Chapter 247: Jiang Swam Beneath a River in the Sky

The first bird struck Jiang hard enough to turn him sideways.

Its split tail snapped across his face. Black claws closed on the bare place below his jaw, found wet skin instead of the feather scent they wanted, and released.

Jiang slid down the root.

Aylin caught at him from above. Her fingers scraped his back and lost purchase in the wet coat.

Three more birds folded their wings.

"Under the branch," she shouted. "Jiang, get beneath it!"

He already wanted the same shelter.

The lower root curved away from the ridge and ended in open air. Beneath it, a clear river channel hung between red branches, its living walls thin enough to show silver animals fighting the current inside.

No dry path reached it.

Jiang let himself drop.

Cold water closed over his head while claws struck the surface where his back had been.

Cold found the Wake Scar before the rest of him. It entered the thin breast insulation, crossed every fresh coat gap, and tightened around the old injury until his first breath tried to leave early.

Jiang waited for the reflex that had once brought a skill behind it.

Nothing answered. He had an emperor penguin’s body, one useful wing, and whatever breath pain allowed him to keep.

For one clean instant, his body remembered what it was built to do.

His breast leveled. Dense bones held him below the churning surface. The sound wing swept back, and his feet found water instead of bark.

Then the right wing failed.

Jiang rolled into the clear wall. His injured shoulder hit first. Light broke white across his sight, and the straight leg kicked after the other one instead of with it.

Water entered his cut tongue.

He hated how much relief lived beside the pain. The river was dangerous, crowded, and hanging above an empty sky, but at least climbing was not the price.

Above the channel, Aylin ran.

She could not see Jiang through every fold in the water. She followed the dark interruption of his body, the shock of his sound wing, and the small bursts of red that appeared when his flank brushed the wall.

Split-tailed birds battered the membrane around him.

Valea climbed behind Aylin with one wrapped barb in her sound hand. She struck beaks away from the branch rather than trying to spear bodies in the air. Each swing reopened the blood beneath her other sleeve.

Hest carried the old yoke crosswise over his shoulders.

"They have mistaken him for dinner," he said.

"They have mistaken him for himself," Valea answered.

"That seems unfairly accurate."

The birds kept diving.

Farther back, the female had pressed the chick into the deepest bend of the black-moss hollow. Bellwyrm lay across the entrance with its sound forelimb raised. Neither bird nor white hook had reached them yet.

Hest looked once, saw the mother holding her ground, and continued only to the next fork. He hooked the yoke there and kept the retreat open behind Valea.

Jiang reached the first bend in the river channel.

Silver bodies filled it from wall to wall.

They had broad heads, mouths underneath, and narrow fins that folded into grooves along their backs. Dozens were trying to force themselves upstream. The front animals had reached a root slit too small for the panic behind them. Their tails beat the clear wall until the channel shook.

A smaller animal lay sideways in the slit. One fin had entered the reeds, and every body behind it drove the barbs deeper. Its lower mouth opened against the clear wall without finding water that moved.

None of the adults turned to save it. Panic had made the whole school into pressure.

White hooks grew across the water behind the jam.

The crown had passed above this root. Its graft was closing every route that did not point toward the brood calls.

Jiang could follow the open center and let the trapped animals absorb the hooks.

The choice would bring him closer to the feather.

It would also leave a living wall to be torn apart behind him.

He turned into the jam.

The first silver animal rammed his breast. Another caught its lower mouth in the gap at his right wing and thrashed. Jiang tucked the useless limb tighter, rolled with the strike, and drove his beak toward the root slit.

The opening was clogged with black reeds.

They were not part of the white graft. Ordinary river growth had folded across the slit under pressure from too many bodies. Jiang bit one reed near its red base and pulled.

Nothing in the clog moved.

His straight leg struck the channel floor and folded.

Pain opened from the old bite to his hip. He released the reed before the current could tear his beak sideways.

Above him, Aylin vanished behind a thick branch.

From her side, Jiang disappeared completely. The water carried blood through the bend, then silver bellies covered even that. Aylin was afraid the branch had hidden a body already going still.

She almost climbed down blind. The impulse would have put her damaged knee into the same current and left Valea with two people beneath the root instead of one.

Jiang heard three knocks through the river wall.

Their old rhythm. Her hand against the root.

He answered with his beak.

