Skyland (2 page)

"Zara," he said, and took her hands, encased
in dirty gloves, in his.

For a moment her eyes brightened and pinched
up at the corners, and he could tell she was smiling. Then she
looked away, but too slowly; he saw the happy micro-expression
fade, replaced by fear widening her dark eyes. She sniffed and
stared out over the expanse of waste.

"So much to be done," she said, keeping her
eyes stubbornly away from his, "and for so little."

"Zara..."

"This trench will not be good for growing
for another two years at least." She pulled her hands out from his
and took up the pole again.

"My Sky... in two years, we won't need this
trench."

She laughed, bending over the compost once
more, leaning on the gleaming railing, to rake the filth below. It
was a hard laugh with no trace of humor. "And let the waste go to
waste? No, we'll need it."

"But things will be different when the city
dwellers are gone."

"Different...so everyone in the country
says."

"So
I
say. I promise."

"There is another option, Harper."

He didn't answer. The muck oozed.

"Harper..." Her voice was very soft, a plea,
or placation. "We could go on the ships and leave Skyland. They
need more farmers. So many from the country are refusing to
go."

He shook his head. "No. There is no need for
us to leave. When the ships and the people in them are gone, then
there will be more food, more resources for the villages. Without
the city's greed, there will be enough to feed everyone. The barren
fields will have time to recover, and there will be plenty, like
there was before the drought. The punishment of the Sky will
end."

"But what if it is a natural degeneration of
our world and not punishment?"

"No, you'll see. When those who build
unnatural contraptions and fly through the air piercing our Sky's
beautiful fields are gone, then this will end. She rains drought
and famine and misery on us for their assault. We will be better
when they are gone."

His fathers words rang out in Harper's own
voice.

He shuddered at the sound.

Zara shook her head. "Not we," she said and
looked at him again. Tears were beginning to soak the shirt neck
tied over her cheeks.

Harper tightened his jaw and swallowed his
own tears.

"My Sky," he whispered, because he knew his
voice would break if he raised it even a little. He hugged her
awkwardly as she stood leaning on the railing, holding tight to the
muck-rake. He put an arm around her, ignoring the waste smeared on
her clothes.

"When you are gone," she said, "maybe I will
go on one of the other ships."

"No!" Harper flinched. He pulled away from
her and she turned back to the rail, but he grabbed her arms and
turned her back to face him. Beneath the film of tears over her
eyes, there was a hardness, a spark of... of anger or something
worse. "My Sky, don't go on the ships. My Sky, please...."

"I may."

"No... please. When I've destroyed the
first, then the Sky Reverends will come for the remaining eight.
Not one of them is safe.
Not one.
"

"My plan is not to be safe."

"I can't leave you thinking that you will be
destroyed with the ships."

"Then don't leave."

"I have to. Otherwise, we will all be
destroyed." He repeated more rote sermons. "The city will suck away
all our resources and we will starve. I can't let that happen. Not
to you."

"No." Zara shook her head. "When I'm left
here alone, listening to the ramblings of zealots and racking filth
for the rest of my life, then I am destroyed." She flinched under
Harper's grip.

He let go of her arms. He took the muck-rake
out of her hands and leaned it against the railing. Then he put his
arms more gently around her.

"Zara..." he whispered. "I can't think of
you on the ships."

She leaned against him and he could feel the
tear-soaked cloth of her shirt soaking into his own. He held her
tightly to still his own shaking limbs. He took a heavy breath,
then another, and a third, but his voice still shook when he spoke
again.

"There is another choice, too..." He
swallowed. He inhaled, choking on the air. "Another choice besides
leaving you, and besides leaving together... Your father would be
very proud if you came with me... into the Sky." The words barely
made it out of his mouth, more sobs than syllables.

Zara froze in his arms.

Her head shook against his chest.

"No. No."

"We could..."

"No." It was more a pained moan than an
answer.

"Zara..."

"No!" Then she was crying openly, her sobs
shaking her body violently. "I don't want to see their faces. I do
not want to see them..."

"My Sky–"

"I don't want to see their faces!" She
hiccoughed the words between sobs. "Harper, why not just destroy
their ships? Then they couldn't fly, and the Sky wouldn't punish us
– if that's what she is doing."

"That wouldn't help. If the people still
live, they will build more ships. We must wait until they are
full."

"No." Her head shook again, wobbling
fiercely amid her trembling.

"Yes. It's the only way. Everything...
everyone on the ships must go. But you could...
we
could–"
No.
You can't ask for her help!
He shook his head.
"You will not rake muck in the trenches for the rest of your
life."

"I will. Without the ships, that is the only
thing that will happen." She sniffed. The trembling was gone and
her body was still again. Then she pulled away, took up the pole,
and hunched over the waste-filled trench yet again.

Harper put a hand on her shoulder.

"It will be better" he said. "Do you think I
am doing this for my father? Do you think I am doing this for the
Sky?"

Still turning the brown gloop, she looked
over at him, squinting over the neck of her shirt. She didn't
answer.

"I'm not," said Harper. "I don't do it for
them. The Sky takes care of Her own affairs."

"And your father?"

Abominations... enemies of the Sky...
Harper swallowed. He closed his eyes, but his father's face,
mouthing the words of the sermons, punctuated by his fist pounding
the pulpit still burned in his mind.

"My father is bitter like kale. He doesn't
defend the Sky. He attacks the city people out of resentment, not
justice. He acts out of hate rather than rightness. I will not
fight for him."

"Then, why are you doing what he says?"

"I'm doing it for you."

"No, Harper. Please don't tell me that–"

"It may be the only way to save us." He
gritted his teeth. A lifetime of a zealot's speeches and devotion
to the Sky... Only the woman in front of him was certain. "You
deserve a chance to escape this wretchedness."
It is the only
way.

