The Shattered Sky

by Paul Lucas

  Fortunately for life on the MegaShard, megastorms were rare and the chances of any one area along the Forever River getting hit more than once a century were extremely low. Our oral traditions tell of the Tower being hit by Skywraths twice, once 120 years ago and another 45 years ago.

  The storm rapidly approaching us, even after losing much of its destructive power over hundreds of kilometers of dry land, was still as powerful as any hurricane ever seen on Lerner's legendary Earth. The Tower, made of near-indestructible Builder material, could easily withstand such an onslaught. Our community, given much warning of the storm thanks both to sharp-eyed youngsters and human weather instruments, had battened itself down as best it could and had little to fear.

  But Lerner and I had feared for a stash of valuable scientific instruments we had stored near a ledge on one of the upper levels. He and I were busy helping the community lash everything down, from storage urns to the very trees of the orchards, so we asked Brightwind to fly up and do his best at securing the instruments.

  Of course he agreed, eagerly, to help us. Unlike his older brother, Brightwind had become fast friends with Lerner over the last several months. Sometimes he even accompanied Lerner in his surveys of the Tower when I was busy elsewhere.

  His crush on me had apparently not abated, as he acted so shy and stuttered so when I asked him to fly up for us. He took one look at me as Lerner and I approached him, then did his best not to look directly at me while we talked to him. He self-consciously dug a hole with his toe as I could detect the bright red of a blush around his eyes.

  He was so cute! And so kind and willing to help. If only his brother and he could switch ages...

  “Where is he?” Lerner said. “Damn it, we should have never let Brightwind come up here alone.”

  “We all thought he would return in plenty of time before the storm hit. It should only have taken him a few minutes!”

  We turned a corner. Ten meters down the broad corridor lay the stash of instruments, rectangular crates soaked thoroughly from the rain thrumming onto them from the open ledge just a few meters beyond. We were nearly three hundred meters above ground level, and had a spectacular unobstructed view of the approaching megastorm.

  We both almost tripped over the shadowy prone figure at our feet.

  “Brightwind!”

  Lerner bent low, checking him. “He’s breathing, but unconscious.”

  “Do you have a human medkit with you?” I said, bending low to check on the youngster myself. We couldn't find anything obviously wrong with him. Suddenly I was very angry with myself for not thinking to bring a medicine bag in our haste. Some Shaman's apprentice I was!

  He shook his head. “No, but there should be one with the instruments, if I remember right.”

  I turned and trotted toward the equipment. “I’ll get it.”

  Out the ledge opening, I could see the dark wall of clouds rolling toward us, still kilometers distant but closing fast. I had read in human texts that on Earth such storms would spin about themselves like gigantic pinwheels. But unlike Earth, the MegaShard did not rotate, and there was no--what was the Lerner's phrase?--'coriolis effect' to make it twist. Instead, it spun vertically, like a vast flattened cylinder of screaming wind and lightning turned on its side. In this case, the cylinder must be over a thousand kilometers from end to end and dozens of kilometers high. Lerner said it looked like God’s own steam roller, come to crush the world flat.

  Thunder crashed as sinuous hands engulfed my waist. I was yanked away hard from the pile of crates just as a dark ribbon lashed out at me from them. I was barely pulled out of range in time.

  I turned. Lerner had his arm around me, holding me close. “Lerner, what--?”

  An angry hiss from behind turned my attention back toward the crates. A long tube of scaly muscle reared up from the topmost instrument package, its arrow-shaped head slowly spreading a hood over a meter wide.

  “A kite snake!” I gasped.

  Kite snakes were cousins of cobras. Their wide hoods extended almost two-thirds of the way down their bodies, allowing them to catch and ride the wind from treetops much like their namesakes. They caught prey like birds and tree mammals by folding their hoods in mid-flight and diving onto the hapless creatures. Their poison was as deadly as their land-bound relatives. If Lerner had not yanked me away...

