Eagles and Swans
Chapter 36: Out of the Shelter
“Miss Breyte has gone about this plan with remarkable resourcefulness,” was the first thing Derron said, once they were bumping along through dark fields towards the bright lights of Helika. “She has a good head on her shoulders. But she tells me you planned it all?”
Ruthenia felt her teeth rattle as the carriage trundled along. “I told her what had to be done by the end of the night. The rest was her invention.”
“Mm, that lady makes an excellent ally indeed.”
The darkness blended trees with sky, until they passed under the gateway into Helika, strings and arcs of light making silhouettes of roofs and pillars. As they coursed down the old dirt road beneath the Ministry of Flight, Derron seemed to know every turn by heart, and the carriage bounced and chugged, until they had pulled to a stop outside the grounds of a familiar manor.
“It’s so quiet,” Hyder murmured, eyes trained upon the lit windows in the upper floors, above the vines.
Ruthenia felt her heartbeat thunder hot in her ears. “It may have guards.”
He smirked. “Can't be as bad as the palace.”
Derron alighted with a click of the door, crossing to her side of the carriage. “Here we are.” He opened the passenger door.
Ruthenia and Hyder scrambled off the carriage. “Thank you, Derron,” called Ruthenia, “and Ihir guide you.”
“Ihir will not help us. Your courage shall guide us, Miss Cendina.”
While the carriage rolled away into the dark, they peered up at the mansion before them, Ruthenia producing her watch from her pocket for the time. One o’clock. Her eyes scanned the wall for the thin window of the study while Hyder Wove a new mask over them.
“That one,” she said, pointing at a casement window beside the stairwell. They raced across the garden beds, leaping over bushes. There was a light glowing in the stairwell window, but watching it closely, she saw that it did not move. Some old nightlight, perhaps.
Both leapt up onto the windowsill and crouched, peering down at where the latch was nailed into the frame. Hyder kept his eye out over the garden. From her bag Ruthenia pulled her hammer and slid its claws under each nail head in turn. With a sharp wrench, she popped the nails off of the frame, and heard the latch land with a muffled clatter on the carpet inside.
“Ruth,” whispered Hyder with a tap on her shoulder. When she turned, he was holding out a glinting object in the dark. “Reida said to give you this before we parted.”
The fishbone key. It felt like years ago that she had last held it in her hand. “Perfect, I knew I could trust you.” She slipped into her pocket.
There, sitting upon the window's edge, her friend's gaze dip away from hers. “I—I'm sorry,” he whispered.
“What for?”
“That I can't be there to help you.”
Ruthenia shook her head. “I can't pull anyone else into this. I want you to live to see better days. You and everyone else I know.”
There was a long, impermeable silence. Then he leaned over and pulled her in a hug, so tight she wondered if he meant to hold her just to stop her from leaving. But he finally let go, and when he did, his eyes were spilling over again. “I always knew you were destined to do something amazing. And with luck, that something won't end in death, too.”
“Thank you for everything,” she answered with a simple smile. “For making the streets feel like home. I'll miss you, no matter what comes.”
He smiled as tears dripped from his chin. “Me too. Keep safe. As safe as you can.”
And with one last lingering smile, and a pat of her forearm, Hyder leapt off the sill. Then he, too, had vanished from knowing.
Now she was alone, Ruthenia could hear her heart in her ears. Hooking her umbrella over her shoulder, she slid the window soundlessly open, and launched herself feet-first through the gap. She landed next to the fallen latch. Once the window was shut, she plucked the fishbone key from her coat pocket.
The study was silent and inky-dark, its door locked to the hallway. The books and stationery were nestled where they always had been, as if the room had never been searched.
Years ago, when they had designed the basement entryway, they had done so with this very scenario in mind—the day the government might come along in search of a hidden machine. The floor yielded no hollowness when knocked, and the friction wear was always hidden by the slab, only the cracks around the edges to give away that there was something beneath.
She felt with a hand for the corner of the desk, then for the activation keyhole in the drawer's knob. She inserted the fishbone key into the slot, depressing the button on the tip. She waited as its pins probed and retracted, one after another, repeatedly, until it went silent.
With a full twist of the key in the drawer lock, the floor began to descend.
It was strange how different the basement looked in the dark: a cavern of steel machinery, benches, and toolboxes. Features of the floor slowly began to define themselves—the Swift in the centre, its wings grazing the walls, metal parts and tools lying everywhere, all the same as the day she had last visited.
She felt her way through the darkness with her feet, dodging stray screws and nuts until she was beside the grand machine.
Beside it, she knelt to the floor, barely conscious enough to keep herself from collapsing on her side and resuming her interrupted nap. In the stupor of her drowsiness, she scrunched her coat up into a wrinkly ball, and laid it down. Cold crept across her as her eyes closed.
She didn’t notice the transition into sleep; it came like a pouncing shadow. All she remembered was the clawing perfume of grease, which persisted deep into her dreams.
