Burning Kingdoms

by Lauren DeStefano

  She introduces us to the harbor, and the roaring body of water she calls an ocean. “Is that like a big lake?” Pen asks.

  “Much, much bigger, and full of salt,” Birdie says. “And the sea has more creatures than lakes. Whales and sharks and mermaids—they have human hair, you know.”

  “Of all things,” I breathe.

  Birdie bounces on her heels, looking at the lights coasting across the water toward us. “That’s the ferry,” she says.

  Pen elbows me. “Look!”

  But I’m still trying to imagine what sort of fish could have human hair, and when I look at the water, every bit of light now seems like it could be filled with strands.

  There’s a tea-steeped moon above us, cratered and beaming. Strange how it looks as near now as it did when we lived in the sky, even as the clouds meandered alongside the city.

  The ferry pushes out into the water, leaving my stomach and lungs on dry land. How easily I forget this afternoon and all the fears that came with it. Pen and Birdie crowd me at the railing. We are looking for mermaids and fins.

  Pen looks between the harbor and the city lights in the distance. I know her. She’s charting the course, memorizing the details most others would miss. She’ll be drafting maps of it for days. Even as a child she would pen maps of every place she’d been, on the back of her hand and on walls if she couldn’t find paper in time. It became a part of her, as obvious as the green of her eyes. And one day it became her name, and no one ever questioned it, it was that certain.

  “There’s one!” Birdie points to where the water has become crowded with bubbles. There’s a head of hair as silver as the light on the water, and once it’s under again, there’s the flicker of a fin as long as my forearm. Pen squeaks with delight.

  “They never come near land and you probably won’t see their faces, but they like to flirt.”

  “Have you ever seen one up close?” I say.

  “Once. I was fishing with Nim, and his hook got caught up in her hair. She let out this wail, I swear, that could be heard from the heavens. Scared him so much, he dropped the pole, which may have been what she was after. They like to collect human things. Which reminds me, mind your jewelry. I saw one jump up and snatch the beads right off a woman’s neck.” She presses her hat against her head at the memory.

  Pen and I close our fists around our betrothal bands.

  The ocean waves slap against the ferry, more turbulent than any of the lakes back home. It’s no wonder; the ocean is filled with so many creatures swimming about.

  “There could be cities underwater,” Pen says. “A whole society with buildings made up of human things.”

  “There’s more shrimp than you could ever eat,” Birdie says.

  Pen makes a face. “Do those have human hair, too?”

  Birdie laughs. Out here, her eyes aren’t downcast. She isn’t all “please” and “thank you” and “yes, Father” this and that. She tells us about all the sea creatures she can think of—hard little fish that look like stars and crawl like hands along the ocean floor, and whales that could swallow a village if they had a mind to.

  “A fish big enough to swallow a person.” Pen is giddy. “What a hilarious way to die, in the digestive tract of a fish.”

  “Whales aren’t fish,” Birdie says, which is all the more absurd a notion.

  “You live in a strange world, Birdie,” Pen says.

  The ferry comes to a stop, and once we’re on land again, I topple dizzily into the two of them, which sends us all into giggles. We collect a few stares from passersby, but they mean nothing. We are young and enchanted and clattering with beads. We are untouchable.

  I find myself very aware of the ground under my feet. It’s unlike the cobbles back home. Rather, it’s solid and black, and its paths branch out like a flat tree, all of them leading to bright lights and music and possibility.

  “Cinema’s this way,” Birdie says, tugging us by the wrists.

  “It hardly seems like you’re at war,” I say.

  “That’s how King Ingram prefers it,” she says.

  “You’ve met him?” Pen says.

  “Lots of times. Father has him over for dinner when there are matters to discuss. It’s a real honor. The king’s paranoid about poisons and he doesn’t trust a lot of people to prepare his meals.”

  “Our king doesn’t come out of hiding much either,” Pen says. “He and his family live in a clock tower that’s full of dungeons.”

  “How medieval. Here we are, girls!”

