Page 48 of Flames and Blood

He goes quiet. I’ve never said those three words on a job, and he’s been around me long enough to know it.

Meyer puts the truck in gear. “North?”

My palms pull. They’ve been pulling since the mountain, and I’ve said nothing to anyone about it, and the direction has never once changed.

“North. Drive.”

Chapter 11

Kalli

Two days after I arrive, I fly. Nobody says the word, but I get the sense I’m being encouraged. Mrs. Nell puts a heavy coat on the chair, tells me the morning is clear, and leaves the door open. I walk out onto the frozen lawn behind the house, and for a long moment I just stand there.

Then I shift for the first time in over a year.

It hurts. My wings come out slow and wrong, stiff along every joint. The muscles across my back cramp and release and cramp again. I stretch each wing to its full reach and hold it there while the ache burns through and fades. The wind comes across the lawn and gets under them.

I run four steps, and I’m up.

Yes!

The cold pours over me. The house drops away, then the wall around the yard, then the whole valley opens out below—white fields, black pines, the frozen line of a river. My body remembers everything. Every correction, every shift of weight, every small movement of the tail. A year in cells and boxes, and my wings still know their work.

Oh, my God. This is amazing!

I climb until the air goes thin and my eyes stream, and I level out, and for a little while I just fly. Big slow circles over the valley, with the sun on my scales and nothing touching me.

This is the first hour in over a year that has belonged to me.

Then I go looking for the boundary.

I aim at the ridge on the north side and climb. The pressure starts behind my teeth when I’m still far from the rock—the same bitter taste, stretched across the whole sky in front of me. I slow down and feel my way forward, and it thickens, and thickens, and then it stops me. There’s nothing to see. My wings work but I don’t move forward. When I push harder, my head fills with pressure, and I fall back.

I try again further along, above the river gap. Same.

Dammit!

I try going straight up, higher than any wall could reasonably reach, until the cold cuts through even me.

It’s there too. The valley isn’t fenced. It’s sealed. A bowl with a lid on it, and I’ve just flown along all of it.

I glide back down to the lawn, land badly and stand there in the snow, breathing hard, human again.

So that’s how big my cage is.

Mrs. Nell is waiting in my room when I come up, the coat pulled around me. There’s a fire going and towels laid out, and she looks me over—wind-burned, wet to the knees, half pleased with myself in spite of everything.

“Good flight?”

“Long year.”

“I imagine.” She folds a towel over her arm. “We need to prepare you.”

“Prepare me for what?”

“A bath first. You’re frozen through.”

A bath is a bath. I’ve earned one, and my back is one long cramp. Whatever’s coming will come whether I’m clean or dirty.