Stand on the Sky Read online

  It was cold, but not deadly cold. They were not going to die.

  Aisulu made a soft fist and banged Serik in the heart, because he was her brother and he’d saved them. “Good thinking, with the rocks.”

  He hit her back. “Good finding, with the horse.” He breathed out hard. “I think we’ll be okay.”

  “Okay?” She made her voice light to cover her nerves. “This is perfect! We’re not even going to get in trouble.” When they came staggering down out of the storm, brave and clever survivors, their parents would simply be glad to see them.

  Or at least, they would be glad to see Serik.

  Kazakhs nomads live in big families, ruled by the eldest brother: in their case, their uncle Dulat, who was fierce as a king. But Dulat had no children, and so if he was a king, then Serik was a prince. And if Serik was a prince, he was a shining one. He was fast, and sweet, and funny. He could ride anything from a billy goat to a bull yak, and his name had been Aisulu’s first word: she’d learned it because her mother was always shouting it across the steppes. Serik, get down from there! Serik, come back!

  And yet, for Serik, their mother’s scolding had never been truly angry. Serik was a handful, but a handful was what he supposed to be. Aisulu was a handful too, but that was different.

  She was not sure her mother would be quite as happy to see her.

  But that was for later. For now, they lay together. The blizzard went on. Serik kept shifting and shifting, which let the cold come in to brush against Aisulu with its blue hands. “Hold still,” she said when a shift tugged the blanket up to expose the nape of her neck. Serik held still for a while. But then he shifted again, slowly, as if trying to sneak the movement by her. Aisulu realized: he was lying with his weight on the painful spot in his leg. “Do you want to switch?” she asked.

  It would be risky for them to roll over. It would let out all the heat they’d hoarded. Serik did not seem to understand. He said nothing.

  “Turn over,” she said. “Take the weight off your sore leg?”

  She felt how her words hit him. He pulled a breath in and held very still. “There’s nothing wrong with my leg.”

  “Nobody sees it.”

  But she saw it.

  For a moment they were both speechless, breathing into each other’s faces. They were very close together. They loved each other. Surely they could say anything. “How long has it hurt?” Aisulu whispered. “Have you told anyone?”

  Aisulu’s nose was full of her brother’s smell: boy sweat and horse sweat, but something else, too, something sharp and angry, a smell that made her heart twist. Something—​he was sick, she realized. The thought punched the air out of her. It was the kind of blow that is so bad that for a moment all you feel is numbness.

  Aisulu felt numbness. She felt tears make her eyes wide.

  “It’s nothing,” Serik mumbled.

  “It’s not!”

  “It will heal itself.”

  “But what if it doesn’t? Serik, what if something is really wrong? We have to tell someone. Tell Mother—​tell Father.”

  “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare.”

  “But it might be . . .” she said, then stopped. She didn’t know what the limp might be. It wasn’t as if they had diagnosed all those doomed limping goats.

  Serik jerked out of her arms and thrust the blanket up. He pulled himself into a stiff crouch. The blizzard swirled in. The gathered snow slid onto their shoes. “Switch, then,” he said. “If you know what’s best. If you think you’ve got all the answers. Let’s just switch.”

  Silent, Aisulu rolled into his space. And then he lay down again, in her space, still facing her, but this time on his other leg. It was cold for a little while, and then it warmed again.

  “Serken . . .”

  “Don’t you get it?” Serik’s voice was low and rough. They were so close that she could feel the hitch in his breath. His hands were curled into fists between them, but he did not hit her—​whatever this pain was, it was not one that could connect them. “Don’t you get it, Aish? I can’t—​I can’t stay here if I’m limping. I can’t ride with the herd, or wrestle the goats, or—​any of it. They’ll send me away.”

  Serik, the golden child, the prince. He wanted the life that left Aisulu wanting more. But how could a boy with a limp rule a nomad family?

  “They won’t—​they’d never—” She curled a hand up and tapped it against his heart. “Serken—​together. We’ll tell them together.”

