Skyland (6 page)
For a hundred thousand Suns it was the least
he could do.
The man who'd bought the chair was leaving
on the fourth ship. The chair maker had two days to smooth out some
of the nicks and put one final coat of varnish on it. Two days to
perfect a piece almost a hundred years old. An antique that would
serve no purpose.
He looked at his watch and shook his head.
Light was fading and when the candle went out, his work would stop.
Until the chair made it to the fourth ship and the chair maker got
his Suns, he could not afford more light.
He dipped a brush into the varnish and
smoothed it onto the wood.
The door clicked open.
"Hi."
The chair maker turned around and pulled the
scarf from his face. "Belle."
He set down the varnish, and stood, holding
his arms out to the old woman.
He caught her in a hug and held tight,
stroking the white hair that ran down her back. The strands caught
on the calluses of his fingers. Grains of sand rolled in the locks.
He kissed the side of her head. One strand of hair caught in his
dry, chapped lips. The chair maker blew it away.
He pulled back and looked at his wife. The
weathered face, touched just a little with the dust of the air,
rosy under her white hair, beamed. She gazed over his shoulder out
the window towards the shadow of the great ship.
"It's magnificent."
"Did you get up close?"
"A little," she said. "I got to the edge of
the docks, but they're not letting anyone right next to it without
a ticket. They started loading this morning – twelve hours early!
It can hold so many. Can you imagine it?"
"I can't."
"And all those people going up to touch the
Sky! Can you imagine?"
He smiled and shook his head. He stroked her
face glowing with wonder, the eyes all lit up like stars. "Do you
want to go? I could barter for tickets... the buyer for this
thing," he gestured to the chair "could connect us. He offered, you
know, instead of the Suns, he offered tickets. He's high up and he
could probably still–"
"No, my Sky. You know I don't."
"We could. If you changed your mind. It is
not too late."
"I want to stay right here and watch it take
off. It'll be spectacular just like the other one, won't it?"
"Yes, I think it will be."
The chair maker moved away, back to the
window. He opened it. The hot, dusty air tasted fresh after the
fumes of varnish inside the workshop. The chair makers wife came
and leaned her head on his shoulder. He took her hand.
The sun was fast approaching the horizon and
more and more people were swarming towards the ship.
"It's almost time." The elderly creak of the
chair maker's wife's voice was high, excited. Her lips, as dry as
her husbands, quivered in a wide smile. The chair maker looked down
at her, his own expression mirroring hers.
We've got all we need right here.
"I'd so much rather see it from down here,"
she said, looking up at him. "I think I'd be so nervous to go into
the Sky – not until I have to."
"May that day be far away."
She nodded. "A
nd She will watch over us
from above,
" she quoted from the
Sky Tomes
.
"Yes."
He unclasped her hand and put an arm around
her shoulder, hugged her tight again. Her thin arms reached around
his waist. He was secretly glad that she refused to go on the
ships. The chair maker had always kept his feet firmly on the
ground and he liked it that way. The flying machines scared him. He
squeezed her close.
You are safer here. And things will be
better after.
The noise of the crowd was growing as more
and more people flocked to the docks. The light was disappearing
fast now. The lone candle burned brighter in the chair maker's
workshop. He knew he should pinch it out now that he was no longer
working. Soon it would be time to retire to bed and save the light
for another day. But he couldn't tear his eyes away from the docks
where the rumble of the crowd was beginning to turn into a
roar.
Almost...
Then some part of the chatting masses went
quiet. Then another. Then another. A wave of quiet moved out from
the base of the ships until there were only a few people here and
there still talking. Then it was silent.
An announcement was being broadcast over the
heads of the people gathered. The chair maker couldn't hear what it
was. From this distance the voice sounded like it was
underwater.
But he heard the deafening cheer that went
up from the crowd a second later.
"It's time..."
"They're ready..."
The engines roared.
Smoke billowed from the base. The engines
chugged and the thing lifted off the ground, slow, graceful. The
smoke cleared and the ship rose higher and higher. People
cheered.
"They're off..." whispered the chair maker's
wife.
Then it blew.
And the cheers turned to screams. Flaming
bits rained down on the crowd.
It's all black.
Harper closed his eyes. Again. The blackness
behind his lids was natural, expected. It was the comforting night
blackness he saw before sleep. The Sky was still there, past his
eyelids, shrouded in the dark helm of night. But it was there.
Or at least it had been.
Where is it now?
He opened his eyes. Again. After only a
minute he had to look. Like a gawker at a bloody disaster zone, he
couldn't keep his gaze away.
The black... not Sky...
not Sky...
space stretched.
It stretched far, far, far. Going out from
his eyes everywhere he looked outside the ship, going away, away –
to where? It just went on as far as he could imagine.
He tried not to imagine it.
His jaw clenched. He ground his teeth
together. His eyes squinted, but he couldn't close them, he
couldn't look away. The thought of the familiar darkness that
waited to comfort him made his eyes well up. It was too much. He
missed her. He missed his Sky.
Harper sniffed.
"The first ship left Skyland today with
almost five thousand passengers–"
Five thousand?
Harper had trouble believing the tally on
the broadcast. Surely, there had been millions crowding the dock.
He shook his head. He'd never seen that many people. He'd never
even seen five hundred together.
"–Flight plans indicate the ship is indeed
bound for Union Proper, but it remains to be seen which planet will
take the settlers."
He listened anyway.
"Oh... ah, this just in–"
One hand twitched in his lap. He held it
tight in a fist. His eyes moved to the news projection on the
observation deck window.
