Cloudwalkers

by Mark Wayne McGinnis

  Conn’s father nodded back, the proper amount of condolence on his face.

  The robust man with the red hair said, “We will await any further contact at our accommodations in the Baird Building.”

  One by one they filed out. Conn watched with curiosity to see if Lili would glance back at him. Jobby! After all, we are to be married. But she neither looked back nor spoke out again before leaving the anteroom.

  “That did not go well,” Lidia said.

  “It could have been worse,” Robert added. “Lidia, do me a favor please, and do so with haste. Assemble the each of the Manhattan CloudMasters.”

  The rest of the meeting had been a rush. Lidia had practically flown from the room, and Robert had closed his eyes, clearly feeling the stress of the day. Conn had wanted to say something to him, something comforting, but he held his tongue.

  Back in the present moment, Conn stepped out of the building and into the fall sunlight. Toag was there, waiting for him.

  Chapter 14

  Halbert Casper hadn’t moved much, other than a slight back-and-forth rocking motion, from where he’d been mercilessly flogged by Deacon Terrence Lasher. Misty, despondent herself, didn’t know what to do—how to help—so she continued to hold her father’s hand, listening to his quiet sobbing for close to twenty minutes before the entire Romano family descended upon them in force, like an invading army.

  Aurora’s mother, aptly named Gladdy—short for Gladice—took charge of the situation and began barking off orders. None thought twice about following them as she knelt down beside Halbert and Misty. Placing a caring hand upon each of their shoulders, she said, “We’re here and we’re going to get you through this. I promise you that.”

  Misty threw her arms around her, burying her face into Gladdy’s comforting warm bosom. “The crazy animal just took her,” she cried. “Oh God, he took my mother.” She gasped for air that wouldn’t seem to reach her lungs as the truth struck her again.

  “I know, dear. I know,” said Gladdy softly, stroking her hair. “Just go ahead and cry, okay?”

  Aurora’s two younger brothers—Ben, thirteen, and Randy, fourteen—arrived, carrying oversized wicker baskets filled with an assortment of harvesting tools: Shovels, rakes, hoes, and various kinds of pruning clippers. “Boys, make haste attending to the hang-row planters,” ordered Gladdy, gently separating herself from Misty, who was immediately taken under the wing of Aurora’s sister Amber. “Then do a far better harvesting job than we’ve lately seen from the two of you back home.”

  Mr. Romano, typically happy, albeit somewhat browbeaten by his forceful wife, needed no such direction in getting down to the business at hand. Peering up, he was already assessing the myriad of small-angled mirrors that lined the concrete ceiling by the hundreds. “Not nearly enough light is being captured; no wonder the crop yields have been so low. But I’m on it!” Disappearing for a bit, he returned with a rickety old wooden stepladder. Climbing up, he called down from the top rung, “Ask Misty if they have adequate reserves of spores. We’ll need to repopulate the hang-row planters once we fertilize them and till the soil.”

  “Now, let’s have a look at you, Hal,” said Gladdy kindly, helping him slowly to his feet and into the house, where she gently but firmly helped him lie down on the kitchen table. Aurora, without being told, had scurried off to the Casper’s two water-holding tanks—one for personal use, the other for irrigation reserves. When she arrived back, she held a large white porcelain water basin. Steam rose into the air as she carefully set it down between her mother and Halbert Casper.

  Gladdy was already assembling the medical supplies she’d be using in the next few minutes, a stack of clean towels set aside. She began tearing up long strips of fabric, which looked like bed sheets, then stopped to survey the wounds on Hilbert’s exposed back. “Some of them will need to be stitched.” Leaning closer down to his partially covered face, she said, “I’m so sorry, but this is going to be painful. First, I need to disinfect the wounds, and then suture them.”

  Misty watched Gladdy through brimming tears. “I should help. What can I do, Mrs. Romano?”

  “You can leave me to this, sweetie. Why don’t you go collect your things? Anything you or your father will need for the foreseeable future. You will both be staying with us, and that’s not up for discussion. Go on! Aurora, go with her.”

  Aurora put her arm around Misty’s shoulders, gently guided her in the direction of her room.

