Sana ran through the thick green forest blanketing the ridge over the bay. She kept one eye on low-hanging branches and another on the roots and stones that roughened the otherwise well-worn trail. To either side of the soft brown, needle-cushioned path, ferns, saplings, and berry vines tangled into a shoulder-high, impenetrable mass. Cedars, the height of twenty men, filtered the sunlight and dropped the bark and needles that colored the path, and silenced the sound of her footsteps.

It felt good to run. Sana had few skills the Sea Swimmers valued, and running wasn’t one of them. But it came in useful for escaping the other children’s taunts and, occasionally, playing tricks on them.

A white light streamed through a break in the forest canopy. Sana stopped to catch her breath at the edge of the Prow, a great jut of stone that pointed toward the sea. Rain-carved divots pocked the rough rock. Hardy shrubs and a few brave, wind-blown trees clung to the thin layer of soil that collected in the depressions, providing protection for seabird and scavenger nests. The eggs should be just hatching, and Sana hoped to watch. Her father had been a Sky Flyer, and she shared his enthusiasm for all things that called the sky home.

Especially the inhabitant of one particular nest on the edge of the cliff—a thunderbird.

Her mother’s tribe, the Sea Swimmers, had poor eyesight out of the water—too poor to see the soaring hawks or fish divers. The only direct experience they had with birds was chasing away the ground-scavengers that went after the catch. Somehow, that led them to hate all birds.

Laughter cut through Sana’s thoughts. A group of boys crossed the Prow, beating sticks against the rock. Sana had heard that elders sent the village children up to the cliff to smash eggs, but she’d never witnessed it. She watched in horror as the boys went about their business, sickened that they seemed to take such delight in it.

A wave roared, not from the sea, but from the air. Sana ducked and looked up. A huge bird soared over the trees and circled the Prow. Feathers stuck up on either side of its head like horns. Where the sunlight caught the right angle, black feathers turned crimson. The bird screeched, sending shivers down Sana’s arms, and dove. Its talons raked across one boy’s shoulders, leaving red stripes on his dark skin. He screamed, ducked, and covered his head. Two of his friends ran back into the woods.

Another boy, long black hair blowing in the ocean breeze, bent over and reached into a hollow. He held a bundle of mottled white feathers over his head and shouted at the bird.

Sana finally understood. The great thunderbird flying overhead must be a mother defending her nest. Which meant the boy’s prize wasn’t just a clump of feathers, but a chick. Sana didn’t understand the Sea Swimmers’ fear of birds or why they chased off the scavengers who cleaned the beach after catch-day. But thunderbirds weren’t scavengers, and even the village elders had stories against harassing them.

Sana left the protection of the trees and darted onto the Prow. “Wait! Don’t!”

The boys looked at her in confusion.

“Who are you?” The boy with the thunderbird chick scrunched his eyebrows together.

“I am Sana, of the Coho Clan.”

He dropped his arm, swinging the chick casually. “I am Ekinak of the Seal Clan, son of Kavin. He gave me this duty, to clean the sacred Prow of dirty ground scavengers. Unless you want to get crushed like your relatives, I suggest you leave.” Ekinak walked to the edge of the cliff and held the bird over the edge.

The thunderbird screamed. She beat her wings against the air, sending a storm of wind, pine needles, and gravel. The other boys crouched low, hiding their heads.

Ekinak squinted against the onslaught. He looked at the outraged thunderbird, then turned to Sana, a cruel smile on his face.

And let go.

The thunderbird screamed again. Sana raced through the wind to the cliff’s edge. It wasn’t as sheer as she thought—there were plenty of hand-holds. But tide was half-out. If it had been in, the water might be deep enough for her to dive into its depths. As it was, waves crashed onto sharp rocks below, promising her an ugly end if she fell.

A weak fluttering caught her eye. The chick had landed two-thirds of the way down the face on a shallow out-cropping. Sana studied the best route down and crouched to scramble over the edge.

