All I hear is the sea, the sea — reaching up to take me.

My skin is covered in fine dust — in the remnants of Uln’s wings. Mimm and Trick burst out of my jacket and clobber my ears.

They’re coming for me — waves with sharp teeth of crystallized salt. My body whips through space, all ache. I close my eyes.

Girls with singing throats are swallowed by the sea.

Mother Nine was right.

Here it is, swelling like a bruise —

And I feel —

Feathers.

Feathers. Not water. Not ice-shard waves. I feel the pinch of beaks. I’m not falling anymore. Not falling — but not rising, either. My heart skips, uneven, and I hang above the crashing sea, the sad songs of birds surrounding me like a garden unfurling.

When I open my eyes, I see the night sky. Mimm and Trick squawk over me. Theirs aren’t the feathers against my neck and behind my head. Brushing my wrists, my ankles, with their edges. Feathers underneath me.

It’s the cloisterwings.

Mother Nine set them free before she lit their home on fire.

And they came for me.

They’re lifting me up, slowly, slowly. Beaks pull at my hair and wings pump against the wildness of the wind. They’ve made a net of black feather and wing-shine beneath me. They are lifting me on their backs. But it feels as though I am held only by the sweet tones of their voices.

I watch Uln’s remains — gray as ash — shift like a thundercloud, landing on the surface of the sea like a fall of distant rain. I drift upward, upward, upward, through layers of mist. Chills ruffle under my skin.

There are other groups of cloisterwings on either side of me, lifting the others on their backs, too, some of them fluttering between us. Bly clasps my hand. Linna’s caught up, too, lying still on a bed of black feathers, her mouth open in shock. The Childer-Queen’s delicate silks are tugged through gathered cloud by the gripping claws and clicking beaks of the First Mother’s birds, wings beneath her and wings above her.

Wings beneath all of us, as though the wind has learned of singing.