Chapter 11
11
Later when Hypatia comes to drag me to the hover park, I almost don’t go. As cool as hoverjousting sounds, I’m not here to have fun, and I was planning to flip through the anatomy book I’d been given in one of my classes this morning to see if there are any leads for what my next steps in looking for a cure for Grandfather should be. But then I remember Rafe telling me to stay away from Hypatia, and screw him, I’m gonna go learn to hoverjoust with my friend.
I follow Hypatia through the mists of the forest to where Georgie is waiting for us at the entrance to a clearing. Georgie’s holding something that looks a lot like a snowboard, and I rush over to examine it, my excitement rising. I love snowboarding. It’s something I’m actually good at, and—oh, this is so much cooler than any snowboard. I feel my chest expand with appreciation as I take the hoverboard from her. Of all the things that I have seen since I came to this place—flying origami pigeons and the rearview of hot guys in breeches included—nothing holds a candle to this.
When we enter the clearing, there’s a large flat section with separate lanes, which Hypatia tells me is called a magna-mat. The rest of the area looks like an elaborate skate park built in and around the forest foliage with slopes and bridges and all kinds of obstacles.
I admire the hoverboard in my hands, eager to get my feet on it.
Georgie says, “It’s a great model. My mom got it for me as consolation for my difficulty in adjusting to moving here. It made me feel better for about a minute until I realized I couldn’t ride the thing without—careful! You’re gonna—”
But I’m already on the hoverboard and shooting up one of the ramps. There’s a subtle tension of magnetism that reverberates all around me with a soft but audible hum.
“Whenever I get on that thing, I end up spraining a part of my body and usually someone else’s body too. How are you so good at that?” Georgie calls.
“I’m used to snowboarding,” I reply as I subtly tilt the board to give it the lift it needs to whoosh through a tunnel, and then I easily shift pressure from one hip to the other to swerve through a hedge maze, Georgie, Hypatia, and everyone else now out of sight.
The board is incredibly intuitive. I play around, seeing what it can do and testing its limits. It can’t go more than a few feet off the magnetic surface, but it’s so smooth.
For the first time in a while, my head is clear. I’m not thinking about my obligations to the Families, or how disappointed Michael will be when I can’t get into a guild, or the fear and humiliation of being stopped and searched by soldiers because a handsome jerk wants to bully me. I’m simply enjoying being . I exit the maze and glide over a bridge. My hair comes loose from its tie and whips in my face, obscuring my vision and getting caught in my mouth. My lungs burn from the sting of the crisp air. As I do an alley-oop off the halfpipe, I hear cheers.
“By the Conductor! Look at her go!”
“She must have done this before—no novice is that good on a hover.”
When I finally slow to a stop in front of Georgie and Hypatia, quite a crowd has gathered. Drawing attention to myself certainly hadn’t been my intention, and it’s the last thing I need. But I don’t have time to worry about it with Georgie and Hypatia fussing over me.
“That was amazing!” Georgie gushes. “You need to teach me some of those tricks. Well, first you need to teach me how to balance and move in a straight line.”
We all laugh.
“You’ll for sure be recruited to your guild’s team after Quorum!” Hypatia’s hazel eyes glitter with excitement. “And then I’ll live vicariously through you.”
Hypatia will also be presenting at the upcoming Quorum as she’s recently come of age to join a guild, but she’d said her family won’t let her hoverjoust because of her health. I’m curious about her mystery illness, especially since sickness seems to be uncommon among the Makers with all their advanced medicine, but I assume that if she wants me to know about it, she’ll tell me eventually.
“Let’s see how you do with a lance,” Georgie says. “I can’t wait to see how you joust. You need to wear a helmet on the magna-mat though.”
The helmet she tosses me is shaped like it belongs on a knight, but it’s no shining armor. The cap is made of spidersilk padding, and the visor is fully transparent glace.
Hypatia grunts with effort as she hands me a lance. It’s longer than I am tall, and it’s heavy and awkward to hold. They set up a target for me in the center of one of the lanes on the magna-mat so I can practice with the lance before attempting an actual match against another person.
I might be good on a hoverboard, but I can barely hold the lance. I drop it on my first and second try. By my third, I make it across the mat still holding the lance, but it doesn’t get anywhere near the target.
