by Joel Ross
“They saw archers and bulls and foxes,” I said. “They gave the stars names, like ‘Elvis Parsley’ and ‘Greta Garbo’ and ‘Michael Jackson.’”
“There’s no way anyone was ever named ‘Garbo!’” Bea said in the darkness. “That’s too silly, even for the old days.”
“That’s what it says in my dad’s scrapbook.” When my father died, he’d left me a notebook filled with historical facts he’d pieced together. “Greta Garbo.”
“‘Greta’ is nice,” Hazel said after a minute.
“‘Garbo’ sounds like the noise you said bullfrogs make,” Swedish told me. “Garbo, garbo.”
“It sounds bossy,” I said. “Like a command. Swab the deck! Garbo the sails!”
I turned toward Hazel’s hammock. “That could be your name. Hazel Garbo.”
Bea giggled. “I’m Bea Parsley!”
“Swedish Jackson,” Swede said. “I kind of like that.”
The raft rocked in the breeze, and we fell silent. Snug in our hammocks, safe and together, far from our troubles. The rich green scent of trees and meadows rose through the Fog, so much sweeter and cleaner than the stink of the slum where we lived.
My eyes closed and my mind began to drift—
“I can’t sleep!” Bea called out. “Tell me the story again.”
“No!” Hazel and Swedish said at the same time.
“Pretty please?” Bea pleaded. “With pigeon on top?”
“Be quiet,” Swedish grumbled.
“Count the stars, sweetie,” Hazel told her. “Until you fall asleep.”
“Pretty please, with churro on top?” Bea asked. “Pretty please with cucumber?”
“Would you tell her already, Chess?” Swedish smacked the bootball he used as a pillow. “I’m getting hungry just listening to her beg.”
I yawned. “You’ve heard it a hundred times.”
“I don’t care,” Bea said. “It’s our story. Nobody else even knows it, because Mrs. E only told us.”
“Some people on the Rooftop know,” Hazel said. “A few of them, at least.”
“You know what I mean! None of the other slumkids. Pretty please, with frog legs on top? Pretty please with—”
“Just tell her,” Swedish grumbled.
“Sure.” I rolled over in my hammock, gathering my thoughts. “Um . . .”
“‘Before the Fog rose . . . ,’” Bea prompted, in a singsong voice.
“Before the Fog rose,” I said, “there was something called the Smog. The Smog covered the whole Earth, like the Fog does now, except it made everything sick. Not just people—but also grass and trees, and every animal in the sky and sea and land. The Smog choked the entire Earth, slowly killing every single living thing.”
“So the gearslingers . . . ,” Bea prompted again.
“They called them engineers back then,” Hazel told her for the hundredth time. “Nanotech engineers. They made tiny machines to clean the Smog. So tiny that a million of them could fit into your smallest freckle. But—”
“It worked!” Bea interrupted. “You can always count on gearslingers.”
“Engineers,” I said. “And yeah, it worked. Sort of. At first. The tiny machines—”
“Nanites,” Swedish grumbled. “She knows they’re called nanites—she’s heard the story a thousand times.”
“Do you want to tell it?” I asked.
“I want to sleep. Hurry up and finish.”
“Fine,” I said, trying not to smile. Swedish loved to complain, but I could tell that he was listening to the story, too. “The nanites fixed the Smog and healed the Earth. They cleaned the water and the air, they scrubbed the poison and pollution from every crack and crevice. Only there was one problem. . . .”
“They didn’t stop cleaning after they finished,” Hazel said, taking over the story. “They were designed to attack any new sources of pollution, and they calculated that because we humans made the Smog, they needed to stop us. The nanites turned themselves into the Fog.”
“You mean they created the Fog,” Bea said like she always did.
“No, they became the Fog. Some of the engineers had been afraid the nanites might go haywire, so they built a ‘command password,’ a secret code inside each nanite that automatically killed it after three months.”
“That way,” I said, “if the nanites went loco, the engineers could just shut down the nano factories, and boom. A few months later, no more nanites.”
“What they didn’t expect . . . ,” Bea prompted.