  The cinema is a wedge-shaped building, the top of which is framed by a strip of light, and the words “ETIENNE JONES DOUBLE FEATURE.”

  “What an unusual sign,” I say.

  “It’s a marquee,” Birdie says. She hands silver coins to a man behind the glass and we go inside. She leads us into a dimly lit room that’s full of chairs and already crowded. “You’re going to love it,” she says.

  Pen is eyeing the girls in the front row who are passing a bottle among them, taking swigs. I can smell from here that it’s some kind of tonic, which wouldn’t be allowed in public back home.

  Nobody here seems to mind.

  I clear my throat loudly. “What was that name on the building?”

  “Etienne Jones,” Birdie says. “She’s the biggest star in the kingdom. Wait till you see her.”

  I stare at the giant screen that takes up the wall before us like a giant image waiting to be developed.

  Then the screen goes black and music starts to play. Pen loops her arm around mine and squeezes. The world doesn’t seem so scary now that she’s in good spirits. It’s not all warfare and doom.

  The moving picture is gray and jumpy. Lips move and then the words appear for us to read. Etienne Jones has bobbed hair and ringed eyes, and when she walks down the street, she kicks her heels, and all the men watch, dropping hatboxes and getting elbowed by their wives.

  But the image is merely a projection. The screen is only fabric. And though our screens on Internment are much smaller and are never used for entertainment, they are more advanced than this. I wonder how it could be that our tiny floating city could be ahead on any of the technology.

  For hours, we watch the antics of the upbeat actors on the screen, our laughter a roar that blends in with everyone else’s.

  By the time we make our way back to the streets, I have no idea what the hour may be.

  “I heard that story you were telling earlier,” Birdie says. “About the dark times and the solar energy.”

  “It’s from our history book,” Pen says.

  “She knows all the stories,” I say.

  “Have you seen the ginormous black book on your nightstand? That’s The Text of All Things,” Birdie says. “Father insists on leaving one for all the guests. Thinks he can save everyone’s soul. I think it’s all a lot of baloney, myself. Most of it, anyway.”

  “Was it written by prophets like our history book?” Pen asks.

  “Prophets, yes.”

  “And the god of the ground told them what to write?”

  “Well.” Birdie checks her reflection in a shop window and begins twirling a lock of hair. “We don’t say ‘the god of the ground.’ It’s just ‘The God.’ ”

  “Just the one? For the ground and the sky and everything?” Pen asks.

  “I think so,” Birdie says.

  Pen looks at me like this is the stupidest thing she has ever heard, and maybe it is. I scan the city, hoping for something I can use to change the subject. Thomas is right. This is the sort of talk that can send her spiraling.

  Whether or not it’s a welcome one, a distraction finds us in the form of brassy music streaming through a door that’s been left ajar. Pen stops us from walking and looks inside. There’s the smell of smoke and tonic. Giggles and clatters. Sparkling drinks floating on trays.

  Pen is hypnotized. “What is this?” she says, swatting me when I try to pull her away. I follow her gaze to a woman who is gyrating on a table. Her
beads swish around her throat in shimmering ovals, and she kicks her leg in an arch right over the head of some lovesick boy. Her lips are red, and I see now what Birdie has been trying to model herself after.

  “It’s a brass club,” Birdie says. Her voice is almost too soft to hear.

  Pen, stars in her eyes, takes a step forward, but Birdie pulls her back. “We can’t go in there,” she gasps.

  Pen looks with heartbreak at the hand that’s holding her back. “Why not?”

  “We just . . . can’t,” Birdie says.

  “It must be late,” I say.

  “We’re already going to have to sneak back in,” Pen says. “Why not have a little more fun?”

  Birdie stutters and looks worriedly over her shoulder.

  “Don’t hold out on us now,” Pen says. “I saw you come home after the stars had gone to bed.” With that, she plunges into the crowd.

  “I’m so sorry, Birdie, she can be like this,” I say, and hurry after her. I can’t imagine the trouble Pen could get into in a place like this, with tonic shimmering in glasses everywhere.

