Skylark Read online

  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.

  But still not exactly vaporizing a pixie with a single thought.

  I hadn’t touched the paper bird in years, not since Basil had disappeared, but I longed for my brother to walk through the door and tell me what to do. He’d tell me not to be afraid of the pixies, that they were barely more than paper birds themselves, animated by the Institute. He’d tell me my fear was making monsters out of little tin bugs. I didn’t have to let that fear control me.

  I shivered, thinking of my brother’s explanation for his sacrifice. You weren’t made to live in a cage, little bird. That much, it seemed, was true.

  In a city utterly dependent on its every citizen to perform their duties and fit in like clockwork, where was there room for me?

  Cradling the bird in my hands, the tingle of the Resource—of magic, I corrected myself—still coursing through me, I drew a deep breath, willing my pounding heart to calm, and exhaled slowly.

  My breath brushed the bird, stirring the paper wings. It so resembled the moment six years ago when the bird had come to life and taken flight that I caught my breath again, heart pounding. Had I accidentally done it again? The wings stilled, but before I could relax, the bird cocked its little head—and burst into song.

  Three clear notes, and then it dissolved into a fluttering series of chirps that had me scrambling to silence it. I stopped myself before I crushed the thing, but I blew on it frantically instead, praying there was no one in a neighboring apartment to hear it. Birds had been extinct, as far as anyone knew, since the wars killed most animals and twisted the rest.

  At first it shook itself with an air of indignant protest, but after a few more puffs it went still again. My head spinning, I crouched by the couch and listened.

  For a moment I heard nothing. I started to stand up, my legs shaking with adrenaline.

  Then came a pounding on the door. I dropped to my knees. The knock came again, loud and forceful—a city official’s knock. How had they found me so quickly?

  I folded the bird’s wings down flat and then shoved it deep into the pocket of my pants. I scrambled to my feet and stood there, heart slamming against my ribcage. I snatched up a packet of ration crackers from the table and shoved those into my pocket too, some part of my brain reminding me that wherever I fled, I’d have to eat. The front door was the only way out of the apartment—except for the fire escape from the window in the living room. I leaped over the arm of the couch and went to the window, fingers fumbling with the latch.

  As I heaved at the window, trying to get it open, a voice from outside the door called, “Lark, what the hell? Open the door!”

  I knew that voice. I ran to the door, hands shaking with relief now rather than panic as I twisted the lock and threw the door open.

  “Caesar!”

  My brother was a tall man, his imposing stature serving him well as a Regulator. He had very carefully cultivated a mustache in an effort to fit in and be taken seriously by the more senior officials. All it earned him was years of being teased for its scraggly appearance. His eyes were so like Basil’s in color and shape, but so different in character.

  “What have you been up to?” he demanded. My relief vanished in an instant. Caesar lived across town now, with the other Regulators, though he still had a key to our parents’ apartment—what was he doing here? He took a step into the apartment, and I fell a step back.

  “Wh-what?” I gasped. “No—C, I didn’t mean to, I swear. Please.”

  Caesar frowned, the mustache drooping dramatically. “What? No, I meant—what were you doing with the deadbolt on? I couldn’t get in.”

  I gaped at him. “Oh,” I managed.

  “Why aren’t you in school?” He moved past me into the living room, thrusting his hands up over his head and stretching, spine popping.

  I shook my head, still trying to process. He hadn’t come to bring me in for illegal use of the Resource. He didn’t know about the pixie, or the paper bird.

  “Keep this up and you’re not going to fit when you get your assignment. Hate to send my own little sister’s name to the Regulatory Board. Look, they sent me to find you, since you weren’t in class. I figured you’d be at Mom and Dad’s. Your name was called.”

  That brought me up short, panic on hold while I stared up at my brother. “My name was what?”

  “Called,” repeated Caesar, his voice casual. He knew what it meant to me, though. His eyes gleamed. “You’re going to be harvested, though hell knows why. Just a scrawny bit of a thing, should just feed you to the shadows over the Wall and be done with it.”

  “Harvested,” I echoed, my thoughts moving so slowly it was like swimming through syrup. Despite my flush of excitement, I knew my name hadn’t been on that list. Something was wrong.

