Windrunner's Daughter by Bryony Pearce Page B

mouth did she realise how much tension she held there. Pleased that the trick had worked she thought about his next instruction.
    “Open and close your fists to make sure the blood continues to flow.”
    She clenched her fists and realised how numb they had become. Opening her hands she repeated the exercise until her arms started to tingle.
    “If you want to go right, dip your right shoulder by one thumb joint.”
    In her memory her father held up his right thumb and shook it to make his point, but one joint didn’t sound like much. Wren ducked her right shoulder as far as she could and tipped into the wind. Her body turned towards the dipped shoulder but, with rising alarm, she realised that she could not straighten herself out: she was in danger of rolling.
    She teetered like a balancing toy as she fought the wind, unable to bring her right arm up. Then it struck her: instead of bringing up her right arm, she should dip to her left. She would need to be very careful, if she tipped too far her wings would flap shut and she would fall.
    Moving her attention from her right arm to her left, Wren shifted her shoulder muscles. Gradually she felt a slight relaxing of the pressure on her right. Again she shifted her left shoulder and felt herself straighten out a little more. One more dip and she was level.
    Unclenching her fists, Wren tried shifting her left shoulder no more than the length of one thumb joint and rolled gently left, changing course again, but maintaining her smooth flight. “Sorry, Father,” she whispered.
     
    The only noise in Wren’s ears was the rustling of her wings. Soothed, Wren finally allowed herself to open her eyes.
    She had been imagining that the wind cradled her in gossamer arms, so when she saw nothing between her and the desert but wisps of cloud, the shock made her squeeze her eyes closed again with a whimper.
    Several shaky breaths later, Wren cracked her eyes open once more. Unable to look down, she peeped straight ahead.
    For a moment, confusion clutched at her thoughts. She was staring towards a cliff with a tiny ‘sphere gripping its edge.
    Where was she?
    She circled, mystified. Beyond the ‘sphere a belt of green surrounded a much larger biosphere, the sun glinted from the panels that ringed its roof. Trees stole out from it, merging into ferns, then into wide flats of green, which looked almost like lakes themselves, and only then finally into the red wasteland of the mountain top, like a patchwork quilt creeping from a bed.
    Her eyes went back to the stubby Runner platform which ended by a biosphere that looked tiny as a shell on a riverbank.
    Wren had turned herself completely around. She was looking at her own home.
     
    Suddenly her breath caught in her throat. Out by the Runner hut someone was moving: a figure wearing wings. While she had being flying with her eyes closed, one of her brothers had finally come home.
    She had her sign. Wren smiled on a long exhale as she circled low towards the Runner-sphere. Tension lifted from her shoulders. She wouldn’t have to commit any further transgression. Whichever of her brothers was back, she didn’t care. She would land, send him to set out again to save Mother and hope he didn’t tell Father what she had done.
        But the Runner was heading away from the house. He was running towards the platform and he wasn’t removing his wings.
    Wren frowned as she swept closer. The Runner’s build was unfamiliar; too wide to be Colm, too tall for Jay. It certainly wasn’t Father.
    The figure started to sprint along the platform. The metal juddered with the thudding of his feet. Suddenly the straps over her chest felt too tight. It couldn’t be … but there had been one more set of wings in the hut.
        “Raw!” Wren’s voice sank like a rock into the wind. “What’re you doing?”
    With tension winding her shoulders together, she willed herself faster. What was Raw thinking? Did he imagine he could catch her? Punish her?