrowed eyes as he crawled back to join them.
["Not funny, Corsa,"] he grumbled.

["Too easy. Besides, aren't you
supposed to be going on patrol?"]

He shrugged, his eyes on Raea, a
question in the lift of his brows.

The answer was still no. Raea held her
tongue and took another bite as an excuse to say nothing. If he was
Elis, that would be different, but she wasn't interested in Cris.
He was funny and cute, but disrespectful and too desperate. Elis
had never been like that, until the matter of bonding came
up.

While she couldn't imagine her life
without Elis, she barely knew him. Their relationship was so new
and yet wonderful, except that she couldn't have it all. She had to
choose.

Fate had chosen for her. She had been
taken from her home.

What if she never returned? Would she
see Elis again? Would he find a way there to come for her? If she
survived, would she ever return to him? The thought of never seeing
him again lumped in her throat and stung her eyes.

She cleared her throat of the clogging
emotions. Cris's eyes fixed on her with concern.

Raea looked away. ["It's nothing. I
just want to go home."]

A moment of silence passed with them
watching her. Awkward.

["We'll get you home. You're safer on
Earth anyway,"] Corsa said.

["Cris!"] The deep, harsh voice
snapped like a whip.

Leksel stepped into view with a frown
on his face. A clang sounded next to Raea.

That was fast—Cris vanished. A good
skill for someone in hiding.

["Damn it, Cris! You better get out on
patrol!"]

No one answered.

Leksel let out a heavy sigh and shook
his head. ["Corsa, next time you see him—"]

["I know."] She sounded exasperated.
Apparently, all this was the norm.

["We're moving tonight. I'll leave you
in charge of Raea."] His eyes passed over Raea, but his voice lost
the steely edge when he spoke again. ["If you don't
mind."]

Was he asking for her approval?
["No…um."] Raea looked at Corsa, but she said nothing. ["No. That's
fine."] Besides, she didn't know anyone else, and he didn't give
her much of a choice.

The harsh lines softened minutely.
["They're planning a raid on the lower levels here. I don't know
when."]

["How do…you know."] The answer came
before Raea finished. ["Someone inside their ranks is helping
you."]

["Not quite."] His dark eyes fixed on
Corsa. ["Get her ready to go as soon as she's done eating."] He
turned back to Raea, his wings relaxing behind him. ["I'm sorry to
rush you off. If you were any other Keeper, they wouldn't bother
more than usual. But you're not."]

["I know."] How she knew! That stupid
shard caused a lot of trouble.

He started away, his voice fading into
the tunnel of pipes as he spoke. ["We have to get out of here to
contact Starfire Tower."]

Starfire Tower? What? Raea set the
bowl down and ran to catch him. ["Why?"] Of all the questions
swirling in her head that was all she could say.

["You can't stay here. This is the
last place you should be."]

Yeah. I kinda figured
that.
No way was she giving the Shirukan
her shard or going anywhere near Heffin's Gate to give it up.
Getting as far from there as possible was her hope too.

But Starfire Tower? That meant he'd be
contacting Saffir, the only other Crystal Keeper, and she could
open a portal back to Earth. Elis had told her about his training,
how he had learned to channel the energy, although he couldn't open
a portal without a shard. Now she wished she had tried harder to
learn it herself. She never appreciated how he pushed her training
until now, when she was stuck on a different world without
understanding how to get home.

Saffir would help her, though. The
thought filled her with hope.

Leksel looked down at her hand on his
arm and she let go as if stung. ["I need to get everyone organized.
Finish eating. You'll feel better."] His voice softened at the end.
Without another word, he strode proudly away.

That was weird. She never expected him
to care. Leksel had let her see a crack in his hard shell. Maybe he
wasn't a hard-ass.

["Don't see that side of him very
often. He must like you."]

Raea whirled on Corsa, the warmth of
embarrassment rising through her. ["What? Me? No. It's not like
that."] She wanted Elis.

["Your choice."] Corsa handed the bowl
to Raea. ["Finish eating. He's right—you will feel
better."]

First Cris, who made it too obvious.
Now Leksel? Come on. No one ever gave her that much notice at home,
except Elis. Josh didn't count—he was a friend.

What was with the two of them? Cris
seemed to take a perverse pleasure in antagonizing Leksel, who
turned around and chewed him out. Of course, Cris deserved it, from
what she had seen. Why did they even stay together in the same
group if they didn't like each other? And if they both liked
her—she highly doubted that as the reason Leksel had been nice—that
could only lead to trouble.

She did not want to be caught in the
crossfire between them.

__________

Grief
's Hard Lesson

The dark morning passed
into an eternity. Every moment, Elis relived the last night's
events. He should have been there.
He
—not Nare—should have been with
Raea.

And yet, if it had been him, maybe he
would have been shot with the neutralizer and fallen to his death.
Or maybe he could have protected Raea. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Too
many variables.

The cold hard fact was that Raea was
gone, and he had no way of helping her.

Worse—he still had to tell
Debbie.

Laying there in bed only delayed the
inevitable. But it was Saturday morning. He could wait. Debbie
would sleep later.