by Jeff Minerd
On the night she planned to leave, she wrote a letter to Mizuki, Takashi, and Emiko. She apologized for sneaking away. She was sure her new family would try to stop her. They had discussed the idea no further after that first night, but she knew that they knew she was thinking about it. It broke her heart to leave them like this, after they had been so kind to her. Part of her letter said:
You once said my arrival was a gift to you. Please know that finding you has been a gift to me. I have cherished our time together, and I will return to Kyo as soon as possible with any more information I have before returning to Spire in the spring.
She left the letter on the night stand in her room. Kaishou’s heart-shaped stone sat there. She picked it up and tucked it into an inner pocket. She looked around, checking for any last little thing she’d forgotten. She wore her black flight suit, and she pulled on her padded black jacket over it. She shouldered the small duffle bag she’d bought at the market, packed with her last few things. Her heart was heavy. This felt like leaving home, and a betrayal.
If she knew her new family a little better, she would have known she wouldn’t be getting away quite so easily.
She nodded casually to the palace guards as she strolled out of the main entrance. They nodded back. She made her way down to the quay where the Devious was docked. She tried to move at an unhurried pace, but her heart beat faster, and she grew uncomfortably warm in her flight suit and winter jacket, despite the wintery air.
The sun had just set, but still the quay was busy. Airships of every size and description were docking or taking off. The air traffic above Kyo did not lessen with the coming of night. Ships flew with bright lanterns at their bow and stern. Brieze paused to take in the view of the city of Kyo at night. On all three mountains, the lights of the city mixed with the dazzling, dancing lights in the air. It looked like fireflies swarming above the city. She sighed, adjusted the bag on her shoulder, and made her way down the steps to the quay.
The quay was crowded with throngs of people. They moved in and out of pools of light cast by oil lanterns lit and hauled up tall poles. A knot of shadowy people were gathered right where the Devious was docked. Brieze cursed this under her breath, but then she reasoned it wouldn’t matter if she was seen taking off from the quay. As far as anyone knew, she was just another night flier, off on some evening errand.
As she came closer, she saw the knot of people were palace guards. And they were all looking at her. Her throat tightened. As she moved to within speaking distance, the group of guards parted to reveal Takashi, Emiko, and Mizuki standing in their midst, eyeing Brieze accusingly.
“You would leave us without saying goodbye?” Mizuki asked. She stood as straight as she could, with both hands perched atop her cane. She looked strange and out of place standing on the quay, wrapped in a black cloak. Brieze had never seen her outside of the palace before. In fact, Mizuki almost never left it.
Brieze stammered, “I’m not going anywhere grandmother. Just out for a night flight…to see the city lights.”
Takashi harrumphed. “In a ship loaded with months of food and supplies? All in secret?”
“And you’ve cleaned out your room,” Emiko said.
Brieze’s shoulders slumped. Despite the winter chill, she was burning up inside her layers of clothes. But she straightened up defiantly, realizing something. “You’ve been spying on me!”
Mizuki shrugged. “We had people keeping an eye on you,” she said. “For your own protection. Kyo is not the safest place for a young woman to wander alone.”
Brieze crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow skeptically.
“And yes, we were spying. Be reasonable my little crane. It’s what we do.”
“Are you going to try to stop me?” Brieze asked, eyeing the guards, sizing up her chances of an escape, which were pretty much nil.
“Yes!” Takashi stepped forward. “You can’t go wandering around the roots of the Wind’s Teeth in winter, looking for a shipwreck. You’ll never find it. You’ll freeze to death, or starve to death, first. No one should even be down there in the first place.”
“I’ll be fine,” Brieze said. “I’ve been to the underworld before. I have all the equipment and supplies I need. And I have a plan for finding the Atagu Maru.”
It was Emiko’s turn to cross her arms and arch a skeptical eyebrow. “What plan?” she asked.
Brieze explained it to them. Their faces grew more and more astonished—and fearful—as she laid out the details.
