46 - Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird_Paradise of Pretenders

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 KAHLO, 1940

 Eleanor watched the Fire Man snuff out the fire, and she thought. It was only a matter of time. His eyes were concentrated, small windows containing fiery, liminal vistas, as he smoothed out the leaves with the tips of his fingers. It wasn’t something warm he was creating. For these tips would fall directly into the water, and it wasn’t something to drink. It wasn’t tea. It was just something he was creating.

 Eleanor watched him finish the pot, bits and pieces of green in it, and pour into the elephant cup’s open back; bits of green fell, and after he filled the cup, he stood and beckoned it to her, towards the hedges of elephants and rhinoceros.

 “Give them water,” he told her. Eleanor shook her head; she appreciated the act, but there was no need when she’d seen him water the hedges from her window just an hour before. She’d also seen her mother walk through the garden, touching the verdant hides and recoiling; but the leaves weren’t sharp, just prickly.

 “I don’t think they’re thirsty right now,” she said.

 Tupil shook his head; the fire was still in his eyes. “They might be,” he just said, and taking the cup himself, sloshed it onto the snout of the large elephant nearest, then along the shoulders of the rhinoceros. Both stood at the head of their respective groves. Bits and drops of the water shone on the foliage, and Eleanor shaded her eyes a bit from the sun, but she couldn’t make out the individual tea leaves bits amidst the greater verdant.

 They twitched; the leaves, nearly shivering, but it wasn’t cold. Just the wind—no, there was none, and the whole leaf-grown, bits and pockets of air cluttered throughout, snout of the elephant seemed to turn, and it snorted. A puff of air bwooshed out from where its nostrils might be, and it spoke.

 “I wanted the girl to water me,” it said, and the leaves were speaking, or rather Eleanor heard the words as they moved. “Her trait is fascinating.”

 Eleanor started—like she’d just opened her eyes, realized that the Klost and Anderi were their selves in the dream, and weren’t who they were in real life—and the rhinoceros moved its head up and down, its horns shaking. “You’re fascinating,” it said to the elephant, and Eleanor turned to the Fire Man. “Is this you?” she asked him.

 He shook his head. “It’s difficult to explain, but no. They’re bits of a Scion called Dante A.”

 “A Scion,” the elephant said, its prickly voice somehow sounding sardonic. “Fire girl, you saw a member of our troupe. He sent us here. Before you came into this world of fire and name.”

 “Just a world,” said the rhinoceros. “Just a garden.”

 “Who—” Eleanor started—

 “Eleanor, there’s so much about the world of Scions, beyond this home,” the Fire Man said to her. “So much I cannot teach you.” He sighed, and moved back to the table to return the cup.

 Again, Eleanor had too many questions, and none of them original. “Were you

 a part of the theater troupe, Tupil?” she asked, but she saw his back harden, and he rose to stand, and he was tall; the elephant and rhinoceros seemed to withdraw.

 “Don’t call me by that name,” the Fire Man said. “I am not a mere flower, Eleanor,” but he sighed again, and touched the elephant on its long trunk. “I don''t want you to end like your father. But, the Paradisiac named Dante A gave us two parts of them, to watch over you as I remained in your father. They''re bioterra; so it''s fine.”

 “Now you''re sounding like K Jeong,” the elephant said. “Daughter of flame. There is too much to explain. And, it seems, you don''t wish to follow the path of fire.”

 “University with the unblooded,” the rhinoceros said in agreement. Eleanor nodded; while she wished to know, she didn''t really wish to go along with it. She''d lived her life untouched by fire, and it wasn''t her responsibility to keep trying to touch it.

 Thought-message from Giya.

 “My friend''s almost here,” she said to the Fire Man, and he nodded. Accept. Hey, my favorite Governor. You are going to predict I''ll be there soon.

 Something like that, citizen, she answered. In the wake of excitement Giya let into the Thought-feed, Eleanor faced the two hedge-animals. They looked back, their leaves and hidden branches vibrant and concealing.

 “I’m going to college,” she told them. “Tell Dante that.” I don''t have to know my father to get there. I don''t have to understand these Paradisiacs or the path of fire. I''m a Scion. Sure. But I have so much more to worry about. First her act of a Governor, which really any second could be dispelled.

 I''m outside the portal. Your house is the one with the towers?

 Tall and silver. You will enter the Dorr palace, Eleanor said. You will meet my ancient animal topiary.

 Governor Dorr with the best lines, came Giya''s response, and Eleanor smiled at Tupil, who was already leaning back on his chair, tea in hand. His own act but one she let continue. She was, after all, bringing a friend for the first time into the palace, and it wouldn''t do for a Governor to lack in hospitality.

 “Eleanor!” she thought she heard, just audibly, from outside the front gates. She thought she recognized Giya’s plastic alto. Just like—well, not really—but kind of like, a kind of bird, with drawn-back feathers, giving a screeching sort of call for its morning companion. Eleanor preened back her own feathers, and walked. She made sure her orange hair caught the sun, falling across the topiary—rather like a tropical bird, back when the earth had such weather, preening its feathers as it walked, dignified, across the garden.

