“Are you sure you want us to use this putty? I don’t think this is the right kind of compound for this weather,” Breeze commented as he stuck his hand into the bucket and pulled out a clump.
“Mr. Excort? I need you to see to the comm repairs at once,” Ray said.
“Why are you so eager to call home? Daddy’s little boy getting lonely here?” Sally taunted.
Ray whirled on her. “You of all people should know better than to say that.”
Excort rolled his eyes, then put his hands over his ears and walked away.
As Breeze watched the dwarf disappear around the corner, it dawned upon him how lonely and desolate the campus was, and watching his classmates argue made the feeling more acute. He had nothing in common with them and could never relate to the life they were accustomed to. Why he didn’t run away from home like so many others from his town did, he didn’t know. Probably because no matter where he went, nobody would accept him, not even here at Perihelion.
“Hey guys, Excort just wandered off,” Breeze announced.
Sally and Ray stopped their arguing to glare at him.
Breeze shrugged and grabbed a trowel and the bucket of putty. He squatted down and dipped the trowel into the bucket and spread its contents across the wall, filling in the gaping cracks and holes.
“Shouldn’t we sand the surface first like the midget said?” Ray said.
“His name is Excort, and yes, we should. There’s a sander right there,” Breeze pointed behind him. “You can start on that section of wall. I believe I saw a scissor lift around back earlier. If it’s fully charged, you can drive it over here and use it to get to the higher sections of the wall.”
“Are you giving me orders? Who made you the boss?” Ray blustered.
Breeze shrugged. “Do what you want, Ray. I’m not going to waste this day fighting with you.”
Ray glowered, and then left to fetch the scissor lift.
“What should I do?” Sally asked.
Breeze looked up and smiled. “You seemed really interested in the colors. You can mix up some of those paints over there,” he said and pointed to a row of cans behind her, “then brush sample patches on the wall. This way when the paint dries, you can get a better idea of what color you like, then pick one.”
Sally clapped her hands together. “I get to pick the color?”
Breeze shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Is there anybody here to tell us not to?”
Sally squealed and ran over to the row of paint cans. She knelt down, picked one up and fumbled with the cover but couldn’t pry it off. She resorted to using a fingernail and cried out in pain when it broke.
She turned to ask Breeze for help but he was already beside her. He had a utility belt that Excort left behind, and he grabbed a screwdriver from it and easily pried the covers off the cans. He then stirred the paint within each one before pouring small amounts into pans. He replaced the covers and used a hammer to tap them shut, then reached into a box and pulled out brushes and placed one into each of the pans.
“Now what you can do is brush a strip of paint onto the wall like this,” Breeze said as he grabbed a brush and dipped it into the paint, and then brushed a strip on the wall. “Take your time and brush different colors on the wall. That will give an idea of what you’re looking for. If you still don’t like what you see, no worries. Just take these extra pans and feel free to mix the paints any way you like to create the colors you want. Just remember as you paint the strips, give them time to dry. The paint is very wet and shiny when you first apply it. But as time passes, the shine wears off and the color fades a little. Kind of like what happened to this place.”
She nodded as she glanced around.
“Anyways, just go ahead and paint the colors you like. Find one that you feel is right and we can go from there,” Breeze said as he handed her the roller.
“Thank you,” she replied meekly.
Their hands touched and she smiled. He blushed and returned to the wall he was patching.
Sally brushed the samples onto the wall all the while looking at Breeze from the corner of her eye. She was pleasantly surprised that there was more to him than she gave him credit for.
“What do you think this school was like before? You know, before it all fell apart?” she wondered aloud to get a conversation started.
Breeze paused for a moment and looked around. “You know Sally, I’m beginning to think this place was never really a school at all. And if it was, the school was just a part of something much bigger.”
Her brushing stopped and she leaned toward him. “What makes you think that?”
