Emilie and the Sky World

by Martha Wells

  Hyacinth settled in, sinking down into a sprawl on the ledge that made it hard to distinguish from a clump of foliage. Emilie hunkered down and tried to follow suit.

  They waited for a while, the stone grating on Emilie’s knees, until she began to get very thirsty. She was about to climb back down into cover so she could get her water flask out of her pack when she saw shadows moving in the gap that led into the camp. She froze and huddled down as far as she could.

  It was Dr Deverrin who stepped out of the gap, followed by Miss Deverrin. Emilie could tell they were talking but couldn’t make out the words. Miss Deverrin seemed to be worried and Dr Deverrin was reassuring her. Then Dr Deverrin turned away and started down the steps.

  Emilie watched with narrowed eyes. He did move awfully easily for an older man. She had been thinking of him as being under the control of some creature or being, something that was mentally affecting him. But maybe that wasn’t him at all, just something that had made itself look like him. She really wasn’t certain what was worse.

  He made his way down the steps and into a ravine in the side of the hill, then followed it until he disappeared from view. Hyacinth flowed into motion, slipping back down the fold in the rock to follow. Emilie scrambled after it.

  What followed was an exceedingly difficult exercise in climbing, crouching, and crab-walking up slopes, at least for Emilie. Hyacinth, with its light weight and extra limbs, was able to make it all look easy. Sweating and struggling to keep up, Emilie knew it was anything but.

  Hyacinth kept darting ahead to watch the route Dr Deverrin took, then returning to lead Emilie. They went down and around the side of the hill, through several jumbles of boulders, across a dry riverbed, and then into a shallow canyon whose floor was studded with giant shards of the blue crystal. The ground was flatter and easier to walk on, but Emilie didn’t like the idea of what would happen if they stumbled and fell against a crystal; all those edges looked sharp.

  Then Emilie spotted something ahead, a metal spire towering over the tall shards. She brushed Hyacinth’s blossoms to get its attention and pointed up at the spire. It froze for an instant, then began to move rapidly sideways, making its way toward the side of the canyon. They climbed the smooth, sloping stone wall and took cover behind some tumbled rock.

  Ahead, at the far end of the canyon, they could see what the spire was attached to. It was a ship of some kind, an aether-ship. Hyacinth quivered all over with excitement.

  The little ship was made of bright pewter-colored metal, with a rounded flat-roofed cabin studded by little windows. Standing above it was a metal sail, at least three times as large as the rest of the ship. The resemblance to the aether-sailer was hard to miss. “It’s your ship,” Emilie said to Hyacinth in a voiceless whisper. “A small version of the bigger one?” Then the obvious explanation struck her. “Oh… It’s a lifeboat. Or a launch?”

  Dr Deverrin was just coming out from between the blue shards, making his way toward the little ship. He came up to a round opening at the back and climbed inside. Hyacinth made a noise she had hadn’t heard it make before, a sort of long hissing sound. She realized she hadn’t heard it make any sort of noise before and thought it must be in the grip of some extremely strong emotion. Emilie dug in her pack and pulled out the professor’s telescope, hoping to get a close look at Dr Deverrin’s expression when he left the ship.

  After an interminable time, Deverrin finally emerged. Emilie focused the telescope on him, but his expression was completely blank. It was so blank, it was like looking at the face of a dead person laid out by the undertaker for the relatives to take their last look. It gave her a cold sensation in the pit of her stomach. It was just one more sign that Dr Marlende was right. And she wondered if the other members of Dr Deverrin’s party had any idea this ship was here.

  She would bet they didn’t.

  They watched Dr Deverrin walk back into the forest of blue shards, then sat quietly, giving him time to cross it. He appeared briefly at the far end, just before he disappeared around a fold of rock. They waited some more, for safety’s sake, then climbed down to the canyon floor.

  This wasn’t something she and Hyacinth had to discuss; it was clear they were going to the little ship.

  Hyacinth bolted for it. Emilie had to keep stopping and looking toward the top of the canyon, in case this was a trick by Dr Deverrin and he meant to double back and catch them. But there was no movement among the crystal shards.