  Pen has already progressed through curtain after curtain of smoke. She’s made a direct beeline for the dancing woman, who is tall and so skinny, she’s concave. A man at the table holds what must be her shoes.

  The dancing woman smiles at Pen, and it’s as though they have a sort of kinship somehow, for in the dancing woman’s eyes is a melancholy under all that cosmetic.

  Or maybe the melancholy belongs to me. I can’t be certain.

  The music doesn’t cease, but it changes. The dancing woman climbs down, and as she does, the man who holds her shoes leans in for a kiss. “Sorry, Mac,” she says, smiling with all her teeth. “The bank’s closed.”

  Birdie stands beside me, both of us watching the dancing woman talk to Pen. We can’t make out her words, but she wraps her long arms around Pen’s shoulders and says something before kissing her cheek. And then she’s gone, waving her shoes above her head, to begin another dance.

  Pen spins around to face us, giddy.

  Birdie and I are on her at once.

  “What did she say?”

  “You have to tell us!”

  “She said, ‘Now is our time to be queens.’ ” She stands a bit taller for having repeated it. “And then she told me not to take any wooden nickels.”

  I don’t know what that means—any of it—but Pen is glowing. With a single hand she lifts three nearly empty glasses from the dancing woman’s table and hands one to each of us.

  “Pen!” I say.

  “What? It isn’t as though anyone is still drinking out of them. Come on, a toast.” She raises her glass. “To the coronation of three queens. Oh, don’t look like that. You aren’t going to make me drink alone, are you?”

  Birdie raises her glass warily. I believe she’s never had a drink before, though nobody here would suspect it by the looks of her; she’s made up so confidently. I raise my glass to show her it won’t be as bad as all that.

  “What’s it like?” Birdie asks.

  “How should I know?” Pen laughs. It’s a beautiful, free laugh. “This is your world, not mine.”

  “There now,” I say. “Bottoms up.”

  The tonic of the ground has a greater burn than anything I’ve ever tasted on Internment, even from the myriad of bottles Pen and I found after we’d picked the lock in her mother’s cabinet. Birdie coughs, and Pen pats her back sympathetically. “Come on,” Pen says. “We’ll look for something yellow or pink. Nothing pink is ever menacing.”

  By the fourth or fifth glass, Birdie has stopped spluttering the stuff back up before she can swallow it. “I can’t hear myself think in here,” she says.

  “Isn’t that the point?” Pen says, mimicking the dance moves she’s been observing all night. They make her look deranged, like she’s trying to stomp invisible bugs.

  I laugh. “What is that supposed to be?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows.” She snorts, which sends us all into hysterics. “The dancing and the music and the hair and the dresses—it’s all so brilliantly tacky.”

  “We really should go,” Birdie says.

  “For a girl who sneaks out at night, you really are no fun,” Pen says.

  “Birdie’s right,” I say.

  “Morgan, you more than anyone should be glad we’re here. Isn’t this exactly what you’ve been dreaming about all your life?”

  She’s right and she’s wrong all at once. I have dreamed of the ground for as long as I can remember, but the most talented imagination in human existence couldn’t have foreseen this. It’s all so bright and fast and terrifying.

  “Dance with me!” Pen says, grabbing my arms. I backpedal, pulling her for the door.

  “You, my friend, are ossified,” Birdie says, and giggles at Pen. I don’t know what that means, but I suspect it applies to her as well.

  When we burst outside into the cold air, Pen opens her arms and throws her head back and says, “I can’t believe we could get away with that in public.”

  “There aren’t any speakeasies on Internment?” Birdie asks. She slips on a patch of ice, and I catch her by the arm.

  “Only bottles and locks and drawn curtains,” Pen says, trying to balance on the edge of the sidewalk, to little avail. “This cold is drawing the burn right out of my veins,” she sulks. “I think I’m already sober.”

  “You aren’t,” I assure her.

  “I don’t know how you’re both holding it so well,” Birdie says. “The ground is tilting.”

  “Isn’t it great?” Pen says. With a shriek she topples into a pile of snow. “Morgan is a sensible drunk,” she tells Birdie as she picks herself up.

