Cloudland

by Lisa Gorton

  ‘You can’t leave me here!’ called Lucy. ‘I won’t stay.’

  Fracta swung around. The look on her face made Lucy flinch. ‘I won’t leave you,’ she said. Just as suddenly, she dropped her head and muttered, ‘But Linneus should have told me.’ Tilting her head towards the lift, she sighed, ‘Get on. I’ll take you back to your friends.’

  Linneus had stopped a few metres behind them. He was silent, staring at his hands. The last of the Stratus clustered around him, turning their backs to the wind.

  Lucy waited in the lift, clutching her ankles, and felt relief rise through her like warmth, knowing soon the lift would carry her back to the Citadel. Daniel’s sharp face floated into her mind. He must be awake by now, she thought. He would be afraid she had left without him. When she pictured his face, twisting with panic, she felt a quick surge of impatience.

  ‘Hurry up!’ she called out the lift door. ‘They’ll be looking for me!’

  Fracta was still talking to Linneus. She fixed her eyes on Lucy. After a pause, she nodded and climbed into the lift, leaning out to give a last order: ‘Listen, Linneus! I’ll help this Earth creature fight the Kazia. I’ll make sure she succeeds. Tell your Stratus! Tell them that!’

  ‘Earth creature,’ grumbled Lucy, as Fracta slammed the lift door. Ropes creaked through a wheel; slowly, in jerks, the lift climbed. Fracta sat with her eyes closed and her chin propped on her knees.

  ‘So you’ll help me against the Kazia?’

  Fracta’s eyes flicked open. ‘Yes, and I will see you defeat her. This once, their war is our war.’

  ‘Their war! Your war! Why don’t you fight it yourselves, then? I can’t do anything against the Kazia! If you really want help, send me back to Earth and I’ll get it for you – a proper army.’

  Fracta shook her head. ‘Not one person on Earth would believe you. Here, they think you are their Protector. Here, you can raise an army.’

  ‘Oh yes! Wist and Jovius!’

  Fracta blew air through the side of her mouth. ‘Not Cirrus and Cumulus! They can’t even feed themselves; but the other sky creatures – birds and Arcarals – and the Stratus will follow you.’

  ‘But I keep telling you, I’m not the Protector!’

  Fracta shrugged. ‘It’s enough that they think you are. War makes lies useful.’

  ‘So why do you care, all of a sudden? What about your revolution?’

  ‘Why ask me to explain? You saw those Stratus, so drunk on phumooze they cannot see or think. What good would a revolution do them?’

  Overhead, the ropes rattled and the lift bumped to a stop. The door opened and they looked again into the kitchen: sunken, dingy and crowded with Stratus. Before Fracta could stop her, Lucy had slid from the lift and started dodging through the crowd, running for the Citadel.

  Near the arch, Fracta seized Lucy’s wrist and tugged her to a stop. ‘If you tell your friends what you have seen, I will make sure you suffer,’ she added with her gentlest smile.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Flight

  Lucy stepped through the arch into the Citadel. Glittering and empty, it gave her a sudden sense of freedom. She glanced into the dreary kitchen with a feeling she was looking back into a dream.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Daniel grabbed her wrist. His face looked waxy. She could tell he’d been crying. ‘You can’t just –’ He broke off and sucked his cheeks.

  ‘Daniel is right.’ Wist loomed behind him. ‘This is not a time for wandering.’

  The contempt in his voice lit a flare in Lucy’s chest. ‘I wasn’t wandering,’ she started. She would have told them everything then, in the recklessness of sudden anger, but over Daniel’s shoulder she saw Fracta shuffling across the room with a platter on her back. Though she affected the mild and patient manner of a servant, Fracta shot a look across the room that made Lucy shiver and fall silent.

  ‘Breakfast!’ exclaimed Jovius, settling at the table. Lucy sat beside him and started spooning up the sweet, lumpy soup she had seen the kitchen Stratus preparing. Daniel sat so close to her his elbow bumped her arm when he lifted his spoon.

  ‘Ready?’ Wist stood up and chafed his hands together.

  With a jolt, Lucy realised they were leaving the Citadel. She looked up at the statues, all still and silent now. ‘But what’s the plan? Where are we going?’

  Wist frowned. ‘The statue ordered us to the Forgotten Lands, where the Kazia has raised a castle of ice.’ He turned away.