  “No!” The space between them was tiny, but his arms stiffened in it. He was pushing her away. “Don’t you dare, Aish. I’ll lose everything.” The stones under them were hard. The snow over them was heavy. “If you tell, I’ll lose everything,” said Serik, and Aisulu knew he was probably right. “And I’ll never forgive you, Aish. I’ll hate you forever.”

  Aisulu fell silent. Her throat felt as if it had been wound up in wire. It got tighter, and tighter, until she thought it might stop her breath. She huddled with her brother in the darkness as the wind howled and the snow fell, weighing them down.

  Chapter Two

  The summer blizzard was short—​an hour, perhaps, or two. It was hard to judge the time. The world seemed to grow quieter and quieter as the snow covered them, until it was so muffled that silence rang in Aisulu’s ears. But now, she thought, the wind had stopped.

  Serik had been shutting her out by pretending to sleep, but the new silence made him stir. The light was dark brown. Aisulu could barely see her brother, but she could feel him judge the silence. She did too. Without needing to speak, they moved together and pushed the blanket off.

  Light pierced them. The pocket of damp warm air in which they’d huddled snapped into icy fog.

  Aisulu and Serik both eased themselves up, sore from huddling on the stones. The light was so bright that it was like looking into emptiness. Serik lifted a hand to shade his eyes. Aisulu blinked and blinked.

  First they found the shapes of their horses, close by, shadows against the white air. Moon Spot came to lean against Aisulu. Snow was matted like felt into the shaggy places of her coat. But she seemed fine. Both horses were fine.

  And finally Aisulu could see again.

  The meadow was ice hard, wind glazed. The sky had pulled up and lost its colors. The air was still.

  Serik strapped the blanket back onto Strong Wind, then picked up the blue silk he had stolen. He still hadn’t said a word to Aisulu. He climbed up the piled rocks to return the silk to its poles. She knew she should help, but she watched him instead. She watched the way his leg bore his weight. She watched the way he moved, which reminded her of a horse with a stone in its hoof. She was watching him so closely that Moon Spot managed to sneak up on her. A cold wet nose found her neck and ear.

  Aisulu turned. “Moon.” She scratched the mare under the jaw, working her fingers into the matted snow and pulling it free of Moon Spot’s coat. Then she leaned her forehead against the horse’s forehead. “Oh, Moon.”

  She and Serik had lived. Their horses had lived. But something had broken between them. Aisulu knew it. Something was wrong. She looked down the northern slope. She saw the meadow blazing white, shadowless. Then she saw that scattered across the hard snow were birds.

  Little songbirds, sweet grass birds, summer birds. Like Serik and Aisulu, they had sought shelter. They had scooped hollows in the hard drifts and huddled in them together. But they had not made it. The shining snow was dotted with the feathered bodies. “Oh,” said Aisulu. “Oh, birds . . .”

  They were dead.

  They were all dead, hundreds of them, scattered everywhere. And still there was not a breath of wind.

  “Look!” Serik was at the top of the shrine, looking down at the meadow on the other side of it. “Aish!” His call was half cry, half whisper. “Quick—​come look!”

  Fox-quick, Aisulu scrambled up the pile of stones, past the offerings people had left: horse skulls and crutches and vodka bottles. Serik was standing at t
he peak of the shrine, holding on to the sky pole. With his other hand he grabbed her arm. “Look at that!”

  The meadow on the far side of the shrine was also blazing snow, and also beaded with dead birds. Dancing from body to body was a great golden eagle.

  An eagle.

  Aisulu’s family had always kept eagles: her oldest uncle had hunted with eagles, and her grandfather, and her great-grandfather, back and back. Her people were nomads who moved with their herds across the mountains of Western Mongolia, and their life could be harsh. And yet it was glorious, and it was sweet, and it had eagles. In the summer the men in her family had kept the eagles in the camp, and had stroked them like kittens. In the fall they went to the Eagle Festival and came home with medals and honor. In the winter they rode deep into the bitter mountains and came home with foxes and hares: fur to keep their families from freezing. And everywhere they went, men named them “burkitshi,” which meant “eagle hunter,” but also meant “great man among Kazakhs.”

