Whisperworld
Chapter 29
The storm passed harmlessly over Angel City, dispersed by the flutterbies’ passage, and thirty thousand people watched in awed silence. There had been violence and battles in the streets of the Whisperward, refugees and citizens against Blackthumbs, Blackthumbs against robots. There was damage and lives had been lost, but the opening of the Tear of God had struck the Whisperward dumb and the stillness persisted. For now, at least.
There were a lot of questions and for the first time, I was the one answering them instead of asking. There were fanatics among the Greenguard and the Gardeners, but with Thorn and Gregory cuffed and the robot activation codes in our hands, we could keep things quiet until a more lasting peace could be established.
It would take some time for the people of the Whisperward to accept that their angels had been a swarm of psychic insects all along, and that their continuing protection would require human dreameaters learning to work the strange white pillar of machinery. The flutterbies were too few and too weak to save us yet. But Thorn laughed bitterly when I told him that his threat would come to pass, that humans would operate the Stormsphere once more.
“You’ll never control them,” he sneered. “You can’t trust dreameaters.”
“Watch me,” I said, putting my arm around Kiyu.
Protection would have to come from the Whitefinger warrens for a while, but the Halos would be useful for finding more young dreameaters in Angel City. There was still a lot of hatred for the psychics, but the Blackthumbs were good at following orders and now those orders were to protect the dreameaters that they once hunted. It wouldn’t be easy, but the people of the Whisperwards would learn acceptance.
They had to. Without the psychics, none of us were going to survive.
I thought often of Liam, how I wished I had protected him. If he could have gone to the flutterbies back then, when he heard them crying for help, when this all began… Too many good people had died for the wrong reasons. Kiyu held me while I cried for them.
They asked me to lead the Greenguard, of course. I think I laughed. I recommended Jacks for the job, once he was recovered from his wounds. Which wouldn’t take long, I suspected. Jacks was a tough bastard. I would have been a terrible leader and he was far better suited to the job. Besides, the flutterbies and I had made an agreement and I intended to live up to my end of the bargain.
“There’s another generation of caterpillars still down there. A lot of them are sick and a lot of them will die, but the rest will grow their wings and join the journey,” I said. I leaned back and let the gentle wind tug at my hair. Was it my imagination or did it smell sweeter? “But the world has changed a lot since the Gardeners first captured them. The flutterbies can’t just return to their migration like nothing’s happened.”
“What will you do, then?” Kiyu asked.
We sat on the roof of the Greenguard base with a magnificent view of the open sphere and its pale, floating contents. With the black shield still lowered, there was no need for the shrine or the key cards now. Everyone could see the gleaming white tower. We would need to rename that thing… Stormsphere just didn’t make much sense anymore.
“There are other Whisperwards out there. The machines inside the Stormspheres still work. The flutterbies needed to be free, but even they can’t survive on freedom alone. Everything has to eat and there’s only desert beyond the cities.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Gardeners were right about one thing,” I said. “We really do need the plants. We need the flowers and the Gardeners’ expertise in raising them.”
“Do you think Thorn will help?” Kiyu asked.
“He’s a prick, but Thorn’s got decades of experience managing the greenhouses. We could use his help, but if he won’t work with the flutterbies, we’ll talk to Martin or Torres. Maybe one of them followed Byron’s research. We still need the flowers.”
Kiyu leaned against me and I put my arm around her. She kissed my cheek while I held her close. I still had to run the plan I had hatched with the flutterbies past Diego and the Gardeners, but I was fairly certain that they would agree. We all wanted to live, after all. The world was a dangerous enough place without fighting each other.
“The flutterbies will need somewhere to go,” I told Kiyu. “Not to be imprisoned, but to rest. To eat and lay their eggs. The forests and fields that their migration used to protect are gone. But the Gardeners know how to take care of plants. We’ll keep growing the flowers for the flutterbies, and we can open the greenhouses to them. To everyone. In time, with the flights banishing the storms along their migration paths, the gardens will spread. There could be forests again. But we need each other to make this work.”
“Together, we can make the world beautiful again,” said Kiyu.
I nodded. “But someone needs to tell the other Whisperwards what happened here. We can’t just execute psychics like Liam Fox. No one should have to die like that. We’ve got to open the Stormspheres and the gardens. It’s going to take some convincing. There will be a lot of questions and people who don’t want to listen.”
“Wind City is a long way off,” Kiyu said. She tipped my hat back to kiss me. “And it’s a dangerous trip.”
“I don’t know. It won’t be so bad,” I told her, “as long as I have a partner.”