"You don't know that destroying the ships
will give me that!"

"But it might."

"But you don't know!"

"I know that the city is greedy and sucks
resources from the farms. I know that I've lived my whole life on
the ground and the Sky is not the place for living people. I know
that Skyland flourished before the city was built and the city
people multiplied."

"Then let them leave."

"And come back when the drought is ended and
ruin our home again? No. Destroying them is our best hope to end
this punishment and make this land livable again."

"Our hope? I don't even think we have that
if we build Skyland on the smoldering corpses of the city."

Harper shook his head. He had
chosen
this road. It was not a certainty. But it was their only option.
Destroying the ships that wrecked the heavens and begging the
forgiveness of the Sky might not bring back the old days of
Skyland, but it would end the new days. And the new days needed to
end.

It was the plan of the Sky Reverends, the
plan of his father.

Harper hated it. But he did not have a
better one.

He had chosen.

Every summer, the plots of arable land
shrank. Every summer, the buildings of the city grew taller. The
country folk grew fewer as the young abandoned the farm life to
seek better in the city. The city grew more as it absorbed the
refugees from the country. The demands of the city grew with their
population. And the plots of land grew even smaller.

Even the kale was becoming scarce.

The sun had sunk to the horizon.

It was orange, like the fruits in the
stories of the old Skyland. Harper had never seen any outside of
mosaics. Only kale, some tubers hidden under the ground from the
sun's angry heat, and a few strains of dark berries, bitter and
shriveled things, had survived the years of drought.

Fruits the color of the sun... they will
grow again after the ships are gone.

He repeated this to himself to quiet the
dissenting shades in his mind, shades that whispered in Zara's
voice. As he stared into the sun – he would not need to worry about
his sight after today – his gut trembled. The orange globe started
to slip below the edge of the world.

"My Sky, it's time.

Chapter
Three

in which there is
water, but only a trickle
...

The horizon sucked the sun lower and lower
and lower. Half of it was gone now. Harper kept his eyes ahead,
watching the sun set and listening to his own life's clock tick
down. They were walking west towards the city, to the expanse on
its northwest side where the docks sat.

The docks.

The seat of the assault on the Sky.

Heresy... heresy...
Harper reminded
himself.

Again.

He reminded himself, again, as he looked at
the towering ships reaching up to the heavens, the very tips
brushing the Sky Herself, he reminded himself of how
wrong
they all were. Just wrong.

Monstrous contraptions. Trespassers in the
Sky.

The sun shone on the city, lighting up one
side of the glass and steel metropolis with an orange fire. On the
other side, the shadows hung long off the buildings.

Abominations...

He squinted at the towering sheets of glass
of the city's tallest buildings, many reaching higher than the
monstrous ships. The orange glare of the sun danced on the windows.
The glittering surfaces threw the light back onto the smaller
buildings, so that even at this distance Harper, when squinting,
could see the squat clusters of older neighborhoods squeezed in
between the new. And the giant facades were mirrors: old stone
walls and tile roofs reflected in the glass, the glass reflected on
the stone and the tile.

It was beautiful.

Wasteful constructions
...
Abominations...
No better than the ships.

He shook his head as if he could shake out
the dissent.

Zara's hand was in his. He squeezed it, but
he could not look at her. She had come to see him off – to the
bridge at the edge of the city, not any farther. Her presence made
the long walk easier. In his peripheral vision he watched her dark
hair, down to her waist, bobbing with each step. The tiny blue gem
that never left her neck, the chip of sacred color, the marriage
gift from the Sky Reverends, that gem was hidden under the long
neck of her shirt. The neck hung down, like his, unnecessary now
that they were away from the stench of the brown trenches.
Unnecessary until the next dust storm, anyway.

Harper would never need his again.

He could not meet her eyes.

So he stared at the sun instead.

Behind them, several paces back walked his
father. The old man hung back a respectful distance to give the
young couple their space, but his angry muttering interspersed with
cheerful whistling was far from unobtrusive. Harper didn't know
which was worse.

"My Sky..." Zara's voice whispered from his
side.

Her pace slowed then stopped.

Finally, Harper turned and met her eyes,
black pools under a film of unshed tears in a face the color of a
cloud.

The dark eyes were narrowed.

She was not looking at him.

He followed her gaze across the bridge, just
ten feet away now, almost in the shadow of the city. The bridge
that led from farmland to city spanned the river, now barely a
creek at the bottom of a dried up chasm. But it was not the bridge
that had caught Zara's eye.

It was the man on the other side of it.

Harper squinted and strained his eyes to be
sure of what he was seeing. On both sides of the trickling river
there were outlying buildings of the city and in the evening light
they cast long shadows. In one of these shadows, nearly invisible,
on the far side of the bridge, the man sat.

The threads that covered his body barely
resembled clothing. They ended in shreds at the elbows and knees.
His feet were bare, and they, along with every inch of skin that
showed under the rags of clothes, were weathered like kale burnt up
in the sun. Ropes of matted hair, grainy with sandy soil, hung down
into the dust. He crouched on the ground, eyes bent to his
knees.

He looked inattentive, almost asleep, if a
person could sleep in such a position. But Harper couldn't hope
that the man had not seen them.

This was a scavenger.

His eyes would be sharp as glass, and his
ears keen.

The scavengers were not friends of the
farmers. They were the country folk not lucky enough to have a
farm, or even have work on one. Hatred out of desperation, out of
envy, and even out of the shame of charity had grown between the
unfortunate farmers and the even less fortunate scavengers.

"This close to the city?" Zara's voice
shook.