didn’t hang them back up. Moving with a new sense of urgency, Wren folded the struts, pulled the quilt off her bed, wrapped them with it and laid them down.
Now she couldn’t see them. She turned her back to the wings, started to get lunch ready; perhaps her mother would eat something today.
As she worked the dust storm raged outside the window. The back of her neck itched. She fought not to turn around.
Convocation could only kill her if they found out she had Run. She’d seen no other Runner for so long. She had only to find her brothers, send them to Aaru and return home. No-one else need ever know she had left Avalon. Colm would be livid, but would he turn her in? She thought not.
Silently, the wings called to her. The dust settled back to the ground, clearing the windows.
She gripped the knife tighter in her hand.
Walking as if in a trance, Wren left the kitchen and entered the airlock. If she was even going to consider doing this, there was something she would need to do first.
“Give me a sign,” she whispered and she looked one final time at the storm-cleared indigo skies above the delta. “Send a Runner in, send a storm. Anything.”
Nothing.
She nodded. Then she caught her long hair in one hand. Ignoring the tears that gathered in her eyes, she reached above her with the knife, placed it beneath her fist and started to saw.
The knife sliced easily through her thick mane and Wren was soon left with a handful of hair. Steeling herself, she held her fist out in front of her and opened it. Gleefully the wind scattered the gathered coils. With the strange sense of lightness on her head, Wren watched, unmoving, as her hair blew into the wind like charcoal smears.
“No-one need ever know.”
Glowing with new purpose she returned to the sphere, found her warmest outdoor clothing and pulled on the padded jacket. She put a spare mask in her pocket and checked the levels of cyanobacteria in her O 2 canister. There were enough in there to keep cycling her air for another couple of weeks. Plenty of time before they would need flushing and replacing.
Lastly she scooped up the water jug. The family’s drinking water came from filters deep underground. Surface water, apart from that in Lake Lyot, was still limited, although more was appearing every year as the air temperature continued to increase, unfreezing the Martian water and, with it, more and more dormant indigenous life.
As the jug filled, Wren watched the closed curtain and listened to her mother’s shallow breathing. What if her illness was the result of another hybrid microbe, like Caro’s? If it was, would any of the colonies have a cure? Aaru housed the scientists, who might be creating new drugs, but Vaikuntha had the biologists, experts in the local species, they too might have an answer. Eden might even have some herb that would offer a solution, a genetic modification perhaps.
She shook her head, unwilling to acknowledge, even to herself, that she was already planning a Running route: Vaikuntha to Aaru via Arcadia, then to Eden … and back. She would look for her brothers at each stop.
She frowned at the jug. How long would she be away? If her mother drank the jug dry, she would never be able to reach the tap. Quickly, Wren filled every mug, cup and pan in the house. When that was done, she surrounded the alcove with the containers.
Her mother hadn’t eaten since she became ill, but Wren cut a loaf into chunks and left that by the bed with some of the hard soy-chiz she knew she liked.
There was only one more thing for her to do. Back in the cabin Wren tipped the bottle of analgesics onto a plate, then she opened the curtain.
She bent to give her mother a kiss and Mia groaned as she woke. “Wren?”
“No-one’s home. I’m going to find help.”
“What kind of help?” Her mother struggled to sit.
Wren pushed her gently back. “There’s medicine here.” Wren put the plate on the floor. “Have some when you need to, I’ll