Skyland Read online

  "I'm sorry." The woman withdrew her hand and ducked her head, "Would you... would you like to sit down and have some tea?"

  "Oh. Yes. Yes, I would. Thanks."

  He turned away from the mirror, away from the shocked expression. Zara was standing beside him again, her smile faltering now. He took her hand and this time it was his lips that stretched into a bizarre smile. She blinked, confused and looked away. She pulled her hand out of his and sat down at the little metal table.

  She thinks I am crazy. Well...

  Trying to drive himself out of his own thoughts, he looked around at the little room once more. His eyes landed on his father still standing in the corner. Harper looked quickly away from the terribly familiar face and back to their host. He hadn't really paid her much attention before as his eyes were examining his own reflection, but he sat up and paid attention now.

  But it wasn't the woman herself that caught his attention, it was her clothes.

  Her tunic was blue

  It was a thin, silky fabric, a fitted shirt that showed the skin tone underneath in some places and confused the dye of the fabric. He hadn't noticed it before in the orange light of the setting sun, but inside with the soft glow of light strips he could see that the fabric was undeniably one of the lightest shades of blue. Like the morning Sky just beyond thin clouds.

  She wears the sacred color so casually!

  In the country, blue was a marker. Prestige. Piety. Wealth. Reverence. Zara's gem necklace was one of a kind, a token of her new status as a Sky Reverend's daughter-in-law. Other chips of blue were guarded in the temple, collected together in the sacred mosaics. Blue dye was saved for writing and illustrating special copies of the Sky Tomes – his father owned one of these. And occasionally, Sky colored threads were bought – only the best threads – to be laid over the altar of the temple. They were never draped carelessly over the body.

  Harper met the woman's eyes and tried to wipe the rude shock off his features. She smiled and poured him a cup of tea.

  Water for strangers. Who can spare that? Only city folk.

  He took the cup and watched one of her long blue sleeves brush the table. The silk was shiny and clean, but the edges were fraying. The hands under them were dried and callused. Blue garments or not, those were not hands used to idle luxury.

  They are not even well off. Not for city folk.... They suffer here too.

  That was not something his father ever mentioned in his diatribes against the city.

  She was young, but as she smiled, her face creased. Weathered lines appeared around her eyes and mouth.

  "Thank you..." Ecca? Ella? Ellie? Harper hadn't caught her name. It had passed behind him in chatter while he stared in the mirror, but he couldn't remember. "Thank you."

  As Harper drank the bitter tea, his mind was brought back to the throbbing bruise the knife-life fist had left behind in his gut. And the man's face, held onto a withered body by malice, was becoming clearer. Harper couldn't erase that face from his mind. It was the same face that stood in the corner now.

  In here, that face wore his father's body.

  In the mirror, it had often worn his own body.

  The old Reverend kept his head down, but the hatred was thinly veiled. Harper had seen it every day of his life, and nothing could keep that prejudice hidden from him. Their hosts were city people, outliers, yes, but still deserving of the punishment of the Sky in the doctrine of the Sky Reverends. Those who had more were misers, even if it was not much more. Just as the farmers were misers to the scavengers.

  No one defends the Sky. They just gratify their hate.

  Harper's cup was only half empty when the growling voice from the corner made him jump yet again.

  "We have to go," his father said, not speaking to their hosts.

  "Are you going on the ship, too, Ecca?" Zara asked their host.

  "No, we're just going to watch the lift off." She was smiling now and her face lit up erasing the tiredness it had shown before. "It's so exciting. We've never seen such massive things fly."

  "But won't you see it much better from the country? It'll be so crowded at the docks," said Zara.

  "Yes, but that's the fun of it!" Her face shone with excitement.

  "I don't know..."

  Harper could tell Zara's smile was an attempt to hide the trembling in her lips, and it was beginning to falter. He put a hand on her arm. Then he took one last look at his father's face. The scavenger's face, twisted with loathing, wearing his father's body standing before him, already in the doorway, one foot out without even a last word for their hosts.

