Half Discovered Wings by David Brookes Read Free Book Online

He
opened his lead-heavy eyes and saw a dirty wall of semi-transparent
plastiplex: it was thick and had slits in the top and bottom for
air. Dreary light put emphasis on the streaks of dirt and grime,
each single scratch shining brightly. The door was
locked.
    He sat up,
touched his neck and felt a tiny puncture mark where the somnadart
had hit. Dried blood crusted on his shoulder.
    Where the hell
was he?
    A reasonably small room, about seven metres each way. A
mattress in the corner. Toilet, dirty – by the side of a small
sink, dirtier. There was a strange earthy smell to the
place.
    A breeze licked him through the plastiplex wall, and so he
stood and moved over, held his hands to the holes. Outside the cell
was a corridor, poorly-lit with a trail of windows running along
its length. Dried mud caked the outside, piled up against each one.
Small green vines and earthy roots snaked through the cracks, and a
few sprinkles of soil were mounted on the hard tiles beneath. There
were streaks of mould and rot underneath the frames. One window was
cracked from one corner to another, and water trickled in and
puddled on the floor.
    Closer to the plastiplex, he could smell the rainforest. And
wet earth.
    Captured , he thought. Captured at last.
    Isaac inhaled deeply and slumped against the floor. He closed
his eyes listened intently. There was the ever-present cacophony of
the rain on the leaves, and little else.
    *

 
    Four
     
    BULLETS AND
BLADES
     
     
    The hustle before sunset took them into forest much less
dense; they began to see shafts of warm dusk-red light sieved
through the trees, churning with dust. The bark of the trees looked
as though it was on fire with the light, and that fire spread to
the river as it turned upon itself until they arrived at the
outskirts of Pirene.
    It was different to how Rowan had imagined. The houses were
taller. The road was cobbled, and some of the buildings had decking
in front made of trampled but sturdy-looking wood. Ropes were cast
in a broad polygon around the petrified, held up by wooden staffs
that dug into the very edges of a large crater.
    The sun set
behind the trees on the other side of the town, and they turned
darker until they were nothing more than a crowd of jagged
silhouettes. Maeia and Taeia clapped their hands as soon as they
stepped on the first cobbles, gazing out over the town.
    ‘ We haven’t played here yet,’ the older said.
    ‘ We’ve been staying here for the past few days,’ said Taeia to
the magus. ‘We’ll show you to our inn, if you like. We’re
performing there tonight.’
    As the two girls galloped off, Rowan turned to Gabel and
asked if they might hear them play.
    ‘ We need somewhere to spend the night,’ the hunter replied. ‘It
may as well be somewhere entertaining.’
    Rowan smiled tiredly and wandered toward the petrified tree
enclosure. It stood a foot and a half taller than her, but the
tallest branches were so thin that it didn’t seem so high. She
wondered how the brittle-looking boughs didn’t break in strong
winds.
    The magus,
keeping an eye on Rowan, stood close to Gabel. He said in a hushed
voice, ‘We have another member of our party to employ.’
    ‘ Don’t have enough hangers-on already?’
    ‘ Three is a pitiful number for a travelling group, Mister
Gabel.’
    Gabel looked across at Rowan, who was quietly studying the
petrified tree. She was an adolescent, a brittle blade disguised by
a weathered sheath. She had seen the world and then forgotten it;
her amnesia had robbed her of all she’d experienced.
    ‘ There’s an old saying that ends, “three’s a crowd,”’ Gabel
said. ‘We don’t need any more companions.’
    ‘ This last one is important,’ said the magus. But he wouldn’t
elaborate no matter how persistently the hunter urged.
    They found the inside of the inn warm with candles and
bodies, and pleasantly dark. Crowds of people pushed their way
around them, between the many tables and the thick pillars