“They didn’t expect the nanites to build their own factories. Nanites started making more nanites. More than humans ever built, zillions of machines so small that they floated like droplets of fog.”
“And we had no way to stop them,” Bea breathed.
“The nanites programmed themselves not to bother animals,” I said after a moment’s silence. “They don’t block the sunshine—plants grow like crazy in the whiteness—but they keep us out. They only target human brains. If we enter the Fog, we become blind and deaf. And if we stay too long, we die of fogsickness.”
“But not you,” Bea said.
“Not yet,” I said.
Bea shook her head. “You’re different.”
“I’m a freak.”
“Yeah,” Swedish said. “You get beat up by birds.”
I went on, ignoring him. “Nobody knows exactly when the Fog started rising. A hundred years ago? Two hundred? We only know that the nanites rose slowly, inch by inch, foot by foot, until they covered the entire Earth in a thick white mist, and nothing remained but a few scattered mountaintops. The Rooftop and Port Oro.”
I fell silent. We lived on the Rooftop—except slumkids weren’t allowed on the mountain itself—but we’d never even seen Port Oro. The Rooftop troopers didn’t let anyone get that far from home.
We’d heard stories, though, and we knew that on Port Oro we’d find a cure for Mrs. E . . . and would finally be safe from Lord Kodoc. Ever since the mutineers of Port Oro broke away from the Rooftop years ago, airship skirmishes between the two settlements were common, so the Port was the only place where Kodoc couldn’t follow us.
“Do you think there are people on other mountaintops?” Bea asked.
“I know there are,” Hazel said from her hammock. “Somewhere across the Fog, if you fly for months or years. There must be.”
“If they’re too far to reach, it doesn’t matter,” Swedish said. “It’s like they don’t even exist.”
“I wonder,” Hazel said with a wistful tone in her voice, “if they also think they’re the last people on Earth.”
I watched the stars through the rigging and imagined distant mountaintops across the Fog. Foreign places where everything was different, where nobody feared Lord Kodoc.
Although he’d been born into a minor branch of the Five Families, Kodoc became a captain of the roof-troopers at a young age. In those days, the scientists known as the “Subassembly” worked for the Five Families, but Kodoc suspected that they were hoarding information. So he attacked them. He seized their labs and research, he took hostages and lives. And as the tattered remains of the Subassembly fled to Port Oro, Captain Kodoc used his newfound knowledge to become Lord Kodoc, head of the Five Families and ruler of the Rooftop.
“Tell the rest of the story, Chess!” Bea demanded. “The part where there’s gear inside the Fog that controls the nanites.”
“You just told it,” I said. “The myths talk about ancient machines that can lower the Fog.”
“Do you honestly think they had these machines and didn’t use them?” Swedish asked. “They just sat around and watched the Fog rise? That’s loco. That’s beyond loco.”
“Not if they didn’t know about them at first.” I swayed in my hammock. “What if the nanites built them? Either way, Mrs. E says Lord Kodoc is obsessed with finding them. He thinks if he controls the Fog, he controls the world.”
“He’s right about that,” Hazel said. “If anyone messed with
him, he’d bury them in Fog. Entire families, whole neighborhoods. All of Port Oro.”
“That’s why he’ll kidnap Chess if he finds him.” Bea rolled toward me in her hammock. “And force you to search for the machines.”
I swallowed. “Well, yeah. . . .”
“Because nobody dives as well as you.”
“I’m the only freak around.”
“You’re not a freak,” Hazel told me. “You’re a garbo.”
“He’s a total garbo,” Swedish said. “Now go to sleep, Bea, before I toss you overboard.”
“Tell me the story of Robbing Hood first!” she insisted.
She loved the story of the hoodie-wearing thief who lived in Sherlock Forest and stole from the rich. She loved the Hood and his crew: a robot called Made Marian and a monkey named Fryer Tuck. We used to play Robbing Hood when we were little, with Hazel as the Hood, Bea as Made Marian, and me as Fryer Tuck. We’d make Swedish be the evil Sheriff of Nodding Ham, of course.
“Bea, let Chess sleep,” Hazel told her firmly. “He needs to stay sharp for tomorrow. This is our big break.”
