Chapter Fifty-Three. Daye
Daye
“I am here.”
“I am over here.”
“Wind gusts. Changing formation.”
“Reached new position.”
“Moved to the rear.”
“Water, to the west.”
“We land.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
“Agreed.”
Daye blinked at the wooden ceiling above her, puzzled. From the fortress’s window, she could just see a flock of geese as they disappeared behind the trees, their honks trailing behind them. They were little more than dark blobs against the dawn sky.
Daye sat up. She had never dreamed before, but she had seen Rory do it.
Maybe that’s what it was? She had felt something changing in her in the last few weeks, ever since the autumn transition; small adjustments in the way the world flowed around her, in the warp and weave of her thoughts.
Maybe dreaming was the latest? Could she have dreamed that instead of honks and calls—no, not instead, on top of them—she heard words? Well, not words. But … meaning.
“I am here! I am here! I am coming!” a straggling goose honked overhead, speeding to catch up with the rest of the flock. Daye brought her fingers up to her face, just to make sure. Her eyes were wide open and round with surprise. Not dreaming, then.
Daye stayed very still and listened. It was like a radio station drifting in and out of focus, the scattered bird calls coalescing into conversations, then drifting out of tune again. But the longer Daye listened, the sharper the sounds got, the clearer the meaning became.
Could it be? Daye rubbed her throat, unsure how to feel. Could it be that thing in her throat doing this?
She perched on the edge of the platform, listening.
All around her, the dawn chorus broke into conversations, and the longer she listened, the more phrases made sense.
It wasn’t a language like the one she was used to, but one of nudges and calls; a constant “I am here,” “This is mine,” “Here is danger,” and “There are blueberries left over here, come here, come here!” Only wider.
More spacious. A food source became a twirl of sound.
Danger, an escalation of notes, climbing higher and tighter, like a mesh to net the hazard in.
Heart hammering, Daye licked her lips. Took a deep breath.
Tried to hold each component in her mind.
And finally opened her mouth and willed her tongue to imitate the trill in the call for food—the rapid climb for fruit and the scattered, almost clucking call for seeds.
The sound rose from her, clear and bright: “Come, food here, fruit and seed.” It wasn’t an exact imitation—Daye could hear the hitches and snags, like stutters in a sentence—but there was no mistaking the meaning of her call.
A chorus answered from all directions—“Food!” “Food, that way!” “She is here!” “She is calling!” “There!” “Come quick!”—all chirping, one atop the other, until their calls dissolved into a cacophony of sound, heading fast her way.
Daye giggled. And then she laughed. And then she was gasping, doubled over, eyes squeezed shut and lips trembling. Chickadees alighted on the slope of her back, tugged at her hair, and inspected her dress for pockets, but all Daye could do was keep breathing, in and out, in and out.
She hated how happy, how grateful, she was feeling. How close it came to excusing everything—the lies, the misleading. How it made Rory’s betrayal, the small, still body in the cage … worth it.
Daye had never gotten as close to hating Rory as she did at that moment.