 “Eleanor, I’m here,” came the stately alto, just bordering enough onto the low tenor to make Eleanor smile, as she touched the steel bars, letting them swing open.

 Giya Igre Bis stood there. She was wearing her normal Blazon uniform, the one that wasn’t required but sometimes students of her stature showed off to the first-years. It was still dappled all over with her signature jade and black diamonds, running all over, as the sun above cast conflicting triangles across those shapes.

 She smiled; she ran a hand over them, seeming to outline the sharp edges. “It matches the light in your garden,” Giya said. She inclined her head to Tupil; the family gardener raised his cup, of warmth and ceramic, and sipped.

 “We have a piano,” Giya said, coming further in, sitting on the light steel chair Eleanor indicated. “It’s from Lowers. But, one of their professionals comes to visit and play.” Her voice, balanced, just between the two. Eleanor found it comforting. Like Adventa Rosan, whom she still hadn’t heard from since that all-too-brief conversation with the others in the Orange Route.

 Eleanor sat down, noting that Tupil continued to sip his tea. As long as he didn’t say anything—while his fiery orange hair, too caught the sunlight, Eleanor thought the two hedges formerly speaking had positioned themselves, almost nearly covering him. She also thought that the white specks in Giya’s hair kept flickering with the sunlight.

 “What’s real music like?” Eleanor asked.

 “What, is Hi-fi not,” Giya answered, turning her head this way and that to look around the garden. Besides Tupil, they were alone. Ulera Dorr had deigned to visit her husband’s domain of work, and they wouldn’t be back before the sun set. Delano had an important meeting today… he was going to a Netbanking conference soon, during the whole summer, before she left for Sector.

 “Does the piano player play Lowers music?” she asked, and Giya nodded, returning her irises to Eleanor’s. “Songs even before Lowers, but, I just find myself thinking of Hi-fi, today, earlier the player actually came by, before I left for Blazon. Happy about someone new, and Going to Sector University, were the two tracks I heard today, or that I was thinking of,” Giya said. “Have you heard them?”

 Eleanor thought to her favorite playlist: Ode to my Nudd Trees. Intentionally repeating such tracks as Friend I’m stuck with, Do I take my plants to college?, and Sitting on the floafa. She’d heard… Going to college, First day of college, but hadn’t thought about songs specific to Sector. She shook her head.

 “Hmm, they’re good, and, depending on the day, Going to Sector changes. How long have you had your gardener?”

 “Since coming here, to Plent,” Eleanor said. “He makes great tea.”

 “Oh yeah? Which flavors?”

 Which flavors—oh. Giya, like people who actually lived in Plent, ordered straight from the Government. Eleanor thought, He actually brews his own, from the leaves in his garden. I can name their names… but she said, after looking up, appearing to think—“Burgundy, Maple, and… Ochre.” They were probably real flavors—she never checked what Mother sent—but tea was colors, like coffee, just not the main colors.

 “Maple? Your gardener’s not caught up. The Nature line was months ago, Governor!”

 “Governor?”

 “Yes, Eleanor, you have access to the lines as they’re made. Interesting, Governor Dorr, very interesting,” and Giya, tossing her left arm over the back of the chair, seemed satisfied at her latest discovery, yet another, intriguing yet tasteful, thing about this Governor she knew.

 Eleanor just nodded. She’d almost slipped. She was a Governor—Tupil didn’t know of her fa?ade. No one did. She only told Mincy and Bode sometimes. Very quickly she Thought for Tea, Latest

 and found that the current line had flavors such as Conch White, Abalone Grey, Sandy, so beach. Like Tupil’s shirt the other day. Yet another thing to keep in mind as she kept up this fa?ade…

 And she hadn’t even been assigned homework yet for Sector. She let out a laugh.

 “You know, I might turn out to miss Blazon,” Giya continued. “It was, for a premiere school in our levgion, extraordinarily easy, but I had fun.”

 “Did you?”

 “Yeah, did you not?”

 “Well, there was that day we were both leaving early,” Eleanor said. “Because it’s so easy now.”

 “Yeah, Sector should be hard though. It’s the best,” Giya responded, but Eleanor knew that Giya might have said, for the eighth or ninth time, But it’s in Sector I, and there are four other Sectors. Giya sighed. “But, you know, it’s the best here, and in the past, we could go to college anywhere,” she said.

 Eleanor laughed out loud.

 “Governor, you think it’ll be easy,” Giya said. She was rubbing her chin while examining Eleanor closely. “Or—did what I say was wrong? I’ve been saying it.” Giya leaned forward slightly. “You know at Sector that you can’t leave until you’ve Altered.”

 She did (although by asking Proen, while still trying to find out who else from Blazon was going). It wasn’t like Lowers colleges that ended after four years. Some students at Sector could stay for longer. And, of course, “altering” had to be more than changing your eye color every Alteryear, but according to Proen, “becoming” the altered version of you.

 Eleanor thought, well, people leave Sector every year, and it’s just college. “Changing” is a constant endeavor…

 Giya was frowning. “No, not really,” she said, and Eleanor realized she’d spoken aloud, again. She heard the slightest of taps as Tupil, still reclining back on his white chair, tapped his fingers on it. “Altering is different from changing. If I met you first year, and then met you now, you’d have altered, but would you really have changed?”