“You can’t be serious,” Emiko said. Her face had gone even paler under her powdered cheeks.
“It’s suicide,” Takashi said. “We can’t let you go. Our guards will take you back to the palace by force if necessary. We’ll lock you up until you come to your senses.”
“Silence!” Mizuki held up a hand. “Ever the hothead and fool, Takashi. Would you kidnap a citizen of Spire and hold her against her will? The apprentice of their wizard, no less? Would you turn our long-time friends and allies against us, and risk war? No, the girl must be allowed to go if we can’t convince her to stay.”
“Then I’m going,” Brieze said.
Mizuki held out a gnarled hand to Brieze. Brieze took it. Mizuki’s eyes glistened as she looked up at her great granddaughter. “Please,” she said, her tone soft and helpless with that special kind of helplessness that comes from a parent’s love. “Please don’t do this thing. Please stay.”
Brieze swallowed hard. She put her arms around the old woman. Mizuki hugged her back with all the strength she could put into her frail limbs. They held each other for a long time, until Brieze gently broke the embrace and held Mizuki at arm’s length.
“I must go,” she said.
Mizuki fought down the tears threatening to brim over in her eyes. She held herself as erect and stoically as she could. “Then we wish you well,” she said hoarsely. “And we will watch the skies for your return.”
With a heart so heavy it sank into her boots, Brieze embraced Emiko and Takashi as well. She climbed into the Devious. The guards were courteous enough to undo her mooring lines and shove her off as she raised the sail. The sail stretched full and the ship rose on the wind. Brieze watched her new family grow smaller and smaller as she climbed higher, their upturned faces becoming less and less distinct. Finally, they blended into the other shadowy figures of people on the quay, and then the quay blended into the other lights of the city.
Mizuki, Takashi, and Emiko stood together on the quay, watching a small ship the color of night vanish into the sky.
Emiko buried her head in Takashi’s shoulder. “We will never see her again,” she said.
Mizuki wiped at her eyes. “I have a feeling we will,” she said. “I hate to admit it, but I think her plan just might work.”
SIXTEEN
The month-long solo trip out to the Teeth was not nearly as bad as the first leg of her voyage had been. Brieze knew what to expect this time, and she prepared herself. She brought several books with her. Eastern books written in the eastern language; long, epic tales of princesses and princes, dragons and sorcerers. They kept her mind occupied and sharpened up her language skills at the same time. And, most importantly, she brought a large bag of candies. They were eastern candies with strange flavors like ginger and coconut and sesame, but they did the trick.
Approaching the Wind’s Teeth all on her own was daunting. They looked even bigger than she remembered, which didn’t seem possible since they were the biggest things she’d ever seen. But there they were, impossibly gargantuan, and menacing, and glittering with the light of the rising sun. Brieze nosed the Devious into the middle passage. She didn’t intend to go far in. Hopefully not far enough to have to wrestle with the Teeth’s treacherous winds. Just far enough in to find a place to set the Devious down.
She searched for half a day before finding what she was looking for—a broad ledge jutting out from near the base of one of the Teeth, just above the surface clouds and big enough for her to set
the Devious down without too much trouble. She furled the sail and anchored the ship with long steel anchoring stakes, pounded into the ledge with a heavy hammer. The semi-translucent, crystal-like stone was brittle and flaky, but she pounded the stakes in deep, and they held.
To her surprise, the Devious turned black. She’d expected the ship to turn white, which would have been the best color for camouflage. But the Teeth were made of translucent crystal. They had no color themselves, although they reflected a multitude of colors, just like a diamond. Evidently, in the absence of a predominant color, the ship’s pigment went black. That made sense to Brieze in a way, since black was the absence of color, at least according to the science of optics. But she didn’t like it at all. It meant the ship contrasted sharply with the ledge and could easily be spotted from the air, if anyone were looking.