  “Wait, I need to check on something else first.” Misty veered them left toward her parents’ room. Aurora kept her in a one-armed embrace as the two shuffled over to the metal door. Finding it slightly ajar, Misty shoved the door all the way open. The lamp mounted on the wall had been extinguished. The contents of the darkened room were in total disarray. The mattress, flipped up onto its side, leaned against the wall. Shelves, broken into mere splinters, lay upon the concrete floor. Clothes tossed into heaps were piled all around. Misty hurried inside and began searching.

  “What is it? What are you looking for?”

  Misty looked beneath the clothes, the broken shelves, and behind the mattress. Soon, she was throwing anything she got ahold of into the air, while frantically kicking the items on the floor. Turning, she screamed, hammering angry fists into the mattress. “It’s gone!” she cried. “They took it . . . I can’t believe they took it!”

  “What . . . what did they take, Misty?” Aurora asked, still in the doorway, keeping a good distance away from her angry tirade.

  Misty, hurrying past her friend, ran over to her own room. That door too was ajar, just like her parents’ door. She plowed into her room then stopped short. A single wall torch flickered light in the disturbed air. She took in the confined, orderly space, which was just as she’d left it. It was undisturbed. The weight of it all suddenly crashed down on her. Falling down onto the bed, she curled into a fetal position and cried into her pillow.

  It could have been ten minutes, maybe even an hour that passed, Misty had lost all track of time. Aurora, sitting on a side of the bed, quietly stroked her hair.

  “We fought so much,” lamented Misty. “I don’t even remember the last time I told her I love her.”

  Aurora sighed, a sympathetic sound. “She knows, Misty.”

  But did she? Astrid and Misty had always had such a strained relationship, but Misty had never loved her mother any less for it. Without her mother, who would help her sell salvage at the market? Halbert was a terrible negotiator, but Astrid always knew how to get the best prices. Who would comb the snarls out of the back of Misty’s hair after a wash? For a moment, Misty thought she’d even miss the occasional whacks on the head with the hairbrush that she got for complaining.

  But beyond sentimental reasons, she wasn’t sure how her life could go on from here. Astrid had done all of the cooking and cleaning in the house, and she had been the one to handle the household finances, tasks that Misty supposed now fell onto her shoulders. She felt crushed under the weight of this realization. She would never be able to run the household, and moreover, it wasn’t what she wanted for her life, she realized. Her mother had been gone for only a few hours, but Misty already felt trapped.

  Briefly, Misty contemplated something she’d never thought about before. She could just end her own life. But then, she thought, who would take care of Father? She cast the dark thought from her mind. Perhaps she could find a way to get her mother back, make things right. There had to be some way.

  Aurora stopped stroking her hair, preoccupied with something else. Misty, gulping in a deep breath of air, slowly let it out. That’s it. No more crying. No more feeling sorry for myself.

  “What is it you’re doing?” she asked, once she had her emotions under lock. “What are you looking at, Aurora?”

  Aurora, her back half-turned from Misty, glanced back over her shoulder. Her voice was full of awe as she said, “You’re lucky they didn’t find this. God, the colors . . . they’re amazing! You’d be in real tr
ouble if they knew.”

  Misty shot forward, practically shoving Aurora off the side of the bed. There, partially exposed beneath her mattress, was the distinctive tartan—royal blue plaid, interspersed with thin lines of yellow, green and orange. “Get up!”

  Aurora quickly did as asked, startled.

  Misty, jumping off the bed, hefted the corner of the mattress up as high as she could and stared down at what lay hidden beneath it: the rest of what surely was some part of a Skylander’s frock, along with a weathered, hand-inscribed leather journal.

  Chapter 15

  The cloudbank held a bevy of Skylander men, women, and children—easily a hundred souls within a stone’s throw of the Empire State Building. Another hundred, mostly Grounders, were being led, both this way and that, across the skyscape by a myriad of multi-clan Cloudwalkers. Farther off, a large contingent of able-bodied men positioned the lightweight, albeit remarkably strong, superstructures of staggered bleachers along the periphery of one of the playing fields. One particular cloudbank area had proved itself to be, over many decades, almost as dense as the ground far below it, and it was here that the Skylander Games would be held.

