Rocco's Wings (14 page)

His leg was covered in blood. The sight of it made him woozy. Feeling a draught at his back, he got up to investigate. Pushing aside a bush, he ducked down and entered a cave. His limbs wouldn’t stop trembling. Pain throbbed in his thigh, piercing his entire leg. He felt suddenly very weak.

Coloured feathers

Rocco returned to the clearing. He was relieved to see Basalt, Vesta, Magma and Iggy lying just as he’d left them.

The gash on his thigh wouldn’t stop bleeding. Flying through the trees, he landed in the stream. Cold water poured into his wound. No bones were sticking out, although he couldn’t stand to look too closely. Returning to the treehouse he gathered up the pieces of his torn leggings. Knotting them together he bound his wound.

His chest was tight, and he still couldn’t walk steady. He laid down on the ground next to Basalt.

‘We got through it,’ he said to his sleeping friend. ‘Now I just have to calm myself.’

One good swipe to his neck and he would have been finished. They all would have been. Without him to take care of them, the white robes would have been laid out there in the middle of nowhere, easy pickings for any scavenger or meat-eater.

It was a bear, he was certain. He’d never seen one before. Such creatures didn’t inhabit Lower Terrakesh. But he’d seen the bear painting hanging in the Meerkat Tavern in Gogogamesh.

He and Jafari had stood in the doorway. Juveniles weren’t permitted inside. The place was empty.

‘Can we get a better look?’ Jafari had asked.

With a nod, the barkeep waved them in.

The painting, a metre tall and lit by a gas light, hung high on the wall behind the counter, above several shelves loaded with glass cups.

‘I painted it from this,’ said the barkeep, pulling out the playing card that had been tucked into a corner of the frame. Rocco and Jafari had held it together. Twice the size of a normal game card, it held the exact likeness of the creature in the painting. A massive ginger animal, with a rich fur coat, stood in the middle of a gushing river. Its paw was out as it reached for a jumping fish.

‘What’s it mean?’ Rocco had asked. The back of the card said
Lord of the Badlands.

‘Just a game the Air Marshals play,’ said the barkeep, taking the card back and replacing it inside the frame.

Rocco’s chest had stopped heaving. He turned his head, looking at Basalt lying stone-still beside him. A clump of feathers had come off, pawed away by the mother bear when she galloped over them.

Sitting up, Rocco pulled more of Basalt’s rumpled feathers away. Underneath, another colour, platinum, shone out.

Vesta’s feathers were hanging oddly. Rocco gave a tug. Bright yellow feathers were growing underneath. What did it mean, he wondered, looking over at Iggy and Magma. Their feathers were also rumpled and shedding.

Were they moulting, and why now, when they seemed barely alive?

He cradled Basalt’s head in his arms. ‘Wake up! Wake up! Basalt, can’t you hear me?’ He began to rock.

Were they dying? Were their wings like leaves, bursting into vibrant colours just before they shrivelled and died?

‘BASALT! Wake up!’

Basalt’s eyes remained closed.

What would he do without them? They were the only creatures in all of Terrakesh who gave him any comfort. Caring for them had kept his mind spirit from unravelling.

The village elders had been wrong about urvogels. They weren’t all cruel like Harpia. They weren’t exactly human, being hatched from eggs and all, but their feelings and motivations were the same.

They were like him. They only wanted to keep their wings.

He pulled Vesta’s head into his lap. Her neck was stiff and the skin around her mouth and eyes was paper-thin. ‘Vesta, please wake up. Please! Please!’

Tears, welling up in his eyes, fell on Vesta’s face. He wiped them away. They might have been her tears but they weren’t. She remained as still and blind as a statue. Were they already gone, too far into sickness to ever return?

‘Why did all this awful stuff have to happen?’ Rocco wailed. The long cold fingers of Death were around him, pushing at his innards and no doubt already eating the organs of his friends.

‘Stop making a game of it!’ Rocco cried. ‘If you’re going to kill us, just do it!’

Why shouldn’t he wail? Wolves howled. Jackals were probably yowling now out on the Endless Plains. He’d heard his mother speak of a death rattle. He would practice.

