Heir to the Sky

by Amanda Sun

  “We do what we have to,” I repeat, looking at the dead monsters at our feet. Aliyah reappears, the massive cream-colored karu draped over her shoulders. It must weigh a hundred pounds; I can’t believe she can carry it. We do what we have to so we can survive.

  Griffin nods. “It’s what makes us human,” he says.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Aliyah teaches me how to skin a karu. She uses the same curved bone dagger, showing how to carefully remove the fur in one piece. It’s a slow process, and I gag a few times, but she smiles patiently, never teasing me.

  She shows me how to take sinew from the monster’s tendons for string, and how to stretch the fur over a frame to dry it. She removes its bladder and throws it to Sayra, who turns it into a water flask with a strap of scrap leather. It’s amazing to me, the amount of survival knowledge these three have. At night, by the light of the oil lamp, Aliyah carves one of the karu fangs into a tiny sculpture of a goat. It reminds me of the pygmy goats in the village. We have so much in common, I think, and also nothing at all.

  A week passes, and my ribs start to ache less. Aliyah and Griffin help me practice archery, spear-wielding and dagger-throwing. Griffin is healing, too, the gash across his back fading into a pale scar. “We can go to the mountains soon,” he promises.

  One day, after dinner, we sit on the benches around the table joking and laughing. Sayra walks to a corner of the room and grabs a bundle of leather and fur. She places it in front of me while Griffin and Aliyah beam.

  “What’s this?” I ask. Griffin’s eyes are gleaming as I take the bundle apart. There are new leather boots, soft and laced like Aliyah’s. There’s the karu fur, fashioned into a cloak, and a leather sheath decorated with tiny pieces of karu bone; it holds a medium-sized dagger.

  “For the journey to the mountains,” Aliyah says.

  My eyes fill with grateful tears that I blink back. “But you can’t afford to share this with me. You have so little of your own.”

  “Says who?” Aliyah booms, reaching her long arms out to the sides. “I have a whole world to borrow from. You helped us slay the karus, Kali. You’ve earned these. And I’ll visit the weapon smith in the lava lands when I want a new dagger.”

  I pull the dagger from the sheath. The blade is metal, not bone, and well-worn with scratches and pockmarks. It has a gleaming garnet set in the hilt that sparkles red and orange like a flame. It shimmers under the glow streaming in the skylight, but I know in the daylight it will blaze like the fire of the Phoenix herself.

  “Thank you,” I say, though it’s not enough. “Thank you for this beautiful reminder that the Phoenix will rise anew.” They look puzzled, and then I remember they know nothing of the Rending. “I’m so grateful for your gifts, and your friendship,” I say, trying again. “I wish there was something I could give you.”

  Then I remember the one thing I have in this world, the one thing I brought with me when I fell.

  I untie the lantern from my side and place it on the table. It’s damaged and worn, not anything like their beautiful gifts, but it’s all I have to give. “When you light this lantern, will you think of me?” I say. “The stars and the Phoenix plumes will remind you of Ashra, the floating continent I come from.”

  “We will treasure it.” Aliyah smiles.

  I’ve known them only a few weeks, but it feels like a lifetime. “Please,” I try again. “Come with us to the mountain range. You’ll be safe in Ashra.”

  Griffin frowns, lifting a hand. “Kali...”

  “No, please, listen,” I interrupt. “I’m not sure why you distrust us on the floating continents, but I can promise you we are good people. Food and land is shared. We are safe and protected. There are still forests to wander, and all kinds of trades to learn. Aliyah, you could craft your own weapons like your behemoth staff. And your carvings! I’m sure they would be so popular. Sayra would love to cook with Elisha in Ulan. There’s opportunity for all of you.”

  “I’m sorry, Kali,” Aliyah says quietly. “But we can’t.”

  It’s the most exasperating conversation I’ve ever had. I’m giving them an escape from the monsters, and they won’t take it. “But why?”

  “Because of the massacre,” Sayra snaps.

