Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 407
As it disappeared a white dome of light silhouetted the
treetops, and Axel felt the deep crump of impact through his
feet.
Calandria was waiting at the edge of the forest. "Are you
okay?"
"Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "Let’s go." They
waded into the underbrush. The darkness would have been
total under the trees, except that a fire had started somewhere
ahead, and the sky was alive with rainbow swirls. Axel would
have found them beautiful if he hadn’t been so frightened.
Of course, if there were any witnesses to this within fifty
kilometers, they’d all be cowering under their beds by now.
No sane person would want to be caught in the open when the
swans touched ground.
It was dark enough that Axel couldn’t spot branches and
twigs fast enough to prevent himself getting thoroughly
whipped as they went. Stinging, his feet somehow finding
every hidden root and rock, he soon lost sight of Calandria,
who as usual moved through the underbrush like a ghost. He
could hear his breath rattling in his lungs, and somewhere
nearby the crackling of the fire. Above that, though, a kind of
trilling hiss was building up. It seemed sourceless, but he
knew it must be coming from the sky. The hairs on the back of
his neck stood on end; so did those on his arms. He might have
preferred it if they were doing that from fright, but he knew it
must be the effect of a million-volt charge accumulating in the
forest.
"Axel!" He hurried in the direction of the voice. Past a
wall of snapped tree trunks and smouldering loam, Calandria
stood on the lip of the crater Marya Mounce’s ship had dug.
The ship was egg-shaped, maybe fifteen meters across. It
was half-buried in the earth. Smoke rolled up from its skin,