 They’re almost the same word, she thought, but not aloud.

 “My rank’s been faltering a bit,” Eleanor said instead. Giya blinked—then she laughed, a surprisingly high alto, one that ended in a catlike growl. “But still alter for the grade?” she asked, and Eleanor nodded with a smile. She had tried intentionally not answering one or two questions a test. It was just enough to bring her rank down a few places. Just enough to watch her chair move a bit closer to the front.

 Giya laughed again. “I think I’m still top 2 or 3, every class,” she said. “Now Proen iHiela and Mii na Ten consistently outrank me.”

 Mii na Ten! The visiting student from High, who’d come here only for his last year. Eleanor had forgotten about him.

 “Is he going to Sector?” Eleanor asked, and Giya nodded. “He’s on the silver route.”

 Which confirmed her suspicions that there were more than just the main colors… but wait, there were only seven class representatives. “How many routes—”

 “Oh, the colors? Most of them are by upper years,” Giya said. “How many colors were you offered?”

 Eleanor thought back. Only seven—red through purple. No silver.

 “Only the truly alter students (like Adventa) who are in our year can be Color Guides, and some students (like Mii) are offered other colors, like silver, or pink, or black.”

 “So we’re not all told the same things,” she said.

 “It’s Sector University, what do you expect, Eleanor,” Giya said, laughing again. “We have to alter ourselves.”

 Tap, tap.

 “I really like your hedges,” Giya said. “My parents just order stones.”

 “Well, mine just like animals,” Eleanor said. “Especially the extinct ones.” She imagined brown cat ears creeping up, slowly emerging behind Giya’s head. Some cats were around in Lowers, apparently, but she’d never seen them.

 Do you want to go to Lowers—she almost thought.

 “Governor, I have my Form Governors today, just wanted to stop by,” Giya was saying. “Oh wait—Eleanor, can I talk to you by hologram sometime? Like I’m just some average student. Talking to a Governor.”

 Holograms. For a brief second, Eleanor thought, the barest wisp of an image, the afterimage of a hologram, appearing across the garden, walking past the gate.

 It was just an image. Eleanor shook her head.

 “Sorry, Giya. We’ve already met.”

 Giya was standing; taking another look around the topiary, waving to Mr. Tupil—“Oh, right.” She sounded disappointed, somewhat—but laughed again as Eleanor led her to the gate.

 “First one to get our assignments, let the other know,” Eleanor promised, and Giya nodded and smiled, taking a look back before she crossed the threshold. Eleanor watched her go, back to the portal—her white spots glinting—from where she stood behind the bars.<hr>

 The doe steps through the tall grass, unaware of identity behind her; she is focused on chewing, on finding the best blades, for they make comfort lining her white-toned stomach, and she has her fawns to consider. Her ears flap in the breeze; they detect the slightest sibilance of movement, and her round plates, those inquisitive and curious eyes, are alert.

 —She turns.

 And the cheetah bites her neck.

 Rubbing my neck, I crane it to stare upwards.

 A body is up there composed, straight and still on the golden plate. I do not know what it is.

 I rub my eyes again. I had to send a Thought for the tree-Governor. I look at my teammates, arguing about Siara’s tactics—

 Siara’s tongue, still and wet, a pink slug, of something break ozone out of the firmless sky in below the ocean, it is sitting there, and I turn, I don’t see Siara but I know it is her tongue and vomit up on the grass.

 A twin shadow sweeps across it. Above my head…

 I reach up my hands again. There should be emptiness. Nothing except my auburn hair above the emptiness above the soma that cannot be cured.

 But I feel hair.

 And it isn’t. It’s harder, it’s of a tougher material, and without seeing I know it isn’t auburn it is sepia.

 Twin piercings of sepia… engaging the shadow, plumes of half-elliptical curves. I crane my eyes around me and see that I am alone on the grass. There is no one behind me, and no one in front of me. All but me.

 The two things above my head are no longer congealing. They were new; but now they are drying, and the gold flecks of ichor sprinkled in the sun on the palms of my hands are as I see them turning sepia, dissipating, disappearing into dust.

 These sable crescents invite me, and I think of trees and I believe in them. I hear the elves, light and grace-footed, running through the forest and I see their stories. I feel the magic that was taken from me, and I open my mouth and gag, but it does not come out.

 All I see is Siara’s tongue. It used to stagger laps on the roofs of launchpads golden illuminated, commanding the Beacons to go forward; now it just sticks to the grass, supple and beginning to wilt, its last throes glistening as the self-restoration blades attempted to remove it.

 I feel the air. It sings and murmurs. It seems to ask me, does the air need these plying machines, honed in moisture of speech, or all it does need are lies. Lies first prepared in the throes of Government. Lies second polished in the forays of peace. Lies third purveyed in the mores of destiny.

 I take my receptor off my head. I look at it. It is burned, transformed, enlivened by the things that sit my head.

 I know their names.

 Thought-message to: Siara El’To.

 Are you alive? That is the question.