  Massacre? I sit there with my mouth open, confused. Griffin sighs and rests his head in his hands.

  “Sayra,” Aliyah warns.

  “It isn’t fair to her if she doesn’t know,” Sayra protests.

  “Know what?” I ask.

  Griffin shoots Sayra a warning glance. “Nothing.”

  But Aliyah says, “Kali, this will be difficult to hear, but remember that we are your friends, and that the other fallen have come to terms with this truth.”

  My blood is pulsing, my heart racing. I think back to the conversation I stumbled upon between the lieutenant and Aban. I know these things are linked. I know it. Something wasn’t right, but I’m frightened to hear it. “Tell me,” I say. “Please.”

  Aliyah takes a deep breath and nods, her earrings tinkling like my headdress back on Ashra. “Kali,” she tells me. “There was no Phoenix.”

  FOURTEEN

  MY FACE FLOODS with heat as my heart pounds against my ribs. “I don’t understand.”

  “The floating continents weren’t sent into the sky three hundred years ago,” Sayra says. “They were raised up three thousand years ago.”

  That can’t be right. The annals only go back three hundred years. “But the monsters only overwhelmed the earth three hundred years ago,” I say. “It’s in the annals—our history books.”

  “Who wrote the books, Kali?” Griffin says gently. His eyes are gleaming with concern, deep hazel like the sand of Lake Agur.

  “I know this is hard to accept,” Aliyah says, and she folds her fingers in mine across the table. Her fingers are warm and calloused, like Griffin’s. “I know there is a story the fallen have told, that a Phoenix used its last burning heat to raise up the continents. But the floating mountains are actually held aloft by a complex system of machines built by the Benu.”

  “The Benu?”

  Sayra drinks from her goblet of water and sets it down with a thud on the table. “You have to wonder,” she says. “If humans were meant to live in the sky, why wouldn’t they have wings?”

  It’s a strange question, but a similar thought has occurred to me. It’s dangerous for us to live on floating continents. I learned from my tutors how animals on Ashra adapted to the conditions. The annals say horses and cattle were brought up onto the islands with us, but that the early generations died because they couldn’t breathe enough oxygen to sustain them at the severely high altitude. Only the smaller mammals have survived—chickens, pygmy goats, pikas. I’ve wondered if eventually humans will adapt, too—by getting shorter, maybe. Sprouting wings is a bit too far-fetched. Isn’t it?

  “The fact is that the floating continents were originally home to the Benu,” Aliyah says. “Another race of humans who were adapted for flight.”

  I look from her solemn face to Griffin’s. Are they playing a joke on me? “I believe in chimeras,” I say slowly, “because I’ve seen them. And behemoths, and karus, and the Phoenix. But humans with wings? That’s absurd.”

  “Why?” Sayra says. She fills my water goblet from a carved wooden pitcher. “In a world of monsters, can’t you believe in one more?”

  Aliyah shakes her head. “They weren’t monsters, Sayra. They were human. The problems started when they were seen as monster hybrids instead of humans.”

  “Were they?” I ask. “Monsters, I mean.” I can’t picture a race of humans with wings. Were they like birds, or bats, or butterflies? How could such a thing exist?

  “They may have been some kind of hybrid,” Griffin says. “But that’s not the point. They lived in friendship with the humans on the
ground. They were capable of thought and conscience, not like the monsters I hunt.”

  “Right.” Aliyah nods. “And I don’t know how or why the floating continents were raised in the first place, only that it was at least three thousand years ago. Maybe the Benu wanted to live apart from human ridicule, or maybe they were running from their own monsters and adapted to the floating continents by sprouting wings. I don’t know. We don’t have any of these annals like you have, Kali. We have only the traditions passed down from survivor to survivor, and stories from the fallen who’ve been pushed.”

  My jaw drops. “Pushed? We’d never push humans off the side of the continent. Surely they fell by accident. Anyway, there haven’t been any reports of people falling in fourteen years.”

  “That you know about,” Griffin says. “They were pushed, Kali. They said so.”

