Skylark

CHAPTER I

The din of the clockwork dawn was loudest in the old sewers, a great whirring and clanking of gears as the artificial sun warmed up. I paused as mortar crumbled from the ceiling and hissed into the water below. Harvest Day. This could be your last sunrise, I told myself. If you’re lucky.

Though I could still hear the screech of the Resource behind the sunrise, I kept moving, gritting my teeth. Not much time to waste if I wanted to see the names for the harvest and get home in time to shower off any sign I was ever down here. After a few moments the dreadful swell of energy eased, as the sun disc outside settled into its track across the dome of the Wall.

At least there’d be a little light now. I knew my way through these tunnels in pitch-black, but that didn’t mean I’d turn down the occasional glimpse of sun through a grate overhead. With a jolt, I realized this could also be the last time I ever came here. My last sunrise, my last day of school, my last childish jaunt through the underground tunnels. Though I felt closer here to Basil than anywhere, it wasn’t nearly enough to make me want to stay a kid. After so many years, I just wanted it to end. Let Basil’s ghost lie here, quiet.

Two lefts, a right, and down. Easy. My brother’s voice in my ear, I clambered on hands and knees into an access tunnel that would lead to the air cleaners under the school. The bricks were harsh and dry under my palms. The air was thick in this part of the tunnels, untreated and stale. At least these sewers hadn’t served their original purpose in the better part of a century-the only smells were mildew and rotting brick. I tried to slow my pulse again. It’s just a tunnel, Basil told me. If you can get in, you can get out, and panicking only makes you stupid.

Somewhere ahead I could hear the faint hum of the air machines. Another sound-above the usual metallic plinking and watery noises of the tunnels-caught my attention. My heart in my throat, I stopped moving and strained to hear through the background noise. Pixies? Panic robbed me of breath, blinding me for long seconds before logic intervened. Pixies moved silently by the time I heard them it’d be too late. Panicking makes you stupid.

A footstep, sloshing, far away. Caesar, then. But that was stupid, too. Even if Caesar wanted to, he couldn’t follow me through the maze of tunnels. If he stopped by our parents’ place and found me missing, he’d have to report me, and by that time, I’d be long gone. And surely he wouldn’t turn in his little sister?

Now the sounds became clearer. Voices echoed through the tunnels: one louder, another hissing, shushing the other. Another gentle splash, moving closer into the distance. Apparently, I wasn’t the only kid on my way to the school.

I veered into a side tunnel, aiming for a less well-known route. My shoulders scraped against the bricks on either side, but I ignored it. Better a few scratches than run into any other kids down here.

Ahead, a glimmer of light outlined the end of the tunnel. I put on a little extra speed and finally lurched out of the tunnel onto my hands and knees in about six inches of mucky water.

I got to my feet and sloshed forward, drying my slimy hands against my shirt. In the distance, the sound of the air cleaner under the school drowned out any noise I made. It wasn’t far now.

My path brought me to another narrow tunnel, barely large enough to fit my shoulders. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken this side passage, but it must have been years ago. Had it always been this small? I stooped and peered into it, only able to see six feet or so through the darkness inside. Just a tunnel. And I had to see those names, know if this was all going to end today. I crawled inside.

I inched forward with my arms stretched out in front of me, the sound of the cleaner machinery beckoning me onward. The scrape of damp brick stung against my already raw arms, and the stale air inside reeked of rot and damp. The narrowness of the tunnel forced me to crawl, pushing myself along with the toes of my shoes and the tips of my fingers. Not surprising that no one else knew about this route.

Something snagged my pants leg, jerking me to a halt. I tugged, throat closing when whatever had caught the fabric failed to give way. The tunnel constricted my body in such a way that I couldn’t even look down to see what had caught me. I jammed my leg against the wall of the tunnel and felt something hard and sharp stab at my thigh. Some iron reinforcement, perhaps, eroding its way out of the mortar. I tugged again. Nothing.

No one knew where I was. Even if Caesar guessed I’d snuck into the school, they’d be checking the popular route. I wasn’t sure if anyone even knew about this way, except for Basil, and he was gone. I could be stuck down here for days-weeks. I’m not going to die down here.