  "For the love of the Sky!" the old man growled. "Let's go!"

  None of this is for love of the Sky, Harper thought. But he only echoed, "Let's go."

  And he stood and walked out after his father.

  Footsteps followed him, but he didn't look back. He heard Zara talking to the city folk, thanking them, and the city folk replying kindly, humbly that it was no trouble.

  They paid him no attention.

  His father had walked swiftly ahead, also not looking back, and Harper stepped quickly after him.

  At the apex of the bridge, Harper ripped the secret pockets out of his shirt. Tiny bits of dirt fell to the ground. He threw the rest over the bridge and into the trickling river below.

  Not for the Sky, Father – you fight for yourself. Not for Her!

  Zara was beside him now.

  He grabbed her arm. "Come with, me now." He pulled her with him towards the end the bridge. They were almost over it when–

  "No! Harper, there are so many people..." She was staring at the edge of the river, mouth open, the eyes stretching until whites shone around the irises. "There are too many." She tried to twist away, but he held tight, and followed her stare across to the mass of heads crowding the docks on the other side of the bridge.

  Lights flooded the space under the ships. In less than an hour the whole city, it seemed, had gathered under them. Harper had never seen so many people. There must have been millions! They lined the port and filed into the ship. He had seen the monstrous thing from a distance and knew that they were bigger than almost anything else built on the planet. But he could not have imagined the things he saw before him now. Distracted by the scavenger before, he had not really taken it in. They were huge. And the people! He did not even know the city held so many.

  As they watched, even more people surged across the bridge behind them. Some of these were clearly outliers, wearing frayed blue tunics like Ecca. Others in rough brown weaves, some stinking of compost or sweat, slunk in huddled groups. They glanced from side to side and shot frozen looks up at the ships. These were the villagers, the small number who would accept the free passage offered in the city's call to farmers, the small number who would go despite condemnation of the Sky Reverends, in hopes of a better life.

  And they shall have it. They deserve more; let them go for it.

  Harper's father hissed at the villagers that passed them. Harper didn't need to hear him to know what curses he slung at them. "Traitors! Blasphemers! Cause of our punishment! Abominations!"

  Harper tried to shut out the thought of his father's voice.

  This is not for him. This is for the Her.

  The groups of outliers and villagers closed around Harper and Zara and drew them the last few steps over the bridge. Then they were in the loading area. Harper looked around. Zara was still twisting in his grasp. His father had disappeared beyond the crowd.

  "No, no. There are too many," she said, and kept saying, again and again. "There are too many..."

  "We will go with them."

  "What?"

  "We will join them. Zara, they need farmers. It will be a better life for us."

  "But the Sky..."

  "She will take care of Herself. We are in our own hands." And we will be closer to Her than the hateful Sky Reverends ever will be. We do serve the Sky!

  He took one last look around for his father, but all he sa
w was the jostling heads of city folk, outliers, and here and there an ashamed villager. Ecca and her family had disappeared, too.

  Harper put his arms around Zara's shoulders and hugged her tight to keep them from being separated. Together, they were swept up the ramp towards the ship. Then there was a man before them in a red jacket. He held a tablet.

  "Tickets!"

  "None."

  "Occupation and number?" he shouted over the noise of the crowd.

  "Farmers – two!" Harper shouted back.

  "Alright, inside!"

  Chapter Five

  in which there is Sky (?)

  The ship's size as seen from its base could not possibly prepare Harper for the true massiveness of the thing. Standing beside it outside, he had just seen a wall rising up from the ground. Inside, the empty space yawned around him.

  "Where are all the people?" Zara asked.

