Page 5 of Skysong

Her father smiled then, the light of it shining even through the haze of grief.18

‘You look just like her,’ he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘Your eyes are a bit more like mine, perhaps – but still, the two of you could have been sisters. Even your wings have precisely the same pattern as hers.’

Oriane looked away, her throat tightening to the point of pain. Her eyes blurred as she stared into the fire. She wished that her mother could have been the exception to the rule. That she could have stayed here with her family, where she belonged.

‘But what was your plan?’ she asked her father hoarsely, after a moment. ‘To keep me safe? Was it just … to keep me here forever, away from everybody?’

‘To keep you away from those who might do you harm,’ Arthur amended.

‘Or from those who might love me.’

Arthur leaned forward in his chair, clasping one of her hands in his. There was a strange look of desperation on his face, as if he were grasping at the beams of a house as it fell down around him. ‘You don’t understand, my love,’ he pressed on. ‘If you never fall in love – never bear a child and pass down your power –youwillneverdie.’

Oriane blinked.

‘From everything we’ve learned, the only reason skylarks die is because they pass their power on to their daughters. Even before Elidia, the larks who lived after giving birth didn’t do so forever – they died of old age or disease or some other human thing. But you … If you never relinquish your power, there’s no reason for you to ever—’

The rest of his words were lost as a strange humming began to sound in Oriane’s ears. It was too much. All of it – the stories; the plan her parents had made; the idea of her life staying the same, staying this wayforever, even after the lure of the outside world had taken hold of her and—19

‘Oriane?’

Arthur was staring at her, concern etched in every line of his weathered face. He still held one of her hands clasped in his.

Oriane watched as he seemed to see,reallysee, the expression on her face, the wish in her eyes. He knew it then – they both did. In the morning, she would be gone. It was too late; the call of the world had grown too strong, and nothing that was said now would make any difference.

Oriane squeezed her father’s hand, then withdrew hers gently from its grasp.

‘I’ll come back, Papa,’ she whispered as she left the room. ‘I promise.’

20

Chapter 3

Oriane must have drifted off in the small hours. She jolted upright in the darkness, the spark of her song awakening in her chest.

In the hallway, she hesitated outside her father’s door. She wanted to talk to him, to apologise, to tell him how grateful she was and how well he’d fulfilled his promise to her mother.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ she whispered instead, and then she was gone.

The transformation happened as it always did: quick as a flash, easy as breathing. Oriane was airborne in an instant, rising high above the quiet cottage and into the perfect clarity of an early summer morning, the darkness poised and ready to lift like a curtain from a stage.

She flew. Her tiny lark’s heart seemed to swell in her feathered chest. Not pausing to land, she let the first notes of her song burst forth as she winged her way above the treetops. Her call shot out and over the horizon, where it found the sleeping sun and pulled it upward, inch by inch. Gold fire spilled over the edge of the world. The forest began to wake below her, adding its music to her song.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

The further she flew, the more Oriane forgot about what lay behind her. Her mind wasn’t usually altered when she was in her lark form, but today it was as if she were more bird than human, her thoughts focused on a sole idea, a singular goal.South.21

She soared onward, the warmth of the waking sun at her side. The capital lay ahead, and the palace. South was the direction of people.

By the time the sun had fully risen, Oriane was further from home than she’d ever been. The ribbon of a road wound along below, close enough that she could already see the tiny specks of people upon it. She banked eagerly in its direction. At its end, she knew, was everything she longed to see.

How long she flew, she could not have said. The sense of unreality, of hyperfocus, had taken over her body entirely. It swept her forth on swift wings. Faster. Further. The miles dropped away behind her. She did not tire or stall. The palace was so much closer now. The sunlight reflected off its windows, so that they burned like beacons.

Oriane sharpened her focus. Was one of those windows open, its shutters thrown wide to let in the early morning air? Could she soar right through it into its heart?

Was that a person she could see within?

The sight of the silhouette – real or imagined, she didn’t know – brought her out of her trance. She was finally aware of herself again, aware of where she was and what she was doing. The city. The palace. Thepeople. They were all right there before her.

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