by Ivana Skye
“Pretty well,” Nena said, bouncing in her step a little as she walked. “Last time I was there I had no trouble at all—it’s really fun being up all night, actually.”
Ah, right: I’d somehow managed to forget one of the most infuriating things about Nena. She’d already done almost everything, so far as I could tell, despite being five years younger than me. And of course she’d been to Mangtena before; of course.
“That’s right, you do have an aunt there,” I said, belying my irritation not at all.
“Yup!” She said, and then made some kind of noise that sounded like an aaaa, flapping her hands as she did. “The little moon is going to be full tonight, too,” she added with a grin.
“You mean Little Sister?” I said with an incredulous squint.
“Yeah, the little moon. Little Sister. Whatever, words, I mean to be fair I like words, and I think in really big ones too, but sometimes I talk pretty fast…”
“Gee, I never noticed,” I said.
Nena turned her head around just to stick her tongue out at me, and then bounded away even further ahead.
I sighed and adjusted my pack, and continued forward.
The trek across the desert felt somehow much longer at night; we’d hiked larger distances on other days, and it had felt easier. I did not speak this opinion though, as I guessed that Nena did not share it. She was energetic, near bouncing with each step, often looking up at the stars, which I was suspecting she liked quite a bit.
I, on the other hand, was starting to learn that I actually preferred daylight to night.
“We’re getting close!” Nena announced in possibly the most chipper and insufferable voice I’d ever heard.
“I can’t tell,” I said, a little bitter. “It’s a little easier to tell time when you’ve got the sun moving across the sky all conveniently.”
“Oh, the stars do that too,” Nena said. “Like, see, the Hunter’s risen, and this time of the year that means it’s getting kind of late.”
I had to admit to myself that telling time that way might be worth learning, if I was to spend any significant amount of time in Mangtena, but I didn’t say that to Nena. Instead, I glanced up at Little Sister, full, and Big Sister, a setting crescent.
With the moonlight I could see relatively well across the wide plain of the desert, but it indeed was a plain; this place nearly felt empty, and especially so without the sun.
“It’s hard to believe there’s a city out here,” I said.
“I know,” Nena said. “That’s part of why I like it.”
I stepped forward, the steps hard on the rock ground. And right when Nena took a sudden slight turn to evade a rock, I noticed that off in the distance there was a place where the moonlight seemed to gather.
My eyes widened. I knew this was the city. I could not yet see any buildings and yet it was lighter there, though nearly all its light was the same as the light the night itself produced.
“Wow,” I muttered.
“Yup,” Nena said.
We pressed on and I couldn’t help but notice the way the moonlight caught on each rock and each brush and each patch of grass—no more so than it had before, but noticing the gathering light in the distance made me notice this light more as well.
Something like excitement rose in me. I smiled, and it was not one of the smiles I’d practiced in mirrors. But that was no matter, for there was no one to see it, since Nena was looking ahead just as I was.
The city grew larger as we approached and I began to see the outlines of buildings. Each was a silhouette against the lights of buildings behind it, but each also reflected lights in its own right, so it was difficult to make my eyes understand their shapes.
“The lake’s on the other side of the city,” Nena said. “Which almost makes it look like you ought to be approaching something, when you come from that side. I like travel from this direction a lot more. All that light and all those people just rise up out of nothing at all.”
I couldn’t help but agree. The closer we got, the more obvious it became that this really was a city, it was metal and glass and it was not the rock of the desert. Yet it was there, in the middle of so very little.
It made me smile.
We didn’t cross the borders of the city for another two hours. That fact itself was more than enough to show just how wide and just how empty the desert was. During those hours my smile had faded, replaced by a tiredness in my legs that was only exaggerated by the fact that I knew we were close to the time that we’d finally stop traveling.
But now we were within sight of some of the outlying buildings. Mangtena had strong laws about how far away from the city center anything could be built, so these themselves were not at all far from any place that might be considered our ultimate destination. Thankfully.
Speaking of that, there was a question I’d neglected. “Are we staying in an inn, then?”
“Technically, we could split up,” Nena said, but before I could wince at the feeling of rejection, she continued, “but it might be more fun not to. Do you have any idea how long you’re planning on staying?”
“Not really,” I said, although the actual answer was not at all.
“I’m asking because there’s some really cool places that you can stay at for free, kind of like a waystation, but only if you’re staying for a month or longer. It’s like … individual rooms and a central kitchen that makes stuff, that sort of thing. I was thinking of being in one myself, and those tend to be good if you end up getting employment in town.”
“So they’re just trying to coerce people into immigrating here,” I said.
“Pretty much,” Nena said with a nod. “They don’t expand the city outward much, but they can always build higher, and there’s no better way to keep a city as one of the most prominent in the world than by attracting all the interesting minds for miles and miles around.”
“Though I can’t imagine too many people live in the immediate vicinity,” I said. It was, after all, a rather flat desert.
“Well, no,” Nena said. “So they cast their net farther. Attracting travelers from across various mountain ranges and all that.”