  ‘But we don’t even know what the Kazia is,’ Lucy protested to his retreating back.

  Daniel rested a hand on her arm. ‘We just need to get into the open,’ he whispered. ‘Then we can slip away. I’ve got food.’ He patted his pocket.

  Lucy glanced up. ‘Listen! This morning –’

  Fracta reached between them. ‘Are you finished?’ she said, scooping up the bowls. She stood behind Lucy in a humble attitude, but her eyes were like glass.

  ‘What?’ said Daniel, glancing from Lucy to Fracta. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lucy shrugged. Fracta nodded once and turned back to the kitchen.

  ‘Come on.’ Lucy stood up and felt suddenly desolate, too exhausted even to feel afraid. She followed Wist and Jovius across the Citadel. The floating pause in every stride added to her sense of isolation. She found herself thinking back to when the rain started. They had wept, she remembered, when they read that some floodwaters had swept away a two-year-old girl. Before long, they had listened in boredom to lists of the missing and dead. How quickly they had grown dull to suffering. The dullness had filled their minds; it had felt like forgetting . . .

  They stepped from the Citadel into a chamber where the walls were so thin Lucy saw sky all around. She looked through the floor at blue air and cloud wisps, drifting over the cloud plain where she and Fracta had stood that morning, and felt she had lost a layer of skin. It was a relief to have Daniel beside her, solid in all that emptiness and light.

  Jovius struck a transparent gong, suspended from the ceiling, and a note sounded the way the sky looked: high and clear. Wist stretched his hand towards the horizon.

  ‘Here they come!’

  Far off, Lucy saw a white wave rise out of the sky and rush towards them. It broke over the chamber. She saw curve-necked, long-tailed creatures with manes that tangled in the wind.

  ‘Arcarals!’ Wist stood at the window, calling in a language of whistles and shrieks. One by one, four of the creatures drifted into the chamber, tossing their manes and staring at Lucy. Their eyes were round and shiny, backed with grey light like tinfoil. They were wild creatures, pieces of sky.

  Watching them, Lucy’s skin tingled. All her tiredness left her. She felt exultant suddenly; everything seemed possible. ‘What are they?’ she whispered.

  Jovius swung around, his face glittering with excitement. ‘The first creatures, sky travellers. They won’t usually speak with us. But when they heard the Protector had come . . .’

  An Arcaral sank to the floor at Lucy’s feet. When she touched it, a shock of cold ran up her arm. Wist and Jovius had already climbed onto their Arcarals and surged through the window. They hovered outside. Around them, the wild herd swirled.

  Lucy’s Arcaral butted its head against her shins and flicked its tail. With a quick grin at Daniel, she climbed onto its back and tangled her hands in its mane. When it eased out the window, she thought she knew how the wind felt.

  Daniel was still in the chamber, looking from Lucy to his Arcaral and squeezing his fists against his chest. ‘Come on!’ she called. With a desperate look, he flung himself onto his Arcaral and clasped his hands around its neck.

  ‘Ee-kor-in-kee-or,’ cried Lucy’s Arcaral. The whole herd took up the cry.

  ‘Right!’ cried Jovius. ‘We’re away!’

  The Arcarals flew as though flying was as natural as falling. Lucy’s cheeks burnt with cold. If she tried to focus on any one thing, her eyes wept. She curled into her Arcaral’s neck and its mane washed over her. The
y were travelling so fast she felt as if she was holding still while the sky rushed through her.

  ‘Kor-kor-in-kee-or,’ called her Arcaral. Lucy looked up to see a bird wheeling in front of her: shining white with curved, black-tipped wings and fierce eyes. When it saw the Arcarals, it gave a cry like metal scraping over metal.

  ‘An albatross!’ The wind tore Lucy’s cry from her mouth.

  The albatross wheeled with the herd and flew towards a scattered mass of cloud. The Arcarals soared over the first, then plunged under the next, cloud and sky passing in flashes. They were racing the albatross, flying so fast Lucy lost all sense of her body – she might have been a line of light.

  The Arcarals banked with such abruptness Lucy’s heart slammed against her ribs. Her Arcaral’s mane was a twisted knot around her hands. She shook out one hand, then the other, catching her breath. When she looked up, she saw a dark cloud hanging in the air in front of her: high, storm-grey – even the wind gusting past it was grey.