He shrugged. “Just the way I arrived here through the strange tunnel in the sky along with the fog, as Oslo calls it, that supposedly hides the island from outsiders. Then, there’s the various types of aerocraft I saw at the landing facility along with the ones inside the hangars being repaired by the robot mechanics. And if you look at the way this place is spread out the avenues seem more like taxiways for aerocraft to be moved from one building to another. And then there is the harbor. From the sky, you can see the remains of piers that have sunk. Were there a lot of ships that came here? If so, for what? The water is crystal clear, you can see all of it.”
Sally stared him. “You…saw all of this?”
“Yeah, didn’t you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember seeing any of these things when we arrived here. In fact, I don’t remember much of anything as to how we got here.”
Breeze was stunned. “You don’t remember flying through some type of tunnel in the sky? It was the weirdest experience ever. If felt like time stood still. I asked Oslo and he tried to explain it to me, something about the island not being in sync with current time.” He paused for a moment. “I wonder why getting here has to be so complex?”
Sally shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know Ray and I boarded the transport and we…fell asleep. When we woke up we had already landed. Excort was there to meet us and took us to the dormitory. We spent about a week with just Oslo, Excort and his wife, Mila. They kept telling us that other students will be arriving shortly but you were the only one who showed up.”
“You mean to tell me that Excort never took you on a wild ride around the island? You didn’t race down a waterfall, and then through a side of a mountain?”
Sally stared at him blankly.
Breeze pressed on. “Did you get a look at the pilot on your transport? Mine didn’t even look human.”
She shrugged. “Like I said, we fell asleep on the transport and woke up when we landed. I can’t remember anything else and I don’t know if Ray does either. I wonder where he is?” She looked around, and then resumed painting samples on the wall. “Breeze, how do you know so much about aerocraft?”
“Where I’m from, that’s what we do. There are a lot of people who are building all sort of experimental stuff. There are some who build and sell to the territorial governments, or to rich folk. Some build and sell to transportation services that ferry people across the land. There is a lot of talk about uniting all of the territories and that it can be done if we mass manufacture aerocraft so people can just fly over the Bad Lands, instead of risking their lives traveling across it. Everyone says it’s going to make my town of Conception into a wealthy city. I don’t believe it.”
“You come from a family of industrialists? Your father must be in charge of a powerful cartel.”
“No, not really. My father runs a scrap metal yard.”
“Oh!” Sally exclaimed, and then realized she said it a little too forcefully. “Well, I bet it must be a very successful one. So tell me about the rest of your family, what are they like?”
“My mother died in an accident when I was little. I have no other family left.” He quickly shifted the gears of the conversation. “Wh
at’s Greenbrier like?”
Sally beamed. “It’s a really great school and so beautiful. The architecture is just divine. So much nicer than this place.” She let out a long, dramatic sigh and stopped painting, then looked up to the sky and closed her eyes. “I can see the trees turning a leafy green after a long cold winter. Spring has arrived and the flowers are blooming. The birds are coming out and singing as so many of them are flying home after wintering in the southern lands.” She opened her eyes and looked at the strips of paint on the wall and sighed again, then put the brush back into the pan. As she examined her stained hands she felt something roll down her cheek. She wiped it away and found it to be wet. It took her a moment to realize she was crying.
A hand touched her shoulder. It was Breeze comforting her as he handed her a towel.
She sniffed. “I feel so lonely here and I don’t know why. To make matters worse, I feel like I’ve been here for a very long time and life is slipping away. And when I dream, I dream that nothing will ever be the same again.”
Breeze listened as he opened more cans of paint. He mixed them into clean pans and stirred, producing a variety of colors. “I get the same feeling you do, but it happened much earlier. In fact, I can look back and say it hit me the moment I walked out my door and turned to see my father was not there to wave me goodbye,” he said while laying out new brushes for her to use.
“We’re supposed to be here just for the summer. That’s all I know.” Sally reached for a brush and began painting fresh strips on the wall.
“Can you tell me more about Ray?” As soon as he spoke, he regretted it. He realized he should have kept the conversation focused on her.
