Spreading Wings
Whoosh—
An unseasonable downpour was throwing every obstacle it could invent into our path.
"Damn it, this country doesn't usually get rain like this…!"
"Save the complaining for later."
"More importantly—this is the right way, isn't it, Ren?!"
I nodded through the driving rain as we ran, answering Huey's question.
"I came this far with Martin yesterday, so yeah."
Who would have thought that playing with the little kids who'd shown up first thing that morning would actually pay off.
I looked up at the slope beyond the stretch of road that had been flooded yesterday and shouted.
"That's the quarry up there!"
We crossed the path where the water was already rising and climbed all the way to the top of the rise. The first thing that came into view was the vast quarry, cut in stepped terraces like a giant staircase.
"Where's Hanson?"
"Down there."
"…Ugh. Of course he'd pick the worst possible spot."
At the very bottom of the quarry, a man was trapped among a pile of boulders that had settled just short of crushing him—right in front of the drainage channel dug to carry off groundwater and rainwater during work.
"Hanson!!"
Huey spotted him exactly as Irene had described—caught while trying to open the closed waterway—and bellowed his name. The next instant I clapped a wing over Huey's mouth at the sight of something wrong in the distance.
"Are you all ri—mmph!"
"Yelling is dangerous."
…Granted, clamping his mouth shut with a rain-soaked wing left Huey's face a complete mess. Still. Below us, Hanson frantically drew an X with his hands, and I raised an arm in acknowledgment.
"Ren?"
"Pteh. What is it all of a sudden?"
"Look over there."
I pointed with a wing toward the far end of the quarry, opposite where we stood. The gouged-out shape of the cliff made it clear: the broken rock that had fallen from there was what had trapped Hanson. And through the cracks in the shattered cliff face, a massive fissure and a streaming ribbon of water were visible.
"…Without those boulders, he'd have been swept away already."
Huey was right. If the rocks that had blocked the channel and penned Hanson in hadn't been there, it wouldn't have been strange at all for the torrent to have carried him off by now. The real problem was that the water pooling behind the boulders was about to hit its limit.
"What do we do?"
"Getting down is easy. Getting back up is the issue."
As Huey said, climbing back over the rocks with the water already overflowing would be no simple feat.
…No choice, then.
"I'll go."
I said it while watching Carol, Irene, and the other villagers racing toward us from behind.
"With my leg strength, I can clear that height in one jump."
The nearest safe ledge from Hanson's position was roughly ten meters up. Jumping it with a person hanging off me would be cutting it close—but I was still a better fit for the job than Huey or Lucy.
"You sure?"
I took a deep breath and answered Huey's worried look.
"Don't worry. If something goes wrong, just back me up."
"…All right."
"Please don't push yourself too hard."
I threw off my rain cloak and started leaping down.
"Hup."
Three or four jumps later, the rain only grew heavier.
"Miss Ren! It's dangerous!"
"Never mind that—are you hurt?!"
Hanson was shouting at me not to come closer as I approached. When I asked, he shook his head in a panic.
Good. No injuries, then. That meant I could afford to be a little rough.
"Move!"
I made the final leap down to where Hanson stood.
"You're really all right?"
"Ah—yes…"
I double-checked that he wasn't hurt.
"We're going up there now, so hang on tight from behind."
"…What?"
"No time for questions—hurry!"
Water was starting to burst violently through the gaps in the rocks; the limit had clearly been reached. I barked the order a little roughly.
"E-excuse me."
"It might hurt a bit—just bear with it!"
As Hanson locked his arms around my neck, I told him to hold on for dear life if he didn't want to die. Then I drew a deep breath.
"Hah… here we go!"
The instant I kicked off the ground with everything I had, I knew.
Ah. I'm screwed.
I'd put too much force into the final leap. Those damn talons of mine had driven straight into the earth. My body began to fall short, about a meter shy of the safe ledge.
"Ren!!"
"Ren! Look out!"
From above, Huey and Lucy came racing down—and somehow their movements started to look slower and slower, as if the world itself were grinding to a halt.
—It would be so much easier if you'd just accept it. For me. And for you.
—Since it's your first time, I'll help you out specially.
—Remember this well. This is how it's done.