  “Back away. Slowly.” I whispered to Lerner. We did so, slowly disengaging from each other. The creature still watched us warily, but folded its hood down somewhat.

  “It must be protecting eggs,” Lerner said. “They like to build nests in secluded high places like this.”

  “How did you know it was there?”

  “I spotted fang wounds on Brightwind’s forearm. It seemed to follow.”

  “He was been bitten? Sweet spirits! We have to do something!”

  The human grimaced. “He’ll be dead by the time we can carry him down to the others, but there should be some antivenin in the medkit. If we can get to it.”

  My eyes narrowed on the snake. “I think I can take care of it.” I stepped to the side and cleared my mind for a spirit-calling. Windrider had stepped up my learning of new magic in the past half-year, as if she sensed that I might need the advantages they could give me in the very near future.

  Bless her wisdom.

  I called a fire-spirit and stoked it into a rage. The crate surface on which the snake rested exploded into flames, throwing burning wood everywhere. The snake was blasted high in the air, caromed off the ceiling, and landed less than a meter from our feet, limp and lifeless, smelling very much like badly burnt meat.

  Lerner kicked the creature and its eggs over the ledge while I retrieved the medkit and tended to Brightwind. The youngster was not as bad as we first feared. The puncture wounds were not deep at all. Brightwind must have been pulling away from the snake even as it struck, so that the fangs only scraped away skin and fur from his arm. Still, it had delivered enough venom into the cuts to knock him into unconsciousness after only a dozen steps.

  My newly-learned healing spells would be useless until the poison was out of his system. Until then we had to make sure he remained warm and comfortable and depend on the human-made antivenin to do its job. Lerner gently picked Brightwind up, the youngster a piffle to his human strength.

  A tortured scream sounded behind us as the wind picked up exponentially. We turned and saw a roiling wall of solid black and gray that seemed to swallow the entire outside world.

  “Lerner!” I shouted. “The Skywrath!” Its leading edge must have been no more than a few hundred meters away, moving faster than anyone in the community had anticipated. If we were caught in one of the open corridors when those three-hundred kilometer-per-hour winds hit the Tower, we would be batted about in these narrow corridors like pebbles in a shaken jar. Or worse, sucked out into the storm, our bodies never to be seen by mortal eyes again.

  “Come on!” Lerner shouted and ran toward the interior of the Tower. Grabbing the medkit I hastily followed.

  Even burdened with Brightwind, Lerner’s longer human legs easily outpaced mine. He was a half-dozen steps ahead of me when the entire Tower shook as the full brunt of the megastorm’s heart slammed into it.

  The wind channeled into the corridor from the ledge opening hit me like a solid wall. I was ripped off my feet and blown down the corridor at blinding speed, completely helpless. If I smashed into any of the UTSite walls, I was as good as dead.

  Suddenly, miraculously, a hand shot out from around a corner, snatching mine. With a strength I could not have believed possibly, it yanked me from certain death and into the shelter of a side corridor. Lerner! The wind was still fierce there, but did not seem likely to yank us off the floor.

  I half-sprawled on the floor, dazed and gasping desperately for breath. Lerner, Brightwind still crooked in one arm, shouted something at me, but I could not hear him over the deafening roar of the storm. Then without ceremony he reached down and snaked his arm around my wa
ist, lifting me fully off the ground. He ran with both me and Brightwind deeper into the Tower.

  * * *

  “Spirits, I never knew you were so strong!” I told Lerner.

  We were huddled together in a small alcove more-or-less in the Tower’s center, trying to keep warm. We had to wait out the storm before we dared try any of the corridors leading to the inter-level ramps, but that could be hours away. The storm winds penetrated even this deep, but thanks to all the twists and turns it was only a medium breeze here. Unfortunately, this portion of the Tower was also the coldest, barely above freezing, as sunlight and warm breezes could never hope to penetrate this far into the massive structure.