“Oh, well, he is from a military family. His father is a general, or something like that, in the Territorial Army. His family is pretty wealthy. And powerful. Ray’s father is always talking about running for president of our territory. Whatever. Politics is so boring. And Ray, well, I guess he just wants to follow in his footsteps. You know, be like daddy, or something like that,” she said and reached for another brush.
“So, how did you meet him? I guess you know each other from school and stuff—”
“Oh, no. We live next door to each other. My father and his are good friends. Partners in crime, I guess. They always talk about expanding into the Bad Lands and making it a safe place for settlers to occupy the lands.”
Breeze gritted his teeth. “So, you two are a couple? That’s cool. I’m not really seeing anyone back home. Well, there is this one girl, but you know, nothing serious.” He wondered if she knew he was lying.
“Ray and I? Together? Well, let’s just say he thinks so. He can be so possessive. No, I just see him as a friend. A childhood friend really. I mean, we grew up together and we live next door to each other. He lives in a big house like me and our parents are friends and all. In the summers, my parents would always throw these really extravagant pool parties and Ray would be there shooing the boys away from me. He’s so cute. In the winter months when the leaves would fall from the trees and fill up the empty pool, we would sit on the bench next to it and talk. He’s a really good friend, but—” she said with a shrug as she mixed another batch of paint.
Breeze felt a surge of confidence as he puffed up his chest. “So, that was some demonstration session we had the other day, huh?”
“I know! Mine was so weird. I guess Oslo programmed the computer for us to have some sort of adversary. I ended up dealing with a crazy lady in a white dress. I floated up and stared in her face. Nobody is supposed to see me when I project if I don’t want them to, but somehow she could. I was so scared when she grabbed me by the throat and threw me across the courtyard.” Her eyes narrowed. “I wonder how she could do that if she was just a simulation, or a hologram?”
Breeze shook his head. “I don’t know. My session was pretty weird. I—”
”—there is no way she could have possibly seen me or touch me! How weird is that?” Sally obliviously continued. “You know, the day we all met at the cove, I was worried because I couldn’t see you when you swam out by yourself. Ray and I were on the rock island and as I looked across the cove to find you, I saw a lady in white who stepped onto the beach for a moment, then disappeared. She seems like the one I saw during my demo session. I wonder if she’s an instructor or something.”
Breeze stood with his putty knife in hand. He was shocked to hear her express concern for him, but also of her seeing a mysterious woman. Memories of the girl he saw underwater that same day came to mind. He wanted to tell Sally more of his encounter with her, but decided against it. “Was there something about the woman in white that seemed familiar? Maybe she was also projecting, or maybe Oslo has some sort of a scanning machine that can pluck ideas out of our minds and materialize them and stuff. That’s why it felt so real when she grabbed and threw you,” he said.
Her eyes were transfixed on him as she listened intently.
He continued. “I saw someone too, you know. Maybe she was an instructor also, but she seemed really young, like our age. She…,” he trailed off as she looked away from him.
“This gift of mine is something I’ve known about ever since I was a little girl,” Sally spoke while absent-mindedly stroking her hair. “They say these powers don’t manifest themselves until we get older, but somehow I was always proficient despite how young I was and I always seemed to know exactly what to do with them. When I would dream at night, I would later realize I was projecting. Even if I had a daydream, I ended up slipping out of my body and would wander about, yet I could turn around and see that my body was perfectly still, and I would always have a link, like a trail of light that I could follow back to it.”
Breeze listened as he set up a ladder. He climbed up, gripping the side of it with one hand while lifting the bucket of putty and the trowel with the other. He reached the top of the steps and placed the bucket onto a tray that protruded from the top of the ladder.
Sally shaded her eyes from the bright sun as she looked up at him. “Why don’t you just hover? I mean, you’re a flier, so why not take advantage of your power?”
“Yeah, well, I’m not much of a flier. I mean, I’m not that good at it. I try, you know, but I’m not like you Sally. I just can’t turn it on. You saw me in the dome. I was a disaster. It took me forever to just get my feet off the ground. I have to concentrate really hard and I can’t deal with any distractions.”
