by Amanda Sun
My ankles sting in the sandals Elisha lent me. They’re slightly too small, and they rub red blisters into the backs of my heels. I think about taking them off and walking barefoot, but I’m afraid of this landscape and what I might step on.
“Elisha,” I say, and the loudness of my own voice startles me. “I made it to the earth I couldn’t stop talking about. If only you could see me now.” I laugh a little, because there’s nothing else to do.
A shadow swirls over me and I look up to see the long spiked tail of a feathered monster that swoops up and over the forest. I quietly thank the Phoenix that it didn’t choose me for lunch.
The sun is at the top of the sky by the time I reach the rocky ground. I listen to the faint whisper I can hear over the chorus of birds in the forest beside me. I think it’s the sound of trickling water, and I hurry forward, stumbling over the clusters of sharp rocks that scrape against my ankles.
It appears like a dream, a long creek babbling over a stony bank, the water clear and sparkling in the afternoon sun. I stagger forward, bending my tired knees and dipping my hand into the water. It’s ice-cold, and I put my spear beside me so I can fill my cupped hands and drink. I splash my face and shake the beads of water from my hair. I scrub the dried blood from my fingers and unlace my sandals. The water stings against my blistered skin and I can only stand to put my feet in the water for a few moments at a time. I peer into the darkness of the bottom and look for signs of fish, but I can’t see anything darting around. It doesn’t look deep enough to warrant fears of underwater monsters or the sharks the annals warn of that live in the oceans.
After a moment I lie on my back, my legs still dangling in the water up to my calves. Burumu, Nartu and the Floating Isles are so far that I can’t even see their borders from here. Only Ashra hovers in the sky, the tangle of roots and dirt hanging down from its shape, the mist of the tiny waterfall foaming off the crystal edge.
There’s a speck in the sky near the rim of the floating continent. Could it be an airship? I flood with a panic to signal it, but the thought just as quickly flies from my head. It’s impossible. If I couldn’t see the monsters flying around the lands from Ashra’s heights, there’s no way the airship will see me on the ground.
The water laps under the breeze and the world feels peaceful and calm. But the lapping gets louder, even when the breeze stops. Something isn’t right. I sit up on my elbows slowly, and look.
A monster is across the bank from me. It’s as big as a caravan, its shoulders at a height nearly halfway up the tree trunks. Its body is covered in soft cream fur, but its long tail is slippery and striped, the end of it dipped into the water. And it has three heads, three, each drinking and gulping from the stream. One is dark purple with horns and a long bearded snout like a goat. Another is like the giant cat from before, but with a mane of shimmering gold. And the third is scaled and sharp with lizard-slit eyes. I stare as my heart pounds in my chest. The water trickles down the goat head’s beard and beads in the cat’s mane. It shimmers off the lizard scales like oil. And then the tail of the monster flicks out of the water, and it’s a snake, with a black tongue that slithers in and out of its mouth.
By some miracle the monster hasn’t seen me yet. So I soundlessly slip my legs out of the water and grab my sandals. I place the leather on my raw, blistered skin, but the pain makes me wince. I can’t run in these. I slip my foot back out, resting a hand on my spear and the other on my flint shard.
I’m terrified to stand up. It will see me, I know. So I sit, thoughts rushing, trying to think of my next move.
That’s when the goat head sees me and bleats. The cat head blinks, its lip curling back in a hungry snarl. The lizard licks its eyelid with its sticky pink tongue.
The monster steps into the creek, where its massive cream paws sink into the water. And then it darts forward, water spraying in an upward cascade that momentarily hides it from view.
I turn and run, the rocks sharp against the soles of my feet.
I doubt I’ll be lucky enough for a hungry dragon to come by this time. It’s over—it’s going to eat me.
EIGHT
I SPRINT AS fast as I can, barefoot across the slippery jagged rocks and onto the grassy plain in front of me. Maybe I should run to those ancient tangled trees on the hill to my left, but the monster would catch me before I made it up the steep muddy slope that leads to them.