  Seeing the eagle now, so close—​Serik was frozen, his hand on Aisulu’s arm. Aisulu, unthinking, cupped her hands in front of her, as if in prayer.

  “From the pair at the high crag,” Aisulu breathed. “It’s the female.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She’s bigger.” Female eagles are bigger than males, and fiercer. Mares might not win medals, but eagle hunters always took female eagles.

  Serik’s hand was still on Aisulu’s arm, tight as a baby’s fingers. He had forgotten to lie about being fine. He was standing with his weight off his sore leg, clutching the sky pole. His face was aglow. “Just look at her.”

  The eagle was feasting. She had her wings spread like a grand embroidered coat. She hopped about on her feathered legs as if she were wearing stiff new boots.

  The lowest feathers of those boots were stained red. The eagle’s beak was hooked and fearsome. When she saw Serik and Aisulu watching, she glared at them with strong and wild eyes. But she didn’t stop eating. Two tears and three gulps was all it took her to finish a dead songbird. A flounce and four hops found another.

  Great silence gripped the mountain. The silk in Serik’s hands did not stir. The dead birds did not sing. It was as if the world were braced for something.

  Aisulu could hear the eagle’s stiff feathers folding over each other. She could hear the meat tear and the beak click as the eagle ate.

  “We could catch her,” said Serik. His voice was high, excited. “This is one way they—​one way the eagle hunters take their birds. They wait for them to be fully fed, to be too stuffed to fly. Then they—”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  There were a dozen reasons why not: Serik wasn’t an eagle hunter. They had no net. The eagle would kill them. The eagle chick would die . . . Aisulu looked at the eagle and saw the eagle looking back at her, with eyes that could see for miles. The eagle was holding still, suddenly. Aisulu could hear the creak of flexing talons biting into rock. There were a dozen reasons why not, but Aisulu could name only one of them: “Because she is an eagle, Serik.”

  Serik yanked his hand away from her, so violently that the horses behind them stirred and cried questions. “And what am I, Aish?”

  The limping prince. The goat for the stew pot.

  “Burkitshi,” said Serik. “I could be an eagle hunter.”

  Never mind the prince of her family. A burkitshi was a prince of the people. Serik’s limp could cost him everything—​could an eagle give it all back?

  “But—” Aisulu thought of the strange moment in the snowstorm when something like a smell had hit her in the pit of her stomach. That smell and this moment. They added up, somehow. To something bad. To disaster coming. “You can’t catch her like this, Serik.”

  “And you can’t stop me,” he spat. He dropped the blue silk and whirled. Little stones clattered and skidded out from under his feet as he dashed down the rock pile toward the horses.

  “Serik!” Aisulu ran after him. He yanked free of her reaching fingers and she tumbled forward onto her belly in the heaped stones. The breath whooshed out of her. For a moment, her eyes were swamped with bright blobs. When she could see again, Serik was on his horse and riding away.

  Aisulu pushed herself to her hands and knees, then surged to her feet. Her stomach still felt punched: it wanted to come right up her throat. But she stumbled the last few feet off the shrine. Moon Spot pushed on her shoulder and made a worried noise. Aisulu put a hand on the mare’s neck, as much to steady herself as to calm the horse down. She had to climb back onto a stone to mount. Moon Spot didn’t like it. Her ears kept swiveling.

  “Easy,” whispered Aisulu, then coughed. “Moon Spot, easy. Let’s go after Wind—​easy and go.”

  Belly spasming, Aisulu guided Moon Spot around the shrine, over the crest of the path.

  In the south meadow, Serik was trying to get Strong Wind to ride toward the eagle. The eagle, still on the ground, was watching them with a tight stillness, poised like a hunter with his rifle raised and his breath slow. Deadly, ready.

  A golden eagle could kill a wolf. Horses were generally too big to be eagle prey, but Strong Wind seemed to have his doubts. The horse pinned his ears and leaned backward, stiff legged, almost as if he might fall on his tail in the snow. But he kept putting one foot in front of the other. The eagle kept staring.