“I’m sorry about teasing you and saying mean things. I just…” she hesitated and twirled her paint brush as flecks of paint splattered all over the wall. “I just get so irritated. I used to be much nicer, or at least I think so. Coming here just seems to bring out the worse in me.”
“It’s fine Sally. Look, you need to understand the differences between you, me and Ray.”
“I wonder where he could be,” she mused.
He pretended not to hear her. “You come from a place where paranormal skills are valued. Heck, your school teaches the paranormal. I come from a place where the paranormal is not really spoken of, or even believed. We build flying machines, that’s it. Toss in the fact that my father doesn’t even want me to practice at all and I would have to sneak out at night and pretty much teach myself. Let’s just say that the desert has a lot of craters spread out across it from me losing control and plowing into the ground. But I never get hurt, at least not much. My father always takes his tractor out the next morning to fill them in, though he doesn’t say anything to me about it. It’s funny, he’s always looking up at the sky with a worried look like he’s afraid someone is going to see them.” He was sanding the wall as he spoke and stopped to feel the smoothness of the surface. He shook his head and resumed.
“I didn’t know any of this Breeze. I’m sorry.” She twirled her brush, never noticing she was splattering her clothes.
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. We come from different worlds
. Like I said, my city is all about aerocraft. People don’t believe in the paranormal. If a man flies, it’s inside a machine. You sometimes hear stories from the older folk about aerocraft being sabotaged or destroyed in the old days and that some shadow group used to attack and burn cities. They keep prattling on about how there once was a time when Earth was filled with brilliant cities and amazing technologies. They even talk about men who could fly into space. Imagine that!”
Sally’s face was pale. “We hear the same stories, too. There is always talk about how life was so much better in the past. I don’t believe it. And I never heard of anyone building spacecraft, have you?”
Breeze shrugged. “There are builders in Conception who are really secretive about what they create. Rumors are always floating around about somebody building a ship that can fly into lower space, just above the atmosphere, but nobody has ever seen one. Then there is always something weird going on in the Bad Lands. You always hear stories about flying creatures swooping around in the sky, or monsters walking around in the forest.” He paused. “I have seen things.”
Breeze made his way down the ladder and to the pile of supplies. He picked out a new bucket of putty and pried open the lid. “Sometimes when I would fly at night, I would see lighted orbs hovering in the distance, usually over a mountain ridge along the western side of my town. They just sit there, then zip away faster than anything I’ve ever seen and I don’t know of any aerocraft that can move like that. Sometimes I would notice the balls of light hovering close to me, as if they were watching me. I would get real spooked and fall out of the sky. As time went by, I got used to them and I would always feel that they were encouraging me in a strange way. I would fly toward them and follow them around. It was weird, because they would take my mind off my anxieties about flying and I could actually concentrate.” He went back up the ladder and resumed patching the wall. “Eventually, I would find myself flying further and further from home. I would follow these orbs west over the mountains until we reached the salted lake that lies on the other side of the range. Hardly anyone goes there because it’s considered to be part of the Bad Lands. You hear talk about gigantic birds flying around there and that their wings make a sound like rolling thunder. Whatever, sounds stupid. One night I followed a formation of orbs across the lake. It was the first time I ever did that and man, that lake is bigger than I thought! The moonlight lit the way and we came upon a huge open plain that was pure white. You could barely see the mountains off in the distance and suddenly out of nowhere, there’s this mountain all by itself. The orbs dropped into the mountain and I tried to follow them but I couldn’t. Something stopped me like a command I couldn’t hear, but I could feel and telling me to keep my distance. I found a hill where I could land…well, crash into, and from there I could watch them. I’m telling you Sally, I would see all sorts of weird craft come out of this mountain. Some of it was really cool. Others were just creepy and weird. Ever since that night I would fly back there just so I could watch the lights and…”
Breeze Corinth (Book 1): Sky Shatter Page 16