  Harper just shook his head. Even though the docks had been packed shoulder-to-shoulder, once inside, each person had their own space in the giant foyer. Here and there people stood in groups, waiting outside the doors that lined the far wall or peering out the many windows on the near side or talking to red-coated Transport Union workers. Launch time was ticking closer and closer (Harper's internal clock was still counting down as it had been for days,) surely most of the people were aboard. But inside these massive walls, there was no crowd, as if the interior of the ship just went on and on and on forever.

  The quiet was eerie too. The noises of the docks had been cut off almost instantly when they passed over the threshold. For a second, Harper stood with Zara just inside the front door, and stared around the wide room, completely at a loss. Until,

  "No reservations?"

  The friendly voice came from a girl, even younger than Harper and Zara, standing beside them. She wore the high-necked red coat of the Transport Union, and like the ticket-taker, she held a tablet. She poked at the screen a few times and then looked up, expectantly.

  "No," Harper answered.

  "Okay. It looks like we can put you in slice A on level 23."

  "Um..."

  "Over there," she gestured to the far wall of doors. "Slice A is opposite us, so take the elevator right in the middle there to 23. One you're up on the level, they'll tell you where to go. You can leave your things... oh."

  She tilted her head to one side and looked curiously at their empty hands. Harper worried for a moment that she would be suspicious, maybe even report them for a search or questioning. But she just shrugged and continued cheerfully. "Well, you can go right to your room after you're assigned, or you can watch the launch from the lounge on 23."

  As if on cue, a female voice, calm and mechanical, boomed through the ship: Final Notice: Outer doors are closing. Launch in ten minutes. And with a great scrape and clang, the massive doors shut behind them.

  "Well, have a nice trip!" the Union worker girl said. She gave them a wave and moved off to another group of idling passengers.

  Harper and Zara headed across the massive entry hall to elevator A. They followed an elderly couple in, and the doors shut behind them. The old woman hit the 23 on the panel and up they went. Thirty seconds later...

  Sky.

  The elevator doors had opened and Harper looked out at the expanse of deep blue. He stepped out of the elevator.

  "It's so beautiful..." Zara whispered.

  Across from them was a great window, floor to ceiling and covering fifty feet of the ship's curved side. The sun had set, but it's light had not gone out completely. The Sky was a dark indigo blue. True blue. The last blue before night, before the stars took over the sky; one or two of the brightest twinkled here and there, but the dark and solid expanse of blue still dominated the heavenly field. The window faced out towards the country and a onto handful of tiny buildings lit up by the city lights four, five hundred feet below? Harper had never been up this high. The ground seemed too far away to calculate.

  Inside the room, to one side of the great window the red coat of a Transport worker stood out against the dark blue of the Sky behind her. She sat at a desk sipping from a steaming mug and reading from the screen in front of her. She looked up and smiled as Harper and Zara approached.

  "You're the two farmers, right? We've got a space for you up here. Room 2332 at the near end of the hall, just here."

  She handed them a key. "Launch in fi–"

  "Launch in five minutes," The ship's voice interrupted.

  "Yes, exactly. You can go to your room, but there's no window in there I'm afraid. Not in the last minute spaces; the ones with the good views were snapped up ages ago. But you can watch the launch from here if you like."

  "We'll stay here." His voice overlayed Zara's, and they looked at each other. Harper could practically hear her thoughts, the same as his: We will have a last glimpse of the Sky.

  "Great."

  The Transport worker took another sip from the mug and Harper and Zara moved off.

  Now that Harper had lowered his eyes from the expanse outside the window and looked around the room itself, he noticed there were more people here than in the foyer, but still only a few dozen. Some looked bored, swiveling in chairs set around the window or sitting at tables in the middle of the room. Some looked excited. And then there were the others...

  One old man was bent almost double, his grizzled beard brushing his waist. He shook as he stood, covering the side of his face with one hand, the side of his face facing the giant window. His head twitched over to that side once or twice as he peeked over his hand. Each time he shook his head and shivered and hid his face once more. A child stared at the blue field, eyes wide, face white, terrified. A young woman – his mother? – stood staring blankly into the room with her back turned to the window. The elderly couple that had been in the elevator held each others hands across a table in the middle of the room.

