Filaria - Brent Hayward [66]
Clambering around the lip of a partition, Deidre gasped and wiped at her face. The wind had blasted tears from her eyes and sliced the air from her lips. Each awful word of that monologue had been branded into her mind, ringing in her ears. Mercifully, it too had been sliced cleanly away.
Huddling nearby, a group of angels — including the black one — were gibbering, talking excitedly amongst themselves. They turned to her, as she emerged, and now they stopped their antics. Gesturing and flapping, a few showed signs of further agitation. Not wanting to go back to where Mingh straw was, Deidre shrank close to the rancid sticks and debris, presenting her back to the group of angels but keeping a wary eye on them, lest they attack.
With slow, strong beats of their wings, two angels lifted off and, in mid-air, kicked at each other, feet splayed in an almost comic fight. Their voices rose in tone and shrillness.
Then a third broke away from the cluster to come rushing toward her, wings outstretched, gait awkward and shifting from side to side. While she cowered, the beast fell upon her, took hold of her shoulders with the tips of the long fingers that spread the membranes of its wing apart, shrieking angrily in her face with horrible breath.
Deidre shouted, twisting, pulling the angel off balance. Clumsily, they rolled. The wings were like stinky warm sheets over her face; she was sure she could have snapped the light bones of the creature with her bare hands but the angel scrambled to its feet and suddenly backed off.
Then she saw the dirigible.
Still quite far away, under thin clouds and smoke lingering from the razed landscape, gleaming dully in the hazy sunlight, approached a ship. Not quite as high as the aerie, without a doubt the tan shape was an airship.
Deidre saw the wooden fuselage suspended from the oblong balloon, and the massive prop churning sluggishly behind it. Though she had only seen images of such a craft she imagined her rescuers standing within the cupola, all dressed neatly in uniforms identical to the one that the gram in her sanctum had been wearing yesterday. She imagined their waxed moustaches, their blue eyes. She imagined their resolve. Perhaps, she thought giddily, it was even the man himself, in the flesh, the man to whom she had listened, in her sketching room, presiding at the helm.
She sat up straight.
Obviously the angels had spotted this craft earlier, and when Deidre had fled Mingh straw’s taunts, they’d been discussing a strategy, in their own way. Now they had resumed their dance, arguing among themselves, kicking and making their awful giggling noises.
“You’re dead,” she told her attacker, who remained standing over her, also watching approach of the slow-moving dirigible. It looked down at her with beady eyes. Its nostrils twitched. “You’ll see, you filthy beast. You’re all dead! You can’t touch me any more!”
The angel blinked, hissed, and looked away.
Balloons were military crafts, under orders from — and in possession of — officials much higher in rank than her father. But was it possible that the Orchard Keeper had discovered her abduction and arranged for her rescue?
She waved vigorously, moving so she could see Mingh straw, who sat still, staring out into the clouds in the opposite direction, as if she remained unawares, unconcerned. Deidre scuttled back to the girl, calling to her, cutting through the crosswind. The angel that had accosted her shrieked once, but did not follow.
“They’re coming,” Deidre shouted. “Mingh straw, they’re coming! We’re getting help!”
The girl turned, very slowly.
Blood bubbled at the corners of her mouth. She smeared the blood with the back of one hand, marking her cheek and chin with demented crimson streaks. “Who is?” Voice thick, though the girl tried to smile. “Who’s coming?”
“You’re bleeding . . .”
“What makes you think, sister, that I need another sister? One more to take care of? The