I race forward, not knowing where I’m going, waiting any moment for the sharp claws to dig into my back. When the claws don’t come, I risk a quick look back.
It’s still there, chasing me, the cat’s head with open jaws and the lizard’s scales grating against each other as it runs. The goat head bleats angrily, water still dripping from its gray beard. The ground rumbles as the monstrosity stumbles along behind me, but its legs are stubby and uncoordinated. It can’t run as quickly as the yellow-and-purple cat from yesterday, which is why it hasn’t caught up with me yet.
I keep running, every breath burning against my ribs, the searing pain slowing me down. The grassy ground is bumpy and uneven, and I keep stumbling over the tiny pockets of soil and moss strewn over the landscape. A massive bird with a lizard tail swoops over us and snaps its beak, but it doesn’t snatch the monster or me. It’s a reminder that if this monster doesn’t eat me, something else will.
I huff and pant as I slow. My body is exhausted and starved, my ribs cracked and throbbing. I’ll have to face it. There’s nowhere to hide.
Against every scream in my head I force myself to turn as I heave in fiery, stinging breaths. I hold my spear tightly in my right hand, its sharp point wavering at the three-headed monster galloping toward me. The beast digs its claws into the ground, and a huge ripple waves through its matted fur as it forces itself to a stop. The cat head is growling, the lizard flicking its tongue. At the back of the monster, the serpent tail weaves back and forth, its fangs dripping with venom as it watches me. The goat head stares intently at my spear.
My own voice startles me. “Come on, you ashen ugly!” He’s so much bigger than the wild boar from my childhood. But he stands between me and survival. And I will survive.
It lunges forward, claws in the air. I slice at the goat head with my spear and hit nothing but air. I grunt with the effort as I swipe again. The goat grabs the branch of the spear in his mouth and holds fast. Icy panic washes down my spine as I yank at the spear, trying to get it free. The cat growls and snaps with his sharp teeth, and I step around the left side of the giant beast so it can’t reach me. The paws make an uncoordinated turn, and we circle one another, the spear lodged in the goat’s mouth.
And then the goat grates his teeth, and the spear snaps in two between his jaws. I cry out, swinging at its head with what’s left of the branch. It clubs him near the ear and he shakes his head, bleating his foul breath at me.
I swing the club again, turning slowly with the monster. There’s no time to grab the flint in my pocket. The snake is hovering close by, and I’m sure he’ll strike the minute my eyes are downcast.
And then there’s a blur of movement, and the snake lets out a gag as he’s yanked backward. A creature draped in mottled beige fur, with curved incisors like a wolf’s, forces the snake’s fangs into the monster’s side, and all three heads bellow at once, the sound ripping through the air. It sways and tilts and snaps at the wolf creature as it climbs on its back and throws its arms around the lizard head. The action throws the monster off balance, and it collapses on its side with a rumble that shakes the ground. The fanged wolf head falls backward against the softness of the fur.
It takes me a moment to realize what I’m seeing.
The creature isn’t a monster. He’s wearing a fur cloak, the wolf head and fangs part of a hood. His face underneath is painted with vibrant colors, but he’s human.
A human. On the earth. My mind races as I try to process what
’s happening. He pulls out a dagger and cuts at the beast while I stand completely stunned.
They weren’t wiped out. The unbelievers who were left behind, the ones illustrated in the first volume of the annals, have survived. They’ve survived for these long three hundred years.
The tongue lolls in the lizard’s head, and the cat’s eyes roll back. The goat head collapses against the ground, its eyes turning vacant and glassy. The snake tail wavers in the air like a tipsy festival-goer in Ulan, before flopping onto the ground like a coil of rope.
The boy doesn’t look at me. He steps over the goat head and squats down by the snake tail, lifting it by the neck and shaking it around a bit before letting it slump back down to the ground. A minute later he reaches for a quiver over his shoulder and slides it off, two dozen wooden arrows scattering over the ground. He takes the snake in his right hand, the arrows in his left, and squeezes the serpent’s head until its eyes bulge. Venom drips down its fangs and onto the arrowheads as he changes them out for new ones.
