The Girl Who Fell Out of the Sky

by Victoria Forester

  Bright morning sunlight was now showering the mountain. Down below, on the edge of the plateau, a tall, thin man was singing the morning song that woke the Chosen Ones and called them to the day. AnnA’s eyes shifted back and forth as she rapidly made calculations. “You will be seen,” she muttered. “I must get you out of sight. I can’t jump you home from here. I will … have to take you to my sleeping place.”

  Bursting into a trot, AnnA tried to appear like she has having a typical morning. It was quickly clear she had no experience in deception of any sort and only succeeded in drawing attention to the group with her uncomfortable display of normalcy.

  “What happens if we’re caught?” Rory Ray trotted next to her.

  “An uninvited Outsider has never been on Mother Mountain,” AnnA said. “You would be sent away as soon as possible.”

  That seemed logical to Jimmy Joe. “So they’d send us on back home?”

  “Or throw you off the mountain,” AnnA said. “Most likely that, but it is difficult to know.”

  Rory Ray and Jimmy Joe looked down. They were a long, long way from the ground, and the valley below the mountain didn’t exactly look like a safe place to be. They both made a mental note to do whatever it took not to get thrown off the mountain.

  As AnnA guided the group through Mother Mountain’s corridors and stairways, Chosen Ones began to appear, each presenting the potential threat of discovery. At times, AnnA shielded them or quickly pushed them into a nook until the Chosen One passed. It was in a nook, while they were all attempting to look nonchalant, that Jimmy Joe peeked out at the passing Chosen One and saw to his surprise that if he hadn’t been wearing a robe, he wouldn’t have looked out of place in Lowland County.

  “Why do they hate us so much?” Jimmy Joe whispered. “I don’t get it.”

  “A long time ago, when Chosen Ones and Outsiders lived together, the Outsiders hunted the Chosen Ones down,” AnnA said, careful to keep her voice low. “If the Chosen Ones hadn’t fled to Xanthia, we wouldn’t have survived.”

  “I’ve never heard anything about that,” Rory Ray said. “How come we don’t know about it?”

  “It is best that the Outsiders forget about us so that we are safe. Chosen Ones must not forget, and we are taught the histories by our storytellers so we will be safe.” Seeing that the coast was clear, AnnA once again guided the group out, keeping her eyes peeled for other possible threats. At last, AnnA hurried them into her chamber, and the four of them came face-to-face with a woman who looked like AnnA but thirty years or so older.

  AnnA’s mother, HannAh, was graceful, her red hair mellowed to a copper shine and artfully coiled around the top of her head with flowers tucked in it. She was holding a dress out in front of her when the children came rushing in but was so startled by their sudden appearance she dropped the dress and yelped, covering her face with her hands.

  “Maman,” AnnA began. “It is Piper. You remember Piper.”

  HannAh could not focus on Piper because she was pointing at Jimmy Joe and Rory Ray—two faces she had never seen before. Everyone in Xanthia knew everyone else, and these two boys were not from Xanthia, which meant they were not Chosen Ones.

  Next, she looked to AnnA for an explanation.

  Her mother had met Piper before, and this seemed like a good place to start. “She needed my help, and these boys—they are her friends. And they are not bad. They will not do violence. They have given their word.”

  “What value is the word of an Outsider?”

  “They come in peace.”

  “It is forbidden!” HannAh was clutching AnnA now, pulling her away from the Outsiders.

  “But, Maman…”

  “They are not safe.”

  AnnA knew it would be difficult to get her mother to understand. She, like all Chosen Ones, would never believe that the Outsiders were safe. Anna had to find another way to get her mother to look at them differently. “They are hungry, Maman.”

  “Hungry?” HannAh looked over AnnA’s shoulder at the group. They did indeed look hungry, particularly the two boys.

  “Their bellies ache,” AnnA continued softly. “I do not want them to starve. It makes me … sad.”

  It was easy for HannAh to believe that Outsiders would let their children go hungry. “Chosen Ones do not starve children,” HannAh agreed. “They must eat.”

