That gets my attention. Suddenly I’m finding it hard to breathe.
She goes on, “My father is very stubborn. He’s afraid of the ground and afraid of advancement. And when my mother became ill with the sun disease, he implored every sort of treatment our doctors have to offer. But of course the treatments all did nothing. She grows weaker by the day.”
“She has sun disease, then,” I say. It’s the same as a death sentence. It begins as a small boil and it multiplies until it has drawn all the color and all the life from a person.
Celeste grabs my hands, startling me. She holds them between our chests and I could swear I feel her pulse throbbing in her fingertips. “What Pen said isn’t true. I had nothing to do with your parents. My brother and I have never had any say in my father’s decisions, and while I’d like to deny that my father is to blame, I believe it.”
I focus on the shiny gray flowers printed on the wall. Tears are threatening their way up.
“That’s another part of it,” Celeste says, her voice softening, the desperation becoming less prominent. “My father has made panicked, corrupt decisions to keep his kingdom from interacting with the ground. But if he could only see that there’s an alliance to be made, all of that could stop.”
I swallow something painful. “How can you be sure the alliance would turn out well?”
“How sure can one ever be of anything?” she asks. “But we have no other choice.”
“You said you hoped we could be friends,” I say. “As your friend, then, I think you should be prepared for your plan to fail. Have you given that a moment’s consideration? You might be stuck in this world for the rest of your life. We all might.” I say the words gently, but it doesn’t take the edge from them.
She squeezes my hands. “That sort of thinking doesn’t serve me,” she says. “If I’m to accomplish something this big, I have to be certain I’ll succeed, every second of every day.”
She kidnapped me against my will, I remind myself. She threatened to kill me. I have no business pitying her. I have no business wanting to help her.
“I’ve invited you to come along tomorrow,” she says. “The decision is yours, but I do hope you’ll say yes.”
She lets go of my hands and opens the door. “If you’re going to have a bath, be sure to let the water run for a few seconds. It comes out cold.”
With that, she’s gone.
Before I go to bed, I check in on Lex and Alice, whose life in this world is parallel to their life on Internment. Lex mutters fiction to his transcriber while Alice patiently holds their marriage in place like a taut length of twine around a stack of old love letters.
“Good night,” she says, and kisses my cheek and whispers, “He’s grieving, and this is a strange place. He’ll come around soon.”
“Good night, Lex,” I say. “You remember me, don’t you? Your only sister?”
He raises his voice to the transcriber, drowning me out.
I used to worry when he behaved this way, but now it just makes me angry.
I am the only one in the hotel incapable of sleep tonight. Even Pen succumbed rather early, complaining of a headache. She blamed the princess for her headache and dragged the changing screen between their beds. Birdie, still hungover from the night before, spent the entire day feigning a stomach virus to ward off her father’s suspicions. She doesn’t come to our room and it’s clear there will be no adventures tonight.
I listen to the clock ticking on the nightstand. Time is the same on the ground. Months and days, too. I had expected more differences between us and them, but all the differences are cultural. They have two eyes like us. They have a beating heart like us. And Birdie’s friendship has been as easy and natural as it would have been had we met on Internment.
But when I look to the future, I’m not certain I see myself here. Nor am I certain I could see myself returning home. I feel very much that I am floating in a sky full of stars, with nothing to cling to.
And sleep will surely never come. When I can take it no longer, I climb out of bed and make sure the bedroom window isn’t locked, in case I’ll need it later. I quietly make my way to the kitchen and fold some apples and slices of bread into a cloth napkin, and I head for the metal bird.
I’ve taken these streets enough times now that I remember where the bird landed. It’s far from the city proper, so there are no streetlamps to light the way. But that’s no matter. The stars remember me; I was born and have lived my entire life beneath them, and they will always light the way.
The snow is beginning to melt, and it’s as though Havalais has endured a flood. I see the night sky reflected in puddles, and I think I could get used to being here. Learn the history books and cast trinkets into the sea to make friends with the mermaids. Lex will come out of hiding and he and Alice will find an apartment, and they’ll invite me for dinner sometimes. And there are no dispatch dates; Basil and I could live to be a hundred years old. We could travel all the way around the planet and never feel that we’re standing upside down, and it will be a marvel for us.
Perhaps it’s the silence of this night or the clarity of the stars. Perhaps I am disillusioned. But I am feeling brave enough to take on this world. And the moon as well, should there ever be a way for me to reach it.
When I reach the metal bird, it feels like a piece of some distant time.
I climb the ladder, knock on the metal door. “Professor Leander? It’s me. Morgan Stockhour.”
I hear rustling and clanging from within, then silence.
“I’ve brought food,” I say.
No answer.
“The food here isn’t very different if you know what to look for. They eat a lot of animals. And the strange thing is that they drink cow’s milk. I can’t say I care for it. It left me feeling a bit nauseous. Anyway, I’ve brought you an apple and some bread.”
The door cracks open. “Oh, for the love of—will you stop talking? You’re going to attract the animals.”
I lean forward and try to see inside the bird. “Animals?”
