Faster Than Falling: The Skylighter Adventures

by Nathan Van Coops

  The Rift was getting closer.

  He banked left and swept low over the slope of scattered boulders that had fallen loose from the mountains. The boulders were as big as houses and the gaps between them weren’t a bad place to hide if you needed one.

  “Grandpa!” Atlas shouted over the rail of the cockpit and scanned the terrain for any sign of The Sunshine Express, but there was no yellow aircraft in sight. He dipped into the ravines and checked the crevices between the biggest promontories. No Enzo.

  After circling for a few laps around the boulder piles, he finally righted his craft and turned it to face the next challenge.

  For as long as he could remember, Atlas’s world had existed within the confines of the Ridge Valley. Womble and all of its neighboring villages fit comfortably within the great bowl between the mountains. The walls of the bowl collapsed on only one side, and that side faced the sea. To leave the valley in any other direction was impossible, with one exception: the Rift.

  Atlas used to imagine that an enormous giant had made the cleft in the mountains with a tremendous axe. Some days he dreamed that he was the giant and was able to knock down the mountains that hemmed in his valley.

  Some travelers had made the rocky climb through the cleft on foot, but it was a slow passage over difficult and sometimes deadly terrain. And all was done beneath the watchful eye of the Beacon. For years the high peaks and narrow passage had protected the valley from the outside world. Till last night when their defenses had failed them.

  For Enzo, the Rift may have been the only escape route left to evade the raiders.

  Atlas applied power to the fans and worked the rudder pedals back and forth, propelling the Sun Dragon forward like a fish. He angled the lateral fins for a climb and slowly gained altitude heading into the Rift.

  High overhead, the fires of the Beacon were still lit. Amelia and Cathy had made it to the top, but too late to save the village. The warning bell hung mute as he passed beneath it. What warning would it toll for him now if it could?

  It didn’t help that the Rift was always in shadow. Even if he entered it with the sun directly overhead, the sunlight wouldn’t last long enough to traverse the entire cleft. The deep gash in the mountainside was miles long and twisted in places, not a clean cut, but a jagged tear—sharp and unforgiving. The towering walls on either side stabbed into the sky to an altitude well above what was safe for breathing. The Dragon might survive a flight that high, but he wouldn’t.

  Atlas spun the crank at his knee and ratcheted the airship’s lateral fins in tighter, narrowing the Dragon’s width and streamlining the fuselage. He took a deep breath, shut down the forward fans to save air power, then went back to kicking the rudder fin.

  He would move slowly.

  He would be careful.

  He would make it through.

  16

  THE RIFT

  “Needle webs!”

  The shout went up from the forward deck and heavy footsteps thudded across the ceiling of Samra’s place in the hold. The noise drew her back to consciousness. She hadn’t remembered falling asleep.

  “Stave off those spikes. Get below and man the oars. Full stop here!”

  More yelling echoed above. Men and women scurried about the ship, taking positions. Samra rubbed her eyes and shoved off the blanket that someone had wrapped around her.

  “Oh Lord—she’s a mother. Look at them eggs!”

  More footsteps pounded overhead, but Samra could only imagine what terror might be lurking outside. She stretched out a hand and concentrated. She needed light to better determine her surroundings. Her fingertips flickered, but went dark again. She muttered at it and tried again. “Come on. Work.”

  Something scratched the table and a match sputtered to life a few feet from her face.

  “Ahhh!” She shouted involuntarily as the glow revealed the wild face of her red-haired captor. He was seated on a bench across a table from her. His fiery beard and billowy hair made him look elemental—a force of nature more than a man. Her memory came back to her. He’d brought her down here last night and held her still while she raged and fought him. It had done no good. He’d simply wrapped her up in a blanket and stuffed her in the corner, his big hands keeping her from going anywhere. Sometime after, she must have fallen asleep.