Something caught at her hair and flung her to the ground. A sharp rock bit into her arm. Ekinak stood above her, shorelines of light-brown hair caught in his fingers.

“Where do you think you’re going, scavenger bird? Why so worried about a storm-maker when we’ve already killed all your relatives?”

Sana glanced over the rock face. Hundreds of nests covered the ground, filling every crevice and nook. All held broken, fly-covered shells.

She stood shakily, cradling her throbbing arm. “I am not a scavenger bird,” she said, her head bowed. “I am Sana of the Split-Harbor People, the Coho Clan.” A gull chick lay lifeless at her feet. From the cliff, she heard a weak chirp.

She stood to her full height, taller than all but the greatest Sea Swimmer warriors. “And even some half-sized son of a blubber-coated sealer knows not to anger a thunderbird.”

She rushed him, pushed him out of her way, and was over the cliff’s edge before he recovered. Loose rock slipped from under her feet, and sharper pieces cut into her fingers. She scuttled down, half-sliding, until her feet found a narrow, but solid, ledge, and she could rest.

The chick lay farther to the left. In her haste, she hadn’t paid attention to the direction. She took a breath and reached out her left hand to climb laterally when a hard object hit her head.

Her vision wavered. Her ears rang a little. Another rock struck her shoulder then her arm. Ekinak’s laughter floated down to her, but the rocks were coming too quickly for there to be just one assailant. She hugged the cliff face tighter, keeping her arms above her head. Eventually, they were going to hit her hard enough, and she was going to lose her balance and fall into the surf.

Thunder boomed, sending a shower of smaller gravel and sand onto her head. Wind roared, taking her breath away. The boys’ assault abated. Sana looked up and got a face-full of dirt. She wiped her eyes. The mother thunderbird hovered at the edge of the cliff, beating her wings fiercely.

Sana used the distraction and climbed down to the fledgling. At half-grown he was already the size of an adult gull. He squawked weakly, but didn’t struggle. She placed him in her shirt, above her belt, and hoped he’d keep his claws away from her thin skin. She climbed carefully to the right, once slipping so badly that she feared she crushed the little chick. She repositioned him to the back of her shirt and didn’t breathe easy until she came out at the shallower hillside where the cliff met the beach in a forest above the Coho harbor.

Sana knelt behind a giant, misshapen tree and loosened her belt. The fledgling tumbled to the ground. He fluttered his wings limply, but his black eyes were sharp. He leaned his ugly head back and held his mouth open wide, giving a loud squawk.

“Shh,” she said, daring to use her hand to close the sharp beak. “You’ll get us in trouble.” She replaced him in the front of her shirt and ambled to the bait buckets, being careful to walk slowly and not draw attention.

She found an old basket and filled it with heads, tails, and entrails. She had to shift the heavy load several times before she found a position that wouldn’t crush the chick. Then she just had to keep him from trying to crawl out of her shirt at the smell of fish guts.

The aunties mending nets ignored her as usual—probably thinking she’d taken the chum to feed herself and her mother. She slipped down the beach. The sun had burned away the morning shore fog, leaving the flat shoreline completely uncovered. A group of toddlers abandoned their swimming and searched the few tide pools for crabs and mussels. Their mothers huddled together against the wind, talking. They, too, ignored Sana as she hurried to the far edge of the village. For once she didn’t mind.

Her mother, Kani, wasn’t home when she reached the tiny cabin they shared. The house nestled into a large rock that gave good protection from the harsh winter storms, but still allowed southern sunlight to fill the central room. Her father had built it when he first came to the Coho. Sana wished she lived in a big log longhouse with aunties and uncles and cousins all sharing one room. But her mother hadn’t married someone from the Seal Clan, as was tradition. She’d married a foreigner, a tall, pale traveler with wings like mist. He had died shortly after, leaving Kani a sturdy stone house and a pale, fragile daughter.

