A girl stood in front of the building, on a strip of gravel that separated it from the grass, with her shoulders back and her hands clasped in front of her. Her hair fell down her back in curls and was a coppery color like no one’s in White Rock. It shone in the sun. She stared at us with bright green eyes and a strange look on her face. The guard with us moved to her side.
I stood straighter, because it seemed to matter, and tried to figure out why she was looking at us that way. The guard cleared his throat. “This is Alondra. She’s the daughter of the mayor. Alondra, these people are here representing White Rock.”
She gave a little curtsy.
“Thank you so much for inviting us into your town,” Luke said. “It’s quite an honor to be here.” He bowed. I didn’t know what to do, so I bowed, too. The girl smiled, as if she found it funny. Did I do something wrong? “This is Hope,” Luke said as he gently touched my back. “She’s the daughter of Council Head Toriella in White Rock, and my niece, and she’s come to talk with the mayor about a possible trade for seforium.”
Maybe now was the time I was supposed to bow. I bowed again, feeling awkward. “Hi,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
“And you,” Alondra said.
Then Luke introduced Brock and Aaren. Aaren reached to shake Alondra’s hand. I should’ve offered to shake hands instead!
“Your city is incredible,” Aaren said.
Alondra smiled, and I beamed at Aaren. How did he always know what to say? Brock shook Alondra’s hand, too, but didn’t say anything.
“It’s nice to meet you all. We do mine seforium here,” Alondra said, and a huge weight lifted off my shoulders, “although I’m not sure we have any to trade. I regret to inform you that my father is tied up with some business away from town, and he won’t be able to meet with you. If you’d like to wait a few days, though, then you are more than welcome to.”
The relief I felt vanished, and panic rose in its place.
“A few days?” Brock groaned. “We don’t have a few days!”
“We don’t,” I said. “Isn’t there any way to talk with him sooner? It’s urgent. Our entire town is in danger!”
Alondra looked startled. I didn’t know if it was because we had yelled or because I said our town was in danger. I tried to calm my voice, but it still came out shaky. “Please. We live inside one of the craters from a green bomb, and the Bomb’s Breath over our crater is lowering. We need seforium to fix it. Everyone in my town will have to leave if we don’t make it back soon, and it already took longer to get here than we had planned. If we wait for a few more days, it’ll be too late. We’ll have to abandon White Rock.”
Alarm and sympathy showed on Alondra’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s in Downwind making trades. There’s no way for me to contact him.”
“I’ll go find him,” Luke said. “Let him know it’s an emergency.” He started running toward the woods leading to the pathway and called out, “Be back soon.”
Aaren, Alondra, Brock, and I were left in uncomfortable silence. I looked at Alondra, wondering if we should head back down to the horses, or if we should wait here.
“Follow me,” she said, and she led us back through the clearing and into the trees. I walked straight-backed the whole time, the way she did, practicing being proper. It reminded me of when we learned about royalty in history class. I didn’t think I’d see it in a town in the Rocky Mountains, though. Right before we reached the trees, she looked over her shoulder, as if she was checking to see if anyone was watching.
As soon as we had all entered the woods, she spun around. “You’re kids!” Brock and Aaren and I glanced at each other, then back to her, confused. “I apologize,” she said. “It’s just that we’ve never had visitors who were kids before!”
I laughed. What happened to acting like royalty?
“And you go through the Bomb’s Breath. People almost never come here—we usually make trades down below. Some get impatient and brave the Bomb’s Breath to talk with my dad sooner. A few even die trying, but kids never come here!” She looked at each of us. “I’m rambling. Tell me about you.”
“Um,” I said, suddenly unable to think of a single thing I liked to do. “Aaren likes science and inventing, and he’s practically a doctor. Brock likes a challenge.”
“And Hope likes beating me in a challenge,” Brock said.
Alondra’s eyes lit up. “Really? Do you Sky Surf?”
“Sky Surf?” Aaren asked.