  “The fact is that the earth became overrun with monsters, and the Benu wanted to help us,” Sayra continues. “They welcomed all humans to the floating continents. But there wasn’t enough room for everyone. There weren’t enough resources to go around. Nowhere to live, nothing to eat.”

  I don’t like where this story is going. Not at all.

  “The massacre you mentioned,” I say, my throat dry, my thoughts shaken.

  Griffin nods slowly, and whether or not it’s true, they all believe it.

  “Humans slaughtered the Benu,” Aliyah says. “Hunted down every last one. Operation Phoenix was the code for the mission. They scourged the land, a new society rising from the ashes of the lost. The humans who disagreed with the massacre, our ancestors, were pushed from the sides of the continents. The barriers saved us from death, but without strength in numbers, without the fighters and the hunters and medics who stayed on Ashra, most of our ancestors were wiped out immediately by the monsters.”

  I’m shaking. I can’t believe it. “How many survived?” I whisper. “How many humans are there now?”

  Griffin’s gentle voice answers me. “We don’t know. Besides the three of us, we know of the weapon smith and his family in the lava lands. There are a few families who’ve done well on the other side of the plain, and there’s rumor of an entire village by the Frost Sea.”

  I think of the drawing of the Phoenix in the annals, of how the wings covered the barrier and the strange machine deep in the crater made when Ashra lifted into the sky. I remember the unbelievers throwing their hands up in despair. Were they not unbelievers, but exiles? Thrown over the sides in a callous genocide?

  “I... I’m sorry. I can’t quite believe it.”

  “Of course you can’t,” Aliyah says, letting go of my hands to stroke the backs of them. “It’s a horrible truth to face. But we want you to know it’s not your fault. You’re not responsible for the choices your people made hundreds of years ago. And you’re not responsible for the fallen now.”

  But she doesn’t know the worst of it, that I’m the princess and heir to Ashra and her lands. Whoever called for the genocide was a direct ancestor of mine. I am responsible.

  “This isn’t who we are now,” I say. “You’d be safe on Ashra. I’m certain they haven’t been pushed, and I’m certain that help would be extended to you.”

  Sayra shakes her head. “We’re afraid for them to know we’ve survived,” she says. “They might think we’re attracting monsters, that we pose a threat. They might try to destroy what’s left of us.”

  I shake my head no. My father would be horrified to find out what our ancestors had done. Is this what Aban and the lieutenant were hiding? The bloody truth of our betrayal of the Benu? Is this what’s sparked the rebellion, beyond the housing and hard work on Burumu? Are people being pushed off the edge for their involvement? Soot and filthy ashes, I think. Who else knows?

  “And the Phoenix?” I say. “There’s a great statue celebrating her by the citadel.”

  “The Benu worshipped the Phoenix,” Sayra says. “They called her their ancestor, whether she was or not. Whether she even existed. That’s all I know.”

  Then...did the Benu build the citadel with its gleaming crystal tower? Has everything I’ve ever known been formed of half-truths told in shadow, our history lessons steeped in bloody deeds and our annals tainted by deception? No. Someone would have remembered what really happened. Someone would have held on to the memory, family to family, of the truth behind the Rending.

  The thought strikes me cold. The rebellion growing, the flyer the lieutenant burned. The fallen—they’re the ones who’ve remembered or found out somehow. Were they really pushed from the edges of our world to be silenced? And what threat does history hold? It doesn’t reflect who we are now. It doesn’t mean we’d choose that bloody path again.

  But Elder Aban had said the past was “dealt with” two hundred years ago, when the annals were changed. Was the conscience of the people burning with guilt? Did they need to erase this blot on our creed of peace and community that the Phoenix bestows? Genocide isn’t something she’d condone. That this brutality is at the core of our history makes me shudder.

  My father has led me to one day govern the people. I can understand the motivations for such a cover-up, as horrible as they are. Our beliefs—our society—would fall apart faced with such evil truths about the Rending.

