by Amanda Sun
The Phoenix bursts like a star exploding, in a blue-and-silver blast so blinding that the whole world seems to light on fire. Ashra shakes with the fury of an earthquake as it topples from side to side. The blue-and-white burst of light blazes across the visible sky, everything turning to sparks and radiance, like we’re inside the shower of a blinding firework.
I can’t see anything for a moment, my blistered hands threaded through Griffin’s fingers and the soft, waterlogged fireweed. I have to blink five times before the light of the blast dies away. The sparks of the Phoenix are glittering and drifting like the silver stars on Jonash’s blade. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
But Ashra is tipping and rumbling underneath us, the whole continent groaning as though it were alive. I look at Griffin to see if he hears it, too. Then I turn from the outcrop to look for the airship, but it’s gone. Maybe the blast lit its wobbly linen balloon on fire. In the distance, the blue crystal of the citadel is gleaming with a bright light I’ve never seen. It isn’t reflected sunlight, or the Phoenix’s stars. It’s lit from within, flashing like a beacon and humming as Ashra shakes.
Then it goes dim, and there’s a horrible cracking sound. Ashra shudders and splits, the rocks rending into jagged edges that break apart. The pieces of my world crack and tumble toward the earth.
The continent is falling.
“Griffin!” I shout. We try to stand, but the world is rumbling and collapsing, and we keep stumbling as it shudders. Griffin reaches for me and pulls me close to him, his warm arms around me.
If the world is ending, I’m glad I’m with him.
Ashra crumbles to fragments around us, some pieces falling slower than others. The tiny rock bridge I’d climbed to my outcrop so many times is one of the first to shatter, detaching us from the rest of the continent. We fall sideways onto the grass and manage to rise to our knees, still clasped in each other’s arms. We’re drenched and sweating, blistered and bruised, but I’ll hold on until the very end here on my realm of one—no, my realm of two.
There’s a sound like buzzing, a humming sound like millions of red bees or flicker wasps. It’s slowing to a drumming, and then the world around us lights in rainbow colors. They dance off Griffin’s shell necklace still around my neck. They weave across his face in light and shadow, flickering on his face like the stripes he sometimes paints there. The world is sticky like scarlet honey, and everything has slowed.
“The barrier,” I say.
And then there’s a sucking sound, and the world tumbles down into the crater below with an earth-shattering crash.
My world goes black.
* * *
“Kali.” There’s a girl’s voice in the darkness, a voice I recognize that’s calling me. “Kali.” Someone shakes me gently. “Two shining moons, girl, now is no time to snooze.”
I blink, the world slowly coming into view. The clouds above have drifted away, the sunlight streaming down. And there’s a familiar face leaning over me, her golden earrings dangling against her long neck.
“Aliyah.”
She smiles, her skin crinkling below her eyes. “You’re all right,” she says.
It all comes flooding back to me—the Phoenix. The continent. Griffin. “Where’s—”
“Right here,” Griffin says from my right, taking my hand in his. His face is smudged with soot and dried blood, ashes strewn through his tangled brown hair. His fingers are blistered, and there are burns up and down his arms, little diamonds of scalded red skin between the wrapped leather strings and beads.
He’s beautiful. He’s Griffin, and he’s alive.
I sit up slowly, supported by Aliyah’s and Griffin’s caring hands on my back, and I look around.
The shadowlands below Ashra are gone, filled with shattered fragments and boulders of what was once our home in the sky. In the distance is a crushed silver machine, crumpled over like a giant broken lamppost.
“The Phoenix’s last burst of fire overheated the generator,” Griffin says. “Without the generator to keep it afloat, Ashra came down. Burumu, too. The blast was that strong.”
My eyes widen. “Burumu, too?”
“Your soldiers saw it fall from their airship,” Aliyah tells me. “Just before their ship went down.”
The Elite Guard. So they’re here, too.
“My father,” I say. “Elisha. Is...is everyone okay?”