  Villagers.

  As Harper and Zara moved over to the empty seats by the window, they glanced at their fellow country folk, the old man, the couple, the child, the young woman, but as soon as their eyes met they all looked away, looked down, turned away, hunched just a little lower. Harper spotted a short couch by one corner of the window and sat down on it. It was soft, softer than any of the metal stools he'd so often sat on in the country. It was like sitting on a pile of blankets.

  But he could not get comfortable.

  His hands were shaking for the first time that day. He closed his eyes.

  "Here, my Sky?" Zara's voice trembled beside him. "Here?" she breathed.

  "We are going to see the Sky. Don't you want to?"

  "I–I do."

  Her hand squeezed his shoulder. Then the seat shifted as Zara sat beside him. A soft kiss brushed his temple. Someone laughed loud beside them, and he opened his eyes and looked over. A group of city folk was chatting, far more intent on each other than the sight on the other side of the glass.

  ''How can they be so calm?" Zara asked, staring.

  "The city dwellers have seen the Sky up close before. They don't appreciate Her. Flight is not new to them."

  He squeezed his eyes shut again.

  He could see his father's face behind his eyelids. He could see the expression that would come over it when he realized the launch was successful. His cheeks would twist as he snarled. Tears, angry, disappointed tears, would fall down, running over the weathered face. Failure, failure, would be the word on his lips. Failure.

  The image glared at Harper in his mind.

  But I will be closer to the Sky than you ever will be, her thought to his father's image. "We will see the Sky," he muttered to himself. "See Her, and not from afar."

  And he would. Not from the ground, but from Her. From the heavens themselves. Oh, to see Her blue fields! To touch the roof of Skyland! That would make his betrayal worth it. That would make his defection right.

  He opened his eyes and looked out the window. Her blue, now speckled with a few more stars, shone over the country in the distance. Sh
e was pure today, not one cloud broke her royal fields. Clouds meant moisture. They were rare now, and Harper knew to treasure them when they appeared. But there was nothing like seeing Her in Her purest beauty, like an indigo jewel closed around the planet.

  Let me see Your beauty close, my lady, he prayed. You are highest, You are supreme. No human can assault You.

  He twitched as the ship spoke again.

  "Launch in two minutes. Passengers please be seated and make yourselves comfortable," the nice voice buzzed from a speaker that Harper couldn't see.

  Beside him, the laughing city folk (now city refugees) wandered to seats around one of the tables. The old bearded villager sank into a chair by the window and bent his face to his forearms. His lips moved silently. The others villagers too moved to seats by the window. They all shared the same fearful glances towards – and then quickly away from – the Sky.

  "Launch in one minute," said the ship.

  The ship began to rumble gently. The seat beneath Harper began to quiver just a little. Then his stomach swooped as the little lights far below became even littler, and they were flying. Zara's intake of breath beside him made him look over. She had her eyes closed. Her hand in his was shaking more than the ship.

  "Shh, shhh," Harper soothed.

  "Tell me when we are away," she said.

  "Open your eyes, my Sky. You won't see Her again."

  Like the little old man she covered her face with one hand and peeked over it. Harper gazed out in awe at the well-lit city moving gracefully beneath them.

  It's not violent... flying. So elegant...

  An assault on the Sky. That was what the Sky Reverends had always called flying. It seemed impossible that it should feel so peaceful. He'd always imagined a much harsher, maybe even a painful experience.

  "Look up, my Sky," he whispered into Zara's ear; she had squeezed her eyes shut again. "We are going to pass through Her."

  She lifted her head.

  The buildings dipped and twisted; the bubble of city lights reached far out into the country and shone on the fields and the brown trenches like dirty swirled thumbprints and then shrank and blurred into the burned up prune. Harper leaned forward. He frowned and squinted at the sight. Zara's hand was on his arm now and it hurt.