 Melea. You’re still on the raider team. The Beacon captain’s voice has the shape of readiness and anticipation. She does not sound like the captain of the Sector premiere phalanx, eviscerated.

 Who else is alive?

 I’m at the opposite end of the field. Lacon is with me; they’ve lost their left arm. Vie and Bodi are here.

 I look again at the launchpad above me carrying a body of one of us. So it is not one of the core five; another player whose brief life was caught in the span of some plaything’s seamless and fickle ideations of liberty. I’m coming. Siara, I did not lose anything, but there’s something strange on my head. I’m coming.

 Alter. Melea, you and Ayer were boundless. Stopping whatever that was, from taking more of us. 

 The rest of those who tried out are dead.

 Siara leaves the Thought-feed, and goes to lick her wounds.

 (Or so I imagine. She can’t lick.)

 I think. I concentrate, briefly. But I can’t remember what had actually happened. All I can see in my interior recesses, dark and uninviting, is the sober reminder of life, that during Beacon tryouts I had seen some Governors, and we had fought.

 Like those days. Joining the Furies, back to back with Valha’ya and her silver spheres of invisibility, my Governor-Gene enhancement and not my trait, which now I realize, had to have done with what happened here.

 But that’s all I know. I look forward and run. A few seconds later I approach them, and they look exhausted and relieved. It’s as if we won a game. I don’t see any bodies and Vie is holding her left thigh, slumped in a sitting position on the grass. She has just lost the bone but she hasn’t told them. Lacon has their raider racket sticking out of their left shoulder. It looks seamlessly fused and as impregnable as Lacon is they must have gone to a restoration center or been embalmed like me. Bodi Ayer is not there. Siara our captain is, mouth closed, silent and I see an alter plastic ball, up and hovering beside her.

 “OK, full team assembled,” comes Bodi’s voice and it is coming from around the APB, around it like the whole of a portal space that imprisons us in that instant before sending us to our desired location. But here there is no portal. Only the space of an open raider field, and the grass not wet with blood but the sweat of escape with our lives.

 Self-restoration.

 It comes to me then, the body on the gold.

 “Yes, that’s my body, they separated it from my voice, and somehow, I can move APBs,” he says, and the others look too tired to dispute this additional fact of fantasy too advanced even for our restoration.

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 I think again to what could possibly have happened, for something did, but I can’t think or speak of it. And even if I did remember I do not think they should know. Because my mind’s recesses do possess one dim illumination: that what did occur was so beyond human, or Scion, understanding.

 I briefly consider asking my second sister directly. Or I could share these issues of darkness with Raegoth, mired by his own unbelievable revelations. The one about some god-vehicle. That doesn’t make the single tint of sense. Alter to none. The portals being their own modified vessels of purification is one dark, immense boat ferrying the living to the Government’s. The possibility of gods in addition to Scions, while that fact was known to me since I could walk, or run does not take that disposal of belief immediately. I have to think here, now, these top raiders, massacred and mutilated.

 “Bodi, can you feel your body?” Siara asks. The first question I would have asked. But it appears as if the surviving team, captain included, had waited for my return. Their savior of horns.

 “Interestingly, I can’t. But I can feel this APB, like the way you feel your hands. And I can move it.” Bodi Ayer, the agent of chaos, sounds surprised, curious, and unlike someone who, I now recall, had shouted, and, somehow, with me, fought these Governors.

 An alter plastic ball, set to highest torque, striking a gigantic tree.

 “It is the only thing I can move. For now.” And already, he is thinking of what else he can do, and as before I, too had something to do against the Government, or at least the Agents, Bodi Ayer must have something against the Governors. He knows their Golden Rules, and had ruled out part of the mix between lie and truth, that my aunt is or was a Governor, when it’s really a sister I never knew I had, who told me to speak to the tree, and maybe I did?

 Because I am not a tree. I am Scion Element’r, or trait without, but no change.

 Why did I ever fight against the Government, when it was unwinnable from the beginning? Because Valha’ya was crazy enough to form a clandestine student organization for Scions at Sector University. Because the Scions there wanted to do something with their life, use their traits in ways I’d never thought of. Because I turned away, and followed the older, more courageous student, daughter to Governors, unknowingly missing the oldest sister I never knew I had.

 Because I did find something with the Furies, something in Taylor’s uncaring attitude towards everything, how his professional identity kept things bureaucratic, and even how the ‘Lazy’ boss would wear terrible socks. Because maybe it wasn’t about winning, or even just not being purified, but being able to keep onto something that we considered part of ourselves.

 “Vie, can you move?” Siara asks.

 Vie iHiela nods. “Siara, can we summon launchpads off the raider field?”

 Siara our captain looks almost incredulous at this answer. She almost twitches her head left, to look at Bodi’s alter plastic ball, still hovering; and seems to take a breath, and then a second, before giving what remains of her team her answer.

 “No, iHiela, they’re connected to the field’s Upload.”

 Golden seat, shimmering, my feet upon it.

 “What about Governors’ seats? Those are launchpads, too,” I say. Not because I know this to be true, but the portals are connected to each other, and I, having Governor’s gene, somehow materialized upon one via portal.