  ‘Nimbus!’ exclaimed Jovius. Dark figures darted and leapt over the cloud’s steep and craggy masses. A group of them, standing on an outcrop, saw the Arcarals and shook their fists. The Arcarals mocked them with whistles.

  The Nimbus were the same colour as their storm cloud. They had finely cut faces and dark hair that trailed in the air behind them when they ran. On their backs, like quivers, they carried lightning bolts. Whenever they met, they stopped and flung these at each other until the air around their storm cloud cracked with light.

  ‘But why are they fighting?’ shouted Lucy.

  ‘They always have; it’s all they ever do. No-one remembers why.’ Jovius watched them for a while, then shook his head. ‘Someone told me they were the first Cloudian army – defended us against the Megaliths and so on. Then, when we started living in cities, they wouldn’t stop fighting.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s true. They hate our cities, anyway.’

  ‘They attack them?’

  ‘Every city used to keep a Cirrus lookout.’ He nodded towards Wist. ‘He was the best of them. In two decades, our city wasn’t once overrun. That’s why the statue picked him.’

  ‘What about you? Why did it pick you?’

  The way Jovius paused made Lucy look at him. His face had twisted into an odd expression. Lucy couldn’t tell whether it was pride or resentment. ‘Wist picked me,’ he answered at last. He was watching Wist as he spoke, and he frowned. ‘I was just one of the Cumulus who took him food and sat with him while he ate. That was all. We didn’t speak much.’

  ‘Kee-in-in-kee-in,’ Lucy’s Arcaral whistled, startling her. The Arcarals were shifting from side to side, tangling tails until the air sparked with unease. Lucy suddenly became aware of the gap of air beneath her and dug her hands into her Arcaral’s mane.

  ‘Those Nimbus are making too much noise,’ muttered Wist. ‘They’ll call down the Varactor.’

  Daniel heard the tension in his voice. ‘The Varactor?’

  But Wist had his ears outstretched and quivering, straining towards the horizon. The albatross cut down through air so fast the wind catching on its wingtips made a sound like fire. We should go too, thought Lucy – but it was impossible to turn away while the Nimbus kept flinging lightning bolts. There was something mesmerising about their violence; so spectacular and repetitive it kept Lucy watching for the next explosion, then the next.

  ‘Here it comes,’ said Wist.

  High up, Lucy saw a column of flickering green, almost phosphorescent light: a quivering sphere, trailing six soft tentacles. It floated effortlessly, with a shimmering drift that gave the air around it the appearance of deep water. Lucy was suddenly conscious of fear, pressing upon the inside of her skin, making her body feel oddly swollen and clumsy. Already, the Varactor was hanging over the storm cloud.

  The Nimbus had stopped fighting. Their steel-coloured bodies looked green in the Varactor’s light. A Nimbus on the cloud’s dark peak raised a lightning bolt, and flung it at the Varactor. Fireworks exploded in Lucy’s eyes. She almost fell; she had a giddy sense of the air spinning.

  Fine wires of light netted the air between the Varactor’s tentacles. When it dropped this net over the storm cloud, the sky broke apart with light.

  ‘They’re falling!’

  Cold with disbelief, Lucy watched the Nimbus tumble from the storm cloud and spin down through emptiness, their hair trailing behind them. The air simply let them fall. She kept expecting it to catch them – but their arms flung out and they fell, turning and sliding down miles with an appearance of slowness. In seconds, they had shrunk to specks and vanished.

  Everything was quiet. The Varactor shone over the storm cloud, now a deserted mass. Around it, the air looked like glass. As one, the Arcarals wheeled and fled.

  Lucy was at once aware of every part of her body: cells and nerves, blood coursing through her veins. What she saw in that moment – Daniel’s profile in the streaming lines of his Arcaral’s mane – printed itself upon her mind. Ahead of them and some way off, a white cloud shone. Flying towards it, the Arcarals were a river in flood.

  The cloud was huge in front of them. They swept up the face of it and whirled into a narrow, steep-walled valley where the wind screamed. In the same instant, the air shook.

  ‘Daniel!’ He looked back at her from a cage of light. The Varactor was sinking over him. Lucy saw Jovius, reaching back. Too late! she thought. In that instant, Jovius kicked off his Arcaral. He hung in air, arms outstretched. Then he snatched hold of Daniel and dragged him, spinning, down.

