I lie on my back for a moment longer. Ice shards threaten overhead. No, not ice – crystals, precious and sharp as daggers. I shudder to think of the stalactites and the cave collapse. That was a narrow escape. The song gets louder now we’re out of the water. It takes on a melody, dissonant and melancholic. It’s haunting, lapping over itself, repeating, echoing and harmonising. My limbs are heavy, and I’m rooted to the spot. There’s a spasm in my heart, a tugging at the muscle, like a cramp or a seizure. I cry out, the sound cutting through the song.
The singing stops, and Isagani and I slowly crawl up onto our knees. Sinigang drags us up by the damp clothing sticking to our skin. He gives us a, perhaps deliberate, nip to check we still have life in our limbs.
Sinigang’s ears perk up, fur standing on end as he arches his back.
I follow his gaze to something in the middle of the cavern. It opens its arms, no, its wingspan, feathers fluttering in the movement. Gold and reds, and colours I can’t name, couldn’t see before. The beast is as tall as the cavern, as though it has grown to fill the space. Its eyes are huge and terrified, the pupils darting between each of us in turn.
‘What is that thing?’ I ask, unable to tear my eyes away.
It opens its throat, and the wailing song pours out. It’s the sound of my heart tugging at my breastbone, a thousand hurts and hopestangled like a ball of wool. The song pulls each out slowly, dragging me forwards towards the creature. The bird wraps its mighty wings around an egg in the centre of collected detritus. It turns its face away from us and sings to the egg, now a gentle and soporific tune. No, not an egg. Something curled into a ball, fast asleep in its feathers. A small girl in a tattered dress and one shoe, dark hair strewn over its talons: Biba.
chapter fifty-six
hanan
Ris holds the emptyair, as if willing Biba back into her grasp. She pauses, still as stone for a moment, and I scour the dark maw of the cave. In the distance we hear Biba’s laugh, uncanny and distorted. It’s followed by a song: not the bright rhymes of a child but a plaintive, otherworldly tune. It reminds me of the chants and recitations we would offer in the Temple of Aistra.
When she hears it, Ris drops to her belly and worms her way into the tunnel on her elbows. I grab her ankles and haul her out.
Her face is caked with mud, eyes ablaze. ‘Biba’s gone down there. I’m not leaving her.’
‘You’ll get trapped. You’re not as small as she is.’
‘I’m not leaving her,’ she repeats stubbornly.
‘Then let’s find another tunnel. One big enough for all of us.’ I look pointedly down at Raina. She is suckling quietly on my dress. My breasts are sore and heavy, and I feel something leaking from my nipples. My body feels stronger down here, how I feel on a good day when my muscles aren’t screaming at me. I’ll need to feed Raina at some point soon, and I think I can this time.
‘Paranish, we brought three children down here to die,’ Ris says, slumping against the wall with horror in her eyes.
‘No one’s dying today,’ I say, with more faith in my voice than in my heart. ‘I’ve destroyed enough lives.’
I take her hand and guide her away from the tunnel. We move into another passage, seeing with our hands and feet, wary of sudden drops and false tunnels. I try to breathe slow and steady, if nothing but to set a good example. I want everyone calm. I can’t have her panicking as she did in the collapse. That would spell ruin for us all. And if I panic, Raina might panic.
‘What happened to you?’ Ris says after a time.
‘The worst thing that can happen to someone like me. They bound me.’
‘What does that mean?’ she asks tentatively. There’s a curiosity there, and a dread. We can’t see each other, using touch as our only guide, and there’s something about the darkness that makes us both more bold.
‘It locks your power within you,’ I say. ‘You can’t use your gift. You’re an ordinary mortal with no protection from illness or injury. You can’t channel life force.’
I can feel Ris stiffen with shock and then squeeze my hand.
‘But what you did to fix my ribs, wasn’t that magic?’
‘Not my magic. There’s an energy down here.’
I lead, inching forward painfully slowly. We scrape our skin and bruise our knees on the sharp, unforgiving rocks in a tight crevice. The air coming in is foul, and I swallow down the bile, hot and acid and in my throat.Breathe. You must breathe.I think of bad air. There’s nowhere else to go. We wriggle through to the next passage and come out into a bigger chamber. There’s more air, but it’s as acrid as before. How long has it been trapped down here? Ris emerges next to me, clearing her eyes and gasping. There’s more light here, a gloomy kind to see by, but being able to see her again is reassuring.
‘Are you hurt?’ I ask. She’s scratched and banged up but doesn’t look too bad considering she’s broader and taller than I am.
‘No. You?’
I bite down pain radiating from my arm. She notices my wince. ‘Your arm, what’s wrong?’
‘I contorted my wrist going through the tunnel,’ I say, examining the awkward angle of my hand.
‘Oh Paranish, what should we do?’