"–Den has said they will take the refugees.
They have yet to say whether they will take
all
Skyland
settlers or whether the eight ships to follow will have to seek
refuge elsewhere–"
Harper's fist relaxed.
He closed his eyes. The blackness of the
night Sky whispered behind their lids. He opened them again
quickly. One heavy breath escaped like a sigh.
"– Den has a lower population density than
most other planets in the Union, a quality that factored into their
decision to accept this shipload of Skylanders."
A hand touched his shoulder, an arm rested
on his neck. Zara. She stood behind him now and leaned silently
against his back, cradling his head against her chest, smoothing
his hair, brushing her slender fingers against his cheeks. She
didn't speak.
"–The refugees will be subject to the
immigration regulations and assimilation requirements, but Den
authorities say they look forward to welcoming the newcomers with
open arms."
"My Sky." Zara's voice was a croon, a sweet,
soothing coo that didn't dispel the fear of the black spaces but
worked at the rough edges of his fear, smoothing them out just a
little. He leaned his head back into her chest. His eyes closed
again and this time, with her voice floating into his head, he was
comforted. "Why are we still here, my Sky? Let's go and rest.
Tomorrow, this will all be less unsettling."
"No."
"Harper..."
"I am waiting."
For what? Come on, it is late."
"Hah! Late? You can't tell morning from
night up here."
"No, but I can read a clock. It
is
late."
"Then you should go to bed."
"Not without you."
"No."
"My Sky..."
"Not yet."
"What are you waiting for? You need your
res–"
"For my father."
There was silence behind him for a moment.
The hands on either side of his face stilled. Zara's chest raised
with a breath. Then another.
"No," she said. "You will not hear from him
again."
"I will. The whole universe will."
"Harper..."
"It will."
"But who will do it? Not everybody
will..."
"They will find someone."
"Maybe not..."
"They will. And if they do not, then my
father will do it himself. All the Sky Reverends would."
"But maybe... maybe they will be delayed.
And if they are delayed long enough, then maybe their plan will
never happen."
"They have been planning the destruction of
the ships since the city first began making them. They are
prepared."
"Then there is nothing you can do."
"I can wait."
"My Sky..."
Her voice was working its way through his
brain, softening more of the edges of his fear, calming him. He
opened his eyes. Then he turned away from the black space outside
the window and looked up into her dark eyes, more familiar, more
comforting than the holy night Sky of the same color.
But he flinched away.
She doesn't know.
The darkness outside the window scared his
wife as much as it scared him. Harper knew that. But she didn't
have its reflection inside her. He did. And he could not expect her
to see that or to understand it.
His body's clock had hit zero.
The ship had taken off, him inside it and it
had reached up to the Sky, just like it was supposed to. But it
wasn't supposed make it to the other side.
He
wasn't
supposed to make it to the other side. It was his job to make sure
that didn't happen. Now hours after launch, flying through space,
Harper was still here. Still breathing.
What now?
There was no answer. There was just an empty
expanse inside his mind that mirrored the blackness outside. The
silence of his body clock yawned in the void.
He shivered.
But there is nothing for it... nothing to
do...
He looked back into Zara's eyes and smiled.
There was at least
something
familiar out here in the void
of space. She smiled back at him, and the edges of his fear
softened, just a bit more. Then he did what he always did after a
long day of hopeless labor. He stood up, wrapped his arms around
her waist and rested his chin on top of her silky hair.
Then he drew her away from the emptiness
outside, into the windowless innards of the ship.
Behind them, the news continued.
in which there is a
space of Infinite Space
...
Harper wandered.
Zara wandered beside him, but she had been
mostly silent their second day on the ship, letting him come to
terms with their temporary home in his own time. He was grateful
both for the presence and for the space.
One foot stepped in front of the other, and
then the other moved in front of it. And the process repeated until
he was somewhere else, and then somewhere else and then somewhere
else. His eyes drifted over the black floors and windowless
corridors.
The ship was vast.
He knew it, but every time he looked up from
his absently shuffling feet and realized that he was somewhere
else, he couldn't help marveling at just how much
somewhere
else
there always was inside the ship. He wondered (though he
tried not to) how much damage his rustic weapon would have done. He
tried to think that it would have done no harm. But he well knew
that a century of perfecting and compressing the formula of the
villagers was an achievement no less than the building of these
giant flying fortresses.
And he wandered.
He missed the blue fields of his Sky that
were now far behind.
Or that were never there in the first
place.
His mind was clearer after the... night's...
rest. He still had difficulty with the notion that there was night
and day up here. But his body still demanded its cycles. Waking up
this... morning... he'd felt like he did every morning when he woke
up. Until he felt the cold floor beneath his feet.
He'd passed one or two windows but drew away
quickly before he could look too far out.
Back home, the Sky changed; this was not
unknown to him. She was dark, She was light. Sometimes, She was
stained with the white splotches of clouds. In the past, so the
stories said, She would grey over entirely before a rain storm. But
She was always there.
Out here in space, she wasn't.
Is She invisible or absent?
His feet walked.
The solid metal under his feet asserted
itself the way the ground of Skyland never had. The walls and floor
hummed around him, quivering with the well-insulated thrum of the
engines. Harper did not like it. Unlike the Sky, the ground beneath
his feet had always been virtually invisible. It was horrid,
unfeeling, unyielding, the enemy of the farmer. It did not give
what was needed except when the Sky so decreed to rain upon it. The
Sky was kind and blue and beautiful. The dirt was an angry, ugly
thing.