  Lights flared on emptiness as Lucy’s Arcaral dropped its head and dived. Cloud rushed to meet her. Her Arcaral twisted, flinging her sideways. Agony in her hands – then she smashed onto frozen cloud in a mess of pain.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Refuge

  Lucy staggered up. Her legs were broken stilts. Daniel and Jovius lay in a tangle at her feet.

  ‘Run!’ Wist shoved Lucy in the back. Everything looked weirdly bright. Dragging Daniel, she followed Wist and Jovius up the steep side of the valley. Wist pounded the valley wall and a door swung open. Lucy pushed Daniel in front of her and fell in after him. Wist slammed the door behind them.

  ‘Safe,’ he said. ‘It can’t get in.’

  Crouched on the floor, Lucy pressed her face into her knees. Alone in the sound of her breathing, she sat without moving and watched red wheels and sparks inside her eyelids until her breathing steadied.

  ‘Daniel?’

  ‘I’m alright.’ He was sitting on the floor with his sleeve pulled back and his bare arm held out in front of him. Lucy saw a blue welt – smooth like plastic – in the soft skin under his wrist, and another near his elbow.

  ‘It’s numb,’ he said, watching his fingers clench and straighten. ‘I can’t feel anything there …’ He traced a finger down his forearm. ‘Is anyone else cold?’

  ‘Whole cloud’s frozen,’ said Wist. ‘Another stop on the Kazia’s touring schedule.’

  ‘They say she leaves Alkazia at night,’ Jovius whispered. ‘No-one knows how. But wherever she goes, the cloud freezes. No Cloudian survives it …’

  ‘That thing out there,’ said Lucy, ‘that’s the Kazia’s?’

  Wist grunted. ‘Looks like it. Don’t usually see Varactors this far down. They need cold to live. Usually hunt in the high skies, the stratosphere.’

  ‘So it will tell the Kazia where we are?’

  ‘It’ll wait out there a while, I’d say. You saw it with the Nimbus. It delights in slaughter. It won’t be happy we got away.’

  ‘Those poor Nimbus.’ Jovius settled back into a more comfortable position, with his back against the wall. Lucy saw the Nimbus again, spinning down into emptiness, and cold sliced down her spine. She imagined the Varactor hovering over the cloud outside: that nauseous light everywhere.

  ‘It’s cold, alright,’ said Daniel.

  For the first time, Lucy looked around her at their refuge. They were sitting in a room carved out of cloud. Its wal
l curved, forming a circle; its ceiling arched from a central pillar. The floor was hard ice where tiny crystals gleamed. It was so cold the air cut into Lucy’s hands. She had a feeling ice would creep over her skin if she stayed still too long.

  ‘Did you bring food?’ demanded Daniel. He had dropped his arm into his lap, and as he spoke he kept tracing his fingers over the welts.

  ‘Just Comclo.’ Wist pulled a box from his pocket, close-packed with white squares. Lucy saw again the Stratus in the kitchen, beating swathes of cloud into ribbons. She had forgotten Fracta. Now she imagined her, in the Citadel, watching the Arcarals carry Lucy into blue distance …

  The Comclo was hard and sweet. It reminded Lucy of the barley sugar her father kept in the glove box to hand out on long car trips. Sucking on Comclo, she remembered all those summer drives when the car seat stuck to the back of her thighs and the day extended, hour after hour, endless as the paddocks they drove past, her mother dozing in the front seat while her father fixed his eyes on that place, far off, where the road rose into the sky.

  All at once, that memory of carsickness and boredom made Lucy ache with nostalgia. To distract herself, she started roaming around the room, running her hands over the strange maps carved into the central pillar: the flight paths of migrating birds. She recognised snow geese and albatross, drawn from above with their wings outstretched. Two carved seats faced the pillar.

  ‘Why would anyone sit here?’ she wondered aloud. Sitting down on one of the seats, she saw a contraption, like a pair of binoculars, set into the pillar in front of her. It was hard at first to understand what she was seeing: colours, a flickering sheen over a shifting green-grey mass. The sea! Seagulls were scattered over it. Lucy imagined their hollow shrieks and the sound of waves, so like the shaking-out of sheets.

  ‘Daniel, look at this!’ she called.

  Without lifting her eyes, she heard him stand up, sigh, and settle beside her. She heard his raw gasp: ‘Which ocean do you think it is?’ There was no way of telling but she understood why he had asked. It was strange to think they could be anywhere, like someone spinning a plastic globe and stopping it with a finger on the Pacific, the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Southern Ocean …