This must be why I had such a bad feeling today.
I couldn’t draw in a breath. I flailed, panicking now.
Come on, Aella. Think of something.
The edges of my vision began to sparkle and dance. I wasn’t ready to die.
And then the root went slack and I fell to the rocky ground, gasping and heaving.
I scanned for Alect and saw him bent double, clutching his knees as he tried to catch his breath, too. In one hand, he held his sword. In the other, the end of the severed root.
Fighting the Forbidding was all about trust.
The fire took to the tree at that exact moment, and it went up like it had been dried and aged for two summers. Forbidding-taken things burned hot and fast. And it was the only way to drive back its eternal creep.
I scrambled to my feet, hurrying to pull the mustang from the tangle of roots that had locked it in place. They were slack now – the magic in them as dead as the tree the fire had killed.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Alect said as he came to join me, axe hacking through the thicker roots holding the mustang. “What it’s like in a place without the Forbidding.”
“Like the Continent?” I asked. The main continent of the Winged Empire lay south of our shores. I’d never seen it. I was proud to say I’d been born here in Far Stones.
“Sure. Or anywhere really,” he said, looking over to where the land curled up like a wave of the ocean. The trees and ferns on that patch of ground grew upside down. It would need to be burned too – eventually. The edges of it slithered like snakes beneath the lip of ground. Always snakes. It made my skin crawl.
“You’d hate it. Everyone there has enough to eat, pretty clothes, oil for their hair, and all the latest contraptions,” I said dryly.
“Yeah, that sounds awful.”
We shared a grin.
“And they live under the ever-watchful eye of Le Majest, the great Winged Emperor.”
“He can’t watch everywhere at once,” Alect teased. He was lean for fourteen, but with his sleeves rolled up I could see our constant battles on the Empire’s frontier were starting to bulk up his arms and shoulders. Just like my own arms had grown strong and taut.
Soon enough he’d be making his choices about the life he’d lead away from home. So would I.
I tried not to think about that. The only thing I’d ever wanted was my family. And they seemed to slip away a little more every year as my siblings grew and started lives of their own.
“They say he has a thousand eyes in every street and a thousand ears listening at every door,” I said in my spookiest voice, trying to distract myself from the things that actually scared me. “And they drag you from your home in the night and bring you to his Vultures.”
“Yeah, I’m sure frontier kids are their top priority,” Alect said. “But maybe we won’t be frontier kids for long. Maybe big bold Aella will test as a Wing tomorrow at the Hatching and go practice ancient magic on the mainland.”
He waggled his eyebrows at me.
“Big bold Aella,” I said, putting a palm on my chest to indicate myself, “is more than happy here in Far Reach. Besides, Alect. No one has Hatched here since Amalia and that was an aberration.”
I gave the vines a final tug and the mustang whinnied, shook his mane, and tumbled out of the clutches of the dead Forbidding Oak, rolling his huge eye at me and plummeting into the forest.
I sighed. He’d been hard enough to catch last time. He’d be even harder now that he was spooked.
“Come on,” I said wearily. “We’ll have to catch him later. It’s almost dark.”
“The old man won’t like that we lost the mustang. That’s the fourth one this month,” Alect said, his expression dark.
“He’ll be more worried if we’re out past nightfall,” I said, retrieving my fallen knife and backing away from the burning tree.
I whistled for the dogs, hearing their yapping echoing out over the stony ridge. They ran toward us, tongues lolling from their mouths and I looked around at the landscape wreathed in Forbidding with a tired slump to my shoulders.
It was getting worse.
Every day, we fought back the Forbidding as it tried to reclaim the land we’d hacked out of it in the first place, and every day it seemed to fight harder and harder. That tangled dark mass – unnatural and twisted, part spirit and part real – wore on a person.
But if I could choose any other place in the world, I’d still stay here. It was home. It was where my family was. It was where you could live free and clear, as hard as it might be.
I was never going to leave.
“What will you do if you Hatch tomorrow, Aella?” Alect said and the way his voice trembled a little, I thought he was more worried for himself than for me.
“I won’t Hatch, Alect. And neither will you. No one in Far Stones ever Hatches and that won’t be changing now,” I said.
But as we walked down from the rocky ridge toward the lights of our farmhouse, I thought I saw a flicker of something glowing – a faint purplish-white between the reaching tentacles of the dark Forbidding. It made a little stab of terror shoot down my spine. There was something different about this Hatching. And I wished I knew what it was.
Seven Years Before...
I gasped as the spirit egg appeared in Amalia’s hands – as translucent as the owl on the Imperial Wing’s shoulder but slightly pink and glowing brighter and brighter.
Magic. I couldn’t help but let that word echo in my head again and again as I watched her. Magic, magic, magic.
“Now, say the word,” the Imperial Wing – a Winged Empire magic manifestor – breathed. She was entirely focused on Amalia as she guided her Hatching. There was a slight curve to the corners of the Wing’s mouth as her lips parted and stayed that way. She seemed to be anticipating a particular pleasure. Everyone else in our town shifted uncomfortably, their expressions identical – worried, nervous, expectant.
“Hatch,” Amalia whispered.
Her whisper echoed out over mothers clutching children close and men holding their pipes in mid-raise. Most touched a talisman or stroked some of the feathers sewn into their belts. Amalia’s friends gripped their skirts or jackets with worry. Most of us had never seen anything happen when a Wing came to town. Certainly not this.
The seconds drew out, long and tense. I held my breath, waiting.
Something cracked.
The crowd gasped all at once.
I leaned forward, nearly toppling from my father’s shoulders as he fought to keep me upright.
Peep.
The faint sound shattered the air around me as we all sighed.
A bit of spirit eggshell fell from the glowing egg, disappearing as a little beak popped out. I felt like I could hardly breathe. There was a sudden struggle in Amalia’s hands and a whooshing sound as everyone leaned forward, breathing again.
The little chick emerged from the egg and shook itself.
Amalia gasped, her face full of sudden delight. She looked up at us all, beaming.
Behind her, her father’s face twisted with grief.
Hatching changed everything. Magic left nothing the same.
Ragged cheers erupted from behind me as all of Far Reach burst with hesitant joy.
Our first Wing had Hatched.