  Then I think of my own plummet down to earth. It was right after learning of Aban and the lieutenant. Is the cover-up continuing? I shake the thought from my mind. I fell off the continent by my own foolishness. I tried to save Jonash from the edge and fell myself. He and Elisha were trying to save me. It isn’t the same at all.

  “What will you do?” Aliyah says.

  Griffin touches my shoulder gently. “You can stay here with us.”

  Aliyah smiles, sliding the dagger they’ve given me toward my closed fingers. “You have the great beginnings of a monster hunter,” she says.

  But I’m the wick and the wax. And if the rebellion grows, fueled by the deception about Operation Phoenix, there will be chaos. “I have to go back,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  There’s an awkward silence where none of us are sure what to say next. But then Griffin nods. “Then it’s settled,” he says. “There’s no point sitting around discussing ancient history. We’ll get you to the mountain, and that’s all we need to know right now.”

  A wave of gratefulness swells in me, and the awkwardness passes. Aliyah helps me try on and lace my boots while Sayra fastens the dagger around my hip. Griffin reaches around my neck and pulls my new karu fur cloak about my shoulders to see how it is for length. His fingers brush against my bare shoulders, and despite the weight of what we’ve talked about, I remember Aliyah’s words to me at the waterfall.

  There’s a rebellion I have to think about, and dark truths I have to get to the bottom of. There’s a spark in each of Griffin’s fingertips, but I will not let them burn, because my life isn’t truly mine. In a few days we’ll both be back to our respective worlds, and this will all be a memory I’ll carry with me to the sky.

  It’s just the way it has to be.

  * * *

  We set out at dawn, when the last of the monsters’ scratching claws go silent on our roof of earth. The laced leather boots are snug and comfortable on my feet as I walk up the narrow stairs into the cool plum world before the sunrise. The karu cloak embraces my shoulders with its warm, soft fur as the mild morning breeze blows through the forest.

  Aliyah stands with her behemoth spear at her side, because monsters could lurk at any time. This world isn’t safe, no matter how different it has felt this past week.

  Aliyah and Griffin embrace, holding each other tightly. Then Aliyah steps back and ruffles her brother’s hair. “Don’t get eaten, monster breath.”

  Griffin laughs and pushes her shoulder gently. “And give you the satisfaction of being right? Not a chance.”

  But Sayra has tears in h
er eyes that she’s blinking back. They all know it could be the last time they see each other, just like every other parting. Sayra throws her arms around Griffin and holds him tightly, her body shaking as she tries to hide her tears. I can see how much she cares for him. Is that why Aliyah warned me not to let things grow between us?

  “It’s all right,” Griffin says, warmth in every word. “It’s only a week’s journey to the mountains, and then I’ll be back again in another week.”

  “Griff leaves for months sometimes, Sayra,” Aliyah says. “He’ll be all right. He has work to do, as do we.” When Sayra keeps crying, Aliyah takes her gently by her elbows and turns her to look in her eyes. “Monster hunters hunt so we can stay alive. Griffin chooses to go. You know that.”

  I know Griffin has hunted monsters since his parents were killed. I know that my appearance here hasn’t changed that, and that once I leave, he will continue hunting them. But I also know that asking him to take me to the mountains is more perilous than I’d realized. I know I’m the reason Sayra is crying right now.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to no one in particular, to all of them. “I can still go alone. I don’t want to be the reason Griffin is in danger.”

  Griffin shakes his head. “Kali...”

  “Kali,” Aliyah interrupts him. She tilts her head back like a proud lioness, her jaw set. “Don’t look back now. This is the path you’ve chosen, and Griffin’s chosen his. We don’t regret it.”

  I nod, but I’m unsure what to think. I don’t know exactly what world I’m returning to. “And you’re sure you don’t want to come to Ashra with me? I can straighten this whole thing out. The past is the past, isn’t it?”

  “Operation Phoenix was three hundred years ago, but as the story has been passed down, each generation has sworn to never reveal that the exiled survived. We put all humans at risk if we reveal this fact to those on your floating mountain.”