Light splintered on Ruthenia’s eyelids, fragments slipping through the cracks. She blinked and stirred awake, and lay there for some minutes, calmly contemplating the pipes of the ceiling.
Then, rising through her fog of sleep, she remembered—eight o'clock tonight. She started upright.
Crawling to a kneel, she stood, every muscle protesting. Her coat was smudged black, as were her elbows, but the only thing that bothered her was the gnawing of her stomach.
She raced to the tool cupboard in the corner, with its stock of emergency crackers and canned meat. She picked up a wirecutter on a lower shelf, wrenched a blade through the lid, then decided the blowtorch would have to do for cooking. Ensconcing it in a beaker stand, she lit the blowtorch and turned away, brushing the base of the can with the tip of the flame until it hissed with boiling.
The meat was scalding; she dipped the crackers in the sauce and crunched on them with all the haste she could make.
Then she returned to the Swift, whose body was all but ready, its great wingspan and two gleaming propellers making her heart swell. Beside it sat an unlabelled one-gallon tin. Unscrewing the lid, she sniffed, recognising the faint tinge of Sharmon’s fuel. She climbed up the ladder to peer into the cockpit. In the seat sat the jarred spool of Thread, right where she had left it.
Her lips curved into a smile. She was almost there.
For an hour then, she put the finishing touches on the Swift's four-piston engine, tightening exhaust pipes and beating the casing into shape. She put the housing over the dashboard, and then paused as her eyes crossed the gearbox.
One piece was missing: the joystick.
By now, there were no more parts in store that would fit: the pipes were too thick, and she didn't have the tools to work the sheets into rods. After half an hour crawling around in storage and sifting through odds and ends, she returned to the Swift empty handed, heart hammering in her ears.
Then, her eyes fell upon her umbrella.
Its crook peeked over the edge of the workbench. Its shaft would be the perfect diameter.
A pang tore through her. Surely there was another way?
Picking the umbrella up, Ruthenia expanded it with a click—and at the sight of that sunny orange, too bright for these walls, all her terror and anticipation, her hope and grief, surged together in a tidal wave.
Six years ago, she had watched everything—her home, her family, her bearings in the world—crumble to dust. This umbrella was the only thing that had survived, clutched in her hand as she had run away. So she had kept it, and had learned to fly with it, in the hope that she could save her history from washing way.
For six years she had hung by this lifeline. The world had changed and grown and decayed around her, and through it all, she had clung onto this tether, to the corpse of the life before.
“Why did you think this umbrella was enough?” she screamed, flinging it at the floor. It clattered and bounced. Her throat ached. “Why didn’t you leave some money? Or some food at least would’ve been nice! What was wrong with you?”
Six years of this tired sight, and she never wanted to see it again. Yet even the thought of pulling it apart felt like tearing out a piece of herself.
Blind with tears, Ruthenia fished around in the cloth-working toolbox for scissors. She picked up her umbrella, gritted her teeth, and slotted the edge of the cloth into the scissors' jaws. She slit the first seam.
Snip by snip her umbrella canopy bloomed. She dragged the scissor blades through the orange cloth in long straight lines, like a surgeon carving a body open. The lines in the fabric gaped like parting lips.
She tossed the canopy away, a bright orange circle, fanning out in ribbon-shreds. She stared down at the orange blur, paused, gasped with a paroxysm of sobs.
Clenching her jaw, she bent for a screwdriver among her other tools. With a few twists, she drove out the screw fastening the crook to the shaft.
Then, as she yanked it off, something pale and cylindrical popped out of the tube and rolled across the floor.
Ruthenia went still.
She stared at the thing lying between her feet, heart racing.
A piece of paper.
She stooped to pick it up, and unrolled the thin sheet—slowly revealing rank upon rank of brittle typewriter text, the old ink just starting to fade at the edges, beginning with:
Our dear Ruthenia,
Ruthenia let out a whimper as a pang stabbed her through the chest. Her fingers wrinkled the old paper as she read on, line by line.
By tomorrow, if all goes to plan, we will no longer be alive. We must confess: we know you may never forgive us for what we're about to do. But we must, and we pray you understand someday.
You see, we do more for Astra by accepting death than by fleeing. You may not believe that now, but perhaps you will when you are older and have seen the world for all it is. As refugees we may be safe—but as martyrs, we pave the way to a future where people like us may live fearless and free. But it will not be a battle of a few months. No, it will be years of struggle yet, and that struggle will begin with us.
But do not ever feel tethered by our deeds. Your life is, and will always be, your own.
We will regret to our dying breaths the one thing we couldn't do—to become the parents we once dreamed of being. Please know, dear Ruthenia, that you were the one thing we would ever have abandoned our cause for. But we are choosing this for you, too—for the hope that you'll grow up in an Astra better than the one we leave behind.
We know this umbrella can't replace us, but we hope it will protect you from the rain when we are no longer around to do so.
Someday, though, you must leave it behind, and see the sky above. And perhaps, if you're reading this, that time has come to pass. Whatever changes are sweeping over your life right now, whatever battles you are fighting—know that it will be alright. We know you will find your way through, for the sky has no boundaries, and the world is yours for the taking. The world is our true gift to you.