“Oh, okay,” Bea said in a small voice. “Sorry.”
“Night, everyone,” I said.
“Night, Chess,” Bea said. “Night, Swede. G’night, Hazy.”
“Good night, honeybee,” Hazel said, a smile in her voice.
I smiled, too, then snuggled under my blanket as the scent of pine trees washed over the raft. The gyroscope spun, the gears clicked, and I swayed in my hammock and gazed at the sky. So many constellations: archer, crab, Oprah. Was there a constellation for us? For salvage crews and slumkids?
Was there a star for me? A tetherboy and a Fog-eyed freak?
4
THE NEXT MORNING, I walked the plank. The cool air gave me goose bumps, and my boots tingled from the ticking of the engine under the deck. My heart beat even faster than usual before a dive. This time I was searching uncharted Fog, following the scent of roses.
“Settle down, Chess!” Hazel called from the crow’s nest. “We’re almost there!”
“I am settled,” I yelled back.
“You are not!” she laughed. “Go check your tether.”
I mock saluted her. “Yes, sir!”
“That’s me!” Hazel gestured with her battered spyglass as her skirt whipped in the wind. “Admiral of the fleet!”
Some fleet. Our rigging looked like tangled ropes, and goofy-looking whales were painted on the bulging balloons. Still, things worked better when Hazel was in charge, so I stepped off the plank and checked my tether while she scanned for the buoy Bea had floated the night before.
“I don’t see it,” Hazel muttered a minute later. “It should be right here.”
At the back of the raft, Swedish spun the ship’s wheel a few inches. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“You have a bad feeling about everything,” I told him. “If you ever had a good feeling, you’d get a bad feeling about it.”
“Keep laughing,” he grumbled. “That’s what they want.”
“They who?”
“Them,” Swedish said ominously.
Swedish was convinced that they were watching us—not Kodoc, some other they. He’d been paranoid about it for years, though he’d never managed to explain who they were or why they were so fascinated by a bunch of slumkids.
“You always say they’re watching,” I told him. “But you never say who they are.”
His eyes narrowed cunningly. “If I knew who they were, they wouldn’t be them.”
Arguing with Swedish always made me dizzy. “So—because you know absolutely nothing about them, you’re absolutely sure they exist.”
Swedish nodded. “Now you’re getting it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!”
“That’s what they want you to think,” Swedish said.
“A few wisps to the left, Swede!” Hazel called.
“Can you see the buoy?” I asked her.
“Not yet,” she said. “But it’s close.”
I didn’t ask how she knew. Hazel charted the Fog better than anyone. Just like Swedish was the best pilot, and Bea kept our raft in the air better than anyone could.
“Close is good,” I said.
I tugged my goggles over my eyes. Bubbles of excitement rose in my chest and I started rolling my shoulders.
“Take a hard left, Swedish,” Hazel said. “And stop fidgeting, Chess!”
“I’m not fidgeting,” I informed her. “I’m limbering.”
“Then stop limbering! You’re making me nervous.”
“Why?” I asked innocently. “Because if there isn’t great salvage even this far from home, we’ll never escape the slum?”
“And you’ll never afford those pink boots you want,” Swedish called to Hazel, tapping on the steam organ.
She glared at him. “I don’t want pink boots.”
“Yeah, Swede,” I said, crossing to the plank, “she wants yellow boots and pink ribbons.”
We teased Hazel about ribbons and dresses because she was such a weird combination of “girly” and “commanding.” She wore long, flowing skirts, dreamed of fancy dances, loved pretty sunsets . . . and could bark out orders faster than the toughest junkyard boss. She was about fifteen, a few years older than me and a dozen times smarter. And pretty, with light brown eyes, dark brown skin, and dozens of silky braids.
I looked like every other tetherkid who ran with a salvage crew. I was compact, wiry, and undersized. My boots were stained and my goggles were scraped, and the leather bracers I wore on my wrists to catch the tether were scarred. The only difference was that I always kept my head down and my hair over my freak-eye.