  Toag asked, “Well?”

  “Well, what?” Conn replied, walking along the well-worn cloudbank path alongside his best friend. Toag used his extended rackstaff periodically, driving its tip down into the bank with just the right amount of force to gauge the amount of resistance. A necessary precaution, and one that, after so many years, was completely second nature to him. Conn trusted Toag’s abilities, but his hands itched to test the cloudbank with his own rackstaff; after three full days, it still hadn’t been fixed, and he felt naked without it.

  “Oh, come on! Everyone watched that Folais clan trudge across the bank. Such a stern-looking group! How was it seeing your betrothed again? Miss Lili?”

  “I ken who my fiancée is, thank you.”

  Both turned, hearing the sound of running footfalls behind them. Young Brig darted between them and turned around, slightly out of breath and red-faced from the exertion. Walking backwards, he smiled up at them.

  “What trouble are you getting yourself into this fine morning, Master Brig?” Toag asked fondly.

  The boy became serious, his gaze settling on Conn. “So we’re going to war?”

  Concern grew on Toag’s face, and he stared at his friend. “What’s this?”

  “Damn it, Brig! Creeping around behind walls and spying on the CloudMaster is a sure way to be locked up. If my father knew—”

  “What’s this about war?” Toag asked again.

  “Gordon Folais is now calling himself a CloudKing,” Brig said. “Also, the MacLeod Clan’s building has become isolated, nothing but quickfall patches surrounding it. And the CloudKing, he’s—”

  “He’s not a CloudKing!” Conn corrected.

  “He wants the MacLeods moved up here to Midtown.”

  “Pfft, like that’s going to happen,” Toag said.

  Conn, reaching down, grabbed Brig by the shoulders and lifted him up to eye-level. “You really need to shut up. None of this can be spoken about any further. To anyone. Is that understood?”

  Brig nodded, clearly unsure if Conn was really mad or only acting like he was.

  Conn set the boy back down. “Make yourself scarce; I need to talk to Toag in private. And remember what I said. If one word of what you’ve heard gets out, I’ll come looking for you myself.” They left the boy where he stood.

  Walking away in silence, after several minutes, Conn said, “When I ken something for sure, I’ll tell you.”

  “Aye, you damn well better. I’m going this way. I take it you won’t be practicing with us for the next few days, eh?”

  Conn shook his head. “Healer says my stitches need some time to heal, but I’ll give it a try next week.”

  “Where you off to now?” Toag asked, turning left at the fork in the path.

  Conn shook his head as he continued going right.

  “Oh, that’s right, someone’s jimmied up his rackstaff. Good luck with that.”

  Conn stood aside, letting a Baird clan Cloudwalker move past him, along with his small flock of four sullen-looking Grounders. “Step wisely,” he said.

  The older Cloudwalker raised his rackstaff to tap paws, but seeing Conn staff-less, he mumbled something undecipherable and moved off.

  The glistening spire of the Chrysler building appeared just up ahead. Like near the Empire State building, throngs of people were out, taking in the splendid early fall day. As an elegantly dressed family of four approached him—parents with their two small children—Conn knelt down to his knee, knowing what was coming.

  “Uncle Conn! Uncle Conn!” the twin six-year-olds yelled in unison. When close enough, their mother released their tiny hands to let them run into Conn’s awaiting open arms. He winced as their forceful hugs jostled his stitches.

  “We were watching the window-makers!” little Jeremy said, pointing up to the building.

  “It was terribly hot. I hated it!” Tori, his twin sister added, scrunching up her face.

  “Well, I’m with Jeremy on this one; I always like watching any artisans work,” Conn said, mirroring back his niece’s scrunched-up face.

  Conn’s older sister, Emma, smiling but looking a bit worn out, leaned over and kissed his cheek. He hadn’t seen her Emma these past few weeks—not nearly as much as he’d seen Michael and his father. But there again, it was no secret she despised politics, anything to do with the clan’s official matters. Her children were everything to her. His brother-in-law, who had been a healer prior to marrying his sister, gave Conn’s upper arm an affectionate squeeze. “Good to see you, Conn. A proper tidy day, is it not?”