Sana deposited the fish heads and the chick to the side of the house and let him eat. She took the basket and went into the woods to half-fill it with cedar bark and soft fir needles. When she returned, the entrails were mostly gone and the chick wobbled on his feet. She dug out a hollow in the bark and set the chick in the cozy nest.

He popped his head above the basket rim and gazed at her with half-closed eyes. She gently ran a finger down his soft neck. He crooned, closed his eyes, and sank into the hollow.

Sana watched the bundle of feathers sleep, her arms draped across her knees.

“I’m in trouble, now.”

She spent the afternoon building a larger aerie out of stones and fallen branches, lined with soft cedar boughs. The chick took to his new home well, especially a particular stump where he perched and shook out his half-grown wings. Occasionally he would grab a stick and move it to a better place. Sana laughed at his attempts to personalize his nest.

When Kani returned from gathering pinenuts and saw the thunderbird, her grey eyes darkened and the corners of her mouth dropped.

Sana rushed to explain, afraid to let her mother speak. “And then he just threw the chick over the cliff, and I had to get it, didn’t I? You always said the Sea Swimmers’ fear of birds was silly, and we should especially always respect the thunderbird, right? So, I didn’t really have a choice. I had to save him. And I’ll find food for him. I think he’s almost full grown, almost ready to fly. He won’t be here very long.”

Kani just pursed her lips tighter and considered the goofy-looking bird. “It’s going to be difficult to keep him fed.”

Sana’s insides roiled like the breakers in the winter. She felt a great weight on her shoulders. It was hard enough to consider bringing the chick to the village, giving the children even more reason to tease her. She didn’t have the energy to convince her mother, too.

“Maybe I should have let him die,” she snapped. She spun around and ran, climbing through the trees. The chick chirped piteously. At the top of the rock above their house, Sana sat on a stone seat and looked out at the bay. Fading sunlight streamed through the islets and sparkled the crests of waves. Fish jumped out of the water, snagged evening bugs, and splashed into circles of ripples. The north wind carried the smell of smoke houses and the colder tinge of glacier.

Kani was next to her before Sana heard her approach. She might be a water-person, but she could be quiet in the woods when she wanted.

She took a seat next to her daughter. “What do you see?”

They had played this game before. Sana had inherited one grey sea-eye from her mother and one blue sky-eye from her father. Her sky-eye could see in the air better than any of the Sea Swimmers’ sea-eye. Sana shut her sea-eye. “The sun is past the horizon. Above us, the sky is dark blue, with stars. The sunset is purple, then yellow, and orange where the sea ends. The islands are black, except the tree-tops glow. The moon is coming up, streaking the bay with a line of white.”

“Any clouds?”

“High wispy ones. Just in the west.”

Kani combed Sana’s hair with her fingers. Another difference. Fish-people had straight, thick, coarse hair, ranging from medium grey to black. It shined in the sun and glistened when wet. And never tangled. Sana’s fine brown hair was just the right texture to mat and snarl whenever she went swimming, and frizz when the fog rolled into the bay.

A knot loosened under Kani’s fingers. “I didn’t mean we couldn’t keep the chick, Sana. I was just thinking out loud. We’ll have to take turns going to the bait bucket.”

Sana bowed her head as her shoulders lightened. “Maybe the tide will throw up a sea lion carcass.”

She could hear the smile in Kani’s voice. “Maybe. What’s his name?”

“Xeitl.”

A large shape cut a straight line across the surface of the water. Sana recognized the blue marking on the dugout canoe. “Annil’s coming in. He was at the breakers earlier. He should reach the harbor before the light goes out.”

Kani rubbed Sana’s back. “Good. He promised me some of his catch if I made him a dance blanket.”

“I wish you could marry him.”

“No, his family is too close to mine. Our people are not as numerous as it seems. It is good we only marry across clans.”

But Kani hadn’t married across clans, she’d married across peoples. And Sana was caught somewhere in the middle.