  “Most humans are like that. I’m nothing special,” he said.

  “To a Myotan you are! Spirits, I still cannot believe it! You lifted us both and could still run with all that wind!”

  He rubbed the back of his head. “I was just lucky you guys were so light, hollow bones and all. Besides, you scared the hell out of me when I looked back and saw your feet leave the ground. I must have had more adrenaline in me than blood at that point.”

  I snuggled up closer to him. I liked the excuse of having to warm up to be close to him. It was as pleasant as I imagined, even with our thick clothing between us. “Thank you for saving me. Twice in one day.”

  He shrugged. “I’d hate to lose the best assistant I ever had.”

  I felt movement in our laps. Brightwind. "Oh no,” I whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “Brightwind is shivering. The cold must be getting to him. I mean, that is good in a way. The antivenin must be working, otherwise the kite snake’s poison would be suppressing even this kind of reaction. Still, we must make him warmer or else he could slip further into shock.”

  “But what can we do? We don’t have anything with us.”

  I thought about it. “We have to share our body heat. Remove your jacket and shirt while I undress Brightwind.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I shrugged off my hassock. “We’ll nestle him against our torsos and then wrap the rest of our clothes around us. He’ll be considerably warmer.”

  He blinked rapidly, staring at my chest. “Lerner?” I said.

  He wrenched his gaze away and did as I suggested. “Right. S-sorry, Goss.”

  We returned to our original position of huddling side by side with Brightwind on our drawn-up laps, except this time fur touched skin. Spirits, he was so warm. He did not feel alien at all.

  Still, he seemed unusually tense. I made sure Brightwind was in a comfortable position and well-nested before I asked, “What was that?”

  “What?” he said, a bit too innocently.

  “That stare just now.”

  “I was hoping you hadn't noticed.”

  “I am not stupid, oh mighty sky human.”

  “Goss...”

  I chuckled, shoving at him gently with my shoulder. My two near-brushes with death had suddenly made me feel a bit giddy. “I am only joking, Lerner. But why did you stare like that?”

  “It’s, ah, kind of embarrassing.”

  “And? Tell me, please.”

  “Well, you have to understand that in my society, females usually conceal certain parts of themselves in clothing, and only expose themselves in the presence of a male if they’re interested. You know, uh, ‘interested.’”

  "And what I did reminded you of that? Is that all? I thought something might have been seriously amiss." I snickered. "It is perfectly normal for you to have a male's reaction to a female, you know. Even a female Myotan."

  Lerner’s cheeks turned bright red. “Maybe."

  "Has it happened before? I mean, since you've been with us?"

  "I guess so. I didn't want to make a big deal of it. I was afraid my reaction would be badly misinterpreted.”

  “Oh, I can imagine our misinterpretations." I started giggling, changing my voice and affecting my best imitation of a clueless female. “‘What is that bulge in your leggings, oh honored human guest? A third leg? Are you kicking at something?’”

  My human friend at first looked miffed and his cheeks glowed red, but then broke into soft laughter.

  I asked, “So which females here do you find attractive?”

  His expression sobered instantly. “Goss, I don’t want you to think...”

  “Do not worry about that. Answer my question.”

  “Well, most of the females here are attractive in some way. I mean, it took me a while to appreciate it, as I wasn't used to how your people looked. But now, well, Sunwing, Feather, and Windsong can be very distracting, especially when they're bathing."

  Not quite the answer I was hoping for, and the disappointment must have shone on my face. He blew out a long breath. “Sorry.”

  “Do not be,” I said as lightly as I could, suddenly anxious for a change in subject. We segued into other subjects, discussing many things for a long time.

  Eventually I grew tired and yawned mightily. Lerner suggested that I get some sleep, that he would wake me when he thought it safe to make our way back down. I nestled down, careful not to disturb Brightwind, and used Lerner’s broad chest for a pillow.