“Yes, yes. Strange ones, at that. With beady red eyes and fangs.”
“Can I come inside, then?” I say, holding the bundle up hopefully. “I’m alone. Promise.”
The professor’s arm reaches out for the food, but I hold it back. “First let me in.”
“Oh, all right, all right. If there are eyes watching, they’ve already seen you.” The door opens all the way, and there Professor Leander stands, holding a lantern. I make a note to bring candles the next time I visit; he must be running low.
“Nobody is watching,” I tell him. “It’s just an empty field.”
“Nothing is what it seems here,” he tells me as he climbs the ladder that leads to the kitchen. It’s still filled with appliances that won’t work without electricity. I’m not sure what he was planning for.
“They’re going to run you out, you know. Tomorrow the king is coming to haul this bird away, whether you come out or not.”
“Yes, yes.” He bites into the apple with a loud crunch. “I’ve been expecting that. Judas and Amy tell me we’re at war.”
“Judas has been to see you?” I don’t know why I should feel betrayed. It isn’t as though I haven’t been keeping secrets and sneaking away. “When?”
“Oh, now and again. Refuses to bring any food, though. He insists I come out.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Savages,” he says. He raises the lantern and I can see all the creases in his face. “You’re lucky to have your skin, the lot of you. Lucky they didn’t take it away from you.”
“They aren’t scary,” I say. “They’re people, like us.”
He finishes his apple and brushes past me and begins climbing the ladder. He takes the lantern with him, leaving me in the darkness. After a pause, he says, “Well, are you going to just stand there?”
I follow him up and through the hallway that leads to the helm, which is made up almost entirely of windows. He blows ou
t the lantern, and starlight fills the space. For a moment it’s like being home.
“See, there,” he says, pointing across the water to where the lights of the capital city are glimmering. “That’s the technology we copied. Copied their buildings and their trains, but tried not to copy their ways.”
“It isn’t very different,” I say.
“It never sleeps.” His voice is a hiss. “Always going. Always building, climbing an endless ladder until they make their way into the sky. It is only a matter of time.”
“Before they reach Internment, you mean,” I say, trying to understand.
“Internment, the moon, the bloody tributary so they can swim with the dead spirits.”
Against all reason, I look to the sky and try to find that impalpable ribbon of light. “They don’t believe in the tributary here,” I say.
“Gardens of bodies,” he mutters. “You learn all you need to know by how a people treats its dead.” He looks at me, his face so close, I can smell the apple on his breath. “You mustn’t die in this place.”
I lean back. “I don’t see how I should help that.” He shakes his head, looks back to the city. It is a strange city, but I’m trying to make it seem familiar.
“What did you come for?” he asks, after a silence.
“To warn you about tomorrow,” I say. But, now that he’s asked, I wonder, “If you’re appalled with the ground, and opposed to the way Internment is run, which would you prefer—to be here or to be there?”
“It’s not about me,” he says. “Not me. I’m not long for any world now. This trip was for my granddaughter. Those parents she’s got were killing her with treatments. When Daphne was killed, they lost their perfect child. They forgot they still had another. They were going to declare Amy irrational soon. Lock her away.”
I think of all those nights I found Amy hiding in the woods. She hid in the cavern and climbed trees and said that there was no one at home to notice she was gone. “They miss her, surely,” I say.
“They’re relieved,” he says. “But, more importantly, so is she.”
“She’s sick,” I blurt. “Judas is trying to hide it, but since he’s been coming to visit and you have his ear, I think you should convince him to bring her to a hospital. From what I understand, the doctors here are more advanced.”
“If you don’t value your skin,” the professor says.
He sits at the helm, and though the buttons and levers no longer work, he runs his fingers over them like a parent caressing its sleeping child. And in the apex between his forefinger and thumb I see a dark mass. The early sign of sun disease.
I feel as though I am being watched the entire way back to the hotel. The professor’s paranoia is contagious, though when I strain my ears, all I hear is the roar of the tides turning. It has all that weight burdening it. It carries the reflection of the entire sky.
By the time I return to my bed, I feel as though I’m carrying the same weight.
“Wondered when you’d be back,” Celeste whispers from the other side of the screen. “I’m surprised you went alone this time.”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying.” I try to bury myself in the blankets, in the dark. “I only wanted to go for a walk without disturbing anyone.”
“You don’t need to lie to me,” she says. “I don’t feel excluded to miss the nightly parties. I need my eight hours.”
“Then have them,” I say. She’s quiet, and I’m left with time to regret my sharpness. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“Pen doesn’t own you, you know,” she says. Cool, practical. “You needn’t include her in every moment of your life.”
Now it’s my turn to be offended. This from the girl whose brother finishes every sentence she begins in his presence.
Unlike me, she doesn’t apologize for her candor. She lets it linger in the darkness, the last thing I hear before sleep.
10
There is something strange about the morning sky. Everyone in the hotel seems to sense it, except for Celeste, who is all energy and chatter about her meeting with the king. “It’s right after breakfast,” she says. “Have you decided whether you’re coming?”