Mum + Dad
She let her eyes cross the text again. Then again. Her eyes darted from one word to another, trying to connect them. Every one of the memories was jammed at the gateway to her consciousness.
Six years of deafening silence. And now this.
Her gaze tunneled into the letter and the room grew bright, and the knowledge that they were gone, they were gone, finally came crashing through the walls of her mind—like a charging beast, smashing the fortifications she had spent six years building to rubble.
“I know!” she shrieked, slamming her fist against her leg, lip trembling. “I’ve always known!”
Your life is, and will always be, your own.
“It was all for nothing, Lita,” she snarled. “They’re still doing it! Nothing’s changed! You left me all alone in the world, hating the one person who could have helped me. And now you're gone, I'm the one paying for your choices!”
She tumbled onto her side atop the workbench, cheek to the wood. She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling with sobs as all the pain she’d tried to lock in the basement of her mind crawled back out to choke her. When she blinked, the stars of ceiling lights fragmented and coalesced again.
“You never cared. You were just two idiots obsessed with martyrdom. You were—my heroes.” She clutched her head through her sobs. “You could still be here. I could still be happy. We could have been a family.”
Suddenly too exhausted to speak, she let the sobs take hold of her. She lay at her workbench and cried for what felt like hours. But no amount of crying, she realised, would bring back the six years she had spent fashioning her own life after theirs, turning their dreams into hers.
A chill crept through the gaps in the ceiling, rippling across her. The flowers stirred quietly above.
No, there was no bringing her childhood back. It was time to stop clinging.
All that was left was to march on forward, out of the shelter, into the rain.
She righted herself again, and picked up the plasma cutter. Holding her umbrella, she gritted her teeth and sawed its shaft from its ribs.
By four o’clock, everything was bolted in and checked. Here she stood, before the prize of all these years of toil. Her parents had only gotten as far as this. Their fledgling machine had never left the ground.
She flipped open the cap of the fuel tank, hefted the tin up the ladder, and poured the translucent oil in. Then she gave the propellors a spin and cooked herself a meal out of the cupboard with the blowtorch. It wasn’t time to leave yet. That time would come soon.
For the remaining hours of the afternoon, Ruthenia waited. There was a lightness about everything, like the morning after a rainy night, vapour rising in the sun. She studied the roots pricking through the edges of the runway gate, hand resting on a lever. Though she could see no sun from here, she felt the air grow cool with the descent of the sun. Her senses sharpened to a fine point.
She thought, as the light began to dim to red, that she could feel a distant, hollow rumbling in her blood, like that of train engines, ready to be launched into the world.
Six thirty. At last, Ruthenia grasped the runway hatch's lever in both hands and gave it a tug. With a vast, guttural groan, the ceiling began to rise, showering earth and rainwater into the basement below. The orange sky peeked through, setting the ramp aglow like fire.
Now, time was running out.
She sprinted back to the Swift, picking up the work goggles beside the toolbox. She dusted them on her coat before pulling them over her eyes. Then she climbed into the cockpit, shut the door, and locked it.
A twist of the ignition, and there was a great, beastly rumble. Heat swelled against her toes, through the canvas of her shoes. There was a menagerie of sounds—hissing, humming, churning—rumbles of hunger and delight—for freedom—freedom—flight.
The engine was already fighting to propel her forward, and not denying them, she lifted the brake.
The Swift began to careen across the stony floor, over dust and grease stains, called by the burning sky ahead.
Her eyes scanned the visible runway. Up above the ground, the garden path led straight onto the grassy acreage beyond—enough, she hoped, for a proper running start.
Light swelled across her as the cruise became a heart-pounding canter. She felt the lurch as the wheels bumped onto the ramp and up into the brilliant evening. Her mind raced with calculations, none of them enough.
It gained and gained momentum, faster than a carriage, faster than flying on her umbrella. An engine like no other, Threadless, diesel powered, loud as the voice of Ihir.
The sky billowed vast above her, welcoming her back into its warm blue embrace.
Ruthenia felt an uncanny relief. It was like something lifting from her, an old black shroud of sorrow. As the machine hurtled through the meadow and parted from the grass, she fixed her gaze on the blocks in the cloudy sky beyond, clutching at the joystick, feeling the sweep of the wings as if they were a part of herself.
Townsfolk lowered their hats in the evening light to gape. A girl raced to her mother, questions tumbling from her lips.
The Swift's wings cast long shadows as it climbed, rumbling, into the evening air.
Ruthenia grinned in the wind, feeling her teeth grow cold, the scent of burning chemical oil and of oncoming rain all about her. Her heart pounded louder than the screaming wind, like the pulsing pistons at her feet, the metal vibrating beneath as air rushed through joints. Brilliant purple sky devoured her whole.
It wasn’t like flying on the umbrella—there was too much power in her forward thrust. And it was not Ihir's will that lifted her, but her parents', and Tanio's, and hers.