Aliyah’s smile drops from her lips. I look to Griffin, but he won’t meet my eyes.
“Stay optimistic,” Aliyah says. “There are many survivors, and we haven’t found everyone yet.” She stands, lifting her behemoth fang staff from the ground and reaching her hand out to me. I rise slowly, Griffin hovering to catch me if I need help. “We did find this,” Aliyah adds, and from her pouch she passes me the garnet-hilted dagger that fell to the earth with a flash.
I flip it over in my hands, the blade dusty with soot and ashes. I brush it off with my hand and return it to its sheath tied around my waist. Then Aliyah passes me a water flask and I drink, and I think how strange it is to be talking with her when I thought I’d never see her again.
The landscape is jagged and uneven, and we make our way slowly. Griffin limps as we walk, but doesn’t utter a word of complaint.
“We were on our way to the lava lands after you and Griffin left,” Aliyah tells me. “A storm dragon dug too deep into the roof of the haven, so we had to leave before it broke through. It would be a shame to lose another safe place.”
“Where’s Sayra?”
“Tending the wounded,” Aliyah says. “And getting the able-bodied organized into a monster patrol on the perimeter. We don’t want any more lost today.”
The thought strikes me like an electric shock. The people of Ashra have been taught to fear the monster-ridden earth. There could be outright panic. And what’s more, a gathering of humans will definitely attract monsters. It’s only a matter of time before they come.
Ashra and Burumu, gone from the sky. Tash and Lilia will surely help the people of Burumu, though I’m not sure how many they can reach. The continent will fall into the monster-infested ocean, and I don’t know if it will float like a raft or crumble, or if the Dark Leviathans will gather and consume it. And Nartu and the Floating Isles, those smaller fragment islands, are so far to the east that they’re probably completely unaware of what’s happened to us. They’ll still be hovering aloft in the sky with their barriers and generators intact.
We walk for nearly half an hour with no one else in sight, picking our way through the jagged boulders and upturned earth along the dirt path Elisha and I once hurried down for the Rending Ceremony. Dragons and hazus soar high above, circling where the continent used to hover among the clouds. It’s strange, being on Ashra and on the earth at the same time. The two worlds are one again, colliding the way my world intertwined with Griffin’s. And this time Ashra’s fate was definitely shaped by the Phoenix, but not in a way anyone expected.
We near the blue crystal of the citadel, now shattered in jagged shards strewn across the ground. It looks like an ancient ruin, like the destroyed houses in the marshlands. The long stone steps are cracked and uneven, the ribs of the library’s arched ceilings exposed and the annals strewn about in the rubble. I see a man in a white robe, his gray beard covered in soot. He’s piling the dusty red tomes on top of each other with a blank look on his face. It’s Elder Aban, and I shout out to him. He stares at me with the same vacant expression, and I realize he’s in shock. I wonder if he thought the Phoenix wasn’t real all this time, or if he believed in her and can’t fathom that she attacked us, or that Ashra fell from the sky. It’s not something I can comprehend myself, yet.
I stumble over the rubble toward him.
“Kallima,” he says. “Thank the Phoenix you’re safe.”
No thanks to her, I thin
k, but there’s no point in aggravating things. “Aban, have you seen my father?”
He blinks slowly and says nothing, as if he’s lost his mind. “Your...father,” he says eventually, as if the words have no meaning, as if he’s never spoken them before. He says nothing more, but after a moment reaches into the rubble again and scrapes the dust off another of the annals, placing it on top of the tall, wobbly pile he’s made.
“Poor soul,” Aliyah says as we turn to leave. “Somewhere between panic and disbelief he’s lost himself.”
“He’ll be all right,” Griffin says. “The fallen always struggle at first.”
We step through the bones of my destroyed home. I’ll never return to my room again, my fireplace crackling with comforting warmth, my blankets snug around me as my father’s soft voice murmurs in the hallway. Those blankets are somewhere under the piles of stones, covered in dust and ashes. But the breeze on earth is so warm. It drifts over me with its own comfort.
