Cloudland

by Lisa Gorton

‘Get up, Daniel. Please get up.’ She glanced back at the door.

  ‘I’ll take his shoulders.’ Fracta appeared beside Lucy. ‘You get his feet.’ With a quick sideways heave, Fracta pulled Daniel across her hunched back. Lucy grabbed his ankles. Together, they half-walked, half-staggered across the hall, bumping Daniel between them.

  When they stepped outside Alkazia, Lucy thought she heard the stars ringing out one high note, like a bell. Her skin tingled with painless pins and needles. They set Daniel on the cloud plain by the cave where Fracta had stacked the Heir, Wist and Jovius, one on top of the other.

  ‘Three hours to sunrise,’ said Fracta. ‘Keep out of my way while I remake this cave.’

  Lucy crouched next to Daniel and wrapped her coat around him. Shivers ran the whole length of his body. He held his crooked hands in front of him and started whimpering as the blood burnt a path back through his fingers. The sound he made tugged at Lucy’s throat.

  ‘Can’t we stop it hurting?’ she cried.

  Fracta was working frantically. She had pushed the cave walls out. Now she was slashing chunks of cloud out of the plain, piling them together to plug the gaps. She barely glanced up.

  ‘You should be glad he’s suffering,’ she said. ‘Means he’ll recover. Worry about them, if you feel like worrying.’ She flicked her head in the direction of Wist, Jovius and the Heir. Wist was still pointing, blindly, at the sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Matches

  Fracta sealed the door. Now, only narrow lines of moonlight angled in through chinks in the roof. It was eerie to sit in that uncertain light with the still forms of Wist, Jovius and the Heir propped against the wall.

  A shudder ran through Daniel’s body every time he took a breath. Lucy told him about Fracta and the rescue but it was impossible to know how much he understood. He only nodded, dull-eyed, and blew into his hands.

  ‘We have a bargain.’ Fracta pressed one finger into Lucy’s arm. ‘I have done my part.’ Drawing a flask from her pocket, she took a swig.

  ‘I said I’d do it,’ snapped Lucy. She pictured Alkazia looming over the plain, its walls lined with frozen Cloudians. In her mind, she saw again those still faces rising from her reflection.

  It was strange – she felt more shivery now, thinking of them, than she remembered feeling at the time. Then, fear had been all around her: an electric charge in the air. Now, it had burrowed into her skin. She felt it stir and scratch there whenever she moved. Daniel’s broken whimpers made everything seem intimate and real. She was afraid of suffering the way he had suffered. All she wanted now was to wait in the still quiet of the cave. Her home felt too far away to want, or even imagine.

  ‘Can I have some?’ Daniel reached for Fracta’s flask. The skin tightened on her face but she handed it to him. Daniel’s hand was shaking so much the flask bumped against his teeth. When the liquid poured down his throat, he choked and broke out coughing.

  ‘What is that?’ he rasped, rubbing his throat.

  ‘I do not drink it often.’ Fracta snatched the flask back.

  ‘I don’t care whether you have it for breakfast.’ Daniel sat straight up. His eyes, which a moment ago had looked as lifeless as sand, gleamed in the pale light. ‘I’m sure that’s alcohol. We could light it.’

  ‘Do you still have matches?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I think so.’ He fumbled in a pocket of his jeans and raised the little box like a trophy. ‘It’s almost full.’

  Fracta sat watching, suspicion wrinkling her forehead. ‘Matches?’ she said.

  ‘Hand me that flask again,’ said Daniel. Fracta looked at Lucy, who nodded. Drawing the flask once more from her pocket, Fracta passed it to Daniel. He scuffed a hollow in the floor and tipped in a few drops of liquid, which pooled and glittered. Grinning at Lucy, he scraped the match. Blue and then red, it flared. After so long in the cloud’s cool light, the fire’s colour and dry rustling made Lucy’s courage leap up like her shadow on the cave wall.

  Fracta stretched forwards, sheltering her eyes. Distrust and curiosity flashed across her face. She’s never seen fire before, thought Lucy, and wondered how it must appear to her – a fierce spirit trapped on a splinter. Daniel eased the match towards that little pool of liquid.

  Crack! Light jolted through Lucy. She thought the cave had exploded.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Daniel leapt up, not noticing when his head hit the ceiling. ‘I’m warm!’ He stretched his arms out and turned awkwardly, with his lips parted. ‘What is that stuff?’