In a world that had frozen completely still, a woman's voice reached me. I'd never heard it before—and yet somehow it felt familiar. The presence behind the voice said its piece and vanished.
Then, as time began to flow again—
Click.
Something inside me that had been out of alignment snapped into place. Like a stopped gear starting to turn.
"Ren!!"
"Ren! Look out!"
Watching Ren plummet again with Hanson on her back, Huey and Luciella threw themselves down the quarry in a desperate rush.
If only it weren't raining…!
Every Taoist technique Huey could use was lightning-based; one careless cast and he'd electrocute Ren and Hanson both. He fretted under his breath, fingers worrying at the bundle of talismans in his coat—
"I'm jumping down!"
"Lucy!"
—just as Luciella, who'd reached the lower level first, prepared to leap after Ren.
Whoooom…
A sudden blast of hot wind roared up from below.
"…Are you watching?" Caroline murmured, standing at the quarry's entrance and folding her wings together as if in prayer as she gazed down. "Your successor has spread her wings most splendidly."
"O great progenitor. May you rest in peace."
FWOOOOSH—!
In the next instant, crimson flame erupted from the floor of the quarry—a blaze vast enough to vaporize the pouring rain in a single breath.
"Wha—?!"
"Master!! Get back!!"
Luciella, already braced to jump, hastily raised her coffin as a shield against the fire—but a wall of flame that swirled and burst outward could hardly be stopped by covering only the front.
"It's all right," Caroline murmured, watching the two of them. "That fire does not burn the living."
True to her word, even after the flames swept past, neither Huey nor Luciella had so much as a scorch mark on them.
"…Huh?"
"It's… warm…?"
And then—
Flap.
A figure shot upward on a great beat of wings, trailing rippling fire along their edges.
"Hey—old man! Don't pass out on me! Hey—!!"
Ren, wings wreathed in dancing flame, was shouting at Hanson as he started to slip unconscious from her back.
"Whoa! That was close."
She caught him with one foot just as his hands let go, then beat her wings again.
"Huey! Lucy! Catch this guy!"
"She's… flying…"
"Ren! Are you okay?!"
Lucy stared blankly; Huey called out, voice tight with worry.
"I'm fine for now."
She handed Hanson off to Huey, landed, and began turning this way and that to inspect her own wings—still flickering with fire, as if she couldn't quite believe it herself.
Whoosh—
The rain returned in force, and the flames slowly died away. The three of them let out a shared breath of relief and smiled at one another.
"…What even am I?"
I'd never heard of a bird beastman who could spit fire.
"Still fretting over that?"
"At this rate you'll poke holes in your wings."
There had been a few complications, sure—but we'd gotten Hanson out, and now we were back at Carol's general store, drying off and killing time.
"Whew. You all did so well."
"Ah—Carol."
Carol had gone to check on Hanson quickly and asked us to wait; now she was back.
"They say he's perfectly fine. All thanks to you, baby."
"More importantly, I've got a question."
The moment she stepped inside and started shaking the rain from her wings, I decided to ask the thing that had been bothering me.
"…Do your people usually breathe fire and stuff?"
"Oh, goodness no."
Carol smiled brightly, as if to say don't be ridiculous.
"I told you, didn't I? You're far more remarkable than you think you are, baby."
Apparently the conversation from two days ago hadn't just been about race in general.
"You see, our kind has existed in this world since long before the beastman races were even born."
"Huh?"
"Well—these days no one remembers the old history, so everyone just mistakes us for a type of beastman."
Among the kin who remained, she said, she was probably the only one who still remembered.
"Our true name is—Harpy."
Carol spoke the word with a look of pure relief.
"Harpy…"
"And you, baby, are a truly special existence even among us."
"I was human, though?"
"Yes. Even so."
Even if I somehow turned back into a human, she said, that fact would never change.
"What I'm permitted to tell you ends here. The rest you'll have to discover for yourself."
With that, Carol closed the subject.
"Ugh… somehow this just got more complicated."
"Tell me about it."
"Still, isn't it better than having no information at all?"
The villagers had asked us to wait a little longer—they had a gift for us—so the three of us sprawled around the table and talked it over.
"Well, Lucy's right. And I can fly now, so I should just count it as a good thing."
At the time, I was simply happy that I'd learned to fly. I never once thought about what would come after.
…About what future those turning gears would bring.