I screamed out for help, my voice echoing in the tunnels. I didn’t care anymore about getting caught. The idea of slowly starving to death in a brick pipe yards below the ground was worse than whatever they’d do to me for sneaking into the school. I knew there were other kids down here somewhere. Maybe they’d hear and help me.

The air was still, but for the mocking roar of the air cleaner up ahead. I was so close that the sound of my voice wouldn’t carry very far over the sound of the machinery.

A jolt of panic shot down my spine, and I tried to calm myself. It felt as though I was smothering to death, forcing me to gasp for each breath. I strained my eyes until they watered, trying to stare through the darkness. Little spots began to dance in front of my eyes. My vision blurred as a roaring fog descended around my ears, accompanied by dizziness so strong I would have fallen if I could have moved.

I knew what was happening.

“When we feel the Resource taking over,” the teacher always droned in a bored voice, “what do we do?”

“Start counting and picture an iron wall,” half the class chorused back. The other half never bothered to pay attention.

I kept gasping for breath, trying to hold numbers in my mind. No, my thoughts screamed at me. Not now. But was it better to rot down here? The alternative was unthinkable. Illegal use of
the Resource was the only offense a child could be Adjusted for.

The fog thickened, dizziness swelling and making it hard to concentrate. Panic urged it on.

Iron, I thought desperately. Images flashed through my mind, none of them what I needed. I needed cold iron, potent enough that the thought of it was enough to stop the Resource in its tracks.

Iron, like the sharp thing digging into my leg. I jammed my leg against it, trying to snuff out whatever was burning inside me. The dizziness eased, letting me blink away the blurry sparks of light obscuring my vision.

I forced myself to drag in a deep breath. Think of Basil. The pipe wasn’t so tight I couldn’t breathe. I was only imagining it. I was just stuck. I got myself in here, and I could get myself out. Don’t panic.

I gave an experimental jerk of my leg, my pants resisting the movement. I stretched forward with my hands, seeking some kind of hole or crack in the brick of mortar that I could hold on to for leverage. There: a bit of crumbling brickwork. I raked it away with my fingertips, nails scraping against the mortar, until I had enough room to get some purchase on it.

I took another long breath in and then exhaled all the way, making myself as small as possible-and jerked.

My leg came free with a dreadful long rip of fabric. I scrambled forward, nails scrabbling on brick, feet scraping. Ahead of me yawned the cleaner chamber, and with a last burst of effort I spilled out onto its floor, the edge of the pipe taking several layers of skin off my arms as I did.

Air. I needed any air but the horrible, Resource-soaked air in the pipe.

Though the mechanics did their best, there were always leaks in the giant bellows moving the air. I crawled forward until I found one, and then turned over and lay there, lungs heaving and eyes shut. Gasps of fresh air brushed my face, tossing my hair around.

Safe.

After a few long moments, the trembling in my arms and legs stilled, and the burning in my lungs eased. I was lying in an inch or two of water, soaked to the bone. I opened my eyes.

The chamber housing the air cleaner was roughly spherical, with the cycling machinery taking up most of the floor space. Gears bigger than I was spun in ponderous, perpetual motion, their bottoms disappearing into grooves gouged in the stone floor. The giant bellows in the middle of it all kept the air moving, pumping recycled air into the school. The noise was deafening.

I would have lay in the muck for an hour, but I couldn’t afford it. I could no longer hear the sun disc, had no way of gauging the passage of time. But I’d come this far-I wasn’t going to turn back now without seeing that list, even if it meant Caesar catching me covered in sewer muck.

I sucked in a few deep breaths until my arms stopped shaking, and then reached for the maintenance ladder, just able to grab the bottom rung. I hauled myself up inch by inch, feet kicking against the wall behind it until I could get them onto the ladder.

The hatch came up inside the janitor’s closet. I carefully shut it behind me and turned my attention to the door: locked, as always. But Basil had taught me about this, too. Years of practice had made it second nature. Grab the handle and pull, lower your hip, slam it into the laminate just below the lock.

Clunk. The lock’s tumblers jarred into place. The door swung open, and I slipped inside the school.

Even though I’d done this every Harvest Day for the better part of five years, praying to anything listening that I’d be harvested next, the sight of my school darkened and empty always gave me an odd chill down my spine. I slunk down the corridor, keeping to the shadows. My steps squelched lightly in the silence, leaving wet footprints against the spotless tile floor. Whoever the other group had been, they hadn’t beaten me here. I felt a strange surge of pride at that thought. Basil had taught me well.

