Gaffriel 34

The Sentinels were only my fourth favorite clan, which means they were my second least favorite next to the Grells.

The sentinels, as a whole, were just uptight and too formal. They wore human clothes and stayed in school until their twenties for college. But they had traditional military training that gave them opportunities, and they engaged in ‘private security’ like nothing that Kiromir and his team did. They were good, but they weren’t free, and they liked it. To this day, that thought haunted me.

The control, the organization, the regimen, and the way they lived felt so utilitarian and oppressive that I wondered how they could breathe. Incidentally, I heard rumors that there were adults that couldn’t even fly! They saw our flight as a nuisance, a primal instinct.

I thought about what I’d heard of them from the women that joined us, Letti in particular. I knew she had been Sentinel at one point, but the summer she got her fires, Letti melded with every wanderer male of age that she could get her hands on because she wanted to taste sky. She had been thirty-eight years Dimal’s junior, but she knew what she wanted. From the summer she turned 18, she chased his fires so hard that Dimal couldn’t bear to leave her behind. Though they hadn’t bound because Letti never let it get that far, it would be only a matter of time. She toyed with Dimal, fickle and teasing for nearly a year. Though he begged her for completion, she didn’t relent because she wanted to taste our freedom, to keep from having kids just yet.

Niala ruined that part of Letti. The moment Letti pulled her out of Kiromir’s arms, every nesting instinct within her activated into a festering pot of mewling hormones. Still, her boisterous attitude, foul mouth, and warrior’s spirit cemented her as Wanderer to the core long before she took Dimal’s left.

When Letti first joined us, my wings were only just getting strong enough to fly. So I worked them daily, beating at the ground, jumping, and fighting the air. At the time, Letti joined me every time she saw me, struggling to get airborne with heaving breaths and weak wings. In time, we went on long flights and glided through cold currents. I didn’t think much of it all those years ago. But now, I wondered if Letti had learned to fly with me. Of course, she would deny it if I asked.

The Sentinel’s pristine fairgrounds swept around us. The acres of land they owned sprawled in all directions, designed for all manner of fairs, events, and circuses. But, this week of the year, only we used it. For entertainment, they put up a circus tent, plenty of yawning canopies for light flying and play. Beyond the places to fly, small tents peppered the landscape, perfectly white matching structures with sealed flaps obscuring socializing families, food, and some lessons. I sat in on a class or two every year to brush up on my mana and things, but I felt like I knew more than the teachers at this point. The migrations here always felt more like a conference than a reunion.

Last year had been my first registration. The Sentinel woman in the booth asked my name, my family, my clan. I was Gaffriel, son of Yarrik of the Wanderers, of the line of GreenTree. My identification had ‘Gaffriel Greentree’ on it like it was some sort of name I’d go by. My family did not define me. However, the Sentinels did.

They kept lists and registers of all the kids and adults born into the tribe. Every year, they made a list of unbound people and matched us based on family, station, and blood. With each matching, they made a list for us to seek out those people to test our fires. Despite the formality of it, I appreciated that they avoided us melding with our cousins. My father’s family had many children, and while people saw it as a good thing, it also meant that I shared blood with far too many people.

The jehannis, exceptions to the tradition, had to ask for special lists. Though, they were less strict about the levels of relatedness between swans for obvious reasons. We needed children born, and these lists facilitated that. A jehanni would never bring children into this world. My heart clenched as I thought about Kiromir not having his own children, but Niala was plenty. She was for me, at least.

I approached the tent with the registration booth. This year, the woman who had the records leafed through a stack of papers until she found my name. Three names sprawled across the paper in neat handwriting, and I wilted when none of those names were Niala. Though, I’d happily throw this paper into the trash just to go off and do it anyway. I couldn’t wait for Niala to chase other fires and find out that mine felt better. I know hers did for me.

I scanned the list again, and I recognized one of the girls’ names on the list. Unfortunately, I had known her to be a rather foul-tempered lowborn girl ten years my senior with a Wanderer mom. We weren’t related, but her family wasn’t my favorite. Last year, I felt so excited about this, but I only looked for one name this year. They probably didn’t have Niala listed as having her fires yet. But then again, I knew many unrelated women here were unbound. The only three they offered me were just the ones they found ‘acceptable’ for my station. Knowing how stuck-up Sentinel girls were, I’d not be chasing fires with any of them.

As I wandered my way to the tents, a blonde-haired girl with pretty green eyes caught my attention. I recognized her immediately and bounded over, arms stretched out.