 So give them all Governor’s gene.

 That is my idea but I don’t say it. Because I don’t know how to do it.

 But now I think that Bodi’s ball is turned towards me, and Lacon, their black-lashed eyes squinting, seems intrigued. But more interesting now is that none of them seem to be in physical agony. Maybe they hadn’t gone to restoration. Maybe the raider racket that is now Lacon’s left arm was given, like my horns that no one is noticing. I prevent my hands from reaching up to test. And Siara, who I told, isn’t saying anything, or rather, she has been saying things, without a tongue, and I look at her mouth, which is closed.

 Siara was given a voice, without a tongue.

 Bodi was given hands, without a body.

 Vie was given movement, without a central rotator.

 Lacon was given a racket, without the arm to move it.

 I was given horns without magic.

 “Fifth Golden Rule. The arena is the field with the circles,” Bodi says. “Field is really any space. The circle are the launchpads.”

 “As I said, every raider field, arena, at least above Might, has Upload which has all the launchpads,” Siara says; but Bodi’s ball is spinning. “Circles include, yes Melea, the Governors’ own golden launchpads.”

 “I thought we couldn’t use them,” Via says – but then, she looks at me, her eyes stare – “Melea, your aunt, you first arrived –”

 “First Golden Rule. Governors have ichor,” Bodi continues. “I can’t speak to what ichor really is. But Melea, yes, her aunt, or whoever, she has it. That’s how she came to us. That’s why she can use their golden launchpads, or any circles in the field. That’s why she’s alive.”

 They are all looking at me. I suddenly see, in front of them, covering them like invisible silhouettes, the faces and slim hopes of the Furies, looking to one of their best fighters, coming back from another successful mission, skin cloaked in sweat, Savores occasionally strained in blood that I hadn’t thought about removing just yet, because I wanted to show the Furies that our cause was difficult, that it wasn’t my sister who was choosing who was sent to us, speaking with Vander Morht to keep us a necessary nuisance, that it wasn’t our own disillusionment with the way things were structured that kept us blinded to the real state of things.

 Lacon starts to laugh. They scratch their racket arm, the twines causing shrieks of grievance. “Bodi, just tell us what the strategy is. The goal is the same, right? To keep passing.”

 They left admission to every university in the Sector, to try for the Beacons. Because I can, I check University feeds—Raider—Raider’s Arena—LACON DENIES ENTRANCE, CHOOSES BEACONS OVER RELICS. We may not have Lacon’s passing, but that’s what—

 “We’ll keep playing, of course,” Siara says. She nods at me. “Melea tried out early, her aunt wants her in. Other Governors, maybe they didn’t want that. Of course, Governors aren’t supposed to interact directly with citizens, they don’t alter us. But—”

 She looks at Bodi again.

 “You can’t force them to change, that’s the third.”

 How does he know all of this? How many rules are there? How are Governors, who can ask me if I’m a tree, no, I’m not, give me real fear, I’m not thinking about it, so something did happen back there, where, I don’t know, how can they be bound by them? What are they?

 “… I can’t say,” he is saying to Vie, who must have asked one of those questions. Vie has the ibef, she likely has family going to Sector—

 “Are you a Governor, Bodi Ayer?” I ask.

 Vie slumps back. My next question is not asked for fear of further transformation. I know we can’t approach them. But ‘approach’ is not entirely equal to ‘be near.’ I ready my Savores.

 I don’t have them. You’re in the present, Melea. You don’t have weapons. Your racket’s in your V-locker. You have your ichor-enhanced body.

 I still needed restoration. Bodi seems to turn, like a human’s nod.

 “No, Melea, I just said that Governors need ichor. While it’s an interesting idea, I don’t think that an alter plastic ball has that.”

 With a unified movement the rest of our heads turn to stare up at his body, a shapeless mass, on the launchpad above.

 “You’re not believing me.” I can see Vie and Lacon, physically readying themselves—for what, a storm of deer, APBs winding in from everywhere, Siara giving us her wrath—“I know the Golden Rules, I let Melea on the team, I survived them. Maybe because I don’t have a body, the rules don’t apply.

 “Well, and you still might not believe me. But there’s a sport we used to have called baseball, and they replaced it with this game called raider. It was the Governors who came together and decided. It was the Governors, congregating in their hologram suits, afraid of the sun when it dances in your eyes, commissioning more violence, the launchpads, of the slowness of it, of just standing waiting for change to happen. By their own rules, they couldn’t be made to change. So rather than do a game by scoring, now we can only win by passing.

 “Does that make sense, Siara?” he asks our captain, who shakes her head.

 “You and your deductions.” But, somehow, she looks satisfied.

 Vie appears skeptical; Lacon laughs again, while there are only five of us, one or two with Governor’s gene, only one’s which counts, I have horns on my head that they aren’t seeing, the Beacons are responding rather indifferently, as if it’s just a game, and I wonder if, their BMP’s already so attuned, each year they do select Satisfaction, so that they do not feel the need to change.

 And the Governors, watching us, each year step on an Alterface, even though they have their own gene, and rules, and can, for whatever reason, take away a sport, and give high school students visions of the future.

 They can alter us.