“The boys on the Prow, they called me scavenging shore bird.”

“What do you think?”

Was she fish? Or, fish enough? Every village child was chosen by a water guardian—otter for the more playful, orca for the powerful. Sana was only half fish, half bird. She didn’t know if she’d even receive a guardian.

And there was always the chance that, very soon, she’d start to grow wings, like her father’s people.

“I don’t know. I don’t feel like a fish or a bird.”

Kani found another tangle and gently worked it out. “Do you remember what your father called you?”

“Guppy?”

Kani laughed. “That too. He called you Songbird.”

“Songbird?”

“Yes. He loved to hear you sing. It wasn’t like the dull throbbing of the Sea Swimmers, but it wasn’t light and airy like the Sky Flyers. It was…richer.”

“I can’t remember singing.”

“You quit after he died.” She pulled the hair away from Sana’s face. “I hope you’ll find your voice again.”

Sana wasn’t sure. She couldn’t swim well, she looked funny, she couldn’t even live with the village children. Why would she want yet another reminder of how much she didn’t belong in her own life?

The meeting drums echoed across the cove as the last rays of the sun backlit the islands. Sana shivered in her new dance blanket, but walked proudly down the path, a large coho in her arms. In the dim light, even she had trouble seeing, and she felt for the scratches cut into the bark of the trees lining the trail. In the village, family fires lit the way to the ceremonial longhouse. She joined the other girls her age in a semi-circle near the entrance, each with their offering.

Tisna and Keili also had coho. Risa had a sturgeon. Juno had come to the Coho Clan from the Seal when her mother remarried, and was allowed to bring a young seal. Sana looked gratefully down at her own large fish. She’d been so afraid of this night, of appearing only with a small crab or even a frog. Annil had traded the prize of his catch for Kani’s blanket. Just so Sana wouldn’t be disgraced tonight.

The boys lined up across from the girls. Ilikan had brought a small shark—a little showy, but he was the chief’s grandson. The rhythm of the drums changed. The girls turned, handed their offerings to a woman standing behind them, then marched into the longhouse. They took seats along the center fire on the south. The boys sat across from them. The elder women, chanting, sat behind the girls. The elder men, beating on their drums, behind the boys. The clan leader passed through the center and sat between the fire and the great carved cedar trunk at the end of the longhouse—the place of Leader of Ceremony. The women leader took the place of Leader of Living between the assembled and the door.

Clan leader Inokeh raised his hands. The chanting and drumming grew into a crescendo. Powerful beats bounced off the split-cedar planks of the walls and roof, throbbing into Sana’s head. She couldn’t see the girls’ expressions, but the boys in front of her had pained looks on their faces. Sana’s sound-eye, the bulge in her forehead, wasn’t as fully developed as those of the Sea Swimmers, but even her head ached. Inokeh dropped his arms, and the pounding mercifully ceased.

Inokeh’s agate beads sparkled in the firelight. Deep shadows marked the wrinkles on his ancient face. Everyone waited—the adults patiently, the children squirming slightly in anticipation. Finally, Inokeh raised his head.

#

#

Sana stole a glance at Sitaka, the women leader. She didn’t smile, but her eyes shone bright in the firelight.

#

Sana’s heart pounded. She closed her eyes against the firelight. Soon they would march out of the warm longhouse and dive into the frigid water where the ocean-dwellers would accept her as a Sea Swimmer or reject her as a monster.

When she opened her eyes, Inokeh stood and looked at the children. “This is the reason the fish look after the Coho Clan and the seal tends to the Seal. It is also one of the greatest lessons children must learn to be adults. Now you will follow the brothers and sisters to find your own guardians. Swim strong and wise.”

Sitaka chanted a blessing as the children filed out of the longhouse. Sana felt her feet follow of their own accord. The faces around her reflected tension and excitement, but none of the fear that filled her chest. Too soon, they left the cover of the trees and came onto the moonlit beach.