  After that, HannAh hurried them over to a low table, around which were arranged pillows and soft rugs. AnnA was sent out and returned with several steaming bowls of food. The first dish looked like pasta but turned out to taste like cinnamon porridge. The next one had nuts and berries, and the last was crunchy and salty. The food was served with a steaming red tea.

  Jimmy Joe and Rory Ray ate as though they had never eaten before. The food was so good, and they had appetites like bottomless pits, despite the fact that they were regularly fed.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Jimmy Joe said, shoving food into his face.

  “Best grub we’ve ever had.” Rory Ray had smears of it on his cheek and chin.

  HannAh could not eat a bite and sat, watching them. “They look dangerous,” she said to AnnA in a quiet voice.

  “Maman, no.” AnnA colored with embarrassment.

  HannAh persisted. “You must take care.” Outside, a loud horn sounded, and HannAh looked up. “The festival call. I will be missed if I do not go.”

  On festival days, all were needed, and in such a small community, if someone did not appear, they would be looked for. HannAh was torn between her duty and her need to protect AnnA, and her face quivered with the dilemma. “If they come for me, they will find the Outsiders here.”

  “Go,” AnnA said to her mother.

  HannAh glared at Jimmy Joe and Rory Ray. “I know what is in your hearts,” she said softly but with venom. “You are not welcome.”

  Jimmy Joe and Rory Ray looked down at their laps. Jimmy Joe in particular had a hurt, confused look on his face. He felt the urge to apologize but didn’t know what for or how to do it.

  “Maman.” AnnA helped her mother up and toward the door. “Go.”

  “Walk with me,” HannAh urged, taking AnnA’s hand and pulling her onto the balcony.

  Reluctantly, AnnA went with her mother, shooting a parting glance back. When the two of them were gone, Piper and the boys released the air in their lungs in a loud whoosh.

  “No offense,” Rory Ray snorted, “but these Chosen Ones need to let the past go.”

  Piper sprang up from the table and tucked herself back into the shadows by the doorway so that she could not be seen while she peeked outside.

  Jimmy Joe ate the last of his meal thoughtfully. “She sure seems a little … unfriendly.”

  Piper snorted. “You think your ma and pa were glad to have me at your house? You think they were friendly and welcoming?”

  “That’s different.” Rory Ray crossed his arms across his chest. “They’ve got good reason for it.”

  “Oh yeah?” Piper said. “And what’s that?”

  Rory Ray swung out his arm at Piper like it should be obvious. He even started to open his mouth with the words “not right in the head” at the front of his tongue but then closed it again. Did he believe that?

  Jimmy Joe took a hard swallow.

  Piper could see HannAh talking firmly to AnnA a few yards away and, beyond them, the excitement of festival day. Chosen Ones were emerging dressed in fancy robes; the younger girls had ribbons threaded through their hair so that they hung down over their faces. Piper tried to look for other Chosen Ones she knew from the last time she had visited, but it was hard to see their faces through the ribbons.

  All at once, an idea came to Piper. Rushing across the chamber, she retrieved the robe that HannAh had dropped to the floor. Just as Piper suspected, it was for AnnA, who was her size. Holding it up against her body, she was relieved to see it was a perfect fit.

  “Hurry up,” she said to Rory Ray and Jimmy Joe. “I’ve got a plan. We’re moving out.”
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  CHAPTER

  32

  “I’m not so sure this is a good plan.” Rory Ray fussed with the leaf crown on his head and the flowing robes that were a little bit too tight across his chest. The three of them were crouched in a stairway.

  Piper had wound herself up in AnnA’s dress and then scrounged robes for the boys to wear. Fortunately, the spring festival attire had the girls wearing an abundance of ribbons, and Piper arranged hers so that they covered her face. She’d also plucked leaves from the climbing vines and created little masks and crowns that covered half of the boys’ faces. Thankfully, the Chosen boys on the mountain were wearing them too, so the Millers fit right in.

  No sooner were they dressed than Piper hustled them out of the chamber in the opposite direction from where HannAh had spoken with AnnA. Piper’s plan, such as it was, was to return to Conrad and bust him out. How she was going to accomplish that particular feat she couldn’t exactly say, but she was taking it one step at a time. Alas, once they rounded their first corner and climbed their first stairway, they were promptly lost.