“You live in a crater with mountains, right? And you said you have the Bomb’s Breath.”
“We sky jump,” I said. “I don’t know if that’s—” We all looked at her with confused faces.
“Come on,” she said, and took off running through the trees.
We stood there, watching Alondra as she ran several yards into the trees, then turned around and stopped. “Are you not coming?”
I glanced back toward the clearing, then in the direction of the pathway that would lead us back down. “I’m sorry. We really don’t have time to play. Or … Sky Surf. Our town’s in danger, and we need to get home quickly.”
She walked back to where we stood. “Downwind is a good hour’s ride each direction, and it’ll take time for your uncle to find my dad and convince him to leave. Would you rather go down to your horses to wait? Or have me show you my town?”
“I—” What I really wanted was to do something—anything—that would help us to make the trade and get back on the road more quickly. But there seemed to be nothing we could do yet. “I don’t know.” I looked to Aaren and Brock for help in figuring out what we should be doing right now.
They both shrugged.
Alondra regarded us for a minute. “Waiting will seem to take forever if you’re not doing something.” She turned to Aaren. “You like to invent, right? Aren’t you curious to see the Sky Surfboard inventions?”
Aaren’s eyes lit up. I knew he was dying to see them.
She looked back at me. “We won’t be gone long. And from the cliff’s edge, you can see Downwind and the entire path there. We’ll be able to see them coming back.”
I looked at Aaren’s face filled with curiosity, and had to admit that mine probably looked the same. Brock’s, too. We came from a town of inventors—we should try to learn from other towns’ inventions. I nodded. “Okay, we’ll go with you for a little while.”
Alondra ran through a path that wasn’t really a path, pulling her hair into a ponytail as she ran. We crashed through the trees behind her until she stopped right at the edge of a cliff by a wooden chest. She pulled out a board made of thin wood, and held it up, a question on her face. We stared at her blankly. It was probably three feet long and a foot and a half wide, with extra flap pieces sticking out on both sides. Two stick-like pieces stuck straight out of the top, and a hole was drilled in the bottom center. Alondra held the board in front of her by the handles, as if we’d realize what it was if we looked longer.
But we didn’t. She pulled out a second one and handed it to me. Then she picked up two things that looked like misshapen bowls, with strings attached to either side. Next came two skinny bundles about six feet long. Each of the bundles looked as though it had a couple of pieces of wood with fabric bunched around them. We carried everything to the edge of the cliff.
I set the board on the ground when Alondra did the same; then I held up the bowl thing. “What’s this?”
“It’s a null.” She crinkled her forehead. “You don’t use a null when you sky jump?”
“Uh …” I looked down at the object in my hand. “No.”
Alondra stared at me as though she was trying to decide if I was insane. “How do you keep from taking a breath by accident?” She didn’t wait for me to answer—she just put the null over her nose and mouth with the strings going around the back of her head. She tightened the strings, lifted the bowl part off her mouth long enough to take a deep breath, then picked up the board and leapt off the edge of the cliff, lyin
g down on the board.
The top of the Bomb’s Breath must’ve been almost even with the height of the cliff, because she sailed straight out, as if it caught her instantly. She pulled the right handle toward her and pushed the left handle away. The flaps on the side of the board moved—the right one bent down and the left one bent up—and the entire board turned until Alondra’s head was toward us instead of her feet. As she got closer, she pushed the right handle and pulled the left, and turned away from us again, pushing off against the edge of the cliff with her foot. The force of her shove sent her sailing away.
I rushed to peek over the edge, afraid that there was nothing but empty air below her, but there was a wide cliff, probably a few feet below the bottom of the Bomb’s Breath, and jutting out at least thirty feet. Stairs were even carved into the stone, leading back up.
Alondra caught my eye, then pushed both handles forward. The board she rode on nose-dived toward the cliff ledge below. She pulled up on both handles and it brought her head upright, and she slowly floated down until she dropped out of the Bomb’s Breath. She yanked off the null, gasped for air, and grinned up at us. “That,” she said, “is Sky Surfing.”
