Free Firebirds Soaring by Sharyn November

limits of the Sunken City far below. If there’d been shoals in these waters, the otters would have been put to work, herding the fish in their dozens and hundreds into the nets. With only scattered fish to be had, their talents wouldn’t be needed, so they sat on the prow of the junk, leaning into the spray, luxuriating in the warm sum.
    When they’d made a full circuit, Grandmother cut the engine, and Yumin kicked the lever that started the motor spooling in the nets. When the nets had been reeled in and were hanging from the gantries overhead, Yumin was dispirited to see only one or two fish sporadically flopping in the heavy mesh.
    “Keep heart, Daughter’s-son,” Grandmother said brightly. “We’ll catch them yet.”
    Yumin sighed. He’d hoped to fill the hold with a big haul right away so they’d be forced to head back into port sooner rather than later. Then he could tell Grandmother his news when they were nearly in reach of home, and there’d be less chance that he’d miss his transport.
    “Look there.” Grandmother pointed overhead with the stem of her pipe.
    The cormorant came angling in from the east, frantically flapping his wide wings, and gracelessly landed on his perch at the mast’s top.
    “Well?” Grandmother shouted impatiently up at the bird.
    The cormorant shivered, and squawked in his simple syllables that he had sighted something in the water to the east. It seemed to Yumin that the bird was agitated, even nervous. “Grandmother, does Great Sage seem . . . distressed, to you?”
    Grandmother looked from Yumin to the bird overhead and back again, and shrugged. “That may be. He’s probably just excited, eager for the treat he’ll have earned when his directions lead us to a good catch.”
    Yumin nodded, and looked up at the shivering bird, unconvinced.
     
    After a few days of relaxing, the otters were eager for some exercise. They slid out through their bolt holes, one on either side of the boat, and coursed along beside the junk as they traveled eastward.
    Yumin was in the prow, fiddling with the red-and-gold device. He was worried but found that he was more concerned about what his grandmother would think of his present than of what she would say when he told her his news. And worried that she’d try to keep him away from shore for so long that he’d miss his transport. The officer had told him to report in six days, and it had already been three. Grandmother wouldn’t intentionally keep him away once she heard his plans, would she?
    He reassembled the device, but its screen remained dark, flat black in its ornate frame of gold. He toggled the switches that initiated the internal diagnostics, but when the cycles were complete, it emitted a sequence of tweets and whistles that meant no fault had been found. To all indications, then, the original persona was intact, deep within the red-lacquered shell, but it still did not communicate or respond to stimuli—awake, but unresponsive.
    Yumin’s deep concentration was shattered when he was pelted on the side of the head with a dumpling, leaving a greasy spot in his hair.
    “I’ve been calling your name forever, boy,” Grandmother hooted. “Where are you, anyway? Your body is here but your mind is somewhere else.”
    “Sorry, Grandmother,” Yumin said, and couldn’t help but think that soon, his body would be elsewhere, too.
     
    The junk reached the spot that the cormorant had indicated, and the bird perched on top of the mast, nervously preening.
    Yumin released the nets while Grandmother fired up the engine, and they began to drag the nets behind the boat. The otters dropped back, allowing the junk to course ahead. They gave a little salute and then dove beneath the waters.
    Grandmother was at the wheel, and she called over to Yumin at his post at the nets. She told him about chores they needed to look after when they got back, errands she needed him to run. Yumin felt an uneasy fluttering deep in the pit of his stomach and