Free Firebirds Soaring by Sharyn November Page A

tasted betrayal on his tongue.
    Far behind, the head of one of the otters crested the surface of the water. From its nicked ear, Yumin could tell immediately it was Genius. Absently, without waiting for the otter’s signal, Yumin kicked the lever that started the retraction of the nets. But after a few moments, Recluse, the other otter, still hadn’t surfaced, and its companion, Genius, wasn’t giving the affirmative salute, but was instead motioning “Fear” and “Danger,” frantically.
    “Hey, Grandmother,” Yumin called, and the old woman looked back. “Could Recluse could be caught in a net, do you think? ”
    Grandmother rubbed her lower lip between thumb and forefinger, and nodded, slowly. “It’s possible.”
    “You think I should stop the nets’ retraction?”
    “No, let them keep reeling in. If Recluse is in a net, bringing the nets onboard will be the best, and perhaps only, way of getting him loose.”
    “Fair enough.” Yumin glanced back and eyed the otter trailing behind them. “Something’s got Genius spooked, though.”
    Grandmother came to stand beside him. “Will you look at that?”
    The otter was still on the surface, still signing “Danger,” and “Fear,” and “Big.” Then he began to sign “Fish,” followed quickly by “Not Fish.” He dove, was gone for a long moment, resurfaced and signed again. “Fish, Not Fish.”
    “What does he mean, Grandmother?”
    “Nothing good.”
    There came a high-pitched squeal, as the motor pulling in the nets began to strain.
    “Yumin, take the wheel.” Grandmother switched places with Yumin, going over to lean low over the spools. From the wheel, Yumin could see that the line was taut, the motor still pulling, but the nets weren’t coming in.
    Yumin looked back, past the aft end of the boat, to where the lines of the net cut V-shaped wakes into the cold water. Genius the otter was nowhere to be seen.
    The motor squealed and strained, and then suddenly the junk lurched forward as the lines momentarily went slack before going taut again. But now the line was spooling in, and the nets were slowly being hauled out of the water.
    “There we go!” Grandmother shouted, clapping her hands.
    The nets flapped onto the deck. There were fewer fish than they’d hauled in over the Sunken City, but, more surprisingly, there was a huge rent in the mesh of one of the nets.
    “What did that ?” Yumin said, mouth hanging open.
    Grandmother narrowed her eyes and shook her head, without saying a word.
     
    Night fell, and the otters never resurfaced.
    Yumin and Grandmother sat on the deck, laboriously mending the nets. They hadn’t spoken much since the loss of the otters. The cormorant, Great Sage, refused to come down from his perch atop the mast.
    The stars were out overhead, and the moons moved across the sky. There was a shooting star moving toward the north, and Yumin realized it was a ship leaving stationary orbit at the top of the orbital elevator. Yumin was momentarily worried that his transport had left without him, but he calmed himself, remembering that it had only been four days, and he had two more to go.
    Yumin looked up from his mending. “Grandmother, I suppose we’ll have to head back into land, come the morning, right?” He tried not to sound too eager, but he couldn’t prevent a trace of excitement, mingled with fear, from creeping into his voice.
    Grandmother was looking at the net in her hands. “I’ve never see the like. Just never.”
    “What about the stories you told me as a boy? The old stories of fish with razor teeth, or otters who carried swords, or dragons from the Land in the Sea.”
    Grandmother waved his words away. “Those were just stories. Not flesh and bone.”
    After a long silence, Grandmother began to talk, quietly, her voice so low that at first Yumin wasn’t sure whether he was only imagining it. “My husband, your grandfather, used to love those old tales. He seemed to know more of them than anyone