Empire of Bones by N. D. Wilson

Author:N. D. Wilson [Wilson, N. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375895746
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2013-10-21T22:00:00+00:00

Antigone jerked awake. Diana was punching her in the shoulder.

“Let’s go, Tigs!” Diana shouted over the sound of the engines. “I need your eyes!”

Antigone blinked, sat up, tucked her black hair behind her ears—it felt oily on her fingers; she needed to wash it soon—and looked around. After Mexico, she had crashed hard. While the old, flat-nosed tanker truck had pumped fuel into the plane, everyone had stretched their legs on the small gravel airstrip with the sun-bleached wind sock fluttering above a tiny trailer that sat tipping slightly on uneven ground. A thick, smiling woman had lugged a pot outside and served up mounds of rice and beans on paper plates. Antigone had wolfed two platefuls and the woman had patted her cheek happily, as pleased with Antigone’s dark skin and dark hair as she was with her appetite.

Cold, dripping glass bottles of Coke had been pulled from a rattling ice swamp inside an old metal cooler, and Antigone had downed two of those as well, even though they were sweeter than any soda she had ever tasted—strong sweet, like molasses.

The woman had kissed her goodbye, and had prattled long strings of Spanish love and admiration at Katie Smith once she’d realized that Antigone was her daughter. Katie Smith had smiled and thanked her, but in rough Spanish. Her own mother tongue was similar in rhythm but much different.

With too little sleep and a very full belly, Antigone had been blinking slowly before the plane finished climbing after takeoff. She’d been asleep before they were above the ocean.

Antigone crossed her arms and shut her eyes again. It felt nice.

“Tigs!”

This time Diana punched her hard. When Antigone opened her eyes again, the older girl tapped her own headset and pointed. Antigone’s headset had fallen down around her neck. She stretched, yawned, and put it on.

“I’ve decided I don’t like flying,” Antigone said, hearing her own voice crackle in her ears.

“Oh, really?” Diana smirked. “Just now you decided that? Do you not remember all of our little training sessions when you would practically start bawling when I made you take the stick?”

“I didn’t bawl,” Antigone said. “I didn’t even cry. I was just really uncomfortable with the whole idea of falling out of the sky.”

Diana banked the plane, and Antigone looked out her window and down at the pale ocean and an island shaped like a fingernail-thin crescent moon, its two points bent until they were almost touching. A long, rectangular boat was anchored between them.

“I should fill out a trainer review for you on this flight.” Diana laughed. “You’ve been a real gem of a copilot, snoring over there. Your brother did the same thing when we flew to Llew’s. But now you’ve got to help me out. This is the place, but we have to decide where to set this bird down.”

“Some random island,” Antigone said. “With some freaky outlawed Sage woman who was on a map of Skelton’s. Just land anywhere. This’ll be great.”

“In a little less than an hour, we will just land anywhere, thank you,” Diana said.

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