She discovered a large, crack-like cave at the rear of the ledge. She didn’t like this either. Such caves were used by pirates. She considered searching for a different ledge, but she might not find one by nightfall. So she investigated the cave. It had once been used by someone. She found the charred remains of a cooking fire, with old chicken bones and apple cores strewn around it. The apple cores were withered and dry, but they hadn’t rotted. Almost nothing lived in the environment of the Teeth, and she supposed that went for the microscopic creatures that caused rot and decay. She was glad to have evidence of this. It made it more likely she’d find Kaishou’s journal intact, if she could find it.
She unpacked gear from the Devious. She took out a long coil of sturdy rope—six hundred feet long, with thick knots tied in it at three-foot intervals. She tied one end to an anchoring stake and drove it deeply into the rock, making sure it held tight. She tied the other end to a heavy backpack loaded with a tent and all the supplies she would need during her time in the underworld. With some lighter rope, she lashed a small bundle of firewood and a sack of dried goat meat to the pack. She rummaged through the pack and took out a slim glass cylinder, two feet long, filled with liquid. She shook the rod hard until it glowed with bluish light. She fastened the light stick to the pack with a strap.
She looked over the ledge. The clouds that covered the roots of the Wind’s Teeth were only a few yards below her, looking like gray mist. She used the sturdy rope with the knots to lower the pack over the ledge, foot-by-foot down through the mist, toward the unseen ground below. As she let out the rope hand-over-hand, she made a mental calculation every time ten knots went by. Thirty feet…sixty feet…ninety feet…one-hundred twenty feet…
The glowing light stick on the pack dimmed as it descended through the fog. Brieze hoped her rope was long enough.
A hundred knots passed…three hundred feet. And still the pack dangled heavily from the rope. The light had been completely swallowed up by the fog. Three-hundred sixty feet…three-ninety…four-hundred twenty feet….
At one-hundred and seventy knots—five-hundred and ten feet—the rope went slack. The pack had reached the bottom! With ninety feet to spare.
Brieze readied herself for a five-hundred foot climb down to the roots of the Wind’s Teeth. She fastened metal climbing shoes with sharp metal cleats to the soles of her boots. She pulled on a pair of thick leather gloves. The worst part was getting herself over the ledge. She walked backward to the very edge, leaning on her rope, trusting it to hold her. Then she leaned back a little more and took one step over and down. Her cleats held. The rope held. She took another step and then she was standing out from the side of the tooth, her feet planted firmly on it, the rope holding her entire weight.
She walked herself down, using footholds where she could to take the strain off the rope and her arms. The wind whipped her braid back and forth. She wished she’d remembered to tuck it away, but there was nothing she could do about it now. She counted the knots as they went by, calculating how far she’d gone. At about two-hundred and forty feet down, her shoulders started to ache and the muscles of her arms burned. She looked up. Already, the cloud-mist had closed in above her. The sun shone only dimly and fuzzily. She was suspended in a gray vaporous emptiness, the only things solid and tangible were her rope and the rock face she walked down. As she climbed lower, the sun grew weaker and the fog thicker.
About halfway to the bottom, her feet found a ledge. She rested there gratefully, allowing her trembling muscles to gather strength. The wind had died down to gentle gusts that cooled the sweat on her face. She looked down. “Is that a glimmer of light down there from my backpack?” she asked herself. “Or are my eyes playing tricks on me?” Her habit of talking to herself, which had never really left her, came back strong now that she was alone again.
“Only one way to tell,” she answered.
With a sigh, she stepped off the ledge and continued her climb.
Her eyes weren’t playing tricks. As she neared the bottom, she saw the glow of the light stick clearly.
Finally, a foot touched bottom!
When she planted both feet on the ground, they sank in a little, as they would in mud. Brieze took a few cautious steps. The ground supported her, but it was definitely soft. She hadn’t expected that. She bent down and scooped up a handful of the whitish-colored stuff she was walking on. It was like dirt, but much finer and dryer. It flowed like water between her fingers. It was made of fine, glittering grains, like milled wheat or corn. Brieze had no idea what the stuff was. There were no liquid oceans or deserts on Etherium, no beaches, so she had never encountered sand before.