The dean’s office was just down from the school’s classrooms. Its locking mechanism suffered from the same weaknesses as the closet’s, and following a loud thunk that echoed down the hall, I ducked inside. The faint light of morning filtered in through the windows, illuminating the furniture inside.

There was a leather folder on the desk. Suddenly everything else fell away, the whole room narrowing, roaring in my ears. Nothing mattered, except that here was my ticket out of limbo.

I knew my name was on the paper inside this time. It had to be. It had to be. It was as though my eyes could see through the folder’s cover, my name printed there dark and clear as if burned into the sheet. Ainsley, Lark.

My fingers shook as I picked up the folder. I didn’t care that my damp skin left wet spots all over the folder and the paper inside. My eyes took forever to focus. The letters, written in neat, orderly rows, were gibberish until I forced my mind to decipher them.

Baker, Zekiel, I read, the blood roaring in my ears. Dalton, Margaret. Kennedy, Tam. Smithson, James.

My brain didn’t even process that the names were in alphabetical order, that it was over before I’d read the first name. My eyes raked over each of the four names twice. I turned the paper over, but only white space greeted me. Empty.

Water dripped onto the paper, spots of translucence that blurred the names. For a strange moment, a detached part of my mind wondered if I’d started crying. Then I realized that it was dirty water from my hair, which had fallen forward over my shoulder.

As the buzzing in my head began to fade, another sound intruded upon the unnatural quiet of the empty school. It was faint first, like the sound of my own blood coursing past my eardrums. Then I picked out a humming, something almost mechanical, rising and falling. I stood listening for long, precious moments, unwilling to believe the sound.

Pixies.

_____________________________________
CHAPTER 2

I threw the folder back onto the desk, not even bothering to make it look undisturbed. The paper inside was already water stained and crumpled. No hiding my presence now. I took two quick steps to the door, easing it open and peering around it just enough to see a sliver of the hallway.

Dark, still, silent. Except-just there. A flash of copper, darting from one room to the next. The tiniest of hums, the sound of the Resource twined with clockwork.

I froze. A thousand half-invented stories whispered about the pixies flashed through my brain. Part of me had been hoping I was imagining it, sensing something else and jumping to the wrong conclusion. I waited, counting the seconds silently. Again it zipped out of the room and into the one across the hall. Twenty seconds it spent in each room, as steady as the ticking of a clock. Twenty seconds with the corridor free.

There were ten rooms in all, five on each side. The janitor’s closet lay in between the second and third rooms on the left. I tried to gauge the distance from the dean’s office to the closet.
As the pixie darted into the next room down, I took deep breaths until I was dizzy. As soon as the pixie came out and zipped into the room across the hall, I made for the closet.

My wet shoes squealed against the floor. Pixies weren’t supposed to have ears, only a sensor for the Resource, but my skin burned nevertheless as though I could feel eyes on me. I skidded once for a heart-stopping second, then careened into the closet’s door. Fumbling with the handle, I finally got it open and lurched inside. I slammed it behind me and stood listening, straining for sound, the side of my face and my ear pressed against the door.

A voice. “Holy shit.”

I whirled to see three pairs of wide eyes glittering at me through the gloom, reflecting the faint light emanating from the crack under the door.

The other kids I’d heard in the tunnels.

“What’s with all the noise?” came one voice.

Without light I couldn’t identify him. I didn’t bother getting to know my classmates very well anymore. They inevitably got harvested and moved on without me. “Are you trying to get us all caught?”

“Sorry. I got spooked.” The words were out before I could stop them. I blinked in the gloom. Why hadn’t I told them about the pixie?

“Is that Lark?” demanded the same voice. He must be the leader of this little expedition.

“Who’s Lark?” came another voice, younger.

“The dud, you moron.” The leader grinned, a flash of slightly uneven teeth in the darkness.

Of course they all knew me. By reputation, if not by name. The unharvested freak. People on the other side of the city knew who I was. I just got older and older, watching kids three, four, five years my junior march off to their harvest ceremonies.

“Was that you screaming bloody murder down there in the tunnels?” The first boy sounded on the verge of laughter.

They’d heard me. When I believed I was trapped, possibly doomed to waste away in a tunnel below the city-they’d heard me screaming for help. And no one had come.