The return knock cost him the reed, but it told her where he had stopped.

Aylin changed direction above the channel. She ran out along a branch no wider than her boot, lowered herself onto one knee, and found the red base of the clog through the clear wall.

Her knife remained lost with the harpoon. Valea’s shaving remained lost beside it.

Valea arrived and held out the wrapped barb.

"It has cut worse things," she said.

Aylin drove the barb through the branch above the reed bed.

White sap clouded the water. The reeds clenched around the barb, and Jiang felt their roots tighten against his beak.

Jiang set his beak again.

Aylin levered from above while Jiang twisted below. Valea planted both heels around Aylin’s good leg. Hest held the yoke fork behind them and stopped the branch from rolling with the Bellmother’s next breath.

The reed root tore.

Water punched through the slit.

Silver animals went with it.

Valea wrenched the barb out before the rolling branch could trap it. She wrapped the wet points against the second barb beneath her coat and followed Aylin.

They did not pause to thank Jiang. One struck his face. Another rolled him over its back. A third drove straight through the opening and vanished into a hanging sheet of water beyond the root.

The jam came apart around him.

Jiang flattened his wings and let the escaping bodies carry him toward the slit. His failed side pulled him crooked. He kicked with the sound foot, caught the edge with his beak, and passed through belly first.

Open sky waited below the water.

The river continued along a transparent root no thicker than Jiang’s body. Beneath it lay the Bellmother’s dark flank and, much farther down, a world of moving clouds.

He was swimming beneath a river in the sky.

Aylin reached the upper side of the root and kept pace on red bark. Her damaged knee buckled at every downward roll, but she stayed above the dark shape in the water.

"You could have taken the open middle," she called.

Jiang surfaced where the living wall dipped. "I disliked the company."

"You swam into more of it."

"I disliked the management."

Her laugh came out too sharp. Fear still owned part of it.

Across the next span, the crown passed over the channel.

The missing-heel diver had grown a narrow white bridge over the water. Each step broke flakes from the graft knee. The sealed heel socket opened again, showing the dark hollow where living flesh ended above the missing bone.

Aylin climbed toward the crown.

Staying over Jiang would keep him in sight. It would also let the diver reach the brood root unopposed. She hated the choice because both routes contained someone breathing, and the forest offered no third branch broad enough to hold them together.

Jiang struck the river wall once from below.

Go, the old rhythm told her. Not safe. Not finished. Go.

She left Jiang’s river and caught the white bridge with both hands. The material flexed like tendon. She pulled herself onto it behind the diver.

The bare wrist turned.

For the first time, Aylin saw eyes through the faceplate: human, bloodshot, and fixed on the wet red roots ahead. The diver looked at her damaged knee, the empty place where her waist cord had been, and the distance to the brood calls.

No threat passed between them.

Both understood the race.

The diver’s bare hand rose, not toward a weapon but toward a crack beneath the faceplate. Blood had dried along two knuckles. White tissue pulsed at the wrist, squeezing the skin each time the graft leg tried to hold weight.

Aylin could have reached that wrist. For one hard breath, the human inside the armor was closer than the silver comb.

Then the small bell coughed again through the roots, and the diver’s eyes left Aylin for the sound.

Aylin lunged for the silver comb.

The diver released the bridge.

White tissue died under her hands. The whole span peeled away from the red root and fell toward Jiang’s channel with Aylin still on it.

She caught a hanging reed.

Her struck shoulder took her weight and nearly opened. One boot hit the clear river wall. Below it, Jiang rolled onto his back and struck twice with his beak.

The two strikes said: still here.

Aylin answered once with her heel.

Her heel answered: still above you.

The diver did not look back. They dragged the failing graft leg across the next trunk and drove the crown’s teeth into a hollow root.

Silver comb met red wood.

Jiang’s whole feather bent across the teeth like a bowstring.

The hollow root inhaled.

Oil-dark mist traveled through it, carrying the smell of Jiang’s breast and the warm place beneath an emperor’s jaw. A small bell note answered from inside the roots.

Then a larger answer shook water from every leaf around them.

Something came through the canopy on six root-colored legs. Its chest was a hollow amber shell, and each breath rang inside it.

The adult living bell passed beneath the thief’s crown.

It lowered its antlered head toward Jiang.

The stolen scent had called it to the wrong penguin.