I looked up; we were just starting to pass the first truly tall buildings, although they weren’t as tall as the ones in the center of the city proper. They seemed bright and shining in the moonlight even where they weren’t designed to explicitly reflect it. “Ta Ralis isn’t like this,” I couldn’t help but mutter.
“No,” Nena agreed. “It isn’t.”
I could easily tell that Sedge was marveling at the city of Mangtena, and I was glad for it. I had brought them here, after all, in my own selfish and impulsive decision to have a traveling companion. I wasn’t sure what they would do here, under the stars and moons and steel buildings—but then, neither was I sure of what I would do.
I tried not to worry about it yet, not just then—the city was still glorious, and if I were to just stretch my hand out in front of me, it would seem that I caught moonlight in my palm.
I smiled, finding that I was bouncing in my step again, close to just jumping up and flapping my hands in the excitement of arrival. I don’t know why I didn’t; perhaps I was concerned about what Sedge might think of me, although I would have guessed that both of us had plenty of reason to consider the other weird by now. But sometimes the body language of people like me—those who thrive in intensity of their own creation, those that the categorizers of Ta Ralis call autistic—inspires surprised blinks in, well, everyone else.
I did not yet know, at that time, that Sedge was also autistic. Perhaps I should have guessed; but then, I was too focused on figuring out how to control my ability to create fire to bother.
Regardless of all that, if we were going to make it to any place to stay, it would have to be me who led us there: only I had been in the city before, and in addition, only I—
Oh.
There was a question I really should have asked Sedge.
“Do you, um,
” I said, “do you speak Nagra, by any chance?”
“Oh shit,” Sedge said.
I couldn’t help but stop walking in order to as dramatically as possible place my head into my palm. Oh, Vitalities, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with Sedge.
Sedge seemed to be doing something with their hand—a nervous fidget they were trying to hide, was my guess. It was already pretty clear to me that they did not like showing vulnerability.
“Wait,” Sedge said, squinting at me, the stars sparkling in the open sky behind them. “They use Western Sign out here, right?”
I nodded; that was well-played of them, to remember that. “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know it as well as I should, so I guess I didn’t think of it, but yeah, it’s more or less the same language here as in Ta Ralis and your area—”
“—Immasa—” Sedge said through gritted teeth.
I nodded again. “Yeah. I think it’s slightly different dialects—I don’t know how it wouldn’t be, these regions have trade and migration between them but they’re still a few weeks away from each other—but you should be understandable, if your sign is good.”
“It is,” Sedge said.
“Sweet,” I said, and gave them a thumbs-up.
So we walked forward and I was newly confident that we could both in fact communicate with the people of Mangtena, although it was possible that a three-way conversation between both of us and a Mangtenan could be challenging.
That’s when we hit our first crowd, easily comprised of more people than either me or Sedge had seen in the last three weeks combined. They did not by any means move as one; some were walking out of buildings, some into them, some across the road Sedge and I were on.
I let my eyes widen and exhaled at the sight. But when I glanced to Sedge, they seemed confident, almost impassive. It was good that at least one of us was, I figured.
“Just like it’s day,” Sedge said.
“Yup,” I said, “now let’s move forward, I think I actually do know where I’m going to try to find us rooms, and it’s possible it will be a little busy now.”
“Great,” Sedge said, sarcasm evident in their voice.
So, step by forced confident step, I continued to walk forward, taking in the city around me as the buildings grew taller with each block we passed, each of them glorious and reflective, and so very many of them adorned with solar panels.
More of them than I remembered, actually. By far.
But I didn’t wonder about that too much, and instead I looked again at the brightness of Little Sister and all its light collected into the streets. Somehow I was instantly taken back to the feeling of performing here, to doing flips and turns in the middle of the night. For a moment I closed my eyes and mourned that time, but yet I felt myself pulled forward to tomorrow by the lights of the city. I knit a thought together among the stars: that among the people of this city I had an audience, for I was well-known, and in my being so I could make something new.
After all, I highly doubted that anyone had seen a trapeze act that included wisps and swirls of mystically-appearing fire.
And in that moment entering Mangtena under the moon and stars, I felt a glint of cool water in the sea of fire, I felt a brief hope that something in my future could set sparkles alight in my eyes. I felt excitement.
Acknowledgments
I mostly acknowledge L.C. Mawson for being a bad influence, as well as for designing the sigil on the cover.
I acknowledge the HDC folks for being cool and inspiring some of the realism of this book.
An additional shout-out goes to anyone I’ve screamed with lately about the publishing process or anything else.
About the Author
Ivana Skye is a disaster without a permanent address, who much like her characters, spends a lot of time navigating the transition into adulthood and screaming. Oh, and writing. She does a lot of that too.
Despite currently being in the middle of multiple months of travel through various countries she is not from, she still retains a strong connection to the state of Colorado, where she will probably permanently live. Eventually.
ivanaskye.com
[email protected]
Also by Ivana Skye
The Size of the World
* * *
Šehhinah:
The Stars that Rise at Dawn (pre-order)