After a few more fruitless attempts, I pull off my helmet, ready to give my lance arm a break. Hypatia seems captivated with something over my shoulder, so I turn to look.
Ah. At the edge of the clearing, a sweaty Simon Sanzio is doing shoulder rolls while holding dumbbells. Kaylie is coaching him, helping him isolate a specific muscle in his back.
I suddenly have some questions about why Hypatia insisted we come here at this specific time of day. Gotta respect that girl’s hustle.
“Seems like a strange place for a workout,” I say. “Why don’t they just go to the gymnasium?” I ask.
“They need the open sky,” Hypatia explains as she weaves a flower into her pale blond braid. “Simon needs to work on his wing strength.”
I do a double take, wondering if I heard her right.
Turns out I did hear her right.
As I watch, Simon spreads his wings. Yes. Wings .
They’re not feathery angel wings or gossamer fairy wings. They’re large and strong enough to hold up a human body. They ripple with muscle and bone, and they’re covered in skin.
Valkyrie. Got it.
As Simon flaps his wings and elevates off the ground, I’m not sure I fully believe my eyes.
Kor would die to see this. He’s always been obsessed with mythical creatures, and when I learned Maker history and Kor’s belief that some of those creatures might be real, I finally understood why.
“You can do it, Simon!” Kaylie cheers. “You’re getting stronger!”
But Simon’s clearly not very good at the flying thing. Red-faced from exertion, he starts to rise higher, higher, until he catches a current, and with a joyous “Whoop!” he’s off, gliding into the treetops.
He waves at Hypatia.
She waves back with a pleased blush, covering her mouth to hide her too-wide smile.
“Not so high, Simon!” Kaylie yells.
And just then his wings falter, and he comes crashing down into a nearby tree.
A very high tree.
One of his wings is twisted at an odd angle, and his face contorts in a grimace.
“Don’t worry. I’m coming to get you!” Kaylie calls up to him. Then to Hypatia she yells, “I can stabilize him, but go get Grey. I’ll need help getting him down.”
Hypatia runs off, her face pinched with concern. More onlookers gather, all calling up encouragement to Simon.
Kaylie strips off her jacket, and I realize she’s much slimmer than I’d thought before. Beneath her jacket, she’s wearing a backless camisole, and I watch in amazement as she unfurls her own wings.
She shakes them, and they flounce into shape.
Kaylie has wings .
I can’t help but stare. Even from a few yards away, I can see that the skin looks tougher than the rest of Kaylie’s skin, and it’s slightly iridescent. The wings are beautiful in their own, bizarre way. Even more beautiful is watching Kaylie as she gracefully leaps up, flaps her wings, and soars into the treetops, her copper hair streaming behind her like dancing flames.
We all watch as Kaylie lands on a branch above Simon.
I immediately think of the angels in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus . I’ve wondered whether Kaylie was Botticelli’s descendant based on her last name. And she even resembles Venus with her pale complexion and flowing red hair.
“They’re straight out of a painting,” I say to Georgie with wonder.
“Literally,” she responds. “Half the paintings you’ve seen of angels were probably originally of Valkyries, then called angels only after all the living Valkyries were driven into hiding. Some paintings, like Botticelli’s, were even altered to make the wings look more angelic after the fact. We learned all about it in Foundations seminar.”
There’s an Avant transfer—one of Rafe’s posse—standing near us, and he keeps turning to glare at Georgie, because apparently a recruit even breathing the same air as him is an indignity. I give him the finger. Not sure if they know what that means around here, but he seems to get the message and stalks away.
“Don’t even bother,” Georgie grumbles. “Better to just ignore them.”
“If you say so,” I respond begrudgingly. “So Botticelli was a Maker, I’m assuming?”
“No, he wasn’t. And he was vocal in denouncing them. He even burned some of his own work depicting heretical Maker innovations during the Bonfire of the Vanities.”
I have a vague recollection of learning about the Bonfire of the Vanities, which took place in Florence, and I make a mental note to find out how it fits in with the Inquisition responsible for the Makers’ exile.
“But he had Valkyrie family members who often acted as his muses before they all went into hiding during the Exodus.”
“Wait,” I say as her words sink in. “Maker innovations. So you’re saying the Makers…?”
