Free Above World by Jenn Reese

sky.
    The ground fell away. The sand became a yellow ribbon between the blue of the ocean and the green of the trees. They rose fast. The frantic flapping of giant bird wings resolved into a steady rhythm. His hair flattened against his face with each downswing.
    The sea spread out to the horizon, seemingly endless. As vast as the ocean had always seemed, he’d never seen this much of it at once. If they flew high enough, could he see around the entire world? Trees, mountains, birds, clouds . . . his eyes couldn’t take it all in fast enough.
    He should have been planning their escape. He should have been trying to wake Aluna or negotiate with their captors. At the very least, he should have been panicked or frozen with fear.
    But as the Above World sprawled out below him, all he could do was stare.

A LUNA’S THROAT BURNED . Something was on top of her, crushing her cheek against a web of coarse ropes. And, as if that weren’t enough, she was adrift in a choppy current.
    No, wait. It wasn’t water buffeting her skin, but air.
    She opened her eyes.
    The world swam below her, all blue ocean and trees and chiseled gray rocks. She wanted to scream, but her throat hurt too much. She was in a net — mashed under Hoku and his bag — dozens of meters above the ground. She twisted her head to see what was holding the net and caught sight of wing tips.
    Hoku’s words came back to her:
sharks in the sky.
Her brothers had spoken about the Aviars often, usually speculating about who would win in a fight. Even underwater, the bird-people’s warrior skills and tactics were renowned.
    The net surged upward and the landscape changed. The trees dotting the mountainside were replaced by row after row of black squares tilted toward the sky. Hundreds of them hugged the ground, obscuring the natural contours of the rock. They sparkled like waves in the sunlight.
    “What are they?” came Hoku’s voice in her ear. She tried to whisper back, but her throat refused to function. She tried again, and a third time, until it obeyed.
    “Hoku,” she said. “Are . . . ?” She swallowed, closed her eyes, tried again. “Are you okay?”
    “Aluna!” came his voice. She wished she could see his face. “I’m fine,” he whispered. “The Aviars captured us —”
    “Really? Are you sure?”
    “Yes! They came with a net — oh. Ha ha.”
    She smiled. Above them, the Aviars’ wings whooshed as they continued to rise. She felt pressure building in the back of her head and the dull throb of an oncoming headache.
    “You know what you did,” Hoku said in his serious voice. “You can’t go back to the ocean now.”
    “I know.”
    “Then . . . why did you do it?” Hoku asked.
    She could hear his real question, unspoken but loud as waves crashing in her mind:
Why did you leave me?
    Staring into that Deepfell’s eyes, those glossy black bubbles, it had felt so right. Deepfell came from the same ancestors as the Kampii. They changed their bodies more drastically, but they still had the same capacity to love and hate, the same right to live. Most Kampii called them demons, forgetting that three generations ago, it was a group of Kampii hunters that initiated the first raid. Daphine knew. As the city’s Voice, she had urged tolerance and tried to negotiate a peace treaty. No one ever listened. Not the Kampii, not the Deepfell, and not even Aluna.
    But seeing that Deepfell’s pain and fear, his helplessness . . . she imagined she was seeing Makina’s last minutes. Would her friend’s panic have been any different? Aluna couldn’t bear the thought of letting a Deepfell, a
person,
die when she had the chance to save him.
    “I had to,” she said. That was all the answer she had. “I’ll find another necklace, or some other way to go back. HydroTek will have the answers. This is just one more reason to find it.” She wished she felt as brave and confident as she sounded. “Besides, we have other things to worry about right now, like the