  The aether-ship sat at an angle against the side of the canyon, but it didn’t look as if it had crashed. It looked as if it had simply been deposited there. Maybe it had, by the aether current, just like the rest of them. Hyacinth went to the stern under the sail, where the round hatch was. The door stood partway open and it flowed inside without hesitation. Emilie followed.

  There was no mistaking that this ship had been built by the same people as the big aether-sailer. The walls of the long cabin were the same bronze color, with the same sort of chased metal strands embedded in the curved ceiling, except these didn’t glow with light. Hyacinth went forward to the little round windows at the front, where there was a smaller version of the folded metal-paper globe, only about a foot across. In front of it was a panel with the same metal-paper controls as on the aether-sailer.

  Hyacinth moved its blossoms over the panel, and light flickered in the metal strands in the ceiling. “It still works!” Emilie pointed upward. She had thought the little ship was a derelict. They might be able to use this to get everyone out of this place and back to the airship. A terrible thought hit her. Did Hyacinth mean to leave now? “Uh, it still works, and everything, but are you actually planning to leave, because I can’t go with you but if you would care to wait…”

  She trailed off as Hyacinth wasn’t listening. It had opened a panel in the wall and drew out a handful of the metal-paper. It turned to hand it to Emilie. After a moment of hesitation, she held out her cupped hands and took it.

  Hyacinth turned to the panel and took out another clump of metal-paper. This one it kept, balancing it in several of its front blossoms. Emilie felt her metal-paper warm slightly against her skin. She hoped Hyacinth wasn’t planning to leave and expecting her to help it pilot the ship. “What is this?”

  The clump it was holding moved by itself as if in response, the metal-paper shifting into different patterns. It moved its blossoms over it again, then turned to face her expectantly. She stared back at it. It poked at the metal-paper clump in her hands and Emilie looked down at it.

  In the center of the clump had formed words, words in Menaen. They said, It is a translator.

  Emilie sat down heavily, her knees weak with reaction. Hyacinth hadn’t spoken aloud, or at least not in any way that she could hear. But this device would let them talk, and if they could talk, they could plan. She said, “That is a huge relief.”

  It sat down too, dropping down onto the deck, most of its blossoms limp with weariness. For me, also.

  So they talked. It was much easier than waving at each other. Its name and the name of the place it had come from didn’t translate into Menaen, but when she told it she had been calling it “Hyacinth”, it said it didn’t mind. She supposed the word didn’t translate, any more than its name for her did.

  It had come with its people on the aether-sailer, to explore this new current they had discovered. From what it said about the aether currents, the whole system was far more complex than the concentric circles of worlds that the Philosophers’ Society had envisioned, but Emilie didn’t need to understand it to follow the story.

  All had been going well aboard the aether-sailer when one of the crew members began to act oddly, injuring others, and then had sabotaged the ship. The ship had started to slow down, then finally became stuck in place in the aether current. They had quickly realized that some creature had actually taken over their friend’s mind, and caused him – or her, as the translator wasn’t clear on gender, but that wasn’t important, either – to behave this way
.

  “That’s what happened to Dr Deverrin, the man we followed here,” Emilie told it.

  Yes, it told her, I suspected this when we viewed the camp. I knew this lifeboat was missing and the something something had disappeared. The creature must have destroyed it and then stolen the lifeboat and come here.

  “Wait, that one didn’t translate. Destroyed the what?”

  Hyacinth turned back to her. It was a mechanism, a device, for driving the creature out of a host. The something aboard our ship assembled it, to force the creature out of our friend. I had it with me, but when I woke after being incapacitated by the aether current, it was not there.