  “Aye, Cleve, that it is.” Conn let his gaze drift to the somewhat shorter man’s nearly white head of hair. Cleve had begun to go prematurely gray at twenty-five, some ten years in the past.

  “Where you off to, little brother?” Emma asked. Then, quickly covering her smile with her hand, she said, “Oops, sorry,” as she looked down at his empty belt and the missing rackstaff.

  “Does everyone know?” Conn groaned, embarrassed. Emma’s expression was sympathetic.

  “We passed by old Graham Gould,” she admitted. “But I have to warn you, he didnae seem to be in a verra good mood.”

  Gould, easily ninety-years of age, was one of the few remaining racksmiths in Manhattan, and the old man was considered a true master of his trade. The last time Conn had been to Gould’s quarters, he’d been with Dob. The two had been friends, but Conn didn’t expect that friendship to extend to him. Not today, at least. Gould did not tolerate the misuse of a rackstaff well.

  “I’ll tread lightly. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  Leaving his sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew to continue with their walk to the Empire State building, Conn headed on toward the Chrysler building.

  He passed through the town square, beneath the gold-topped bell tower which warned Skylanders of God’s Rampage. The impressive cupola and dome had once topped another building in Manhattan, but sometime during the 23rd century, that building had started to succumb to time and the unforgiving acidity of the elements. A Herculean effort by all the Manhattan clans was made to save the beautiful tower and cupola. Piece by piece, the individual constructs were dismantled, lowered down to street level, transported uptown, and hauled up the side of the Leland-Brock building, which at 496 feet tall, barely crested the cloudbank. But with the addition of the bell tower and cupola, it became a stunning centerpiece for the Skylander Town Square outside the Chrysler Building, and a useful tool with which to warn Manhattan Skylanders of the approach of a God’s Rampage lightning storm.

  As Conn exited the town square and passed within the shadow of the Chrysler Building, he looked up to find no fewer than ten men and women, all sept craftsmen, attending to the never-ending job of keeping the building’s façade looking as beautiful as the day it was completed.

  Skylan
ders took great pride in the visible presentation of their buildings. Earlier, Conn had witnessed just as many septs working on the Empire’s façade. A new window was now being positioned into place, some seventy-five-feet up. Over the past five centuries, every window had been replaced many times over. The building days of old, when manufacturing facilities existed, had been lost with the Ruin and the advent of God’s Rampage. Today, a window’s far less perfect panes, though perhaps more charming in appearance, were known as crown glass. Each replacement pane was hand-blown by clan artisans, accomplished glass blowers who routinely custom-made several big windows in a day. To create each pane, they blew molten glass into a large bubble using a long blowpipe. The bubble, maneuvered into position and then flattened, was next attached to the end of an iron rod, called a punty, and spun around as fast as possible by the artisan. This process allowed the flattened bubble of glass to fan out and form a circle, which the artisans then cut to size, into windowpanes.

  Conn entered the art deco-style building through its south, cloudbank level entrance up. Taking the stairs to the 60th floor, he made his way to the central windowless suite of rooms belonging to Graham Gould. Most of the men and women who worked there were highly educated professors, masters in their respective fields. For Skylanders, getting a higher education was not an option. As a Cloudwalker of noble blood, even Conn was expected to continue his education at the Chrysler Building. Both of his older siblings, as well as his father, boasted multiple degrees in various fields.

  Entering into Gould’s dark and cluttered realm was like taking a walk back in time. The first thing to greet Conn was the rich aromatic scent of freshly cut Ragoon timber. There were other odors too: wood stains and varnishes, and smoky smells from the giant, black, iron hearth, filled now with scarlet and gray embers. All the walls were lined with hanging, vertical rackstaffs. Some appeared to be recently made and others polished worn and smooth by hundreds of years of use. While some were fully retracted, others were extended to their full seven-foot length or mid, sword-sized length. Rackstaffs filled all the walls and even hung from the ceiling.