“Yes, have you?” Pen rolls her eyes. But when the princess isn’t looking, Pen gives me a quick nod that says she wants me to go.
I’ve decided to, but not because it’s what she wants. I’m going because I feel that the professor should have a friendly face in sight when he’s dragged out of his life’s work.
“I’d much like to go,” I say, and mimic the sour face Pen gives while the princess is busy inspecting herself in the mirror. Pen throws a necklace at me.
Celeste smiles. “Excellent. See you at breakfast, then.”
Once the princess is gone, Pen says, “You have to tell me everything.”
“I don’t have to,” I say.
Pen pushes my shoulders down so that I sit on the edge of the bed. She climbs behind me and begins twisting and pinning my hair. She says it makes her anxious the way I let my hair just hang over my shoulders like a wet rag. Pen believes in a pristine appearance, always. It draws the line between living and giving in. Under the bloodshot eyes and ashen skin and frizzed hair her mother wears, traces of a pretty woman still linger, dying slowly.
“What has gotten into you?” she says. “You’ve been touchy. Is it Basil? Is he very sick?”
“I checked in on him earlier this morning,” I say. “He’s much better.”
“What, then?”
“I’m only tired,” I say.
She tugs a piece of my hair. “Hey, you know what I was thinking? When the war is over, we could get our own apartment in the city. Maybe Birdie would come, too.”
“They cost money here,” I say. “They aren’t assigned.”
“So we’ll get jobs.”
“What about Thomas and Basil?” I say.
“You’re such a good girl,” she teases. “Upholding the rules of betrothal when the law isn’t looking.”
“I’m still going to marry Basil,” I say.
“So marry him, then. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow.” She pushes me toward the mirror so I can see what she’s done. All my hair is off to one side and woven into a fish tail that winds into a bun.
“It looks nice,” I say,
“Worthy of a day spent in the presence of royalty, if I do say so myself.”
She rests her chin on my shoulder. We stare down our reflections as though they pose a threat. Who we are versus who we were supposed to be.
The clouds have become the color of mud. They are heavy and unreal, strokes in one of Pen’s wild colorings when she’s feeling fantastical and the look in her eyes says she is unreachable. I stare up with worry as the wind works at undoing my hair. Celeste holds her borrowed hat to her head. There’s a violet flower with a blue stamen pinned to its side that complements the brightness of her eyes. If she’s at all worried about the sky, she doesn’t let on. She’s watching the king’s men in a circle around the metal bird. They’ve brought machines this time that look like giant metal monsters, one with two long fingers and another with teeth that are eager to tear the professor’s invention apart.
“Stubborn, isn’t he?” she says. “They’re going to disassemble it whether he comes out or not.” At the next gust of wind, she holds her skirt against her knees. “I wish they’d hurry up.”
The machine with the long fingers rolls forward. I look away just as the metal begins to crunch. Voices shout into the megaphones for him to come out, and all I can think of is that mass on his hand that will be the death of him.
I run forward. Celeste calls after me but I run for the metal bird, past the men with guns and megaphones, up the ladder. Nobody stops me. The machine is still tearing at the helm. I hear the glass shatter.
“Professor Leander!” I call. I tug at the handle and find that it isn’t locked. It isn’t even latched.
He isn’t on the main level and I climb the ladder up to the helm. Cold air fills
the hall; the metal groans as it settles.
I find him sitting at the controls, staring at the open space that was once his windshield. The machine has stopped tearing at it, but only because I’ve run inside. They had no regard for his life at all.
“We have to go,” I say.
He closes his eyes. “It ends here, then, does it?”
“It begins,” I say.
He looks at me, unbelieving. We hold each other’s gaze, and I see the moment when realization strikes him: I am it. I am the only one on this whole round, half-upside-down planet who is going to come for him. And I believe it’s for me, not himself, that he stands.
He mutters complaints and curses the whole way to the door. I put my hand on the latch. “Ready?”
“Are they very barbaric out there?” he asks.
“Only slightly.”
He clutches the book he grabbed on our way out, and then he holds it to me. The History of Internment. They are everywhere to be found back home, but this must be the only copy the ground will ever see. Suddenly this book, a copy of which I handled and carried every day as a student, has become the last of its kind. “I’d like your friend to have this. The budding cartographer who drew me that lovely map.”
“You can give it to her yourself,” I say. “She’d love it.”
He forces it into my hands and throws open the door.
A hush has fallen over the king’s men. The princess stands among them, wringing her hands. She looks nervously at me.
“Ladies first,” the professor says.
I climb down, and the moment I touch ground, all the men raise their guns to the professor. They are all wary of this bizarre and wild-haired man. I look up at him. There is nothing like sanity in his eyes. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t do anything stupid.
He holds his hands up to show that he is not armed. Guns don’t exist in our world; I know the proper name only from hearing Jack Piper boast about the king’s artillery. But it’s as though the professor knows all about them. It’s as though he knows everything. What a terrible burden it must be.
Burning Kingdoms Page 10
