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Freefall lurched in a side-gust thrown off by storm clouds behind them. David gripped tighter with his knees and hung on grimly. They weren’t going back—inclement storm or no.
After the Scotts’ return from the World Beneath, he’d held every intention of resuming regular Dinotopian life. He was going to introduce their father to the dinosaur citizens, coach him through the adjustment period like David wished someone had coached him; make up with Karl (almost dying together kind of put their little brotherly scraps into perspective); apologise to Marion for acting boorishly—
Thunder rolled like nature laughing at him. He felt his face twisting under his mask into something ugly. He made no attempt to smooth it, or calm the turbulence inside.
One step into Zippeau’s house had thrown all plans out the window. He’d been in the library, picking up an annotated biography of Gideon Altair for Romana. The Canyon City Library held a great number of scrolls but Waterfall City's collection was second only to the Great Library of Sauropolis. Bouncing the scroll in a leather travel tube, he’d woven through the afternoon chaos with good-natured haste. He’d wanted to check Freefall was safe in the Rookery before the storm rolled in.
The same storm tainted the sky behind them an ugly icy green; he repressed the urge to nudge Freefall into flying faster. The azdarchid picked up on David’s restlessness anyway: his powerful shoulders surged and the trees below whipped by. It didn’t help. David wanted to be gone already, and the vize around his ribs wasn’t loosening any with every mile Waterfall City fell away behind them.
He’d stayed his course from the library with casual single-mindedness. The luxuriant Dinotopian clothing – gold, turquoise, royal purple, viridian and ruby – no longer dazzled him. Nor did the tantalising whiffs of spice and grilled nuts on the breeze alongside the sweetness of jasmine and orange blossoms from the arbours lead him astray as they once might have. Marion had agreed to take a walk by the canal with him, and David intended to tell her he was sorry for the way things transpired in Canyon City. To… make amends. He’d been avoiding it all week. He’d finally had to admit it was time to stop running.
It was a perfect afternoon for it: warm and mellow, with a light wind down the river scouring the edge off the sun. The storm was due to set in just before sundown, and the cool front ahead of it had blunted the summer’s edge. Karl had been upriver fishing with their father for two days. Zippeau was detained at the library until late. (The rediscovery of multiple entrances to the World Beneath and the Council’s public acknowledgement of a need for more sunstones had kept him hopping since the Scotts’ return). Everything was in place.
Freefall squawked at a flight of wood-pigeons that shot up at them from the trees, and snapped at the wing of one that didn’t change course quickly enough.
David thumped his neck reassuringly. “Let ‘em go, buddy.” He empathised with their inertia too deeply to watch one be lunch. Sometimes you committed too deeply to a course to realise the danger in time to save yourself.
Other times the hazards moved of their own accord. About to set the scroll down on the sideboard in Zippeau’s house, he’d drawn up short at a sound. Had he imagined—?
Another stifled sound. Definitely from the bedroom he had shared with Karl. Twenty-six have might been there. Zippeau hadn’t mentioned if Karl took her fishing or not. Setting the scroll down, David had padded down the hallway to the door. It was slightly ajar. It crossed his mind to call out, but something had held him back.
He’d stepped up to the crack and peered in.
Stone hands seized his ribcage. They squeezed what they found to pulp, then collapsed under their own weight and fell away, taking the bottom of his stomach with them.
Another breathy sound: half-giggle half-sigh. They fitted together so neatly atop the blankets, his brother and Marion. Perfect opposites: knees and foreheads touching; fingertips tracing a delicate wrist; bare feet pale against the dark fuzz of Karl’s comforter.
David barely remembered to take the scroll from the table. Its smooth tube hung heavy against his back now as they flew. He didn’t know if they would make it back to Canyon City ahead of the rain; if not—he prayed the oilcloth was enough to keep the scroll dry.
Marion must have arrived early. Karl must have given up on fishing, or forgotten something and returned for it. When Marion rang the doorbell, Karl must have answered. A muscle jumped in David’s jaw and his hands tightened reflexively on the harness. Alone, Karl and Marion would have had time to talk. Karl would have used his irrepressible charm: that charm that soothed angry fathers, deceived teachers, and seduced ex-girlfriends back into his arms.
It made David sick how easily Karl got everything. After the World Beneath, he’d thought Karl had found something that could change him. David thought he himself had changed; he thought after everything they’d been through together, he could finally understand Karl. He could learn to forgive his brother past transgressions and overlook his faults.
But that was a crock of horseshit. Karl would never change. Marion would never see him for what he truly was. And David – for all his good intentions – couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea of forgiving Karl for being a lying, cheating, manipulative prick. Or Marion, for falling for Karl’s act while being so righteously high-and-mighty about her virtues.
He was heartily sick of both of them. The sun could come and go a thousand times before he would be happy to set eyes on either of them again—that, and a thousand times again.
But he could make that happen. All of his things had been in a dormitory bunk in the Rookery; only Mayor Waldo’s petitioning of the Skybax Corps to allow a Hero of Dinotopia a few days to relax and recoup had kept David in Waterfall City. He’d felt his chest – weighty as if his very bones had been wrought of iron – lighten at the thought of climbing on the pteranodon’s back and just… going.
He could leave a message at the Rookery reception for his father (or whoever should come looking) that he had returned to Canyon City. Make a second brief stop by the dormitories to collect his kit, and then go straight to the roosts. He wasn’t running away. He wasn’t. It was simply time for him to return to work.
Entering the Sauropod Dwelling through the cavernous main doors, he’d cut across the graven compass rose on the stone floor to the stairs that would bypass the public floors and take him directly to the Rookery. He’d taken the steps two at a time.
By the time he reached the roosts, he was already miles ahead of himself, the ground slipping away from Freefall’s mighty wingstroke in his mind’s eye. It wasn’t running away. It was running toward. There was a difference—right?
Freefall swooped upward on a vertical thermal, leaving David’s stomach just above the trees. Thunder cracked behind them.
The storm was catching up. They’d eventually have to go to ground.
But they were free. And with the first spots of rain dampening his flight jacket and the sweeping winds of the storm urging them on, he finally felt it.