  “Welcome back, Little Weed.” The man’s eyes were not unkind. His freckles formed dark constellations across the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m not a weed.”

  The man lit an oil lamp dangling from the ceiling. “You look like one. But if you say you’re not, then you must have another name.”

  Samra folded her arms across her chest and looked away. She was stuck in the corner of a narrow galley. She discovered there was a chain around her waist. It was clasped with a lock, but she wasn’t shackled to anything. Apparently the man had just wanted to weigh her down and keep her off the ceiling. A buoyancy belt of sorts. It was working.

  The table and benches took up one quarter of the room and cupboards and supplies occupied the rest. Two doors opened off the galley but the one she wanted, the one leading back above deck, was directly behind this red-haired giant. She didn’t see a way around him.

  “If you don’t have a name,” the big man continued, “someone will pick something to call you, and all of a sudden, that will be how you’re known. That’s how it works. Stop calling something by its right name and one day you forget you ever knew it. That’s what happened to me aboard this ship. Might happen to you, too.”

  Samra’s eyes wandered back to the man with the fiery beard. “They changed your name?” Despite her best efforts to hate him for capturing her, he was fascinating to look at. And now she had to admit she was curious about the name.

  “Didn’t just change it. They forgot my old name so completely, it’s like it never even existed.”

  Khloe and her friends had certainly called her enough terrible things, but no one had ever lost track of what her name really was. “What did they call you?”

  The man studied her. Crinkles lined the corners of his eyes. “They call me Sunburn.” He folded his arms across his chest and mirrored Samra’s defensive posture.

  “Because you hurt them?” Samra asked.

  The big man laughed. “No. They called me that the first time I took my shirt off to go for a swim. They said my skin was so pale I would blind them and give them sunburn.”

  Samra studied the big man’s arms. They were freckled like his face but the insides of his wrists were indeed very pale. “Does your skin light up?” She had never heard of a Grounder glowing like a Skylighter, but wondered what this already fiery man might look like lit up.

  The man called Sunburn grinned at her. “No. I don’t glow. Just in the crew’s imagination. But that is how they saw me that day, and that is why no one aboard even remembers my real name.”

  Samra considered the situation. She didn’t plan to be stuck here long, but even after she made her inevitable, daring escape, she didn’t want anyone calling her ‘Weed.’ She would much rather be something fearsome, or at least a name they would remember not to tangle with in the future. It had never occurred to her that her name was something she could lose. The thought made her suddenly possessive of it.

  “My name is Samra,” she blurted out. “Samra Rose Coley.”

  Sunburn nodded gravely. “I see. That’s a strong name. I thought you might have a strong name.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “I’m glad you told me. I think it will help you stay strong now. The captain wants to speak to you, and I didn’t think she wanted to talk to a little weed. A ‘Samra Rose Coley,’ however . . .” He laid his hand on the table. “ . . . that’s a different story.” When he lifted his hand, it revealed a key that appeared to match the lock around her waist. He stood up and moved to the second door, swinging it open for her. “The captain will be up at the cockpit. I’ll show you the way.”

  Samra stared at the open door and the big man waiting
for her to enter it, then snatched up the key.

  He’d left the other door exposed now. She could make a break for it, maybe get back above decks and jump overboard before he caught her. But why was he giving her the chance to escape? Did he know something she didn’t?

  He knew her name now.

  He said it was strong.

  She was strong. Whatever this raider captain wanted, she would have to listen to her, too. She’d tell her a thing or two, and make them return her to her patch. If this was how they’d remember her, they needed to know that she was the fiercest Skylighter on the patch and they’d abducted the wrong person today. They’d better return her or suffer the consequences.

  Samra slid off the bench and out of the corner of the galley. She unlocked the chain around her waist and let it fall to the floor. Controlling her breathing to keep from floating, she straightened her shark tooth necklace and marched through the doorway Sunburn was holding open. She staggered a little with the subtle swishing motion of the ship, but kept her balance and continued, flinging open a second door at the end of the short corridor. She marched into the next room, prepared to give the captain a piece of her mind, but stopped short at the sight of what was happening in front of her.