Rocco threw his head back and wailed in anguish. The sound of his voice sent a flock of birds scurrying up into the redwoods. He fell silent. He didn’t really want to get caught. The Air Marshals had a camp on the other side of the lake. He’d seen them often over the preceding days, gathering or mustering above the trees on the distant short.

His shoulder was marked with three long claws. The skin was turning purple. It was painful to lift his arm, but by a process of rolling and tugging Basalt he managed to load him on the tree bough and pull him back to the treehouse. Vesta, Magma and Iggy weren’t as heavy.

Once that task was done, he sat down behind a long bough overhanging the flat rock. Across the water, two or three Air Marshals were flying around the forest. They might have been hunting game. Every so often he heard what sounded like the thud of an arrow.

The cave would have been a better spot, farther away, but he had no way of getting the white robes up to the pinnacle, especially not now with his bruised shoulder. Even if he could manage that part, the rock face was exposed. The passage up and down the bluff would be risky.

* * *

Rocco stared grimly into the bottom of his cup. Four more days had passed. He stirred in two eggs, stolen from a goshawk’s nest, and his last bit of cheese. Setting the cup on the small fire beneath the flat rock, he stared out at the lake.

It was early. The water was covered in mist. The sharp trill of a water bird echoed across it. Terrakesh sounded hollow. He couldn’t see the base of the redwood tree that housed the treehouse, but he knew the top of the trunk and the way the branches stuck out.

The ground smelled of decay: fallen leaves and soil that never seemed to dry out entirely.

With his meal cooked, Rocco picked up his cup, once bright and silvery, now sooty and black. He climbed to the top of the flat rock, watching as the sun – the only thing moving – angled itself around the water causing the rock to fall into shade.

As he did on most mornings, Rocco imagined that Basalt, Vesta, Magma and Iggy were sitting around him as they had on the first day. Iggy would look up and ask him about the Air Marshals. Basalt would clear his throat in a way that told everyone they should be getting onto whatever task came next. Their eyes were open. They were looking at him.

The wall of trees on the distant shore stood impenetrable against even the strongest sunlight. No Air Marshals were out. How long could they roost here, right under their noses?

Several metres away a herd of antelope-like animals, grass-eaters, ran out of the woods. Their long jittery legs stepped toward the water’s edge. They began to drink. They might have been impalas except their horns were multi-pronged, high and scrambled.

In another hour, the clearing would be sunny. He would carry Basalt, Vesta, Magma and Iggy out for their morning air. Since the incident with the bear, he never left them alone outside. It was his job to keep a constant watch.

A grass-eater’s head bounced up, then another. The entire herd stopped drinking. One bolted. Soon they were all running, a single fluid mass back into the trees.

What had startled them?

Across the clearing, a shape stared out from the tangled understorey. Rocco’s heart pounded as he got to his feet and stared into the bushes.

Sunlight flickered through the leaves.

He glided up. He almost hoped it was a meat-eater, some kind of wildcat or bear – better that than an Air Marshal. At least he could scare it off.

He beat his wings. Halfway to the other side, a familiar bob of hair appeared, and the whites of a pair of eyes.

His throat swelled up. ‘Iggy? Is that you?’ he cried, rushing down and seizing the small urvogel’s arm.

Iggy cried out.

‘Want me to carry you?’ asked Rocco, releasing Iggy’s arm, which was so skinny it felt like a stick.

Iggy nodded feebly. Rocco scooped his friend up in his arms. A trail of feathers fell away as Rocco carried Iggy over and laid him down on the flat rock.

‘Am I the first?’ Iggy’s face was shrunken, but the light of his eyes was the same.

Rocco nodded. ‘Look. Look at your feathers.’ He motioned excitedly. ‘They’ve turned violet!’

Iggy tugged weakly at his wing. ‘More like purple,’ he said, pulling out a feather and holding it up to the light.

‘Okay, purple. Oh Iggy, I thought you were never going to wake up! I thought you were gone, gone, gone!’ Rocco reached over and kissed Iggy on the head. He hugged him tightly, but not too tightly because Iggy’s frame was thin like a fragile bird.

Iggy twitched.

Rocco hugged Iggy again. ‘You’re not urvogel anymore. You’ve turned into a… giant, mutant, butterfly.’