Sana scanned the crowded shoreline for her mother. Kani came to her solemnly, took the dance blanket, and pulled her down to kiss her forehead.

“What if I don’t get a guardian?” Sana whispered.

“Swim wise,” Kani said, and she pushed her off to the growing line of children at the water’s edge.

The moon glistened, casting sharp-edged shadows on the grey sand. The gentle waves lapped at the beach like a cat drinking milk. Sana tugged at the giffer skin suit Kani had made several years before. The hide of the big, slow moving rodent had the unique quality of staying flexible and warm in water. The suit was too short, even with the slits cut into the torso, but they’d never received another giffer skin to make a replacement. No matter. It would keep her warm enough.

The other girls wore little more than short pants and aprons that covered their fronts and tied around their necks and around their backs. But then, all the other kids had the warm layer of fat and the thick skin that protected them from the cold sea water. Sana was thin and tall. Her toes were short stubs on long feet, instead of long and webbed. And she had only a fingertip’s length of webbing between her fingers.

The moon came out from behind a cloud. Sana breathed a sigh of relief. Her sound-eye couldn’t feel the echoes off the sea-bed as well as the other clan members, and she couldn’t send clicks at all. At least the moon would provide some light. The foam from the breakers glowed as it crashed in on itself. Sana tried not to think about diving under that violent mass. She’d worry about it when she got there.

Even more terrifying than the breakers was the growing fear nothing in the sea would come to her. Surely the ocean guardians could sense her flying-blood, tell she wasn’t a true fish-blood. She sent a wish to the great coho that he would send something, anything.

Inokeh gave one last blessing, and the kids ran into the bay.

Sana gasped as she hit the cold water. She swam strong, but quickly fell behind. The sun had heated the top layer of water, down to a man’s height. Underneath, the north currents kept the bay frigid. Sana kept near the surface, trying to remain under as long as she could to stay out of the wind that bit as it blew across her wet skin.

The sounds of splashing ahead of her grew increasingly distant. Black heads occasionally popped up for a gulp of air then descended again. A couple of figures had reached the breakers. Silence settled over the night, a peaceful companion for the moonlight. Sana stretched out her arms and continued on to the roaring wall of white.

Although the sisters in the story had swum north to the Eye, Coho children considered that cheating. They always kept to the south where they had no choice but to swim under the breakers. Sana briefly thought about heading north. The route would be longer, but she wouldn’t have to worry about the long, dark dive. She shook herself. She was Coho. She would face the breakers.

The moon dipped behind a thin cloud, giving off an eerie glow. Some ways away, a fish leaped from the water and splashed down again. Sana swam on, passing Oyster Rock and the nearby kelp beds. Before her, the breakers stretched from one end of the bay to the other, interrupted only by Turtle Island in the center.

As the island passed to her right, the far line of white grew into an impenetrable wall. Crashing water roared—even beneath the surface where it sounded like a landslide. Sana took a deep breath and dove. Before she could reach the still, lower waters, the current reached out and tossed her. She tried to not gasp, tried to figure out which way was up. She held her hands out, looking for clear air. The waves pulled her through, but then pushed her under again before she could take a breath. Her sea-eye couldn’t see a thing in the blackness. Her hands felt lighter foam, and she stroked at the water. But it drew her down, tumbling.

This time, she submitted to its pull. Down into the inky blackness. When the waves relented, she swam, hoping she was going in the right direction. Her lungs threatened to burst out of her chest. She caught sight of the pale moonlight above her, breached the surface, and panted hard.

Far in the distance, white sand glowed. Past the Prow, she could even see the northern beach where the Seal Clan lived. She was still on the harbor side of the breakers.

Her arms ached from trembling and straining. Her legs barely had energy to keep treading in the cold water. Her sky-eye burned. She looked at the towering wall of white foam, let her body roll with the gentle swells that pierced through from the other side, and said quietly, “I need help.”