 “We make our own field,” I say. “We take all the launchpads from here.”

 Saying that, I feel something like I once did, after I’d stopped recording effects of the Magy’cal Gene on me. Of course, there never were any. Or it was all the effects of the Governor’s gene and ichor, just waiting to be used. Or I wanted to be a Scion all this time, to find a reason not to have to keep passing to my sister, to not follow her to Sector, and to put myself on a quest without any ending.

 Raider games end after 100 minutes, Telot tells me after a practice where I keep trying to pass to Mik’vael and them after the tenth digit, the other team’s players dropping off their launchpads in exhaustion and too tired to even stare. Passes are all that matter.

 I summon a launchpad, and put my feet on it. My horns reflect in the circular surface and I think of antelopes working together to somehow outrun the cheetah.<hr>

 Skylark looked around at the cleos clacking their claws, each seeming to perform a bit of dance. She laughed.

 “I don’t think that’s very funny,” the teacher next to her said. He was inspecting the little animals closely, using his index and thumb to form a circle around his right eye. “It could be, that they are performing a mating ritual, or they are trying to ward off predators, being us.”

 “They’re just dancing,” Cerise said. “It’s called the snow-dance, some of the upper Majors have made one just like it.”

 Cerise proceeded to do just that, moving from side to side, raising her arms above her head and rotating her wrists back and forth. They were much smaller than the rest of her body compared to the claws of the cleos, which seemed to be bigger than the rest of their bodies, if the small tuft was the head and the round flat part the body. But Cerise was also wearing a tuba, what Peridot and Oliviet had been wearing on the second residual, and so like the rest of them her body was rather inflated.

 “Break!”

 A child had come by. Skylark saw that he had tufted-white hair clinging to his head; and like the rest of the actual Sector II people here, he was wearing what looked like light clothing, but also looked very soft, and warm, and probably of multiple layers. He was the bravest one of a group; the rest of the children, similarly white-tufted, were all gawking or staring. Skylark laughed again, even though she’d been here a while, and they were obviously tourists, Cerise included, because the boy—

 “It’s not a snow-dance, it’s called clappella,” and he laughed, and the rest of the children there laughed also. “And these aren’t from here. Cleos are from sixth and up.” He gave them one more curious look, before straying away; Skylark sighted a flap or two lifting up from the bottom of his shirt as he skipped off on the cloud-surface, and it reminded her of the trails that marked the bottom of Ultramarine’s.

 She turned to look at Cerise, who was looking disappointed. Skylark imagined Cerise having a sudden urge to grab one of the cleos by its claws, shake it up, and toss it into the sky—

 —And then maybe some white-beaked bird would swoop down and grab it up. But so far, cleos were the closest thing to the animals she’d learn about in Sector I. Lobsters, or shrimp? Something like those.

 Oh! She had forgotten to ask them if they’d seen her.

 She’d forgotten to ask the rest of the Powers if they’d seen her. Only now did she remember that feeling, that hectic sense of blue overpowering her, that’d come as she rose into the sky. And she wanted them all to know. They all had to know. It was the only

 thing she wanted them to know.

 (And somehow, she didn’t remember the time between landing, for surely she’d landed, and reuniting with the rest.)

 “I believe I can fly—” she started, but the rest of them weren’t looking, they were now turning their faces away from the box of cleos and, Luke and Sterne, they were saying something about finding a restaurant, they likely wouldn’t find any nexus tubes sticking out of the clouds—and Jaceus, taking one final, dismissive look at the trapped dancers, held his bind out in front of him and was looking at it again.

 It wouldn’t go anywhere. That

 she knew, that, somehow these were with them, but not quite like how these cleos remained in this white, snowy box. Her own binds flew softly around her; some two or three of them came just above the box, seeming to turn and peer over it as if they had eyes.

 Wait. How would they eat? They couldn’t use Net-currency or realts here. Skylark quickly caught up with them, Luke eagerly describing the muffins that Agate would sometimes make, Sterne replying that he’d joined their group too late, far too late, and he wished now how he could thank that Scion Zarr with regeneration, what was her name? with the black hair, for inviting him. Wisteria, Luke said. It’s a shame she didn’t stay, she’d probably not need to wear these heavy things, they’re worse than visorfaces.

 He waved his arms around, narrowly missing Skylark with his right arm as she ducked. Agate, what if—what if you started a bakery, here? This cleave is awesome, I mean, alter, I mean, they don’t say that here, ha ha, and Agate as usual had her fairly-serious, how-do-I-approach-this expression, her light blonde hair seeming to lilt as they all walked together.

 Well not all of them, Jaceus and Cerise were behind, he was asking her something, and Skylark thought she had to listen, but she was hungry, and wanted to hear what Agate would say. She’d never had one of Agate’s muffins, and she barely remembered what Lowers food tasted like anymore, she could only think of the Sandwich Lites, and trying to think of living in Lowers she entered a place of somber blue, one that sounded of weak and faint things, of pushing and crying, of a name, and here she forgot.