  The cockpit of the ship was roughly triangular. The top featured a ceiling of tapered windowpanes. The panes narrowed at the front of the ship, offering a view forward, a wider view above, and a narrow view below the prow. The room reminded Samra of the head of a snake. At its center—the brain of the snake—there was a chair on a raised step. It was empty because its owner was standing, arms clasped behind herself and peering up through the glass windows.

  Outside the windows, two men were standing on the bow deck, stabbing harpoons at an immense, hairy spider. The spider was dangling from its web with its hind legs and slashing at the bow of the ship with its front limbs. Great chomping jaws scissored the air above the heads of the men, and eight shining eyes gleamed in the pale dawn light. Its belly contorted and the spider attempted to skewer the men with a sharp appendage protruding from its rump.

  “Sunburn, I want you to tell Hodges that if he dislodges any more of those egg sacks onto my ship, I’m assigning him to galley work for a month. Last thing we need is a brood of spider babies crawling all over the rigging.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Sunburn responded. He’d stepped through the doorway behind Samra, but waited calmly behind her. She noticed he was also blocking the exit. On the other side of the glass, the men were having little luck with the spider. One of them threw a harpoon, but the weapon sailed wide of its target and flew into the spiny webbing beyond the beast, piercing a sack of eggs. The hole immediately widened and a swarm of spiders the size of melons clambered out and rained onto the windows above them. Sunburn groaned. “No one aboard appreciates Hodges’ cooking. I’ll see that he mends his aim.” Sunburn rested a hand on Samra’s shoulder. “The young stowaway is here, Captain. Her name is Samra Rose Coley.”

  The captain turned and appraised Samra with a disinterested stare. “You can leave her here. I’ll deal with her.”

  Sunburn turned to the door and ducked back through it, but before he closed it he gave Samra a wink. “See you soon, Little Weed.” The door clunked as he closed the latch on the other side.

  Samra had intended to give this captain an earful immediately, but there was something about the way she stood staring out the window that didn’t invite interruption. She was a steel rod unmoved by the events unfolding outside. Captain Savage had shed the tight-fitting leather jacket she had been wearing above decks and was now wearing a loose-sleeved white shirt. The striped whip was still coiled at her belt.

  Two people occupied chairs near the window: a pilot, and beside her—seated at a table of maps—a man serving as navigator. Both crewmembers had their eyes fixed on the action taking place on the bow.

  Samra screwed up her courage and took a step forward. “I need to get back to my patch. You have to take me home.”

  Captain Savage turned slowly. Her deep green eyes looked Samra up and down, then turned back to the spider-fight going on outside. “I don’t have to do anything.”

  Samra struggled to come up with a response. “They’ll be missing me. They’ll send the guardians and make you give me back. You don’t want to anger the guardians.”

  “If you’re talking about those flying assassins who impaled my back-up pilot and sent him to his death, then I would agree with you. And it’s more reason to not get near your people again.” Captain Savage stepped down from the raised platform and strode over to Samra’s position. She wasn’t terribly tall, not compared to Sunburn, but she still loomed over her. Her piercing eyes had none of his warmth. “But, since you are here, you can tell me more about this patch of yours. Are there others like it? More giant globes like the ones that escaped? The big one must have been four hundred feet tall. Biggest thing I’ve ever seen in the sky. Where did it come from?”

  Samra didn’t know the dimensions of the Globe Mother. She’d never bothered to think about it. The Mother was simply a fact of life, constant and eternal. It was home. “There aren’t any other ones like her. She’s the Mother.”

  “Mother?” Captain Savage asked. “And these littler ones?” She gestured through the ceiling windows toward the back of the ship where the ruin of Cirra Sola was strapped in the cargo nets. “Where do they come from?”