  The flower people had used the device to force the aether creature out of their friend, but they hadn’t been able to repair their ship. The other crew members had taken the additional lifeboats and left, but Hyacinth had felt it was its duty to remain behind with this lifeboat, to make one more attempt to free the aether-sailer. But the aether current had started to behave erratically and had snatched the lifeboat away while Hyacinth was working on the aether-sailer. It had seen the airship arrive, and it had been afraid to answer their hails, thinking they had been the ones who sent the creature. It had spied on Dr Marlende’s party, and had just decided to try to contact them when the aether current had swept over the ship. Hyacinth had not been caught by the current but had been incapacitated by it, and had lain dormant for some time. It had just woken and heard movement on the ship again before it had run into her party. After a short time, it had become clear, even without being able to understand their speech, that they had not sent the creature and were just as much at the mercy of these erratic aether currents as it was.

  Emilie nodded. “Do you think the creature is making the currents do all this? That it made them grab your ship and all of us?”

  Yes. But how, or why, is unknown to me. Do you know what this place is?

  “I was going to ask you that.” It wasn’t reassuring that Hyacinth didn’t know. “It looked to us as if the aether current picked up chunks of land and brought them here. Is there any reason why someone would make an aether current do that?”

  It seems dangerous and unwieldy. But there must be some compelling reason to create this construction. It might be a natural phenomenon, but it is not one my civilization has ever encountered before.

  “We’ve never seen anything like it, either.” She told it about the disappearance of the Deverrin party in their airship last year, and how they had been presumed dead, and how Professor Abindon had detected the aether-sailer and they had come up through the current to see what it was. “So the creature must have come here on the lifeboat after it sabotaged your ship and gotten control of Dr Deverrin the way it did your crew member.” But why was it doing this? Was it just collecting aether-ships and people, or did it have some sort of goal? “There’s one thing I don’t understand. It attacked your ship and sabotaged it so it would be trapped in place. Why?”

  We talked much on this, before the others left. We think it must want something from our ship, or perhaps to use it to try to travel somewhere within the current. But this makes little sense in light of its later activities. It has succeeded in this; why is it still here?

  “Yes, exactly. And does this little ship still work? I mean, if the creature wanted to use it to go somewhere, could it do it?” Could we do it? she wondered. Perhaps they could pick the others up and flee back to the airship or the aether-sailer.

  Hyacinth’s blossoms shivered in agitation. The power is low, and the something is a little damaged, but flight is still possible. But I also wonder... Why did the creature come here at this moment?

  Emilie felt a cold chill travel down her spine. “Oh. Maybe it was setting a trap for us. Maybe it realized we were watching it.”

  They both turned to peer out the little windows. Nothing moved in the canyon, though there could be a dozen people hiding among the blue shards. Emilie forced down the fear and made herself think. She looked up at Hyacinth, though she didn’t know if it could really see her face, or if it did, if it could read her expression. “If you help me free my people from this creature, we’ll help you fix your aether-sailer so you can get it out of the current and take it home.”

  Hyacinth waved its blossoms. This was what I hoped we could do.

  Emilie nodded tightly. It was going to help her. That made her breathe a little easier. “I think… If we can get back to our airship, Daniel and Seth are there, and they can help us.”

  Hyacinth considered briefly, its blossoms opening and closing, and Emilie realized she was asking it to extend them a great deal of trust, just on her word. But it said, We will do this. If we leave immediately, the creature will not be able to trap us, if that was its intention.

  Hyacinth turned to the panel at the very front of the ship and ran its petals over the metal-paper control. Emilie felt a hum travel through the deck, and the bronze lights blinked and began to glow softly. There were no chairs to sit in, so she crouched down on the deck where she could peer out one of the lower windows and hold on to a rail built into the wall.

  The deck pushed against her feet as the ship lifted off the ground. The blue shards dropped away below, and Emilie was glad to see they were moving away from the camp, so there was no chance of the Deverrins seeing it launch. If Dr Deverrin wasn’t lurking out there waiting to trap them, then the longer it took him to realize the ship was gone, the better.

  The ship moved away from the canyon, out over a dry lake bed. Then it shuddered and Emilie fell back, sitting down hard. “What happened?” It occurred to her belatedly that Dr Deverrin’s trap might have involved a weapon that could shoot them out of the air.