 “Skylark,” came a voice, and it was Cerise, passing her hand over Skylark’s shoulder as she walked up beside her. Skylark felt a tingle, now, surely, the girl who’d been here before, or Claude had (but did that mean that Cerise had been here, or both) and would tell her that her ascent had been amazing.

 “Was that your trait, or was it the binds?”

 “What?”

 Cerise was looking straight ahead; walking side by side, she was taller, and she’d changed her hair to white, but the kind of white that was clearly not like the snow here, or of that boy’s. Her glasses shifted on her nose.

 She reduced her voice to just above a whisper; Skylark knew that Jaceus was just behind them. “You can’t fly yet, right?”

 “Fly? That wasn’t flying.” But then what was?

 “The binds commanded your flight, elevated by cleave,” Cerise said. Her eyes were lightly tinted red; it was Cerise, and not the one who’d orchestrated all her binds. “They told me.”

 “Who’s they?”

 Cerise paused for only the most momentary of stops on the cloud; she kept walking, Jaceus’s slow poofs

 unceasing.

 “Oops,” she said. “Too early, Skylark.” She gave Skylark a bright wink before accelerating forward, bumping right through the others like—like, and she didn’t know how she thought of this, but a few years ago in the run of V-movies there was one remake, singular of an ancient kids’ show, about these super-brilliant sages who only wore purple, green, yellow, red, and decided to finally get out of their mysterious home to find the moon. Cerise even gave this weird giggle as she bounced through, but Luke only laughed.

 They were walking nowhere. Skylark didn’t see any buildings ahead that were clearly demarcated as places that gave food out to tourists. But, Agate was now asking Cerise that, and Cerise was responding that when she came here before, she had to sing (use her bind) to get anything, to do anything.

 So Cerise had a bind before, too. Skylark almost asked, Is it below?, but—but she was too early. She had to wait a bit, and then, maybe she’d ask Cerise how to fly, and it was not because she’d seen Cerise or Claude fly, but—but she knew.

 “OK, so, Agate, you can get us anything, because you’re the best at singing,” Luke said, but Agate was shaking her head. “That was just my voice, Luke. I wasn’t using my bind.”

 Agate held her own out. It was soft-winged, but also hard. Its handle was a dark blue (nearly grey) and had a second grip curving out. She looked at it with a measure of curiosity, but Skylark saw the anticipation sleeping in her eyes. Like she was trying coffee for the first time. “But maybe—singing is important here, right?” Agate asked, to Cerise but it also sounded as if she were asking herself.

 “It is,” Cerise said. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

 Agate nodded. “We have to eat,” she said. “All we had was the cleave and the clen-mix below.”

 “I’m not hungry,” Skylark said. “I have to go higher.”

 She felt pangs, but no one heard.

 “Skylark, you keep saying that, but you gotta eat now and then!” Luke told her, throwing his arms out to the row of white houses. “You literally have seven of these things. That’s more than enough for all of us.”

 Cerise chortled.

 “NO, that’s not—I don’t think that’s how it works,” she was saying, her eyes serious—“All seven of Skylark’s binds are hers. Don’t touch them, Luke.”

 “OK,” Luke said. “I am hungry, though and—well—we can’t just take something.”

 Skylark cast her eyes about. It seemed that in the last few moments, the people had cleared, leaving only them and the cleos. She breathed. A wisp of cloud curled out of her mouth. As the others kept talking—which just sounded like Cerise just not telling them how exactly to get food—she felt an inkling, like something worming itself in her gut, that it wouldn’t be easier after D Major Eberry, that he’d let them go up, and Tammarin too, and even Ultramarine, on some kind of exception, and that even if Cerise was pretending to be fine, what she hadn’t seen when she’d gone up was a clear way up, and, she knew, that in one thig Cerise was right—that from here on out she had to use her binds. All seven of them.

 She looked back at them. Sterne was arguing, pointing this way and that, and Jaceus was saying the systems of protection again. Skylark thought of that small case, that had held Cerise’s face in it—and she thought of the nervousness that Tammarin’s tuba assistants had had when talking about Eberry, but Eberry had really quailed to Cerise, or Claude. And Cerise knew things that, she had to admit, she wasn’t telling, and just because Cerise thought it was too early didn’t mean it was. And Cerise had said, she had pretended, she had pretended to not have been to Sector II before.

 She had to do it without them.

 Skylark slowly edged away; making steps on the snow, for snow it was, soft and welcoming. She kept her eyes on the group, something about why can’t Agate just try to make something, and Agate was agitated, saying that the whole baker was just a temporary thing, they were only using it, and, whatever she did try to make, it wouldn’t be anywhere close to the cleave.

 Cerise turned her head and caught Skylark’s eye—she winked and tilted her head just a bit—You can go, she seemed to be saying, and Skylark nodded as she finally turned and as she reached the first of the buildings, silent and tall, she found the door, just an open archway, somewhat curved at the top, and stepped in.

 Immediately she winced—it was colder

 inside—and everything was just tables here, just a group of long, flat white tables with nothing on them. There was one that seemed to have a space of a different hue for most of its surface, and as she came up to touch it, her fingers came off with something that felt like snow, but wasn’t, it was just slightly warmer, and she thought of hair, but it didn’t look like hair.