Aaren sat on the ground and examined the second board as Alondra replaced her null and climbed up the stairs. He moved each of the handles, noticing how much they moved the flaps on the sides. He flipped it over to see how the mechanism that connected the handles to the flaps worked. Brock crouched down next to him, and for a while, the two of them discussed things like how the flaps affect the air and how the handles affect the flaps. I couldn’t believe they could simply talk about all those technical things when they’d just seen what Alondra was able to do with one of them.
Aaren held up the null. “Do you ever let visitors who are coming to trade use these?”
Alondra shook her head. “I’m not supposed to show them to outsiders.” She looked guilty for a moment. “But I’m pretty sure my dad meant I wasn’t supposed to show them to adults.”
Aaren looked up at me, and his smile grew bigger. “You’re dying to try this right now, aren’t you?”
I shrugged it off, pretending it didn’t matter at all to me.
He held the board and null up. “You should test it out.” He paused a moment. “For the sake of science.”
I knew he added the science part just to make me feel less bad about doing something fun when we should be … waiting, I guessed. In truth, curiosity and excitement had grabbed me so fully, I wasn’t sure I could drag myself away from this spot without Sky Surfing if I wanted to.
I pulled on the null, took a running leap off the cliff, and landed stomach-down on the board. I hung there in the air, feeling as if I wasn’t even drifting downward at all. I pushed one handle forward and pulled on the other, like Alondra did, but the board tipped so suddenly, I tumbled off it, flipping from stomach to back to stomach a few times before I came to rest in the middle of the Bomb’s Breath on my back.
I closed my eyes and floated, enjoying the weightlessness, even if I wasn’t on the board. Then I kicked and squirmed until I was feet-down, and I drifted out of the Bomb’s Breath. I landed on the cliff, pulled the null down to my neck, and let out a laugh that bounced off the cliff face. Even a total failure on the Sky Surfboard was fun. I grabbed the board when it drifted down to me, and raced up the stairs.
I handed my board and null to Brock. “You have to try this!”
Within moments, he tipped his board and fell off.
Alondra laughed and called out, “I think you tumbled even more quickly than Hope did!”
“Overachiever!” I yelled.
He gave me two thumbs up as he glided down through the Bomb’s Breath.
When Brock landed on the ledge, Aaren pulled on the null and took a running leap into the air. He moved the handles a little, turning slightly toward the right. He straightened them out, then turned slightly to the left. It wasn’t much, but he managed to stay on a lot longer than Brock and I did. He even figured out how to pull up on both handles and stay hanging on as he drifted to the bottom of the dense air, feetfirst.
We cheered for him the entire time. Alondra handed her board to Brock. “Here. You two go together.”
I bit my lip, and looked out over the cliff’s edge. After just a moment, I could see Luke’s horse down below! He looked about the size of an ant, with a little tiny dust cloud rising out behind him. He was almost halfway to Downwind. We had time and nothing else to do. I looked at Brock.
He raised an eyebrow. “See who can stay on the board the longest?”
Given how quickly we’d each stayed on the board last time, it was probably the only contest we could’ve had. We almost crashed once by accident, then once on purpose. When I tried to shove away from the wall, I reached too far, and I flipped my board upside down. I was having so much fun, I didn’t even care that I lost.
“How old do you have to be in White Rock to sky jump?” Alondra asked once I got to the top of the stairs.
I snorted, thinking about how anxious everyone in White Rock was just knowing we had sky jumped before. “Nobody but us goes into the Bomb’s Breath.”
“Really?” She stared at us. “Why?”
“You do realize it’s deadly, right?” Brock said.
She laughed. “Yes. I realize. That’s why we use the nulls, and we have to wait until our ninth birthday before we go into it. We have to be twelve before we jump without a parent, and we can never jump alone.”
“I can’t believe they let you at all,” Aaren said.
“My dad said that when you live above the Bomb’s Breath, you can either use it as a strength or accept it as a weakness. It’s only a strength if you’re not afraid of it.” The wind blew Alondra’s hair back as she grasped one of the long wooden bundles. She fitted one end into the hole at the bottom of the sky board, then bent the bundle of fabric and sticks over at a hinge close to the base. Now it looked as though the board had a six-foot-long tail. None of us even asked what it was. We just watched her work.
When she was finished, she picked up the board and held it at her side with its tail trailing behind her. “Watch. Sky Surfing is even better with this.” She placed the null over her nose and mouth, then took a running leap off the cliff, landing on her knees on the sky board, the force of her run shooting her and the board across the top of the Bomb’s Breath.
When she got out far enough, she spun her board so she was facing us, then bent the hinge on the tail again, so it was sticking up like it was when she first put it in the base. She got to her feet and removed something that held the three sticks together at the top. One of the sticks stayed straight up, one fell to the right, and the other fell to the left, the cloth that was apparently attached to them spreading out tight, making a wall of fabric.
“It’s a sail!” Brock yelled.
The wind caught the sail, billowing it out behind Alondra. She flew across the thirty feet of nothing but air separating her from us, and skidded to a stop on the grassy weeds right in front of me.
“See?” she said. “It’s the best!”
I could hardly wait until Alondra and I finished attaching the sail to the second sky board. As soon as it was ready, I adjusted the null and took off running.
I leapt off the cliff and landed with my knees on the board. The wind rushed past my face, blowing my hair behind me as I sailed forward. None of the mountain was visible from where I knelt—I just saw miles and miles of sky all around me, with the ground far below.
When I began to slow, I tried to turn my board the same way Alondra did, but it didn’t work. I panicked, my hands sweaty where I gripped the edge of the board. What if I was out farther than the edge of the lower cliff? If I drifted down through the Bomb’s Breath, I’d drop out of it and fall all the way to the base of the mountain, eighty feet below.
I looked around me. This was the Bomb’s Breath. My favorite place, no matter where in the world it was. My panic left, replaced with the calm that being in t
he Bomb’s Breath always brought. Instead of turning the board around, I turned myself around so I was facing the others on the cliff. They jumped up and down and either screamed or cheered—it was hard to tell, I was so focused on my own little world.
I leaned forward and pulled up on the bundle of sticks so they were standing straight up, then got to my feet, carefully, with the sail in front of me instead of behind me like Alondra showed us. When I removed the band, the sticks fell to the sides, making the sail.
I held on tight as it propelled me toward the others. Since it had taken me longer than it had taken Alondra, I had been drifting downward, and my board hit into the side of the cliff about a foot down from the top edge. I descended slowly, one hand on the sail. I was the captain of this ship, and I was going down with it.
While I drifted closer to the ledge below, I looked out across the Bomb’s Breath. It was kind of cool to think that it went everywhere. It was the one thing that united the entire planet.
When I neared the bottom, I leapt off the board and fell feetfirst, in slow motion, until I dropped fully out of the Bomb’s Breath and landed with a thump on the lower cliff. I pulled off my null, gasped for air, and screamed “Yes!” It left me feeling as though I could do anything. Maybe I could.
We each took turns after that, with Alondra teaching us new things, and us trying crazy things that even surprised her. As the afternoon sun fell lower and lower in the sky, Alondra soared up and down and around in circles, then let go of her board and did a front flip in the Bomb’s Breath before landing on the cliff and catching her board. She had obviously spent a lot of her life practicing here. How long would it take to get that good at Sky Surfing? I would practice night and day if I lived here.
Aaren and Brock had been clapping and shouting in excitement, but I didn’t realize until she landed that I hadn’t said a word. I had just been sitting on the edge of the cliff, watching. Dreaming. Thinking of how it would be to live so close to a place where I could jump like this.
Sky Jumpers Book 2 Page 12