There are villagers from Ulan wading through the wreckage. Some are on their knees, crying. Others have their hands held up, as if the Phoenix will return and reverse our fortune. They can’t accept what’s happened. Others call out for their children or their parents or their siblings, everyone searching, everyone disoriented. But among them I see helpers, soldiers of the Elite Guard in smudged uniforms, holding the hands of children as they help them search for their parents. I see Sayra in the distance, a bow and quiver looped over her arm as she searches the skies for danger. She holds a water flask in each hand, passing them to those in need who drink and smudge the soot off of their faces.
And there, in the courtyard, I see my father lying down, the Phoenix statue shattered beside him, a piece of the azure tower crystal pierced straight through his chest.
I let out a horrible cry and run toward him, tripping over the stones and fragments of our old life. Elisha is beside him, blood trickling down her forehead where she’s been struck by a stone that’s fallen. She’s covered him with the lavender cloak I shed before I chased Jonash to Lake Agur. The cloak is stained dark, and I don’t want to know why.
“Father,” I say, kneeling at his side. His face is pale, his eyes closed, but they flutter open at my voice.
“Kali,” he says, his voice just above a whisper. “You’re all right.”
Elisha’s face is streaked with dried tears and ash. “I’ve been doing everything I can,” she says, her voice tired and strained.
“I know,” I say, tears blurring in my eyes. She’s bundled his golden cloak like a pillow under his head, and she sits so her back shades him from the gleaming sunlight. She’s done everything, but his body is destroyed by shards of crystal and stone. Beside us the Phoenix statue’s wings lie in sharp, fragmented pieces, scattered wide across the courtyard. The world of the Monarch is broken. My father is dying.
“I love you,” he tells me, and I squeeze his hands tightly. It’s horrible to know that he kept the truth of the Rending from me, that he ordered the Benu mutilated or thrown from the edge in what he thought was the best way to protect Ashra. But he is my loving father, who was always good to me and who always tried to do what was best for the people. I do not love what he did, but I love him, and now he’s being taken from me.
“I love you, too, Father,” I say, and the world is blurred by my tears as I shake with sobs.
Aliyah and Griffin kneel on either side, resting their hands on my shoulders. I want to beg them to do something. Aliyah must know some kind of herb or poultice that can soothe my father’s pain. But I can see how stained the cloak is, all the puncture wounds from the crystal shards. I know there is no hope for him.
“I have burned to the wick’s end,” my father murmurs, closing his eyes. “I’m tired of lighting the way.”
“Rest now, Your Majesty,” Griffin says. “We will protect Kali in your stead.”
My father clears his throat, turning his head to the side. “She is...just like her mother,” he manages, his voice frail. “A free spirit that flies where it will. All she needs, young man, is the sky.”
“Father,” I whisper, pressing my forehead to his as I close my eyes.
And then he lets out a tiny breath, and I know that he is gone, that his own spirit is flying with Mother’s in a field of thistles and fireweed and song.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE REST OF the day is spent searching for survivors of Ashra’s plummet from the skies. The village houses and barns in Ulan are mostly in ruin, but there are some that are good enough for a night’s refuge while we try to hide everyone from the hungry eyes of the circling sky beasts. The change in altitude is dizzying for some, the air thick and warm down here. There are many broken bones and missing people, but the barrier has saved many of us. Most are in shock, barely able to accept the food and water that Sayra and the Initiates take from shelter to shelter. Chickens and pygmy goats wander the wreckage, pecking and braying at the strange landscape. The Elite Guard have formed a protective circle around Ulan, swords drawn and arms shaking. They’ve never seen monsters as close as the ones in the sky, never had to use their swords to fight anything but illusions of danger.
All our lives are at risk in the open like this. There is no fence to protect us, no door that can be latched against the fangs of the shadowlands and sky beasts.