 She looked closer. Around the edges of the table were rough patches of it, and she realized that there was a rough outline on the table—something had been lying on it. Just moments ago.

 “Portamento, a few minutes,” a voice said, and Skylark saw that towards the back of the room what had looked like a wall was—one very wide curtain, or flap of some kind, and soft movements and steps could be heard shuffling behind it.

 Skylark looked closer. Weaving her way in and out of the tables, she approached the flap.

 It was like Ultramarine’s. But besides being much bigger and completely white—no—it was still blue, just a very, very light blue—it had faint lines running through it, about a hand’s breadth apart, running in long horizontal directions across it from side to side. And many of them—wait—each line was actually a set of five lines, and between each set of five lines was a gap.

 She stepped back. There was something searching

 about this. She’d almost touched it—she hadn’t—but she hadn’t. By alter, she hadn’t.

 Alter. Did she just think alter?

 A low humming. She realized that her binds were with her. They all rose at once and hovered, about an arm’s length away from the flag. They seemed to also try to get close, before zipping back—they were like, like—mm, some extinct animal, one of the major insects—

 “Here for your clux?” the voice said. It came from behind the wall.

 “Cl—clux, yes,” Skylark said.

 What are you doing, she thought.

 I need to go higher, she thought back. I’m at least D Major. That image of the blue fliers, circling that massive pillar of cloud, came back to her. That sense of impossible distance attained.

 “I’m here for my clux,” she said, trying to make her voice stronger. She thought she heard her binds raise their pitch by a half-step.

 “Which Major,” the voice said.

 “D Major,” Skylark replied. On a tingle of confidence, she added, “Like Eberry.”

 A pause before what sounded like a sigh. “Did you have his cleave affogato today?”

 “Yeah, it was terrible,” she said.

 “Then don’t have it,” the voice said. “If you’re ever able, try B Major Windy’s latte blue. It may be too high for you, but I’m sure you’ve already heard—”

 “Every day,” she said. “I’m just a D Major.”

 She imagined the speaker nodding. “Binds, allegro tutti,” it said, and after a second her binds came together, lining up vertically—all seven of them—in what appeared to be two rough rows, one after the other in a left-right-left-right-left-right-left zigzag formation.

 They kept humming. It was a low C. But then, their humming made the tone shift up to a D. Then, in unison, they all together moved to the five lines on the flag that were at around her eye level. Then, all as one—

 —They touched it.

 Skylark felt a twang strike her stomach, like someone had actually hit it from the outside, hitting her tuba and into her chest, but no one was there in front of her, and it was piercing and cold and tingling, like the worm had grown into a lizard, and she reeled, but she used her hands to force her head upwards so that she could keep looking—and the binds, their wings all overlapping each other’s handles, like—like it was—one big, feathery insect.

 She laughed, but it hurt, and soon her binds began to glow, and the notes ascended, to an E, then higher, to an F; and here, Skylark felt a squeezing on her shoulders, and a pinching on her toes, and an itch at her eyelashes—but she kept her eyes open, even though it made it all hurt even more—

 G Major.

 A crash on the other side of the curtain.

 “G MAJOR?” the voice yelled. “I’m sorry—you said you were D Major—G MAJOR? I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m offbeat! I’m so offbeat, G Major!”

 And then, some muffled growls in pain.

 The binds continued to hum in G, and Skylark was satisfied.

 “Ha ha, I was just pretending,” she said. She made her voice slightly sharper. The person on the other side was clearly below G Major. “I still need my clux.”

 “Right! Presto, G Major!” Some more shuffling, and then some movement to her left, and then that space where the wall made a right angle to the next wall blew open, caved inward and outward, and the person who was speaking, was there, carrying a long, folded thing in blues and whites, with what looked like snow dappling it.

 Skylark immediately recognized it as like the cloak C Major Tammarin had worn. She stared at it for a few seconds before remembering that she was used to this, she was receiving her clux like it was Saturday.

 “I’ll take it,” she said, holding her hand out.

 The lower-ranked (definitely) was looking at her confusedly. Then he saw the seven binds, which had flown back to hover by Skylark’s shoulders, waving their wings softly. He opened his mouth, and kept it open, his eyes, which were cold and silver, like frozen holograms.

 Then he shook his head, twice, thrice.

 “You’re composing,” he said. “For your second chairs?”

 “No,” Skylark said. “These are all mine.”

 Her throat began to clear; at first, making her voice slightly sharper had stung, but it was beginning to clear. “I’m waiting.”

 The Probably C Major nodded and, pulling open the folds of the clux, spread it out with his hands, so that it hung there. And before he said anything, Skylark’s binds, led by the one with nearly white feathers, floated into the sleeves and collar and sides, and using their wings pulled it away from the hands; and then, slowly moving it over, they hummed a single G, and Skylark turned around and pushed her arms into the sleeves; and as she did so, she did so without thinking, her tuba was shrinking, becoming thinner, and became like a soft outer layer, in between the same and only shirt she’d brought; and this new item, this clux; and as her binds pulled away, she found a hood on the back, and pulled it over her head, fitting her cerulean strands within, and she was warm.

AliNovel

46 - Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird