Chapter Fifty-Nine Hanan
chapter fifty-nine
hanan
Priestess Sinaya’s squandered gift. The queen’s heart’s desire. I suspected as much when I saw the tree above the Maelstrom, and now I’m certain. I stare at the bird – Adarna it tells me in my head, voice piercing behind my eyes.
A creature that can turn flesh to stone has so much potential for chaos.
I look to the bird as it sings its death chant, luring us to give up, to give in.
It’s a voice that tells us that succumbing is the easiest. It would be so sweet to close our eyes, to let our minds smooth and melt to a puddle.
It would be as peaceful as slipping into sleep. One moment, flesh. The next, stone.
When I can finally pull my gaze away from the bird, my body resists movement.
The others are stiffening, flesh turning to stone faster than before.
Ris leans against me as we stagger for protection behind the rock figure.
From their conversation I deduced this had been someone important to her once, and to Finlyr also.
Biba’s father, if I had to guess. There will be time to mourn the dead, but we must move if we hope to stay among the living.
‘Fin,’ Ris whispers as I examine her, measuring the extent of the turning.
Finlyr is worst of all. His arms are marble-veined, meeting from hand and shoulder at a point around the bicep with four small bleeding holes.
‘What is that?’ I ask, turning his arm carefully.
‘That is my doing,’ Sinigang admits.
Adarna shrieks, and Biba slowly opens her eyes and stretches.
The bird scoops up Biba with its wings, and the girl grips hard onto its feathered breast. It beats its wings, and we duck as nest debris comes flying towards us.
Feathers and swords and glass bottles. Detritus collected from its victims over the years.
We throw ourselves behind the statues, our bodies rebelling against the movements.
A bottle smashes against one of them, glass raining down on us.
There’s a huge gash on my leg. I examine the cut: it’s an angry red, deep and bloody.
Everything’s stopped. There’s silence. Blissful blessed silence.
The pain of the cut, the smell of the blood.
Just like practising healing at Aistra. I grab another shard of glass and slice my skin.
Sinigang watches me. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Pain helps,’ I gasp out through cuts.
Sinigang nods and then lunges for Finlyr. He yells and jerks back as the otter-cat sinks his teeth into the skin and releases. Blood seeps into the ragged torn shoulder of his shirt. He can’t take his eyes off the wound, pulsating rhythmically.
‘Why the fuck did you do that?’ he shouts.
‘You have to bleed,’ Sinigang insists, extending his claws.
‘Drown out the song,’ I say, showing him the gash on my leg. ‘Pain reminds you you’re alive.’
‘You never heard of cat-scratch fever?’ he demurs. ‘Get Ris, we need to get Biba back!’
The pain has quietened the song, and I can finally hear myself think.
Adarna can turn flesh to stone, draining the life out of us.
It feeds on our energy, just like the queen and Raina when they fed on me.
I understand why she wants the bird home.
A priestess is a conduit for the energy across all Paranishian life forms; a private feast for the royals.
Adarna would be even more powerful and wouldn’t burn out like the priestesses.
The ultimate power over Life and Death. It would be the ruin of us all. I can’t let her have it.
‘You must hurt yourself; that’s the only way we survive this,’ I insist, as Ris stares at me helplessly.
She’s too rigid to move. I crawl over to her, the brand on my thigh burning, the flesh outlined like a rash.
Like Finlyr’s shoulder where Sinigang bit him.
I have an idea, and instead of bringing the blade to her skin, I press the brand against her, my thigh against hers.
A scorching, searing pain radiates across my body, and I hear a muffled cry from Ris.
Then the stone is receding, flesh warm and soft beneath mine.
I hold us together as the cold rock leaves her body enough so she can move.
I’m only holding back the tide, but if I can buy us more time we might have a chance.
‘We have to get Biba,’ she says as soon as she can.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ I tell her. ‘We need to get to the bird, all right?’
She nods, grabbing at the others who are being corralled by Sinigang.
I think back to the times the queen drained me.
To the powerlessness I felt in those moments.
Life slowly ebbing away, flowing down into the void.
I picture a waterfall, and I flip it in my mind.
I reverse the flow of the life force, a trickle but there, nonetheless.
My power is just out of reach, but I can latch on to Adarna’s.
I touch Raina’s cheek, joining her to the energy chain.