  ‘Block those gaps!’ ordered Fracta. She had fallen back against the wall. Now she pulled herself up, holding her arm stiffly, and jerked her chin at some breaks in the ceiling where the dawn light poured in.

  ‘Fracta! Your hand! It’s burnt!’ Lucy seized Fracta’s wrist and pulled it into the light. It was seared in a claw shape. Its skin had the sheen of damp linoleum. ‘It’s burnt!’

  ‘Block those gaps!’ Fracta snatched her hand away. ‘Quick, or we’ll all be caught.’

  ‘Alright!’ Lucy gazed around the cave, seeing nothing she could use. Her heart was shuddering.

  ‘Ice-razor!’ hissed Fracta. ‘Cut pieces!’ Lucy knelt and slashed but the pieces shattered.

  Fracta moaned with impatience. ‘Slow! Calm!’ With her injured hand, she marked a shape on the floor. Lucy traced the shape with her ice-razor, copying the twisting motion of Fracta’s wrist, and a piece eased free. Lucy slid it into the widest gap. Fracta was already tapping on the floor. Again, Lucy knelt beside her and traced the shape that she had made.

  The work settled Lucy’s mind. She kept on until they had closed the cave again in half-light. Fracta nodded and sat back, balancing her seared hand on her knee. Lucy noticed she didn’t complain or even study the injury, and felt a nudging respect.

  A clatter made Lucy turn. Wist had tumbled sideways. Daniel balanced him against the wall again. ‘His eyes!’ he breathed, his hands still on Wist’s shoulders. ‘He’s looking.’

  Lucy crawled across the cave. Wist’s face was stiff but his eyes had a light in them. ‘And the Heir,’ she whispered. ‘And Jovius.’

  ‘The fire woke them!’

  Though Jovius hadn’t moved, Lucy saw life flow through him again: a motionless tremor up his wrist, disappearing under his sleeve and flashing out again on his face. His fingers looked oddly vulnerable, like grubs. They started moving like grubs, too, with little wrinkling twitches. He clenched one hand into a fist and uncurled his fingers slowly.

  ‘Wist?’ His eyes cleared and he frowned. ‘Wist?’

  Wist was rubbing his eyes. He yawned. ‘But were we taken or not?’

  ‘Lucy saved us,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Saved us?’ Wist jerked forwards. ‘From Alkazia?’

  ‘Fracta did most of it.’

  Wist saw Fracta and flinched. Fracta stared back, her face fixed in an expression of defiance. Lucy guessed it was the first time she had looked any Cirrus in the face. At last, Wist nodded, so slowly it was almost a bow.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. Fracta’s eyes flickered. Wist started examining the wall with one hand. When he caught sight of the Heir, he pressed his palms against his chest. This time, he did bow, with his chin tucked against his neck.

  The Heir only gazed at Wist. Lucy wondered whether he was still frozen, but, after a pause, he frowned and turned his head, studying each of them in turn. When he saw Lucy, he inched up one hand and brushed his fingers across her cheek.

  ‘But I remember this face,’ he whispered. He kept gazing at her. ‘I have lost things,’ he said. ‘In my mind. There’s a blank here.’ He pressed his fingers against his forehead.

  ‘Why did you choose me?’ she breathed. ‘Am I really the Protector?’

  He blinked at her. Once more, he brushed the tips of his fingers against her cheek. ‘I have seen this face. Always in windows. Looking up at us? The only one looking out?’ He frowned. ‘Why is the light so dim?’

  ‘Frozen too long,’ said Fract
a. ‘He’s forgotten everything.’

  ‘But he’s alive,’ said Lucy. A tingling feeling ran down her arms. ‘We could rescue them all.’

  Daniel looked at her, his face bright. He nodded slowly. ‘Fracta,’ he asked, still with his eyes on Lucy, ‘how much of that drink do you have?’

  ‘Only this flask. But I could get more. The Stratus have plenty of phumooze.’ The bitterness in Fracta’s voice made Lucy remember that cavern filled with Stratus, slumped unseeing, half-lost in the heavy air.

  Daniel started tapping his fingertips against each other. ‘We could blast the whole place! Run a line of that stuff around Alkazia! Then boom!’ He splayed his fingers. ‘There wouldn’t be anything left!’

