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common crow.
    Much to her mother’s chagrin, she kept him, claiming that her crazy Aunt Rhia had sent him all the way from Rhinewall. How else could he know her name?
    “Only if he stays in your room.” Lynn had allowed it begrudgingly. And so he did.
    Now Orrin’s little mimics were the only clues she had.
    “ Ree-ahh ,” Orrin sang, his voice echoing against the walls, “ Reeee-ahh .”
    “Are you taking me to see Rhia?” she mused. “Judging the way I am giving you a ride, I think it’s the other way around.”
    Or are we just going to die down here in the sewers? she thought.
    In response, Orrin stretched out his neck and opened his mouth wide. The sound that came out was a clicking, chittering sound. It electrified the hairs on the back of Skyla’s arms and neck.
    “Where did you learn that call?” she asked.
    Orrin only blinked, his body bouncing along on her shoulder as if detached from his head. He clucked a few times indignantly.
    “Where did you learn that call you just made?” she asked again.
    Orrin croaked and it almost sounded like he said, “Eyes.” But Skyla couldn’t be sure.
    After walking for what felt like hours, they came to a fork which forced them to turn. What had been a tunnel leading to the right had been sealed ages ago. To her left was the canal, dark and deceptively smooth. It bisected the city and provided power to turbines humming behind thick walls.
    This leads to the Flux, to the Wilds, she thought with a thrill. This leads out of the city. I’ve never even been out of the city… I’ve never been anywhere.
    As they rounded a corner, blue gray morning light poured over the damp concrete walls, lifting the gloom and hurting her eyes. The canal that had rushed along beside her seemed to fall off the edge of the world. A cool breeze smelling of pine and loam hit her face, washing away the shadows.
    Orrin caught the breeze in his feathers and spun around happily on the edge of her backpack. He launched from her shoulder and flew up ahead, his shadow fluttering on the sides of the damp walls.
    She found her path blocked by a gate, which spanned the width of the tunnel. She gripped the bars like a prisoner. She sighed.
    What now? she thought.
    Orrin whistled from across the canal. She turned to see him perched on a large, wet lever sticking out from the opposite wall. A chain dangled from the lever, an open lock hanging from the end. Orrin was wiping rust from his beak with a claw.
    “How am I supposed to get over there?” she yelled over the roar of water.
    Orrin looked at her from the lever and squawked. Not my problem, kid. I want to get out of here as bad as you, he seemed to say.
    The bars had two crossbeams that ran along the width of them. Skyla shimmied her way across the rapid water, given a sharp fright when her foot almost slipped at first. School uniform shoes were less than ideal for this.
    Black, violent water rushed underneath her, pressing debris that had built up for decades—maybe centuries—against the bars, a throbbing viscous garbage dump. The lever, she decided, was probably to purge the filter somehow.
    Skyla cringed as her fingers sunk into the slime covering the lever. Despite the coating of sludge and rust, it moved with ease. Several tons of steel bars fell through the floor of the canal with a loud sploosh . Foam drifted out over the surface toward the ledge, followed by the smallest bits of refuse,  an aquatic parade of castaway rejects, free of their watery purgatory. What looked like a large blue and pink fish drifted several yards beneath the surface and was gone. Skyla shivered when she thought she saw a face—and hair.
    The parade of random waterlogged objects finally dwindled to a boot, a newspaper, some rope and other small indescribable objects. Skyla decided that it was probably best to keep moving.
    Orrin perched at the edge of the drop, cawing cheerily. Skyla watched him as she sat down on the lip of the canal, only a few feet away