Chapter 253

In the starless dark, a burst of gold: Mingus unfolding into THE GRIFFIN. A golden eagle-lion, wings wide enough to carry the whole crew, gold feathers blazing against the black, a great hooked golden beak, a lion's golden hindquarters, and the same kind brown eyes. He swoops under the falling crew and takes them all: Kompis on his neck, arms round it, ribs and all; Vigolas caught by the coat-collar in one talon; Rougeina and Krydog and Smurjan sprawled across his back; and Svala clinging to his neck-feathers with the Lace's cord wrapped round her fist, and on the end of it, swinging below them like a catch, the Netmaster in her own net.

dangling from a golden talon, eyes screwed shut.

swinging in the Lace under the Griffin, staring up at the great gold eagle-lion carrying them all. Her House's sign. A griffin with a catch. Alive, and gold.

The island still falling, slowly turning in the dark, its birds snarled in the dead net under the cliffs. And from the last Fowler skiffs on the black water, lure-whistles screaming, forty perfect copies of the wing-keeper's call, pulling the tangled birds every way but up.

falling with the island. Tärna on her knees on the stone, bone whistle at her lips, whistling with everything she's got, and the crack in her note drowned under forty flawless lures.

Killing the lures.

Perne, on the falling island's rim, left eye to Fjärran's scope, a crimson tear, tik, and a brass horn on a skiff's mast bursting; a panel later, small and far: …krak. PERNE: "One."

Kompis, on the Griffin's neck as it dives, Mingus's heart thundering under him (the golden pulse line along the border, enormous), the world going grey: the FIVE-GUN VOLLEY. Five lines at once: Ivar ahead; Lilla Ulv ricocheting from behind; Fru Gnista's fireworks bursting over the skiffs, blinding; Tyst, silent, at the horn-mouths; Bror's gold shove rolling the last lure-skiff gently over. BROR: "…Bonk." Five brass horns shattering. Blood from his nose. KOMPIS: "…That's six."

The last lure dying. Nothing in the dark now but the wind and ten thousand birds, and one old, cracked whistle.

Trollmage, who has slept through nearly everything since the Sky-Net came down (one terrible joke excepted), sitting up on the grass, yawning, crown crooked.

(A long violet finger writing in the air:)

MACRO : UPDRAFT = 1 ISLAND

A column of violet wind roaring up under Flyttfågeln, and the fall slowing, for four whole seconds. Trollmage keeling over onto the grass, asleep before he lands.

(The thin emerald line of a rule (the way a fall falls) kinking one notch, knk. He scratches a new line in the lid with a pin: FALL, 1 NOTCH. DUE: A SPILLED DRINK.)

getting up off her knees. Very old. Very small. Bone whistle up. Looking at her Flock clinging to the meadow, at her birds tangled in the dark, at the sea coming. She takes the biggest breath of her life.

The island stopping: hanging a mast's height above the black water, the Spill pouring straight down into the sea, ten thousand birds holding it, wings beating. Held.

The whistle still going, thinner, the crack in it, thinner, and then breaking off. She sits down on her stone stool. Slowly.

The Griffin landing on the platform, folding its wings, setting everyone down on the stone, and then, padding forward, coming home: the gold coat settling, the wings folding into nothing, the eagle's head softening, and a golden retriever with a greying muzzle trotting the last three steps, tail going, as if nothing happened. He goes straight to the old woman and lies down across her feet.

arriving up the outside stair, out of breath, and without looking, eyes half shut, doing the head-count by sound and weight alone.

dropping to her knees beside the stool. For the first time in the whole arc she isn't bouncing, isn't perching. Kneeling. Still.

a claw of a hand on Svala's feathered hair.

Tärna lifting it off her shoulder, all its hundreds of knots, and holding it out, not to Svala: to Drekk.

(Svala, on her knees, dragging the Lace's cord: and Grip, wrapped in her own net, young, twenty-five, eyes wide open, kneeling at her sister's feet.)

Ninety-nine and twenty-five. The same nose, the same chin, the same small hands, seventy-four years apart.

smiling, eyes half closing, very tired.

And for one panel, drawn faintly behind her in the same pose, a girl of nine on the rim of this same island, teasing a smaller girl who's sitting on her feet, too scared to look over the edge.

Something breaking in her face. A snort she can't stop. Then, against everything, against eighty years, helpless: a laugh. Not a copy. A child's laugh, the laugh of a seven-year-old on a flying island, with a cracked bit in the middle of it. And her eyes crinkling shut.

The panel black at its edges. Grip's eyes shut for the whole of it.

And all over the island, all over the Current, out of every face she ever watched, every rose thread snapping at once: pt pt pt pt pt pt.

smiling, eyes closed.

(Her hand, resting on Mingus's head, going still.)

Svala's balloon, empty. Mingus lifting his head off the old woman's feet, looking up at her face. Then, very gently, laying his chin back down across them, and staying.

Farmor Tärna is dead.

Her eyes opening. Wet. And knowing exactly what has happened.

In the small gilt cage, the rose-red book. Its clasp: click. She doesn't look down.

The Gilded Cage, hoisting sail and turning for the dark. On her deck, by lantern-light, the last loyal net-captains carrying the Flock's children up out of the Hour-Room in carry-nets and lowering them into the longboats.

kneeling in her net beside her sister's body, holding the dead hand. And through her black hair, from the temple, a single streak of white running like ink dropped into water. Spreading. The first hour of one long night.