“Made the Valkyries. Yup. They’re an example of the kind of science the Makers were exiled for—attempting to improve upon the original creation of the world.”
Kor had said unicorns were Maker experiments too, and now that I have evidence there are literally winged humans, it feels safe to ask, “Are unicorns real?”
Georgie laughs. “You should see the look on your face. They are real. But they’re extinct. I think the last unicorn died, like, eighty years ago.”
Why do I feel sad for the loss of something I didn’t even know existed until now?
“But the wind horses are still around. You have to ask Master Botticelli to introduce you to Peggy.”
“So if the Makers can do all”—I motion to the winged people above us— “ that , can they, like, cure cancer too?”
“I assume at least some kinds.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that they haven’t… shared that with the regular world?”
She’s thoughtful for a minute before she says, “Years before I knew the Makers existed, my grandmother had a very treatable form of cancer. The cost of her treatment was so high that she burned through her entire life’s savings in a year.
“She didn’t tell my parents, but we found out after she died that when her money ran out, she’d started reducing and rationing her medications, and she’d even entirely stopped using the ones needed to manage her severe side effects. There were pharmacies full of the medicine that could have reduced her suffering and saved her life, but she couldn’t afford it, and so she died in her fifties of something perfectly treatable.”
“I’m so sorry.” I know what it’s like to have a sick grandparent. The whole story is so tragic, and it’s definitely not the first time I’ve heard of a situation like it. Why is our world so cruel?
Georgie continues. “So I guess my point is that my experience with provincial health care was that a lot of cures existed that were only accessible for some. And at least here they treat anyone who needs it.”
I have about a thousand more questions, but I’m distracted by the sound of Simon yelping.
I look up and see him slipping from his perch. He grabs at a branch and catches himself. He hangs, his feet kicking, trying to find purchase beneath him, but there’s nothing there.
Kaylie helps him keep his grip, but the branch itself is half-dead and close to splintering. She lowers herself to support his weight, but as soon as she tries, her wings falter.
“He doesn’t look that heavy,” I say.
“Oh, she could probably lift him on the ground,” Georgie explains, “but Valkyries’ wings are only strong enough to carry their own body weight, and they have to stay light even for that.”
The branch Simon hangs from is high. If he falls, he’ll definitely break some bones, probably worse.
I have an idea.
I dash over to the tree. I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’m good with plants. If I understand my abilities correctly, I should be able to push Ha’i into the tree to help it strengthen enough to hold Simon’s weight until more help arrives.
The bark is harsh under my palm as I form my fingers into shiin. I close my eyes and try to find the well of Ha’i within me like Master Liu taught me. I imagine channeling the line of energy into the tree. Kaylie yells her encouragement; she thinks I can do it.
But nothing happens.
Maybe the leaves on the lower branches look greener? That’s not enough to heal a dying branch.
Simon is sobbing now.
“Just a little longer,” Kaylie says to him. “Your brother is on his way.”
“Hold on, Simon!” a deep voice booms as a shirtless man comes careening through the sky from the direction of the village. He has a trim build of lean muscles that ripple as he flaps a pair of wings much larger than Kaylie’s. This must be Grey, Simon’s brother. It takes me a moment to recognize him in the distance, but it’s the gray-haired guard who searched me the other day.
I hear a sound like the crack of a whip as the branch snaps.
And Simon is falling.
Directly on top of me.
“Simon!” Grey yells, flying toward us. But there’s no way he’ll get here in time. There’s not even enough time for me to instruct my body to move out of the way.
Simon crashes onto me, and the breath is knocked from my lungs as we collapse in a tangle of wings and limbs. My vision blurs as my head smashes into the ground, and Simon’s face collides with mine, my teeth splitting his cheek open like an overripe peach. The metallic taste of blood fills my mouth.
I try to spit out the blood, but there’s so much of it. Some mine and some Simon’s. I feel like I’m choking on it.
I hear voices, but they sound far away, as if I’m underwater.
“Don’t touch them!” Kaylie calls as she swoops down to us.
“Simon, are you okay?” Grey bellows.
Then his voice again, close to my face, fuzzy through the pounding in my head. “Thank you for breaking his fall. You may have saved his life.”