  Lucy pictured flames reaching across the whole sky. ‘We could do it!’ she cried. Her heart started hammering against her ribs.

  ‘We need a plan,’ said Fracta. ‘If we’re going to trap the Kazia, we’ll have to work in daylight. That means shadow-mongers. Maybe the Varactor.’

  ‘I’ll need at least a hundred litres of that stuff,’ interrupted Daniel.

  Fracta nodded. ‘I can get that. And Stratus to help you pour it.’ She looked at Lucy. ‘I’ll summon them in your name. You and I will lead another group into Alkazia to cut the prisoners out.’

  Jovius and the Heir had settled back against the wall but Wist was glancing between Fracta and Daniel, frowning. ‘They have fire,’ explained Fracta. ‘You have watched Earth? You have seen it?’

  A look of comprehension ran across Wist’s face. He nodded. ‘Snow geese can hold off shadow-mongers.’ He turned to Lucy, his face pinched with excitement. ‘We’ll go into the sky and call them to us.’

  ‘Rest now,’ said Fracta. ‘Set off at nightfall.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Calling

  As soon as Lucy closed her eyes, she realised how tired she was. She curled up on her side, snuggling into the warmth of her coat. The light filtering through the walls made everything shimmer. Between sleep and waking, strange images chased through her mind. She was in the pine forest at home – only every tree was made of cold fire and their branches, shaped like flames, reached for her face. She was in a hurry to get home but paths stretched out in all directions and she couldn’t remember which way to go. She thought: If I follow the spiders . . . When she looked down again, the burnt, black pine needles under her feet bent into legs without bodies and started running so fast she couldn’t keep up.

  She woke to the sound of talk.

  ‘It’s the Varactor that worries me,’ Fracta was saying. Wist nodded. The pair sat side by side: one hunched and wizened, one straight and thin.

  ‘The Varactor’s made of electricity,’ said Daniel.

  Lucy sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Daniel was holding out his arm, showing the two welts in his skin: one near his elbow, one near his wrist, and both purple now like old scars.

  ‘Electricity?’ repeated Wist.

  Daniel nodded. ‘Look at these marks on my arm. There’s an entrance and an exit point. That’s what you get with electric shocks.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ interrupted Lucy.

  Daniel only glanced at her. ‘You’re awake,’ he said, and turned back to Fracta. ‘If we had a strip of metal, an antenna or something, we could short-circuit the Varactor. Of course, it wouldn’t be easy. We’d need the Varactor to strike both sides of the metal at once, burn itself out.’

  Fracta turned to Wist. ‘An albatross could fetch such a thing for us?’

  Wist jerked his chin. ‘I will ask.’

  Fracta turned and cut through the cave wall. Through the gap she made, Lucy saw the night sky, black backed with cobalt, and the first stars. Uneasy still from her dream, she followed the others outside into the freezing air. Daniel shuffled from foot to foot, hunching his back against the wind, while she and Fracta patched the hole in the cave wall, closing Jovius and the Heir in safety again. By the time they finished, Wist had found the carpet.

  ‘We’ll meet back here,’ said Fracta. ‘I might be some days.’ She crouched on her cloud board and skidded into the dark.

  Lucy looked once at Alkazia, but already the carpet was rising into the dark. The cold night rippled against her cheeks. They were flying at an angle towards a small, bright star. Lucy stretched out her arms. Daniel was staring into the dark with his arms wrapped around his legs. His face looked as still and polished as stone.

  Soon they had left Alkazia far behind. They hovered in an immense darkness. Twisting his fingers in his mouth, Wist made a high-pitched cry. After it, the silence was immense. Lucy felt more keenly the loneliness of the high air and wondered again at Wist passing so many years, day and night, above a city alone.

  At first, Lucy thought she heard her own heart thudding. As they waited, the sound grew and broke into separate sounds. Far off, a white cluster spread and took shape. At last, they made out the flying arrowhead of the snow geese. There was something extraordinary about the way those birds flew out of the dark. Lucy imagined their cold existence, beating their way each year across the world. They were creatures of air and they carried with them something elemental and pitiless. Lucy could hardly believe she and Daniel had stood among them.

  The snow geese circled the carpet. Wist called to them in shrieks. One bird broke away and hung in front of Lucy, rising and sinking on slow wing beats. Its eyes were pale blue, white rimmed, and fiercely cold. At last, it cried out and wheeled back to the flock.