  “I think it’s left.” Jimmy Joe pointed down a small corridor.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you numbskull; it’s right.” Rory Ray gave Jimmy Joe a conk on the head. A passing Chosen One, seeing the hit, was shocked by its violent nature and stopped dead in his tracks.

  Piper forced a laugh and said loudly, “That is very fun,” hitting herself on the head in the same way, then laughing even louder. When the Chosen One moved on, she gave Rory Ray the eye. “Do you want to get us thrown off the mountain?”

  Rory Ray shook his head contritely. “Sorry.”

  Creeping up a staircase tucked off to the side, the three of them climbed to the third tier and found themselves on an overlook to the plateau below, where they were able to see a great commotion by the pooling waters on the main level.

  “They’re here! They’re here!” A cry echoed from all parts of the mountain.

  Thinking that they had been discovered, Piper braced herself for the worst when a child raced up to her. “Hurry, or you will miss it!” The child grabbed Piper’s hand and pulled her along.

  Piper soon found that she was swept up in a stampede of rushing children.

  “Have you seen them?” a boy close to Piper yelled out.

  “They are flying fast. We must hurry!” another child answered.

  As soon as they reached the bottom level by the pooling waters, the rush continued past the Celebration Center and only ended when to go any farther meant they would fall down to the valley below. At the edge, they leaned out dangerously.

  “Do you see?”

  “Look! Over there!”

  “I see! I see!”

  Piper looked where fingers were pointing and was able to make out a small group of very small birds in the distance. Someone squeezed up next to her and took her arm. It was AnnA, her face red and her eyes flashing.

  “Why did you run away? You must stay with me.”

  “I wanted to get back to my friends.”

  AnnA sighed. “If you are discovered?”

  “I won’t tell on you, AnnA.”

  Rory Ray and Jimmy Joe joined them. “What’s going on? What’s everyone looking at?” Jimmy Joe placed a hand above his eyes to shield them from the glare of the morning sun.

  “It is spring,” AnnA said just loud enough so that they could hear. “On the first day of spring, the Fortune Fliers return home to their nest at the top of Mother Mountain.”

  Jimmy Joe squinted. “What the heck is a Fortune Flier?”

  AnnA had to think of the best way to describe them. “They are … Fortune Fliers. If you are able to catch one in your hand, they will whisper your future to you.”

  “Shut the front door!” Jimmy Joe looked from AnnA to the small, approaching birds in the sky. “You mean they can see the future? No way!”

  “We all try to catch them,” AnnA said. “That is why there is so much excitement.”

  The competitive streak in Rory Ray bubbled to the surface. “I’ll catch one. No problem.”

  AnnA did not think so. “It has been generations since the last Fortune Flier was caught. It is very difficult.”

  Rory Ray snorted. “Not for me.”

  “I’m better at catching,” Jimmy Joe said.

  “You couldn’t catch a cold.” Rory Ray elbowed Jimmy Joe back, and Jimmy Joe jostled him in return.

  “Guys,” Piper said with an edge to her tone, “I think we’ve got other things to worry about.”

  “Look! Look!” children shouted. The Fortune Fliers were now coming into view.

  With bodies no bigger than a thumb and a wingspan the size of a melon, the Fortune Fliers clothed themselves in vivid colors of violet, indigo, scarlet, and sage. They were buzzing in swirling patterns that created streaks of bold color in the air. It was said that the Fortune Fliers were the product of a union between a pixie and a mermaid; they sported a pixie face atop a scaly body held aloft by gossamer wings.

  Hanley, a boy about the size of Rory Ray who was at the front of the group, hung over the precipice dangerously, then suddenly turned. “To the ledge,” he shouted.

  Instantly, everyone ran for the ledge.

  Because it was Mother Mountain, and because the Chosen Ones were the Chosen Ones, the stampede for the ledge took on its own unique quality. Hanley stretched his body like it was made of taffy. A girl with golden hair named Priscilla was followed by a swarm of bees, and a toddler strobed like a little sun as she ran.

