The Sign of One. Eugene Lambert

seconds – that’ll get us off the ground.’

      I can’t decide if he’s joking or mad. Or both.

      We use the tractor to pull the cable out from the winch to the windjammer. I watch, fascinated, as Chane unhooks the looped end of the cable and attaches it to a quick-release hook set into the jammer’s belly. We’re all set now. I know roughly how this works, even if I’ve never actually seen it. It’s like flying a kite – the winch winds the cable in at full power and hauls us into the air.

      I think that’s how it goes anyway.

      When I look up, I see Sky standing at the edge of the plateau. She’s holding a small device above her head and staring at it. I wander over. One boot-length behind her is the cliff edge, a drop that makes my palms go all sweaty.

      ‘What you doing?’ I ask.

      ‘Checking the wind speed,’ she says, chewing her lip.

      And that’s when I notice how calm it is, no breath of wind on my cheek.

      In the wind-scoured Barrenlands, that’s weird.

      Chane joins us. For such a big man, he moves quietly.

      ‘No wind, no ridge lift,’ he says. ‘Our lift-cells give buoyancy, but to soar we need updraughts from wind hitting the cliff. Launch now and it’s a one-way trip down to the valley floor.’ He grins, showing me teeth green and rotten from chewing shadeweed. ‘Don’t worry. Wind’ll be back, soon as the day warms up.’ He stomps off then and starts checking all the windjammer’s control surfaces.

      Sky holds the instrument up again. Still nothing.

      ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know,’ I say.

      ‘What wasn’t?’

      ‘That twist. At the fair, when you clobbered me. They made me do it.’

      She looks at me. ‘Who made you?’

      ‘Nash and the rest. My mates. They ganged up on me.’

      ‘And poor little Kyle couldn’t say no.’

      I shift uneasily. ‘I wanted to, but they’d have beaten me up.’

      ‘Right,’ she says, staring at me. ‘Better to zap the twist than risk a kicking?’

      ‘Like you wouldn’t.’

      ‘No,’ she sneers. ‘I wouldn’t.’

      She throws me the wind meter, lifts her left hand to her mouth, makes sure I’m watching, then sinks her teeth into the flesh of her wrist. With a grunt, she pulls her head back and starts peeling her skin off. It comes away with a rubbery sound. I’ve skinned countless rabbits, but I still groan seeing this. One last tug and the skin hangs from her mouth, a fully-formed, inside-out hand. She holds her hands up and wiggles her fingers. Right hand, five of them. Left hand, only four.

      No little finger – a stump where it should be. The indelible mark of the ident.

      My hand twitches, but I stop myself from making the Sign of One. I stare at the glove – thin, skin-coloured rubber, the fake little finger padded and stitched to sit next to the next finger along. Cunning, that.

      Without a word, she tucks it into a pocket.

      I shiver. Sky’s a scab. She’ll have watched her twist sister die.

      ‘Look, I still feel bad about it,’ I say.

      ‘Oh, I bet you do. Especially now you could end up in that cage with your mates paying to hurt you.’ She points at the wind meter in my hand. ‘Shout out if you see twenty on the gauge. Sustained, not gusts.’

      She turns and limps away.

      ‘We all have to survive,’ I shout after her, but she doesn’t look back.

      Just then, I feel a tiny kiss of wind on my cheek, but when I hold the wind meter up, the little spinner thing can hardly be bothered to turn. It’ll come sooner or later, so says Chane. Yeah? Well, I’ll take sooner if that’s okay. . .

      Two hours later, the wind has picked up like Chane said it would, the steam winch is up to pressure and he wants to launch. I’ve yelled at him until I’m hoarse, but as far as he’s concerned, he’s already risked his precious Rockpolisher enough.

      ‘We can’t go,’ I say again. ‘I don’t care what Rona told Sky. I’m not going anywhere until she gets here. You can’t just leave her behind.’

      But he’s not having it; says I can stay if I want, but he’s out of here.

      It’s Sky who finally persuades Chane to accept a compromise. I get to run back up to the ridge and take one last look, in case Rona is close. If there’s no sign of her, I come straight back. We launch out of here, and that’s that.

      Sky follows me up the hill. At the top we stand there and peer down at the track that leads up from Freshwater.

      Nothing doing. The trail is empty.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘We have to go now.’

      ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I don’t care what happens. I’m not going without Rona.’

      Sky grabs me by the arm. ‘Don’t be a fool. It’s a tough call, but Chane’s right. We’ve got a long way to go and dayshine is wasting. Look, Kyle, if your mother was coming, she’d have been here hours ago. I don’t think –’

      I shrug her off. ‘Don’t think what?’

      ‘Your shack went up in flames so fast. She won’t have got out.’

      ‘No way. I saw her.’

      ‘You saw what you wanted to see.’

      I’m about to contradict her when I glimpse movement on the trail.

      ‘Look,’ I say, excited. ‘Here she is. I told you –’

      Only it isn’t Rona.

      Two men step out from trees on to the trail, a long way below us. A dog pulls one of them along. Their faces, round under their hats, look up at us. Dog man, who could be one of the Fergusons, points his pulse rifle up in the air.

      I see the green flash and hear the thump.

      The hunter’s signal – prey spotted.