  “That’s mine,” Samra replied. “That was my aerie.” She found herself growing angry at the sight of it. “You ruined it.”

  The captain glanced through the rear-facing panes at the back of the cockpit. “You’re right. My crew did a poor job of harvesting that one. Most of the lift cells ruptured and we’ll probably have to cut it loose. It’s going to cause too much drag up there.” She crossed her arms. “My men had never seen anything like it. We didn’t know the big ones ever came down this low.”

  This conversation wasn’t going at all how Samra wanted. She needed to get home, not educate this Grounder pirate about patch life.

  “Where else do they come down? Does this ‘Mother’ land in other places besides the valley?”

  “We only come to the one valley,” Samra replied. “In springtime.”

  “We saw the rest of the globes cut loose, after your people attacked us. Where do they go next?” The captain advanced toward her and Samra backed up, bumping into the windows on the side of the bow.

  “We didn’t attack you,” Samra retorted. “We were having a festival.”

  “Believe that if you want, but we were just doing a bit of harvesting on an abandoned patch of skyweed. Next thing we know your people came flying out of the fog throwing harpoons. You can hardly blame us for fighting back.”

  “That’s not true,” Samra stammered. Though she hadn’t seen anything from her tendril pocket. Was it possible she was wrong? Had the guardians been the first to attack?

  “Captain, looks like Wallace is injured.” The woman at the helm gestured to one of the men who had been battling the spider.

  “Bitten?” the captain asked.

  “By one of the small ones,” the pilot replied.

  The man called Wallace was retreating from the bow, cradling his arm.

  Something thudded into the window next to Samra and made her jump.

  She shrieked.

  The spider was the size of her head and gnashing its fangs at her against the glass.

  Then it happened.

  Samra lit up to a brilliant white and gushed light in the direction of the spider before she even had time to think. The spider cowered away from the light and leapt off the window, tumbling into the darkness below the ship. Samra looked down and found she was hovering a foot off the cockpit floor. She made the mistake of touching her own reflection in the glass and the movement spun her around.

  She rotated to find the captain and the other two crewmembers shielding their faces from her light.

  “Bleeding guts that’s bright,” the navigator swore, his hand cov
ering both eyes.

  Her light flickered, then blinked out as suddenly as it had come on, dropping her ingloriously back to the floor.

  The woman in the pilot position stood with mouth agape. Her face glinted with jewelry, a nose piercing and silver studs through her ears. She was close to the captain’s age but her expression had none of the captain’s intensity.

  The captain’s expression changed from indifference to something more calculating, her mouth pressing into a thin line.

  She’d done it! She’d glowed. Samra studied her hands with amazement. She never imagined it would be like this, but it had finally happened.

  The captain looked past Samra to where the little spider had been, then glanced out the front windows of the ship. The mother spider had retreated from the light as well, back up onto her web, leaving the lone crewman on the bow blinking in confusion. Even he was now looking inside, curious about the sudden brilliance.

  “Can you do that again?” Captain Savage asked. “Could you do it to that one?” Her finger stabbed forward toward the giant spider outside.

  Samra was suddenly apprehensive. She hadn’t even thought about lighting up. Not that she hadn’t tried plenty of times before. It just never worked. Only now, it had. It finally happened.

  “Look.” Captain Savage took a step closer. “The longer we wait here in this oversized gully waiting for the critters to get out of the way, the farther away your patch gets. We saw them fly over the ridge, so that means they’re already on the far side of this range, moving east. You won’t catch them on your own. You’re welcome to try, but the fact is, you need a lift.”

  She pointed at Samra’s chest. “I’m willing to consider going after them, but there’s no such thing as a free ride in these skies. The berths on the Restless Fury are for crew only. You want to fly with us, you’ll have to earn your keep.”

  The captain jerked her thumb toward the bow. “Move that hairy behemoth out of our way and I’ll let you stay aboard.”