I open my mouth to speak, but I’m so overwhelmed that nothing comes out.
A minute later he glides the arrows back into the quiver and shoulders it again, neatly pulling the matted fur cloak over top. He’s still looking at the ground when he asks, “You need venom?”
“Sorry?” I say.
He stands up slowly and turns to face me. I’m surprised to see we’re nearly the same age, at least as far as I can tell. His brown hair is cut jaggedly, two yellow and purple stripes painted under his eyes; the colors remind me of the giant cat from yesterday. His arms are tanned and muscled, though hidden by the strap of his bow and the beaded leather lacing that crisscrosses his right forearm. His ripped leather tunic is covered with straps that hold the quiver on his back, a row of daggers on his hip and a pouch at his other side, half hidden by the creamy fur of the cape. Around his neck is a string of iridescent shell circles that remind me of home; they’re like the shells that decorate my headdress for the Rending Ceremony in Ashra.
“Venom,” he says again. “Do you need any?”
“I...” It takes me a minute to understand what he’s asking. The snake’s venom, he means. “No,” I stammer. “Thank you.”
He nods. “Where are your weapons?”
I look down at my broken branch, the rope and the flint scattered on the ground by the goat’s head.
He frowns. “That’s it? You’re either brave or crazy.” He bends down to retrieve the flint, and that’s when I see the lantern fastened by his pouch. A large dent caves in the side of the lantern, the black iron riddled with carved stars and plumes. Elisha’s lantern that I dropped over the edge of the outlands.
“That’s...that’s my lantern,” I say, pointing at it.
He reaches a hand for the lamp, lifting it slightly to glance at it. “Yours?”
“Well, my friend’s.”
He stands and tilts his head up to Ashra, hovering silently in the sky. Then he turns to me. “Did you fall? From the floating island?”
“Yes,” I say, tears stinging in my eyes. I can’t believe I’m talking to a human on the earth. It’s more breathtaking than anything I’ve read in the annals. “Yes. Two nights ago, I think. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. I need to get back. Is there a way?”
He doesn’t answer my questions but looks at me intently. I feel too on display in my ripped, muddy robe, my corded belt cut and unbraiding, my feet bare and blistered and my hands covered in scrapes. Hardly the best first impression for the Heir of the Eternal Flame.
He reaches for the leather that ties the lantern to his belt and loosens the knot with his slender fingers, holding out the iron handle to me. “Welcome,” he says, with a shy hint of a smile.
It catches me off guard, to think a human has taken down a caravan-sized monster and now welcomes me to the monster-ridden earth. “Thank you,” I manage.
The handle creaks as I take it gently, the sunlight streaming through the cutouts on its surface. Oh, Elisha, I think. Homesickness swirls in every fiber of my body. I don’t know how to think or act here, or what the boy is thinking of me right now. The candle inside has shattered from the fall, only a small jagged piece of it left at the bottom. I undo my rope belt and tie it through the loop of the lantern handle, fastening it to my hip.
Then the boy turns to the monster again, and with his dagger he slices into the fur at the nape of the goat’s neck. The squelching sound turns my stomach, and I look away as the blood trickles onto the ground. If I’d grown up in the village like Elisha, I probably wouldn’t be such a baby about it, but we never slaughtered animals in the citadel. I take a deep breath and turn back to face it, to face him. I can’t afford to be a coward down here, or I’ll never make it back to Ashra.
“Could I... Could you tell me if there’s a way to get back to the floating continent?” I ask. “Do you know a way?” He keeps cutting, not even looking at me. I feel stupid for asking the question then. Of course there isn’t a way. He wouldn’t live down here if he could escape.
He keeps cutting along the fur, pulling back the skin to expose the fat and muscle. “What are you doing?” I say. “It’s already dead.”
“If you don’t mind,” he says, “I have to work quickly, before the venom spreads. Perfectly good waste of meat.”