  “Some sense,” I say. “I don’t even know where we are.”

  “I do; everything’s jake,” Birdie says. “You’ve done this kind of thing before?”

  “Now and again,” I say. “Not often.”

  “Not often,” Birdie echoes, rolling my accent down her tongue.

  “Only when we’re together,” Pen says. “We have a pact. Never drink to combat our sorrows and only drink when we’re together.”

  “Why?” Birdie says.

  “Because it’s dangerous otherwise,” I say, fighting off a chill that is not entirely brought on by the wind. Lex. I had my first sip of tonic the day we learned Lex would never see again. My parents kept vigil in his hospital room, and they sent me home to an empty apartment. But Pen was waiting for me on the steps; she took me by the hand and she led me to our secret cavern, the bottles clinking in her satchel. That day was an ocean in itself, filled with creatures that wanted to pull me to uncertain depths.

  It’s as though Pen knows what I’m thinking, for she wraps her arm around my shoulders and kisses my cheek.

  Pen looks to Birdie. “I should like to know more about your lonely god.”

  “That part is boring,” Birdie says. “The divinities are the only parts I ever liked in my studies.”

  “What are divinities?” I ask. I had hoped to keep Pen from mourning our own faraway god, but if we’re to live in this world, we should learn about its faith.

  “They’re like guardians,” Birdie says. “They keep the elements safe. They’re the first creatures to have existed in the world, and everyone descends from them.”

  “So the divinities are human, then,” Pen says.

  Birdie shakes her head, loses her balance and giggles as she stumbles. “There’s Aresi, who doesn’t have a body. She lives on the wind and can be thousands of places at once. And there’s Terra, who makes things grow, and when living things die, it’s her job to guide their spirits up to the afterlife.”

  “So it’s her fault Internment is floating in the sky, then.” I laugh.

  “She must not have liked us,” Pen says.

  “Maybe she thought we were dead and the whole city got stuck halfway to the afterlife,” I say. And after I’ve said the words, I realize with certainty that I’m still drunk.

>   “Growing up by the water, I was made to learn a lot about Ehco,” Birdie says. “When the world was created, he was the first creature of the sea, and he was as small as a worm. And he asked God why he was meant to live in that whole huge body of water, and The God told him that when he put mankind in the world, mankind would sometimes ask The God for things he wouldn’t be able to do. And mankind would grow angry with him—and they would grow sad, and that anger and sorrow needed someplace to go, and so it would be Ehco’s job to consume it and keep it in his body so that it didn’t destroy the world. He was a small thing then, but soon the ocean would be the only thing big enough to contain him. And eventually he divided himself into pieces—a bit in each ocean.”

  Pen cranes her neck to get a view of the water in the distance. “Your ocean does seem to go on forever,” she says, “but I don’t think it’s big enough to contain all the anger and the sorrow in the world.”

  “They’re only stories,” Birdie says. “People live their lives devoted to them. My father made us memorize passages from The Text, but even as a girl I never believed them. Except maybe for Ehco.”

  “Why just Ehco?” I say.

  “Because when I see anger and sadness,” Birdie says, “I can’t believe it’s for nothing. I like the idea that there’s a great monster in the sea who keeps all the bad thoughts so we can let them go.”

  She has slowed a pace behind us, and Pen and I stop to take her hands as we make our way back to the hotel.

  I had worried about sneaking past the princess upon our return, but her bed is empty and neatly made up. Early gray light follows us in through the window.

  “She can’t still be meeting with your father,” Pen says.

  Birdie opens the door and looks out into the hallway. “Nope. Fireplace is out,” she whispers. “Father is always the one to put it out before he goes to bed.” She lurches in an unfortunate and familiar way, and, hand over mouth, she staggers off for the water room. They call it a bathroom down here, but that doesn’t make much sense, as the bath is only a small part of the room’s purpose.

  Pen falls facedown on her bed with a groan. “I’d say I’ll feel this in the morning, but it’s already morning, and I already do.”