“Yeah,” I muttered, my fingers curling into fists.
One of the other kids giggled, and I gritted my teeth. The first boy said, “Well? Did you see the list?”

I breathed in. “No,” I said calmly. “I didn’t. But you’d better hurry if you want to see it before anyone comes.” And without waiting for a reply, I dropped down through the hatch and let my weight pull it closed. I dangled from the hatch for a moment before swinging my legs over onto the ladder. I reached back up for the lock, shaking fingers closing over the red handle.

Just do it, I told myself, head beginning to ache from clenching my jaw so tightly. They would’ve done the same to you. And lock them in with a pixie. My stomach roiled at the thought, a shudder of remembered terror running through me. I stared up at the hatch for a few long moments and then groaned, dropping back down to the floor, the hatch unlocked.

My heart still pounding, I set off down the larger tunnel, avoiding the one where I’d gotten stuck. My nerves were jangling, and I had to try not to think of how close I’d come to being caught. The punishments for sneaking into the school were dire-minimum rations, isolation, even giving you a lower status apprenticeship when you were harvested and made an adult. Plus there was pride. In all these years, I’d never been caught. My thoughts were lost in imagining the punishments, fear mixed with relief still ruling my mind as I hurried home.

I should have noticed something was wrong. Even though the cleaner chamber was receding further and further behind me, the sound of machinery remained. The humming grew louder as I walked, but I was so relieved at my escape that I didn’t give it a second’s thought.

And so when I reached an intersection of the tunnels and rounded the corner to come face to face with a pixie, I could do nothing but stare stupidly.

It had no eyes, no mouth, only a featureless, round head no bigger than my pinky fingernail. Delicate copper wings were a blur of motion as it hovered, its segmented body giving it an insectlike appearance. They were the smallest of the mechanimals invented in the extravagant decades before the wars, requiring so little of the Resource to run that they were the only ones the Institute still used. They were nothing more than curiosities then, but now they were the Institute’s eyes in the city, able to detect instantly any illegal use of the Resource. Children weren’t expected to report malfunctions and submit to Adjustment-children, after all, can’t be expected to act responsibly. They need to be watched.

For a moment we were still, me staring at the pixie and it watching me sightlessly in return. The only sounds I could hear were the buzzing of its wings, the whirring of its gears, and the jarring, discordant twang of the Resource twisted to its mechanism.

Then it gave a malevolent whine of triumph and launched itself toward my face, so fast I almost didn’t see it move. Without thinking, I threw up my hands, all of the panic, relief, despair, and fury of the past half hour exploding with no time to count to ten, no time to think of iron.

The pixie was thrown against the far wall of the tunnel with such force that it shattered, fragments tinkling against the brick and splashing in the water.

I staggered, lightheaded, a hazy mist descending over my eyes.

A wave of dizziness nearly knocked me down, and I stumbled over toward where I’d seen the pixie strike. Dropping to my knees, I felt through the muck. There was nothing left but a few hollow shards of copper shell.

Shaking, I forced myself to my feet again. The Resource. I’d used it. And not just a tiny spell to save my life in a tunnel somewhere. I’d damaged a pixie, a precious machine, the very eyes of the Institute. No, not just damaged. Obliterated.

It shouldn’t have been possible. Even the strongest flow of Resource was barely enough to levitate a pencil without the help of machinery to amplify it. It was a power source-like the tightly wound spring in a watch-nothing more. The Institute had always taught us so. That the architects could be wrong was unthinkable.

At least I’d found out I wasn’t a dud. But at what cost?
…

I longed to linger in the shower and let the water wash away the fear as well as the tunnel muck. I’d learned long ago to save my shower ration for the days I’d be going tunnel-hopping, but even so I had only a few minutes at most. It had taken me the better part of an hour to work my way back through the tunnels, and then find a circuitous route home that would avoid having anyone see me, wet and mucky and bleeding.

I scrubbed away the mud and dirty water, my scraped arms stinging. I rinsed my hair as best as I could, in too much of a rush to coax any lather out of the cheap ration soap. After I’d finished, I stood dripping by the window. The sun disc was just clearing the buildings.

I closed my eyes, letting the light wash my face through the dingy window of my parents’ apartment. If only I’d stayed stuck in that pipe, I never would’ve smashed that pixie. In the pipe, I had thought it better to be caught than to rot. Now, having used the Resource, being caught would mean Adjustment.