  Still, there was something nagging at my mind, something I had to know. “Lerner?” I asked quietly. “Can you answer a question for me, and be absolutely honest about it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Am I ‘distracting’ to you?”

  He took many heartbeats replying. He pulled me close, and sighed in contentment as we snuggled into each other. “I wish you were human, sometimes,” was all he said.

  ELEVEN

  I now have little doubt that the Myotans must have splintered off from a much larger group. The time of separation is hard to guess at, since the Myotans don't keep long-term written records, but I'd say at least ten to fifteen generations ago. Their language structure, their unusual blend of technologies, many of their cultural assumptions, and a critical look at their own legends all point to their origin in a larger civilization. Their own origin story of their people wandering for untold years before being led by the Sky Spirit to the Tower indicates they arrived here only after a very long journey.

  But where they might have come from remains a mystery. No non-Builder ruins have been found within an earth-span of the Tower, and I find it difficult to believe they could have come from much further on foot, or even wing. My best theory so far is that they arrived in this section of the MegaShard via the Forever River and eventually made their way here. But they have little to no knowledge or traditions relating to sea travel. If they spent generations making their way along the Forever River, their culture, language, and such should reflect it.

  Of course, the exact origins of the Myotans here at X12 may never be solved. If they've been here two or three hundred years as I estimate, that's plenty of time for whatever larger group they may have once been part of to change irrevocably or even disappear altogether. Both have been known to happen with surprising regularity to our neighbors on the MegaShard.

  ---From the journals of Armand Lerner, 11 June 541.

  * * *

  Nine months after Lerner came to live with my people, he was preparing to launch his first full-scale glider.

  Our first test would of course be unmanned save for a Myotan-sized bundle strapped into the pilot’s harness, controlled by a tether like an over-sized kite. We were confident it would crash after only a few hundred heartbeats at most, but hopefully not until Lerner was satisfied that it could handle the winds without shaking apart. Lerner was obsessed with safety, which was one of the reasons our covert project had taken so long to reach this point. He refused to risk anyone until his design was fully tested and proven. He did not want my people presented with a faulty gift.

  We were hauling the partially-assembled frame up to our tall testing hill. At the crest waiting for us were the rest of the parts we had brought up on a previous trip, covered with a foul-smelling bitterroot-treated hide that would kee
p most curious animals away.

  The landscape around us was slowly but surely returning to normal after the devastation of the Skywrath. Far fewer trees had been uprooted than expected. Upon examining a number of upended oaks and pines and Gawrsh trees, we found an amazing spurt of new root growth that must have started even before the megastorm hit. The plants’ reaction made a strange kind of sense; after all, the Builders would have engineered the flora of the Shard with megastorms in mind. Why such storms would be allowed in the first place was beyond me. But my people were grateful for such a phenomenon; it had helped save our orchards.

  Even more oddly, all the topsoil that had been lost was now nearly replaced, appearing over the last few weeks as if by magic. Lerner blamed the Nanotech Matrix. Besides just being a tool of convenience for sentients, it was also the backbone of Shard maintenance, acting by the uncounted trillions all over the Shard to maintain the habitat’s delicate ecological balance. Too much erosion in any one place could have devastating long-range consequences for an entire region.

  Broken trees and animal carcasses still littered the territory around the Tower. This had been a boon of sorts after my people emerged from our shelter; we were still making our way through all the dried meat from all the dead animals we had found scattered around the area. For the first time in a long while Cloud and his hunters had little to do; our community now had so much meat Windrider had to spend a good amount of her week casting preserving spells so that our new supply would not rot.

  The relationship between Lerner and I had become strained since that night of the Skywrath storm. We both knew (I think) what our feelings were, and sometimes we would find excuses to hug or hold each other, but we were unable to bring ourselves to take the next step. We hovered in a kind of emotional limbo, more than friends but not quite something else. We argued more than anything these days, our growing frustration with each other and our situation boiling over at times.