“Liquid dirt,” she said to herself. “Fascinating. I should get a sample.”
But she would get the sample later, when she wasn’t so tired. Sweat soaked her back. Loose strands of hair clung to her sweaty face. Her hands ached. She sat and slumped against the crystalline rock face she’d just climbed down. She allowed herself to just sit and enjoy the fact she’d made it. She let her weak muscles rest. She looked up at the sky. The sun was just the pale white ghost of a sun far above, shining weakly through the heavy fog. It gave only a little glimmer of light to the world beneath the clouds. When she looked outward, there was only thick mist in every direction. In the distance, vague dark shapes loomed. They could be wrecks. Could be boulders. Could be almost anything. No one had explored this world before. No humans, anyway.
After a half hour’s rest she stood up with a groan, brushed herself off, and got to work. She unpacked and pitched her tent, staking it down as best she could in the strange ground. The stakes didn’t hold well, so she found heavy rocks to hold down the tent corners. She untied her bundle of firewood and sack of dried meat from her pack. With tinder and flint and a bit of kindling, she lit a small fire—just a few pieces of wood that crackled with yellow flame. She didn’t want a large fire. She didn’t need one for warmth. It was much warmer beneath the clouds than above them, as she’d known it would be. She wanted a low, slow, steady fire. Bright enough to be seen—and smelled from far away by sensitive noses—but not so large that it appeared strange or threatening.
She unbuttoned her jacket and fished around in the inner pockets of her flightsuit. The suit had many little secret pockets, and despite her excellent memory she sometimes forgot what she had in which of them. Finally, she found what she was looking for. A silver medallion. The silver had been wrought into the shape of two strange-looking hands, empty and palms up. She pinned the medallion to the front of her jacket. She dug into the sack of dried meat and flung a few handfuls of salted goat strips out into the darkness beyond the light of the fire. From her backpack, she pulled out a notebook. She sat by the fire and set it on the ground within easy reach.
She ate a little food and drank a little water. She rested with her back against the rock. The fire spit and popped. It made a pool of light and warmth that stretched only a few yards into the darkness and fog.
Now there was nothing to do but wait. They would come. Sooner or later.
“I hope…” she said.
Brieze woke with a start. Her
fire had burned down to a few red guttering tongues of flame. The sun had disappeared. It was nighttime, and the darkness closed in around her. She sat in a tiny pool of reddish firelight. She couldn’t see anything beyond it. Sand slithered and hissed as the wind pushed it about.
She wasn’t alone.
Something moved in the darkness. She heard scrabbling sounds and the faint clink of metal on metal. Sniffing. Lips smacking and chewing. Satisfied grunts. Something was eating the goat strips she’d scattered in the dark. Slowly and cautiously, Brieze placed a few more sticks on the fire. It sprang up with crackling yellow flames. She saw the gleam of their eyes as they drew closer to the fire. Big, bulbous eyes, spaced far apart and glimmering green with the light reflecting off their retinas. There were two pairs of eyes and, strangely, a single eye bobbing and blinking all by itself.
But they were Gublins. She’d found them. Her plan had worked so far.
She stood up and shook the sand out of her clothes. “I am a Gublin friend,” she said loudly and clearly, and as well as she could, in the Gublin language. “I seek your help.”
The eyes blinked and hesitated. The creatures whispered to each other. She couldn’t be sure they’d understood her. She could understand the Gublin language well enough, but it was extremely difficult to speak, consisting as it did of variously pitched hisses, punctuated by clicks of the tongue and gurgling sounds made in the back of the throat.
She pointed to the medallion on her jacket, which she was sure they could see. Gublins have excellent eyesight—at least in the dark. She held her empty hands out together, palms up, imitating the gesture of peace the medallion depicted. “A Gublin king of the West gave me this, as a symbol of friendship. It guarantees me safe passage in the Gublin realm.”
She wasn’t sure how much weight a friendship medallion from a king in the West would carry with these Eastern Gublins, but she figured it was worth something at least. Worth a try, anyway.