‘Follow me,’ I yell as I charge towards the bird and jump. I latch on to its feathers, trying to find purchase as I yank some of them out.
‘Hanan,’ Ris shrieks, following in my wake.
She helps me onto the bird’s mantle. Once I have my legs either side of it, I grab at the tufts by its nape for purchase.
Adarna bucks and screams, but it’s no good. I tug back the power it drained. I focus my mind on its throat, imagining I could place my hands down its gullet and still its voice.
‘We don’t have much time. Get up here!’ I command, and the others grab hold, Finlyr wrestling Biba from Adarna’s loosening grip.
Remnants of us atrophying from the outside in.
The song has stopped finally, and I just have to hope the effects will reverse quicker than it can kill us.
We pull them bodily onto the bird in a graceless tussle fought by sheer will.
‘Punch a hole to the sky,’ I command it.
Adarna sways its head to and fro, trying to resist. It flies around the cavern, smashing into rocks, sending its past victims toppling one after another. Soon there is nothing but fragments and dust clouds.
‘No!’ I hear Ris screaming beside me.
I grab her and hold her tight.
‘You’re mine,’ I insist. ‘Adarna, fly.’
Finally, Adarna shoots up to the roof of the cavern and doesn’t stop.
We yell, clutching on to the bird as it takes to the air.
We’re going so fast, the water doesn’t have time to catch up with us.
We blast right through, breaking the surface and breaching like a whale.
We gasp, grit and sand and water sloughing off us.
It shakes its feathers and beats its wings, shrieking into the daylight.
It flicks water from its ears. I’ve never seen a bird’s ear before.
It’s a strange little thing, a fleshy layered orifice.
Adarna’s voice echoes across the expanse of the water as it struggles to maintain height, a shrill chattering squawk.
My ears pop from the change in pressure.
My blood feels like it’s fizzing. The layers of stone crack and break, slipping off my skin and into the water.
The Maelstrom churns beneath us, and the daylight is golden and blue, wisps of cloud moving gently across the sky.
I didn’t expect to survive this. My stomach roils as Adarna finds its course, and we hold on for dear life.
‘Where are we going?’ Ris yells.
Adarna dances deadly in swirls and acrobatics through the air, and we hold on, feathers fluttering in the breeze.
It feels like the brief moment I inhabited the insect back at the Bastion library, being one with the mind of a creature that could take wing.
The freedom to slough off my human form, floating weightless in the air propelled only by instinct.
Adarna’s heart beats steadily as it flies with determination, and I can feel it pulse along my body. The others are just a thought in the back of my mind as I try to maintain a course, wind whipping my hair and face. It takes everything in my will to keep Adarna from bucking us off.
‘Where is it going?’ Finlyr asks.
The expanse of water that took weeks to traverse is visible below us, whipping by faster than I can see it.
Paranish comes into view in the distance.
I understand now the tales they tell children about the great otter-cat whose paw print marked our land: the pad and four digits of our isles.
The hill, which houses the Bastion on the mainland.
And then the four seasonal isles, with their distinct colours.
“The winter storm; golds and reds of autumn; the clear blue waters of summer; and the verdant green of spring.”
As we get closer, the bird dives lower, and we shriek to hold on.
Adarna descends rapidly through the clouds, and I shiver, the skin on my arms gooseflesh.
We emerge through the cold current onto Aistra, and I only have a few moments to survey the temple before the bird lands, sending dirt and snowfall flying.
The smell of scorched bark lingers in the air, and I hold back my nausea as my feet hit the ground.
I run to the Tree, heedless of everyone and everything else.
The bark is blackened and burned, cracked through the centre like lightning has struck it. The earth where I lay is still disturbed, showing the remnants of my escape.
‘What are you doing here?’
I turn and find Salvacion leaning against an archway. Her face is bruised and swollen, so much so that I recognise her initially by her Seaguardian uniform, which is torn and dishevelled.
‘Salvacion?’ I ask, approaching her. ‘What happened?’
Her eyes are molten as she staggers towards me. ‘How dare you return!’
I turn my body to shield Raina. Then Ris is between us, and Salvacion backs down, light and recognition flooding across her face, and she pulls Ris into an embrace.
‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ she says, then draws away with a groan, clutching her side. ‘What in Aistra is that thing?’ She indicates Adarna, eyeing it warily.