  “Carriage is waiting for you downstairs. Kind of a crappy driver if you ask me, but hey—he promises he can get you to the Institute. At least you get it all to yourself.”

  I swallowed. “But—but the other kids?”

  Caesar shook his head. “You’re the only one called this time.”

  All happiness fled, leaving me cold, my thoughts suddenly crystal clear. I saw the paper in my mind’s eye as clear as if it were in front of me again. I closed my eyes.

  They knew. Somehow, they knew I’d been doing magic. I wasn’t being taken to the Institute to be harvested—I was being taken to be punished. And there was only one punishment for illegal use of the Resource: Adjustment.

  “Congrats, little sis,” said my brother, reaching out to ruffle my hair.

  Chapter 3

  The carriage driver was a skinny boy a few years younger than I with too large ears and hair a shocking orange. He swung a leg over his cycle, lines of muscle standing out on his skinny calves. The hitch between carriage and cycle creaked as he let his weight down onto the seat.

  I wanted to run—but where would I go? There was no place in the city where the pixies wouldn’t find me.

  I looked over my shoulder at Caesar, hoping for some lastminute reprieve. I wanted to tell him I was in trouble, but my tongue was thick and heavy. Caesar had turned his attention to the hand-held talkie device that kept him in touch with the other cops, and didn’t so much as glance at me.

  The driver kicked at the starter, magic coursing through the gears of the bicycle. We pulled away slowly, the kid straining at the pedals. The pedals, like much of the rest of the carriage, were rusty and worn. The only thing in good repair was the gleaming mechanism nestled in the chains that turned magic into motion. The warm glow of copper seemed out of place within its case of rusted, ancient machinery.

  I tried to imagine what it must be like to live in the Institute as the architects did, using machines like this every day. Ages ago people used horse-drawn carriages to get around. After the Wall went up, horses took up too much space and ate too much food. And so the Institute had developed these crude carriages, powered by bicycle, mechanical advantage—and a conservative dose of the Resource.

  It took more power to move something directly by raw magic than it took to use magic to operate something mechanical. Clockwork was the best, with delicate gears, pendulums, and jewels that moved smoothly and efficiently, so long as something—magic—provided the impetus.

  There was a time, before the wars, when the whole world was rife with technology. Most was gone now, but for the art of binding the Resource to clockwork. Without it, no one would have survived the cataclysmic events that ended the wars, destroying the countryside. We were the last city on earth. Only our architects, and the Wall they constructed, kept us safe. And they continued to do so, forming the Institute of Magic and Natural Philosophy, to preserve the remaining technologies that keep us alive. And to harvest the power they needed to do so.

  Anoth
er time, I would have enjoyed a carriage ride. Carriages were free on Harvest Day for kids called to the Institute, but at all other times they cost too much for most people.

  “Aren’t you kinda old?”

  The driver’s voice yanked me back to the present. I was used to this question by now, and I ignored him. My experience in school had taught me that silence usually bred silence, and that by ignoring people I could usually make them stop talking to me.

  Not so with the driver. “Your name’s Lark, right? My sis just got harvested last year and she’s only like nine,” he said, puffing between sentences as he pedaled. “But she’s cool. She’s real old for her age, and smart, too. Gonna be an architect’s assistant someday.”

  Basil had been told on more than one occasion that he could’ve been an architect if he’d had different parents. As it was, he had set his sights on the glass forge, and dreamed of the day he’d get picked as a vitrarius, one of the specialized glassworkers in the Institute. It would’ve meant that his future children, if they’d tested well enough, could’ve been architects, if they were lucky. So, the idea that the sister of a carriage driver had aspirations of working in the Institute was ludicrous, but I didn’t say this aloud. Instead, I found myself asking, “What was your harvest like?”

  The boy slowed in order to turn down a different street, and waited to answer until he’d picked up speed again. “It was spec. You’re so lucky. You wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff they got there. All the fruit you can eat, and syrup and these fried potato slices and—” He had to stop for breath.

  “No, I meant the harvest itself, not the feast. What was it like when they stripped you?”

  “Oh.” No answer for a while, which I chalked up to the slight hill we were climbing. “I don’t really remember much about it, I guess. The food was much more interesting. What, do you believe those kids who say it’s like cutting off a hand or something?”