  Up ahead, the older and the faster ones were already climbing the rocks behind the waterfall to reach a ledge that jutted out and presented a perfect jumping-off point. The younger ones were doing their best to climb too but mainly fell and landed in the waters and then got out and tried again.

  The messenger squirrels were scampering excitedly about and saying the words “Fortune Flier” over and over again, which in turn was drawing the elders to the pooling waters to watch and cheer. Meanwhile, the Fortune Fliers were following the path of the water up to the top of the mountain and had just started to fly up along the waterfall.

  Piper and AnnA kept close to the other kids so as not to draw attention to themselves. Piper had the perfect vantage of Rory Ray and Jimmy Joe on the ledge above.

  “I have one! Here I go!” Hanley leaned off the ledge as only an elasticated boy could do.

  Piper shook her head at the sight of him. “It’s an amazing thing to see,” she mused, “all the special abilities y’all have.”

  AnnA agreed distractedly. “We are capable of great things.”

  “Obviously,” Piper sighed, and then stopped dead, her mouth opening. “AnnA! What do all the youngens here think about what’s going on with the Outsiders?”

  “They do not know of it. The elders do not wish to concern us with these matters, and we are not welcomed at the council meetings.”

  “But wouldn’t the kids here want to help us out? I mean, if they knew about the bugs and how bad it could get?”

  AnnA wrinkled her nose as she thought about this. “We have been taught about the Outsiders through the storytellers. No Chosen One, old or young, wishes to be near them.”

  “But what if the stories aren’t true? Or at least not true anymore,” Piper said. “Do you think I’m dangerous?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But I’m an Outsider now.”

  “No. Well … yes, but no.” AnnA shook her head and then nodded it and shook it again. “You are different.”

  “But I’m not different. I have no special ability, and that makes me an Outsider. Am I worth saving?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if all the others are like me?”

  AnnA could not wrap her mind around this. “They are Outsiders.”

  “Oh, AnnA,” Piper breathed, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. “I think I have a plan. Can you gather together a handful of kids about our age and just let me talk to them? If I
could talk to them, I know I could make them understand.”

  Before AnnA could answer, a cheer rose from the children above. Hanley had leapt out, bursting through the waterfall and startling the lead Fortune Flier as it flew up.

  The Flier was darting and strong, dipping in and out of the water. Flanking him on either side were Fliers with dark purple wings and thick green bodies.

  The little birds were not particularly upset when Hanley was suddenly in the middle of them. With adept skill they dodged his grasp and darted around him, giving him a nip on the rear end.

  Now kids were leaping in bunches, stretching out their little bodies and waving their arms to grab and grasp. Fortune Fliers buzzed back and forth like angry bees, bearing their sharp teeth. Below, parents cheered and clapped, the noise echoing off the mountain walls amplifying it.

  Piper watched Rory Ray thrust his muscular arms about, like a bear trying to take flight. He did his best to snatch a Flier but, like the others, quickly fell into the water below, empty-handed.

  One by one they all jumped, until at last the only one left on the ledge was Jimmy Joe, frozen in place. Piper wondered if he’d lost his nerve or perhaps was afraid of heights.

  Unbeknownst to Piper, Jimmy Joe had carefully selected a soft pink Flier with wings the color of a purple sunset that had lagged behind the rest. She was graceful and elegant, slowing down to let her tiny little fingers tickle the flowing waters before she began her ascent.

  Jimmy Joe kept his eyes locked on her. He did not rush but waited and watched patiently as she approached.

  Every Chosen One on the entire mountain was now gathered, their eyes resting on Jimmy Joe.

  “I do not know that child,” a mother said to another. “Is that Ephram?”

  The other mother could not tell. “Whoever he may be, let him catch it.”

  The pink Flier arched her back and raised her gaze to the top of the mountain, climbing. Jimmy Joe crouched down as she approached, and although his body was in Xanthia, a record inside his mind was playing an old tune, the words to which had been etched onto his brain. You can’t do it, Jimmy Joe. You’re too small. We don’t want you around, Jimmy Joe. You’re a pest.