“PRIM!”

She caught me around my waist, and I suddenly realized that I had grown and she hadn’t. I had a good foot on her, nearly. Then, bouncing, she looked up at me and grinned. Technically, we were second cousins somehow by one of my mom’s siblings, but I’d not met most of the family surrounding that side. Probably because my mom always hated that she bonded with a wanderer, or her family did. I wondered why she bonded with him if she hated the Wanderers so much.

“I got my fire!” She bleated with excitement as she held out her hands and flashed a green flame over them for a moment. I glanced about. We weren’t supposed to be showing fires or feathers outside of a tent, but I celebrated with her all the same as people turned glaring eyes on us.

“You’re a healer!” I said.

“I know! I got my fires a few months ago, and they’ve been training me,” She squealed.

Every part of me tingled with excitement for her. I knew Niala would be too, and a question glinted in her eyes. They had been friends for a while.

“Ni got her fires, too,” I said as I guided her out of the way. We strolled from others at my lead. While I didn’t think we were hiding Niala’s fires from anyone I knew of, I didn’t want to advertise her news. The Wanderers all knew, and Kiromir didn’t say that we needed to hold back.

Prim gasped with excitement. “I bet she got lightning.” Her eyes twinkled.

“Nope!” I kept my voice flat and metered. My reaction would make or break Prim’s.

“Fire?”

“Nope!”

“Oh my freakin’ feathers, ice?” She said, ready to squeal. Niala had prayed for ice.

I shook my head.

“Surely she’s not a healer, too?” Prim commented, grinning wide with delight.

“Nope.”

“She’s a blank?” Prim’s face fell slack as her brows turned up in pity. Palpable misery descended over her like a veil. We knew a few other blanks in the groups, their colorless fires functionless and weak.

“She got one we’ve never seen before. We had to call the elders. It’s black,” I said with as much excitement as I could muster. My positive reactions may spur others.

“Black? Like the black seraph’s fire?” Her eyes went wide and round with a gleaming shimmer. Since Prim got a better education on Wildling history and language than most sentinels, I knew she would think similarly to us. Her family had been old school like that.

“I think so.” My cheeks tinged pink, and the corner of my mouth lifted in a polite grin.

Prim covered her lips with her fingertips and moved to sit in the worn grass. Dust and light soot coated her pants. I noticed the ground had been scorched. This meant that the Horizons clan had been there before us. The Sentinels torched the earth with flame throwers to get rid of the feathers we shed between migrations. A local university had gotten caught with a flight feather at one point, and they’d exercised caution since. The feather mysteriously disappeared from custody after a day or so.

“So, that pretty much cements it. There’s another tribe out there, something that’s not Wildling,” She spoke with awe and delight.

I shrugged. With Niala’s strange ikris, wings and appearance, I couldn’t deny it. Niala couldn’t help but be from another tribe, a lost one.

“Not like Kiromir has been able to find them. They’ve been searching for years.” That, too, made me sad to think about; Niala was even more alone.

Prim had met Niala on our first Migration with her. Niala only picked up smatterings of Anil, and though everyone had this insistence that I was too dumb to know Anil, I muddled through with her. It’s not that I didn’t know; I lacked the confidence and went quiet. I struggled with the words, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t speak or understand. People just assumed, and I stopped correcting them. They assumed a lot of things I never bothered to correct. Trying to explain that a Greentree wasn’t dumb felt like trying to convince them that Moonbrand, Skysinger, and Soulstars weren’t royalty.

I’d been sparring with Krell for the past year, working hard to get better. Prim’s eyes raked my frame, and her grin went crooked.

“Enough about Niala. You’ve gotten biiiig,” she giggled as she reached for my arm. I pulled back, and her arms nabbed my bicep. I could lift her up fairly easily with it as she swung and wrapped her legs around my side. We were good friends, had been for a while, but I felt suddenly self-conscious of another woman touching me.

Prim stood about five foot three, diminutive to my six-foot or so. I had been growing so fast that I hadn’t kept up with it. As a result, my legs hurt all the time, and I just felt stretched thin. When your brain still thinks you’re sub-five-feet-whatever… you just miscalculate your reach a lot. Though, the more I practiced here recently, the better I got.

“Hey! Get off!” I laughed, tugging at her. Every inch of her thin, wiry muscle clung to me. As women, they were trained to be quick and quiet. Men, especially those of us from broad families, relied on brute strength. I felt afraid that I’d hurt her if I tugged her free too hard. Her green fires made her valuable in other ways besides fighting, after all. She didn’t need to be strong. They needed her more for her pedigree—however low it might be.

