Between the Sea and Sky by Jaclyn Dolamore Read Free Book Online

gather around here?”
    The boy glanced at the statue on her lap. “Winged folk?” He squinted doubtfully.
    “Yes.”
    “The messenger station, I guess.”
    “Could you take me there?”
    He frowned slightly but squinted ahead like he was thinking of how to change his route to get her there. The cart continued forging through the crowds and turned down a street hemmed by walls of tan stone with climbing vines that seemed to give up halfway. Esmerine thought it couldn’t possibly get any more crowded but it did. People didn’t even try to get out of the way of the horses; there was nowhere else to go.
    “Is it always like this?” she asked.
    “We’re nearing the market,” he said. “It’s that time of day when everyone’s rushing about.”
    They finally made it into a rectangular clearing paved with flat stones, surrounded by buildings of four and five stories, even one with a bell tower. A colossal pillar rose from the center of the square. Following the line of the pillar, a winged figure suddenly shot into the air with papers gripped in his toes, one of which slipped free and fluttered into the crowd below. He hovered in the air a moment before dropping back to the ground again, like a gull swooping upon its prey.
    Esmerine clutched her heart through the rigid stays. For a moment, she thought it was Alander, and resisted an urge to leap from the carriage. But no, Alander had been taller even when she last saw him.
    “Can we stop here? I want to speak to him, just for a moment,” Esmerine said, putting down the winged statue and turning toward the side of the cart.
    “Of course,” the boy said. “I’ll help you down.”
    He hopped from the cart and ran around to her side, where he placed his strong hands around her waist and whisked her down like she was still near-weightless underwater. She braced herself for the pain of her feet hitting the ground and managed not to wince, but she limped as she approached the winged boy.
    The boy looked around Tormy’s age—twelve or thirteen—with hair to his chin and scruffier clothes than she recalled Alander wearing. He shouted to the passing crowd, “The newest pamphlet from Hauzdeen! Hauzdeen’s views on royalty! Sir? Madam?” He waved a wing at a passing couple who were overdressed for the heat. They shook their heads.
    Alander had always depised nicknames like “bird-boy,” for the winged folk looked nothing like birds. The boy’s wings resembled a leather cape draped over slender arms, but he had no hands, only a thumb and finger. What might have been his other three fingers stretched to form the framework of his wings. The thin skin of his wings attached at his sides, down to his knees, and his blue vest and brown knickers seemed to fit around him like magic, but she knew from Alander that the winged folk customarily pierced their skin in three places where their wings met their torsos, eventually forming holes just large enough for a fastener to slip through and hold the fronts and backs of clothing together. She had always found the idea clever yet disgusting.
    The winged boy perked up when he noticed her studying him. “Say, you look like an intelligent young lady. Surely you’d like to read Hauzdeen’s views of royalty?” He thrust a pamphlet her way.
    “No, thank you, I—”
    “I don’t blame you. I don’t understand a word in this pamphlet,” the boy said, fanning himself with the papers. “But maybe you’d like to buy one to use as a fan yourself?”
    “No, I just wanted to ask if you happened to know a boy—man—” she stammered, reminding herself Alander would have aged just as she had. “Someone named Alander.”
    “If you mean Alan, sure. He works at the bookshop.”
    “Is he a Fandarsee too?” The winged folk called themselves Fandarsee—which, Alander once explained, meant “winged folk” in the Fandarsee trade tongue.
    “That he is, miss. And if you’re interested in him, you’ll certainly want to purchase this