The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [136]
"We must have thrown it by now," the worms moaned. "We must have. We think so."
Cyan and I looked up and down the corridor. It was unpainted metal and very dull. "That's more steel than a whole fyrd of lancers."
The Vermiform started sending thin runners around the curve of the corridor. "We're above Plennish," it said.
"Wow," said Cyan. "What an imagination I have."
I found a tiny, steel-framed window. I stood on tiptoe and tried to peer through the thick glass. "It must be night time. Look at all the stars." There certainly were an awful lot of stars out there, filling the whole sky and ― the ground! "Cyan, look at this ― there's no ground! There's nothing under us but stars!" I looked up, "Oh. wow."
"Let me see," she said.
I refused to let her take my place at the little window. I pressed my face to the glass, gazing intently. "The grey moon fills the whole sky!"
"It isn't a moon." said the Vermiform. "It's Plennish. It's grey because it's completely covered in Insect paper."
"Ah. shit. All that is Paperlands?"
"Yes." It sighed. "The Freezers once tried to bomb it. Now radioactive Insects come from there to infest many other worlds."
"I'd like to fly around outside. There's so much space." I looked down again ― or up ― to the stars. A little one was racing along in relation to the rest, travelling smoothly towards us. It was so faint it was difficult to see. I said, "A star is moving. It's coming closer fast. Shift us out of here."
A shiver of apprehension flowed over the Vermiform. "We can't keep going. We're exhausted."
"You have to!"
'We can't. We can't! Anyway, this is a refuelling dock. If any ship tries to land without the protocol the Triskele Corporation will blow it to cinders."
I glanced out the window, and saw them from above. Horse skulls like beaks, pinched withers falling to bone. Their long backs carried no corpses now. Sparks crawled around them, flicked up to the window glass; they ploughed straight into and through the metal wall.
"It's the Gabbleratchet!"
Human screams broke out directly underneath us. The Vermiform threw a net of worms around Cyan and myself. Sparks crackled out of the floor beside us. The muzzle of a hound appeared ―
― Air rushed up around me. I was falling. I turned over, once, and the black bulk of the ground swung up into the sky. The air was very thin, hard to breathe. I fell faster, faster every second.
I forced open my wings, brought them up and buffered as hard as possible against the rushing air. I slowed down instantly, swung out in a curve and suddenly I was flying forwards. I rocketed over the dark landscape. Where was I? And why the fuck had the Vermiform dropped me in the air?
And where was Cyan? Had it separated us? I looked down and searched for her ― saw a tiny speck plummeting far below me, shrinking with distance. I folded my wings back, beat hard and dived. She was falling as fast as I could fly. She was spinning head over arse, so all I could see was a tangle of arms and legs, with a flash of white panties every two seconds and nowhere to grab hold of her.
"Stretch out!" I yelled. "Stretch your arms out!"
No answer ― she was semiconscious. She wouldn't be able to breathe at this altitude. I reached out and grabbed her arm. The speed she was falling dragged it away from me.
She rotated again and I seized a handful of her jumper. I started flapping twice the speed, panting and cursing, the strain in my back and my wings too much. Too much! We were still falling, but slower. My wings shuddered with every great desperate sweep down ― and when I raised them for the next beat, we started falling at full speed again.
"Can't you lift her?" said a surprised voice, faint in the slipstream. A wide scarf wafted in front of my face, its ends streaming up above me in the airflow. It was the Vermiform: it had knitted some worms around my neck!
"Of course I can't!" I yelled. "I can barely hold my own weight!"
"Oh."
The scarf began spinning around us, binding us together. More worms appeared and its bulk thickened, sheltering