  ‘They will help us,’ said Wist. Relief sounded in his voice. The snow geese swung in wide loops around the carpet. Their yelping calls came out of the night, filling Lucy with restless excitement.

  ‘Now the albatross!’ exclaimed Wist, and gave a whistling shriek.

  They waited. At last, an albatross planed out of the high air. Turning on one wingtip, it landed with a soft thump on the carpet. Edging closer to Wist, it tilted its great head and opened its beak in rasping cries.

  ‘Comclo,’ murmured Wist. Daniel slid him a piece. The albatross snatched it from Wist’s hand. Holding the piece in one scaly claw, it clacked its beak to break off fragments, snatching them up before they fell. All the while, as it ate, Wist murmured to it. It answered in cries so low pitched they sounded like purrs.

  ‘They’re friends,’ whispered Daniel.

  Watching the albatross prop and sidle on the carpet, Lucy became aware of the space beneath and above them, and of all the stars, glittering more brightly now as the night darkened. Resting her shoulder against Daniel’s back, she felt something like peace settle on her: a sense of weightlessness, as though they had risen so far above Earth they were floating over their own lives.

  The albatross spread its huge wings and tipped from the carpet, not falling but rising in a wide spiral away from them. It hung still for a moment and then plunged so quickly it left a white shadow behind it. Lucy imagined it using the force of that flight to snap the radio antenna from a boat, far at sea, and then cresting over the waves, climbing again on steady beating wings.

  ‘Ready?’ Wist pressed down a corner of the carpet, making it spin suddenly and plummet. The snow geese wheeled. Their wings made the sound of an audience clapping. Again, Lucy felt the panic and elation of flight. She wondered how long they would have to wait for Fracta – whether tomorrow, or the next day, she would lead this strange army against Alkazia.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ice Fire

  They waited two days for Fracta to return. At night, they stood for an hour on the plain, huddling in the warmth of their coats, staring up at the night sky while the snow geese shuffled at their feet. Before sunrise, they crept back into the cave to sleep.

  While they waited, Wist told them the history of the Arcarals. He taught them some words in the language of the albatross, and explained the complex laws of the weather council. All that time, Jovius and the Heir slept and ate, slept and ate. Some dullness in their eyes made Lucy think of her grandfather in the nursing ho
me, mumbling and sucking on his false teeth; all the time, dazed cries from other rooms.

  On the second night, Lucy heard a clack clack on the cave wall. Fear clutched at her. She sat up, half-dazed, her pulse drumming in her head. ‘Daniel?’ she whispered, fumbling for him in the shadows.

  Outside, she heard the rasping cry of the albatross. The aftermath of panic washed like a grey tide through her body. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she could make out Daniel’s dim shape, rolled against the wall on the far side of the cave. Wist was sleeping next to him with his head tipped to one side and his mouth hanging open.

  The albatross called again. With her hands still shaking, Lucy cut a low door in the wall. In its beak, the albatross held a broken-ended antenna, so long the bird had to step sideways into the cave.

  ‘R-rar-ark,’ said Lucy, hoping it meant thanks. The albatross looked sidelong at her. Lucy thought she saw laughter in its cold eye. She used her ice-razor to cut some Comclo into pieces.

  ‘R-rar-ark,’ it said, flinging pieces up and catching them again in its beak as they fell. Its smell – old fish and salt wind – made Lucy homesick for summer holidays: sticky skin, and the sunburn headaches that coloured everything neon. The air was so blank here. She longed even for the smells that crowded cities: exhaust fumes and cooking; even the rotting smell of mud and floodwaters. The albatross had turned in a circle twice and tucked its head into its chest. Lucy stretched out on the floor again, and settled back into the tedium of waiting.

  Fracta arrived the next morning. Lucy had been asleep when she heard a scraping sound. For a moment, before she opened her eyes, she thought it was her father coming home without his keys, but she woke to the close glare of the cave. A space opened in the wall beside her and daylight poured in, blinding Lucy for a moment. Then she saw Fracta’s face peering in at them.

  ‘We are ready,’ she said.

  Cold fingers squeezed Lucy’s lungs. ‘This is it,’ she whispered. Daniel was staring at her, the skin stretched tight over his cheekbones.