Iggy flapped jerkily. More of his old white feathers fell out. Underneath the new feathers were ready to take their place.

‘Have you moulted before?’ asked Rocco. He regularly lost his feathers, but so few at a time that he hardly noticed.

Iggy shrugged. ‘Not like this,’ he said, pulling out a new purple feather and holding it up to the light. He turned it over in his hand, brushing the filaments as if the colour might come off.

‘You look like a parrot,’ said Rocco, noticing for the first time that the tips of Iggy’s wings were orange, not bright but dullish, like a fire about to go out.

‘Maybe I’m still sick.’ A furrow appeared on Iggy’s brow. ‘It was awful, all that sweating and feeling thirsty.’

‘Wait here.’ Getting to his feet, Rocco flew over to the treehouse. He returned a moment later with Iggy’s flying belt and waterskin. He refilled the waterskin and laid it in Iggy’s lap. Then, taking the comb from Iggy’s flying belt, he started to brush out his friend’s wings.

‘I had an awful dream.’ Iggy took a tentative sip of water. Taking another gulp he began to tell Rocco how he’d dreamed of being chased through the trees, how he had tripped, and hadn’t been able to get up.

‘What were you so afraid of?’ asked Rocco.

‘I – I couldn’t find Magma. We were being chased by the Air Marshals.’ Iggy kept looking at his wings.

‘We both have coloured wings now,’ said Rocco, squeezing Iggy’s shoulder.

He’d made a pile of Iggy’s old feathers on the rock beside him. The wind swirled the feathers away. In clumps, they spiralled across the water. Song birds delivered the morning’s glory, so fine a sound that a tear welled up in Rocco’s eye.

Iggy drank small sips of water and ate a few of the blackberries Rocco brought him. The sun grew hot. Iggy eyed the water.

‘Why don’t you get in. It’s fresh. I’ll keep an eye out for Air Marshals.’ Rocco motioned across the lake.

Iggy began to undress.

‘No, wear your shoes. The bottom’s rocky. Might as well wear your clothes, too. Get everything clean.’

Rocco laughed. Iggy shuddered as he lay back in the water. He began to float up and down in the shallows. Once he was safely sitting on the flat rock again, Rocco flew back to the tree house. Basalt, Vesta and Magma were still soundly asleep. As he was accustomed to do, he gave them three drops of water under their bottom lip.

By evening, Iggy had grown surprisingly stronger. He even managed a short flight around the clearing.

‘We both have coloured wings,’ said Rocco again, after it had grown dark and they had returned to the treehouse. ‘Maybe – maybe we’re related.’

Iggy snickered, laying his head on his waterskin. ‘We’re not hatch-mates.’

‘No, but we could be. You’re not from the same clutch as Vesta and Magma, either.’

Iggy stared over.

The next morning when Rocco awoke, Iggy was gone. The space where Magma had been lying was empty. Basalt and Vesta lay like stones against the treehouse wall.

Rocco scrambled outside. Magma was sitting alone on the flat rock.

‘Where’s Iggy?’ asked Rocco as he flew up. Magma had been picking out his old white feathers. An array of dirty white feathers surrounded him. His wings, bright green, had a large red splotch in the middle.

Magma rubbed the side of his head. ‘Don’t know.’

‘You should sit behind the branch. There’s Air Marshals over there.’

‘I need the sun. My head hurts.’ Turning his face upwards to the sky, Magma opened his wings. His hair, no longer in its usual tidy topknot, was matted in a pile at the back of his head.

‘But you’re bright now. Easy to spot,’ said Rocco, tugging the branch until it cracked, causing it to slump in front of Magma anyway. Magma didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were shut, and his head tilted up.

‘Why do you think his wings are green?’ asked Iggy, landing on the flat rock. He’d been to the stream. Uncorking the waterskin in his arms, he passed it to Magma.

‘Same reason yours turned purple. It’s a mystery.’

Magma took a drink and laid the waterskin in the hollow between his crossed legs.

Magma had been grumpy before he’d fallen asleep. He was just as irritable now. Rocco would just ignore Magma’s moods. He was good at ignoring other stuff.

For the rest of the day Magma remained on the flat rock. He didn’t speak except sparingly to Iggy. By nightfall Basalt and Vesta had begun to stir.