I was supposed to be in school by now, listening to the names called for the harvest. Suffering through the same drawn-out ceremony. The fat, sugar-sweet Harvest Administrator would be there by now in her red coat, delivering her speech to the kids about sacrifice and efficiency, and the journey into adulthood. She had always terrified me, despite her pleasant demeanor. I wasn’t used to seeing large people, and she got a little wider each year. In the past, fear of the Administrator was always enough to make sure I attended every Harvest Day.

But I knew I wasn’t on the list, and no one would notice I was gone. All attention would be on the kids whose names were called. I was still buzzing from what I’d done, little jolts of the Resource escaping from my fingertips and my wet hair when I moved. I couldn’t report to class like this. What if they could somehow sense it when I entered? What if it clung to me, like the faint stench of the tunnels still inhabiting my hair?

I drew in a shaky breath and turned away from the window. I got dressed slowly and then went into the living room. Rummaging in the box of my belongings by my sofa bed, I pulled out the paper bird Basil had made for me before he disappeared.

“Don’t go,” I’d begged him.

“You weren’t made to live in a cage, little bird.” He kept his voice low, calm. Soothing. But there was a tension behind his gaze that had frightened me. “Someone has to take the first steps beyond it.”

“But who will protect me from Caesar?” Caesar, my older brother by five years, and two years older than Basil. He was almost a stranger to me and terrifying in his gruffness.

Basil crouched down to eye level with me. Even then I was short and scrawny. “What if I made you a friend to keep you company?” he asked.

It had been years since he’d last made me one of his paper animals. He’d taught himself how in school, stealing scraps of recycled paper and folding until they resembled creatures out of the history books. Elephants, tigers, dogs, squirrels, once even an eagle.

“I’m not a little kid anymore,” I protested.

“I know,” Basil said. “This would be a special one, different from the others. I’ve had this paper-” and he pulled a small, yellow-gray sheet of paper from his satchel, “-waiting for a few weeks now. The animal’s already inside, waiting to be set free. You just have to see it.” He looked back up at me, serious and earnest. “But she’ll need someone to take care of her. Will you do that until I get back?”

I knew what he was doing, saw through his efforts to distract me, but I nodded anyway. It had been so long since I’d watched him fold. He winked at me and turned his attention to the paper. His fingers flew, forming angles by folding and folding back again, creases leaping up along edges and bisecting the center. “Slower!” I begged him, longing to see and learn the trick of it, but he just laughed and kept folding.

I couldn’t see what it was until he was nearly done, at which point my breath caught in my throat.

“A lark,” he said, bending the wings back up into place and then resting the paper bird on the palm of his hand. “Like you, Lark.” He grinned again, and leaned toward me so he could jostle my shoulder with his.

Just before I could reach out to take the paper bird, he pulled his hand back and bent his head, gazing at it with great concentration. I felt a tingle spread outward from the base of my skull, a lightheadedness that caused my vision to spark strangely and the blood to rush past my ears. Even though I knew what I was sensing could not be true, my breath quickened. Eventually he drew in a breath and then exhaled carefully over the bird, blowing against its wings. I heard a tiny sound, like the ringing of a far-off bell. The paper bird flapped its wings once and then soared in a tiny, effortless circle over the palm of Basil’s hand before gliding over to mine.

I stared in horror at my brother as my spine tingled with the thrill of the forbidden. I’d never seen anyone use the Resource before. It was supposed to be impossible without the alchemists’ years of training.

“How did you do that?” I breathed.

Basil grinned at me. “Magic.”

My mouth hung open. I tried to remember the last time I’d even heard that word. It was strictly forbidden in school.

He winked, reaching out to tap my chin and close my mouth. “It’s okay to say the word, you know. That’s what it is. And they think they can control it-control us-but they’re wrong.”

Magic had made the bird fly from his hand. I’d always assumed he was moving the bird like the architects moved machines like the pixies, using a tiny bit of Resource to power something designed for the purpose. But I should have known better. It was, after all, only a bit of folded paper-the wings weren’t designed for flight, the body too fat and the tail too long. There were no gears for the Resource to set in motion. His spell had been effortless and considerably more impressive than floating a pencil.