Swedish looked more like a thug or a bootball player than a raft pilot. He was so burly, shaggy, and bearish that he barely fit in the thoppers—sleek, narrow airships—that he flew in drag races to earn extra money. And Bea was our kid sister, with short red hair, big green eyes, and smears of grease on her face. She didn’t dream of roast meat and conspiracies like Swedish, but of gears and pistons and building crazy new thoppers that looked like demented dragonflies and flew like hunting eagles.
“On Port Oro,” Swedish said, trying to mimic Hazel’s voice, “everyone wears yellow boots.”
“And there are no junkyard bosses,” I added.
“Pigeons lay scrambled eggs,” Swedish said.
“It rains soup,” I added, “and snows rice!”
“And apples grow on trees!”
I gave him a look. “Um, actually, they kind of do. . . .”
“Oh,” Swedish muttered. “Right.”
“If you two are done,” Hazel said, eyeing us, “can we get back to looking for the buoy?”
I laughed and bounced slightly on the plank. Maybe today we’d finally catch a break. Those roses were a great sign. I started scanning the Fog for the buoy again, and—
A deafening POP! shattered the calm morning. It came from beneath the deck, from the engine where Bea was working, adjusting a faulty propeller.
My blood froze. “Bea?” I called. “Are you okay?”
No answer.
“Chess, go!” Hazel shouted. “Swedish, cut the engines!”
I dove from the plank, caught a cable with one hand and swung under the deck as a bubble of fear expanded in my chest. What if something had happened to Bea?
5
I SCRAMBLED PAST THE side rudder and the vents, and spotted Bea beside an exhaust pipe.
“Bea!” I said, slumping in relief. “What happened?”
She didn’t answer, her usually pale face so dark with soot that she looked like she was wearing a mask. She tapped a bolt with her wrench and told the engine, “Not funny.”
She talked to the machinery, the rotors, cables, and gears. That wasn’t so weird, except she was sure that they talked back. Of course I couldn’t argue with the results. No other gearslinger could’ve kept this scruffy raft in the air.
When I tapped her shoulder
, she jerked in surprise.
“Chess!” she shouted, even though I was only a foot away. “What are you doing down here?”
“We heard a huge pop and—”
“What?” she shouted. “I can’t hear you! There was this huge pop!”
I eyed her. “Are you okay?!”
She eyed me back. “Are you okay?”
“Hoo boy,” I muttered. “I’m fine!” I shouted. “Are. You. Okay?”
She gave me a thumbs-up. “No problem! The hydraulic valve’s just mad because I didn’t adjust him yesterday!”
“Right,” I said.
“Valves are moody,” she explained.
I shot her a dubious look, and she grinned back. She knew we all thought she was whackadoo, but she didn’t care.
I tapped her leather cap twice, saying good-bye, then climbed back onto the deck.
“She’s fine,” I told Hazel. “Just bickering with the spark plugs.”
Hazel rubbed her face. “Do other captains have these problems?”
“Other captains have airships,” Swedish told her. “You have a floating rattrap.”
“That’s what I have for now,” she said.
Swedish and I shared a bemused look at Hazel and her big dreams.
“But I can’t find the buoy,” she continued. “Chess, help me look.”
I shoved my goggles to the top of my head, started to brush my hair away from my freak-eye, then hesitated. Like I was afraid that someone might burst out of the clouds and spot the white wisps drifting across my right eye.
This was the fear that never left me. The clouds of nanites in my eye helped me see farther, hear more, and move faster in the Fog than anyone else, but they also marked me as a freak. As Kodoc’s freak. He wasn’t just my enemy, he was also my creator. Millions of tiny machines swarmed through my brain because of him. Cobblers made shoes and weavers made cloth and Kodoc made me. Like I was nothing more than a tool he’d crafted to help him find those ancient fog-machines—so he could kill his enemies in the silent rise of white.
I’d felt his power every day of my life, before I’d even heard his name. Not just because of the big things, like not having a mother. Kodoc was also the reason I’d worn an eye patch as a little kid. My dad was the one who’d given it to me. He knew I had to hide my eye, but he’d hated how ashamed I felt. So after he died, I vowed that I’d never wear a patch again. And I hadn’t: I’d just kept my hair long, my head down, and my mouth shut.