  Hyacinth didn’t answer, too occupied to look at the translator. The ship shuddered again, and the metal-paper controls and the globe were all flowing and changing like water. Another shudder, and Hyacinth waved its petals in agitation. Then the ship started to sink gently down toward the ground.

  Once they had landed on the lumpy surface of the lake bed, Hyacinth turned to her and the translator said, Something is wrong. The ship will not enter the aether current. We cannot travel away from this place without making repairs to the aether navigation equipment. It drooped a little. It may take some time.

  Emilie eased back into a sitting position and let go of her death grip on the railing. “Well, now we know why the creature didn’t use the ship to escape.” She let her breath out in frustration. “But we still don’t know why it left the camp and came to the ship. If it knew we were following it and it meant to trap us, it should have done it right away and not given us a chance to move the ship. It must have come here for another reason.”

  Hyacinth pivoted, as if looking over the interior of the ship for anything that was different. Perhaps it has hidden something here. It got up and started to search, finding little cabinets in the walls to look through that Emilie hadn’t even seen were there. She followed it around, watching as it pulled various incomprehensible – at least to her – objects out and examined them. If this was a lifeboat, she supposed most of them must be supplies and survival gear for flower people. The paper started to move in her hands again and spelled out: There is nothing here that does not belong.

  Emilie turned around again, looking over the ship. It didn’t seem disturbed, except by the search Hyacinth had just made. “So why did the creature come here in the first place and take over Dr Deverrin? I mean, here to all these jumbled-up pieces of land, this construction. If it wanted to fly away, it had the aether-sailer. I mean, yes, you said it sabotaged it, but then it should know how to fix it again, right?”

  Hyacinth’s blossoms suddenly all opened. The metal-paper formed the words: You said the people in the camp had been here for some time?

  “Around a year. That’s a long time,” she added, in case it didn’t translate. “Before your aether-sailer arrived.” She realized the problem. “But this construction must have been here for at least a year, because what was left of th
eir airship crashed on it. So if the aether creature created this place, it could have taken over Dr Deverrin first. It could even have sabotaged the Deverrin airship, just like it did your aether-sailer.”

  And it did not have access to this lifeboat until recently, so it could not have been traveling back and forth between here and the aether-sailer.

  “It makes more sense if there’s two of them.” Emilie’s throat was suddenly dry. “If the creature that attacked your crew is still on the aether-sailer. If the creature who took over Dr Deverrin is a different one.”

  If so... Perhaps the creature came to this ship to communicate with its companion. Hyacinth flowed toward the front, to crouch in front of the control panels again. Its petals moved over the metal-paper surfaces. After a moment, it swung back to face her. We are correct. The communications device has been used. It has contacted the aether-sailer. Hyacinth’s blossoms shivered. It must have been talking to someone.

  Emilie nodded to herself, the cold feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. The creature had been there the whole time while they had been searching the aether-sailer. “These two creatures are planning something. They don’t just want to escape. If they did, Dr Deverrin would be trying to repair this ship, so he could get back to his friend on the aether-sailer and the two of them could leave.”

  Hyacinth turned back to her. This ship has not been here until recently. Perhaps they have not been able to communicate before now.

  Emilie sat down on the deck and thought hard. “I’m not sure we can count on that. The one that’s back in the aether-sailer isn’t inside a person anymore, right? They’re aether creatures, so they must be able to travel in the aether. Maybe it can still travel between here and the ship.” She shook her head in frustration. There was still so much they didn’t know. “I don’t think it matters what they’re planning so much, at least not at the moment. We just need to get my people and you and your ship, and this ship too, away from them.” She looked up. “The other Deverrins don’t seem to know that the creature is there at all. They think he’s just Dr Deverrin. But Dr Marlende – he’s the leader of our expedition – he knew right away it wasn’t Dr Deverrin.” It had to be very difficult to believe that a strange ghost-aether-creature had taken over your father or mentor. But still, with all this time to witness his odd behaviour… “Do the creatures confuse people, make them believe things? I’m trying to figure out why the other Deverrins haven’t noticed anything odd.”