Joel Ross

We teased Hazel about ribbons and dresses because she was such a weird combination of “girly” and “commanding.” She wore long, flowing skirts, dreamed of fancy dances, loved pretty sunsets . . . and could bark out orders faster than the toughest junkyard boss. She was about fifteen, a few years older than me and a dozen times smarter. And pretty, with light brown eyes, dark brown skin, and dozens of silky braids.

I looked like every other tetherkid who ran with a salvage crew. I was compact, wiry, and undersized. My boots were stained and my goggles were scraped, and the leather bracers I wore on my wrists to catch the tether were scarred. The only difference was that I always kept my head down and my hair over my freak-eye.

Swedish looked more like a thug or a bootball player than a raft pilot. He was so burly, shaggy, and bearish that he barely fit in the thoppers—sleek, narrow airships—that he flew in drag races to earn extra money.

And Bea was our kid sister, with short red hair, big green eyes, and smears of grease on her face. She didn’t dream of roast meat and conspiracies like Swedish, but of gears and pistons and building crazy new thoppers that looked like demented dragonflies and flew like hunting eagles.

“If you two are done,” Hazel said, eyeing us, “can we get back to looking for the buoy?”

She talked to the machinery, the rotors, cables, and gears. That wasn’t so weird, except she was sure that they talked back.

She gave me a thumbs-up. “No problem! The hydraulic valve’s just mad because I didn’t adjust him yesterday!”

“Remember that buoy who went out yesterday?” she asked the spare buoys. She “listened” for a moment, then nodded. “That’s right, Bumbleboy.”

“They’re not so bad,” Hazel said.

Swedish snorted. “Yeah, they just shoot down any airship that gets too close to Port Oro.”

“We do okay in the slum,” he said stubbornly.

“Enough food,” she said, “that Bea won’t go hungry.”

Swedish looked at Bea and his expression softened. Ever since she’d joined the family, we’d tried to protect her from the worst of the slum. Maybe we were used to it, but she deserved better