"A place."
"We'll work out the details later. In the meantime, get some rest, eat something. I've already got people tracking the flock."
Slowly Ari turned and left the room. If this was true... An almost painful burst of joy exploded inside him. Dad was going to help. Dad had said he was proud of him. He was going to get Max all to himself. It was like Christmas and his birthday and sort of Halloween, all rolled up into one.
97
Have you ever-no, I guess you never have. If you've never flown with hawks, there's no way you'd be able to understand what it's like. Maybe if you've swum with sharks or something, not like at SeaWorld but in the ocean. That might be kind of close to this feeling.
I looked over at Nudge. Her face was serene, curly hair streaming behind her. We had just crossed the border from Virginia into North Carolina. The Appalachian Mountains rose beneath us, not as high and not nearly as pointy as the Rockies. These were older ranges, and time had softened them. See? Some of that geography stuff stuck with me after all.
We were high, high up, where oxygen was pretty thin. The sun was hot and bright on our backs and wings, and we had nothing but open sky all around us in every direction. Best of all, we'd spotted a flock of broad-winged hawks and joined them.
At first they'd scattered, wondering who the heck these huge, ugly raptors were dropping down on them, but then they'd cautiously circled back. Now we were wheeling in and among them, flying in a loose formation, the six of us and maybe twelve of them. I'd already hissed at Total to be very quiet and not make a sound. He huddled in Iggy's arms, nose quivering, small black paws twitching as he chased them in his mind.
"This is incredible," the Gasman said, tilting one wing down to soar in a huge circle around us. I grinned at him. Just two hours ago we'd been screeching out of Anne's yard as Erasers swarmed out of vans, aiming their sights at us. Now we were free, breathing thin, pure air, surrounded by creatures who showed us what to aim for: their fierce, proud beauty, awesome grace and flying skill, and unjudging acceptance of beings so incredibly different from them.
It was a huge change from, say, Erasers, who mainly showed us how to not be clumsy, predatory idiots. And I for one was thankful.
"Maybe we could just live with them," Nudge said wistfully.
"Yeah," said Gazzy. "'Cause you love eating raw squirrels and snakes and stuff."
"Eew. I forgot about that," said Nudge.
"Anyway, guys, we can't live with them," I said, stepping up to my role as full-time rainer-on-parader. "We need to get farther away."
"I want to go to Florida. You said," Total chimed in, and though the hawks had warily accepted our speech, Total's voice made them realize that he was alive. Several of them sheared off, effortlessly tipping a few feathers downward to shift their whole position in the airstream. It was so completely streamlined, the way they did it, and I practiced it myself.
We flew out of the hawks' territory, and they left us with hoarse cries. One by one we sheared off, soaring in huge, symmetrical arcs and then joining up again.
"It's like synchronized swimming," Gazzy said, pleased.
"No, it's like exhibition jets," said Iggy. "Like the Air Force Thunderbirds. We need stuff so we can leave huge trails of colored smoke behind us."
"Oh, yeah!" said Gazzy, totally psyched. "Like, we could get sulfur and-"
"And this would help our whole 'lie low, disappear' act how?" I said, bringing them back to reality.
"Oh, yeah," said Iggy.
"Maybe someday," I said, hating to see him and the Gasman so disappointed. "In the meantime, let's do a vertical stack!" I said, angling upward into position. Fang put himself directly below me, carefully out of range of my feet, because he's just paranoid that way. Iggy was below him, then Gazzy, Nudge, and finally Angel on the bottom, as white as the clouds we were flying over. We were six stacked bird kids, flying in unison, making only one shadow on the clouds. Totally cool.
Of course it was too freaking peaceful to last, right? I mean, there was no way I was going to wallow in serenity for more than two seconds, right?
No, of course not.
What happened was, Gazzy suddenly pushed upward into Iggy, wanting to knock him off balance, the way all of us have done to each other a million times. It would have been fine, and even funny, if Iggy hadn't been holding, say, a mutant talking dog. For example.
But he was. And when Gazzy bumped up into him, he knocked Total out of Iggy's arms. Total gave a startled yip and then he dropped like a piece of coal, right through the clouds and out of sight.
98
Angel reached for Total as he plummeted past her, but her fingers only grazed his fur.
"Total!" she cried, and Total started barking and howling, dropping farther away, his voice trailing off.
"Oh, crap," I muttered, then veered down past Fang. "If I'm not back in two minutes, do not let Angel have another pet." Then I tucked my wings behind me and started to drop.
"Max! Get Total!" Angel shouted after me, her voice panicky.
"No, I'm dropping straight down through clouds just for fun," I said to myself. I know people always fantasize about dropping through clouds or walking on clouds, landing on clouds. The thing is, clouds are wet. Wet and usually chilly. And you can't see anything. So, not as high on the fun scale as you might think.
I followed the sound of Total's howling, letting myself fall toward the earth. Suddenly the mist cleared and I saw the ground, green and brown, below me. Plus a bunch of white-
"Aaahh!" I cried, as I dropped out of the cloud and practically onto the back of a glider plane. My feet actually brushed its thin skin before I pulled my knees up and angled my wings sharply. I slightly scraped the plane's right wing before I could pull enough to the side, then I moved my wings powerfully and rose up several yards, out of the way.
Gliders are virtually soundless. That was the lesson for today. This close I could hear the wind whistling against the smooth, streamlined plane, but there had been no sound to tip me off. That had been close. If I'd dropped in front of it...
I could no longer hear Total. Dang it! My eyes raked the air below me. I tucked my wings back and aimed downward again, shooting like a rocket instead of just letting myself fall. I poured on my new supernatural speed and roared toward the ground, and suddenly Total was in view and getting larger fast.
He was still howling pathetically. There was no time for me to slow down, so I just shot toward him, scooped him into my arms, then pulled out of the steep, steep dive about two hundred feet from the mountainside. Raising my face to the sun, I rushed upward, my wings feeling like steel, like fusion rockets. I looked ahead to make sure there was nothing above me, then I finally glanced down to check on Total.
He was crying. Large tears made wet streaks through his black fur. "You saved me," he choked out. "I couldn't fly. I was falling. But you got me."
"Yeah, I wouldn't let you fall," I told him, and rubbed behind his ears. Still weeping, he licked my cheek gratefully. I clenched my teeth.
The rest of the flock was circling overhead-Fang had made Angel stay with him. She was peering down anxiously, and as soon as she saw me coming she hurried to meet me. "You got him!" she shouted happily. "You saved him!"
Total wiggled excitedly in my arms, and I let him go over to Angel's embrace. He weighed almost half as much as she did, so she couldn't hold him long, but right now they were crying in each other's arms. Fine. Let him lick her. I rubbed my cheek against my sweatshirt shoulder.
Angel was actually crying herself, I realized. She almost never cried-none of us cried easily, and Angel was unnaturally stoic for a six-year-old. The fact that she was crying because she'd almost lost Total told me that she was majorly attached to him. Which wasn't great. I mean, I liked Total fine, but we still didn't know much about him. I wasn't 100 percent sure we could trust him.