As the sunlight fades and the sky streaks with orange and purple, as the stars begin to shine and the moons wax new, Griffin and I sit down on the side of the steep cliff where I once fell alone to a frightening world. The smoke from the campfires in the village spirals into the sky.
“They will look to you to guide them,” Griffin tells me. “You’re the heir.”
“As are you,” I tell him.
“Yes, but I’m illegitimate,” he says, amused. “And I have no training, so I can slack off. It all falls to you.” I know he’s trying to cheer me up, but his words are dry in the early evening, tainted with more truth than either of us wants to admit.
I rest my chin in my hands as we watch the soldiers guarding. Elder Aban is still stacking books in the ruins of the library. He’s got ten swaying towers of them now, as tall as he is, and an Elder Initiate, the one who hurried me into the citadel for the Rending Ceremony, is gently tugging at his arm to pull him to the shelters. He yanks his arm away, still shocked and lost somewhere in his own mind.
There are too many of them. The monsters will come, and they will come hungry. They don’t stand a chance.
The only airship on Ashra, the one that fired on the Phoenix, has a massive rip from one edge of the balloon to the other. Nartu is at least a month’s trek away, and with this many traveling, maybe more. I’m not sure how to transport this many people safely. And Nartu is too small to hold them all, even if we had the airships from Burumu to use. And there’s no guarantee what’s happening there, either, in the little village at the ocean’s edge.
“I don’t know how to save them,” I say. The words are terrifying to hear aloud.
Griffin’s hand finds mine, and he squeezes my fingers. I want to run away with him. I want to soar all the way back to the ocean, to stand on that shore how we did once when I promised to see it again with him. I don’t want the responsibility and sadness that’s been weighted onto my shoulders.
“When you fell from the sky, you were lost,” he tells me. He nods at the ruined valley below us. “Now they’re lost, too. They need someone to save them.”
“Like you saved me.”
Griffin laughs. “I only found you,” he says. “You saved yourself first.”
“Can we go to the ocean?” I ask. “Just you and me. And I’ll collect shells and breathe in the salty air and let the waves lace my ankles with foamy surf.”
Griffin laughs warmly. “I’ll take Tash’s fishing boat and spear Dark Leviathans until the waters are safe enough to swim in.”
The mention of the sea serpents drains the ocean from my thoughts. I think of the Phoenix circling Ashra, of how she rose out of the lake that I swam in so often with Elisha. I look out at the campfires, at all the survivors waiting to see what will happen. Their Monarch is gone. The Sargon and his son are dead.
“What will you do?” Griffin says gently.
I want to run away. I want to help them. I want to do what’s right and not lose myself.
“The lava lands,” I say finally. “Let’s take them there. Your village is still standing, right? Are there enough houses for them all?”
“Maybe,” he says. “But they’ll need some work. It’s been many years since they were lived in.”
“Are there other havens, like the one underground in the woods?”
“Some, yes. And there’s the ocean with Tash and Lilia. They can surely support at least a few families there, depending on Burumu’s survivors.”
“And the village near the Frost Sea?”
An amused smile tugs at Griffin’s lip. “It’s a rumored village,” he says. “But, yes, there are safe places about.”
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because,” he says, “you sound like a Monarch.”
I find myself smiling, despite everything. “I think I’m growing my wings.”
“One of us should have them,” he teases.
The best way for the people to survive is to split up. In the morning, Griffin and Aliyah will help with basic monster training—the types to look for, the tactics they use. How to use their weaknesses against them in order to survive.
And then we’ll tell them the choices—north, to the lava lands and Griffin’s village, and farther on to the Frost Sea; south to the mountains and the ocean, through the dangerous marshlands and the hazu-infested plains. East toward the dugout havens in the woods, and farther still to Nartu’s shadow and the Floating Isles. West toward a great desert and the unknown. Or to stay in the shadowlands and build a new Ulan, fortified and protected by walls built from the ruins of our old life aloft in the sky. The choice will be theirs to decide. There is no need for an heir anymore. Their lives are theirs, and they must choose how they will walk.