  “Serik,” whispered Aisulu. But her brother wasn’t listening.

  The moment was poised on the edge of a cliff. It was going to jump.

  The eagle took off. It swooped past them, flying low. Aisulu felt the great rush of air as eight-foot-wide wings brushed almost by her ears. Moon Spot reared. Aisulu had to throw her body along the horse’s back and wrap her arms around the damp neck.

  The eagle swept past, and Serik came after it. His hat flew off behind him, a splash of blue and gold in the wind.

  Moon Spot reared again, and Aisulu could only hang on.

  “Serik!” she shouted, but it was no use shouting.

  She gathered handfuls of black mane and leaned forward. “Fast, Moon. Let’s show them fast.”

  Moon Spot took off after Strong Wind. They went fast: two sure-footed mountain horses and the two mountain children, chasing the eagle, leaving the high snow and their home mountain and the whole of their old lives behind.

  * * *

  The terrible thing was that Serik was right. The eagle was so full of songbird that she was flying low, sometimes hardly flying at all. She pulled out far, far in front of them, but never up and away, never quite out of sight as they galloped down mountain, through the snow drifted in the folded places, across ridges scoured bare by the wind, farther and farther from their home. Far ahead, the eagle alighted on an outcrop, beating her wings in warning. She was huge, and she looked bigger on the ground than she did in the sky.

  Over and over, the eagle perched and rested, and then took off again as they came close. But she rested longer each time, and let them get closer each time. And when she flew again it was not as far.

  Serik tore after her, and Aisulu galloped alongside.

  The wind of their motion slapped and howled in Aisulu’s ears. “Serik, wait!” she shouted. “Serik!”

  But her brother’s heart was hurting so much that he could not listen to her. So Aisulu stopped calling. The eagle, watching them come, had bad-luck comets for eyes.

  Every time they came close, the eagle rose on heavy wings. The wings made a noise like their mother shaking out a rug. With her voice, though, the eagle made no sound. Every time she let them come a little closer.

  Finally, at the bottom of the mountain, the eagle alighted on a heap of bones—​the twisted ruin of a camel skeleton—​and did not rise again. Her beak was open and glinting. She looked at them. Her eyes were perfectly round.

  Aisulu reined up beside her brother and looked back into those yellow eyes. She was hot under her shapan, with sweat running down her backbone. But there was a tight cold place where her stom
ach should be. This eagle was broken. Something so large and wild—​broken.

  “Serken,” she whispered. “Let’s just go.”

  The broken eagle twitched her head toward Aisulu’s voice. But Serik didn’t even look at her. He slid down from the horse like a cat round a corner, both sneak and swagger.

  The eagle watched Serik. Suddenly she hacked and shuddered, and then threw up a mass of songbird. She spread her wings—​her huge wings, wider than Aisulu was tall. But even having made herself lighter, she could not lift. She did not rise.

  The sky over them was big and lonely, as if the five of them—​horse and horse and girl and boy and eagle—​were the only creatures under it. It felt bad to Aisulu. Cold and bad, as if the world had already gone wrong. The mountain tilted at her back, alight with new snow. A little wind whispered and curled around her ankles.

  She thought wildly: Burkit makes burkitshi—​the eagle makes the eagle hunter. She’d heard that all her life. The eagle chooses, she thought. The eagle. And this one—​

  “Serik,” she said again.

  “Shut up, Aisulu.”

  The eagle’s head jerked toward Serik’s shout. Still she did not rise.

  Serik started to take off his coat. Aisulu could see that he meant to throw it over the eagle, because of course they had no net. He kept his eyes on the bird’s eyes and fumbled with the metal buttons. One, two, three, four. He eased one shoulder forward and free. But then, as he twisted to free the other shoulder, his limping leg made him waver a little.

  As he wavered, the eagle struck.

  The eagle screamed—​a huge high wild sound—​and rose and swung her talons out. They were curved like crescent moons. They were sharp as blades. They could take down deer.

  Serik shouted and staggered backward.

  And then something snapped. It sounded like a branch breaking. But it wasn’t a branch. It was Serik’s leg.