I reached to tug her off of me and found her frame so slight—so easy to toss. Because of this, her slender frame effortlessly flipped over my shoulder. I couldn’t risk hurting her, so I just tugged and slung her up and over my arm. She squealed as I did so before running towards one of the grand circus tents.

Niala caught up with us then, a shy yet bitter look on her face, aura tickling my senses beneath her suppression. It felt strange to sense her aura even when most others couldn’t. I’d been able to do it a while and half-smiled at her. She had that look she always got when Rolyn had spoken to her. But that didn’t stop Prim. She hopped off of me and bolted for her, bowling into Niala with glee. The smaller of them had recently turned fifteen—full of spark and delight.

“Wooow, you’re big too,” Prim said with glee. Niala only had five or six inches on her.

She lashed her dusty grey-tipped brown wings hard, jolting against Niala with that begging look to fly. I knew that the Sentinels weren’t allowed to fly like we were. The migrations always felt like too much of a treat for them. Her weakness showed just by the fact that my ikris didn’t even tingle when she lashed. I wondered how often she had been allowed to fly and where they could do so safely. I didn’t like it.

Niala kept her wings inside. In sympathy, I made an effort to let mine out at the flash of the petite blonde’s. Lashing after someone else showed submission, but it made Prim happy to see. Niala always resisted it, and I wondered now if it had anything to do with her tail or just her sheer strength.

Niala carefully slid her wings free. She shimmied in a fluid, practiced gesture. Every movement came gingerly, and stray downy feathers littered in her wake. I’d scruffed them as best as they were going to get last night, but the molt always left feathers sitting awkward, like changing your hair part only far more severe. Surprisingly, though, they looked decent. Then again, they always looked decent to me.

I might be biased.

Her feathers gleamed with sleekness, the sheen on them fresh from the night before, pinions straight. She didn’t have much volume to them, but they didn’t look haggard now. I made sure of that, and my eyes couldn’t stop trailing my handiwork.

Twenty-four hours and I’ll be marking those.

“Slingshot?” Prim giggled. I snapped my focus back to her and bore the brunt of her quirked brow and knowing smile. Niala appeared equally distracted by something far more disquieting as her eyes drifted towards the ground. So, I nudged her with my wing, and her warmth against the crush of my feathers sent tingles through me.

Niala and I exchanged glances, and I bent my knees to match her height. We made a hammock of arms between us, and Prim leaped into it. We counted to three as our arms swung in tandem while bearing Prim’s light weight.

“In, dra, tra!” We counted before slinging our arms, sending Prim skywards into the tent. Her wings spread, her body lined up, and her small wings beat hard to gain extra altitude.

Two great poles stood high in the sky, and she flew fast up to the top of them to grab onto one of the holds they had nailed every few feet or so.

“Prim got her fires,” I told Niala quietly as we watched her laugh.

“I heard her mom talking on the way over. She’s a healer.” Niala shook her wings out and adjusted her footing. She bent her knees, cocked her wings, and leaped to flap her way higher. Her wings were made for soaring and striking like ours were meant for fluttering and drifting. Her sharp, well-muscled wingbases cocked and struck with sharp cracking whiplike noises against the air. She went for one of the support ropes and hung there, slender arms above her head, wings cocked and ready on her back.

The hem of her shirt fluttered about, showing hints of skin. Interestingly, the tone on her form stood out a little more than the other women, and I liked how sturdy she looked. I blamed it on Kiromir having her at our sides, in training and holding her own with us boys all the time. Niala could go head to head with me and win every time. Hell, I saw her floor Krell and Thanus a few times. Nodak never stood a chance.

Biologically, she seemed predisposed to broad strength, but her power also came from her dedication to Kiromir. She never wanted to leave his side. Kiromir always stayed in some sort of training or flock duties and associated mainly with the other of their ‘hunting’ parties. So, by proxy, Niala got the best training a Wanderer could have.

I took off after her with fluid strokes of my wings and snagged the support line with a grin next to her. She looked over at me with a half-smile.

“You get your list yet?” I asked.

She shook her head, and her aura flicked.

“Come on, we’ll go get it together,” I told her, and she looked away. She didn’t look happy.

“Let’s just have fun for a while?” Her pleading tones should have made my stomach knot with joy, but simmering anger started to bubble hot and deep in my belly because I knew that someone had hurt her.