“You’re...you’re going to eat that thing?”
“Why not?” he says, cutting strips and laying them on the ground. “He was going to eat you.” I shudder, but he continues. “If I had time to do it properly, I could get a great deal more than just a hunk of meat. But the snake’s venom is spreading, and the scavengers will be here soon. We need to be gone before that happens.”
“The scavengers?”
His blade never stops moving. “Pack of nasty beasties,” he says. “They can smell a rotting chimera carcass a mile away.”
Chimera, I think. So this type of monster has a name. I shudder again, thinking of all the scavenger monsters that it will attract.
“Can I help you?” I say, eager to get away before they come. He looks at me for a minute, then nods, cutting across the large piece of fur dangling from the goat’s neck. He tosses it on the ground, and the edges curl upward. I nod and kneel beside it. I only hesitate a moment before smoothing out the sticky inside and loading the chunks of meat onto it. I’m so hungry, so desperate, that for a moment I consider shoving the glistening raw meat into my mouth. But I know I’ll get really sick, so I try to force the impulse down. The meat is warm and bloody, staining my hands pink. The iridescent flies try to land on it as I shoo them away.
It’s amazing what you can do when you’re faced with no other option.
“It was... It was clever to use the snake tail to kill the chimera.”
“The best way to take down a monster is with the weaknesses it presents you,” he says.
I say nothing, only take another chunk of the bright red meat and place it onto the skin.
“I was looking for you, you know,” he says, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. He goes back to carving.
Looking for me? “How?” I say. It’s not like I planned to fall from the continent.
“There’s a barrier around the floating island,” he says. “When you passed through it, it set off a light in the sky like a star. I saw it two nights ago, and I’ve been searching since. That’s how I found your lantern.”
“A barrier?”
He nods. “You must’ve wondered why you survived the fall?”
I remember then, slowing as I fell, the air sticky like honey. The rainbow lights dancing faintly on my fingertips. “But I’ve never read about a barrier in the annals.”
“What are the annals?”
I choke back my surprise before I blurt anything I’ll regret. Of course he hasn’t heard of them. It’s the Elders wh
o have kept the records on Ashra, high above in the sky. And then I remember the second volume Aban kept hidden, the writing about a barrier and a generator on the flyer the lieutenant burned. “Did the survivors of the Rending keep records?”
“The Rending?” he says, which answers my question.
“Of the Phoenix,” I say. “You know, the day Ashra was sent into the sky. The day the unbeliev— I mean, that some humans were left behind. Your ancestors.”
There’s a horrible cluster of wails in the distance. The sound of it chills me to the bone.
“Time to go,” he says, and wipes his dagger on the grass before sliding it into his belt. He reaches into his pouch and pulls out some string that he uses to tie the bundle of meat inside the strip of fur.
We stand, and he notices my bare feet. “You can’t go far like that,” he says.
“I had to leave my sandals at the creek after the chimera chased me.”
He gives me a sympathetic look as he adjusts the fur cloak over his shoulders. “We’ll have to go back later, okay?”
The wails come again, and I tremble. “It’s fine. Anything.” Just don’t leave me here alone, I think, but I don’t say it. I don’t want him to think I’m afraid. As heir, I’d never be allowed to admit that to anyone.
He nods, and takes off running toward the steep hill crowned with a tangle of trees. I follow him, running as fast as I can with my aching ribs. It’s easier to run without those sandals after all, the grass soft and pliable under my feet. He’s faster, though, probably used to running for his life down here.
That’s when I think about the others like him. Because he can’t be the only one to survive, can he? There must be others as swift and equipped as he is.
When we reach the edge of the hill I hear a frenzy of howling behind us. I turn to the distant mound of the chimera. A dozen wild doglike monsters are crawling over it like maggots, tearing flesh and chomping with their large fangs. One of the giant birds I’ve seen circling the valley is hovering over the carcass, the wild dogs snapping at its legs while it scrapes at them with its talons. I can’t look away from the horror of it.