Children of a Broken Sky (Redemption Chronicle Book 1)

by Adam J Nicolai

  Somehow, that only made her timidity rankle more. He had tried to hide, too; but eventually, he'd been dragged out.

  "Syn living here now?" he asked.

  Helix glanced back. "Oh—yeah. She has to share a room with Beth."

  "You two be good today," Lyseira's mom said. She gave them each a quick hug. "With most of the town helping, we might even get the near shore done today if we're lucky. I'll see you tonight."

  "Are you hungry, you two?" Helix's mom asked as she left.

  Lyseira answered for both of them. "No, ma'am. Mom made breakfast."

  "I see. Well, we've yet to have it here, so I'm going to get it started. You two make yourselves at home."

  The day was an endless procession of pitying looks and people walking on eggshells. Helix's mom kept trying to cheer Seth up, which only made him more angry and quiet, and Helix constantly tried to play with him, like the older boy thought it was his duty to keep him busy. Now and then Lyseira would intervene, gently steering them away to give him some space. She seemed to understand what he wanted, and alone among everyone, he appreciated her attempts to help. But she was only seven, and Helix and his mother were sure they knew best.

  When Helix's mom served an early lunch of radish stew—a meal Seth had always found revolting—he made up his mind.

  Today was the day.

  After lunch Helix's mom turned them outside to play. Syntal tried to retreat back to her room, but her aunt wouldn't have it. She sent her out with the rest of them, insisting that she "needed the air."

  Helix stared at the grass, kicking idly. Lyseira asked what Seth wanted to do, but he just shrugged.

  What do I want to do? I want to get out of here. He had no place in mind; he just wanted to escape this one. To get away from the pitying looks, to run until something else grabbed his interest and wouldn't let it go. He was going to do it; the only trick was to avoid being followed.

  When the idea occurred to him, he marveled at his own cunning.

  "Let's play hide'n'sneak," he said.

  Helix brightened. "M'sai," he said. "Let's play on teams! We can play girls against boys," he added, glaring at Lyseira.

  "I don't want to play teams," Syntal said. "Let's just play normal."

  "Just normal," Seth agreed.

  The kids pulled grass to see who would be the seeker, and Lyseira came up short. "'Member your mom said we can't leave the yard," she reminded the others as she settled against a tree.

  "Hey, that's not fair!" Helix sputtered. "You have to face the house or the tree or something, or you can just look any time!"

  "I don't cheat," Lyseira retorted, but turned to face the tree. Helix and Syntal scattered around behind the house to hide, leaving Seth alone in the front with Lyseira, who had her eyes closed.

  It was perfect. He bounded across the road, and the thrill of each running step knocked loose an epiphany. He realized exactly where he wanted to go.

  "I can't see you, I can't see you, I can't see you, this I swear,

  "But I might hear you, I might smell you ‘cause of stinky underwear,

  "Try your best to hide from me, while I say the rhyme—

  "But do it fast because I'll only say it two more times!"

  "Three times!" Helix yelled from somewhere behind the house. "Cheater!"

  I'll be gone when she's done, Seth realized. Who knows if I'll even come back. I could leave for good, set out on my own. I could join the Pazervers. If I—

  "Seth!" Lyseira called. The word tripped him; he stumbled to a stop. "You're supposed to stay in the yard!" She waved at him from the tree.

  She peeked? He couldn't believe it. It was so unfair. Lyseira, of all people? Lyseira had peeked?

  "Cheater!" he shrieked, so hard his voice broke.

  Then he ran.

  ii. Angbar

  He wasn't sure his parents would help with the cleanup. They weren't always welcome when the whole village was around. In the end, though, his dad had insisted they go, and Mom had agreed.

  The wreckage along the river sounded exciting—he really wanted to see the broken bridge—but they told him to stay home. He begged and wheedled, cajoled and whined. They were steadfast. "Stay inside and behave yourself," they admonished as they left.

  There was no chance of that.

  Outside it was all blue sky and the buzzing of cicadas. The breeze greeted him like an old friend with a warm hug. And the woods...

  The woods had completely transformed for him.

  Trees were upended and spilled across one another; gentle slopes had given birth to new ravines and jagged hillsides. Paths that he'd known for years were gone. Every branch was a story of apocalypse.

  He pretended he was in the legendary Veiling Green, the forest where no one who entered ever returned. Maybe this is what it's like there, he thought: every familiar sight a twisted reflection, like something from a dream.

  When the forest surrendered to the vastness of the lake shore, he was amazed anew. Branches and uprooted plants littered the shoreline. Debris and treasure lay everywhere. Wooden boards, dishes, nails, dolls—everything he could imagine, washed downstream from Southlight or maybe even from other villages further upstream.

  It was the exclamation point at the end of the storm. All the tales of the storm's brutality concluded here. Excited, he ran to the shoreline.

  It became a battlefield, and he was the last survivor of the army that had lost.

  Then it was the remains of a city under the lake, expelled from the depths in a violent spasm of dark magic.

  He was just becoming a pirate who had devastated an enemy ship and was picking through its beached ruins for booty, when he saw Seth burst out of the woods.

  The boy's face burned red; he was panting like a dog. He bent over double, gasping for air, then collapsed to his knees.

  "Seth!" Angbar called as he ran to meet him. "What are you doing here? Look at all this stuff! Hey, do you think some of this stuff is your stuff? Because I heard your house fell in!"

  Seth's hair stuck to his head like a clump of sweaty seaweed. He was panting too hard to answer Angbar's questions, but he leveled a glare at him that could've melted stone.

  Angbar must've been talking too much again—he did that at home sometimes and earned similar looks from his parents—but he was too excited to hold back. "You gotta see it all, it's washed up all over the lake. I think that one might have gold in it—" he started, when Helix, Lyseira, and Syntal came stumbling out of the woods as well.

  "Aha!" Helix shouted. "I told you he'd be at the lake!" The freckled boy started running, the two girls right behind him.

  Seth bolted to his feet. "Go!" he hissed at Angbar, waving him further down the shore.

  "What — ?"

  "Just go!" Seth yelled, shoving him hard in the back before running past him. Angbar staggered in the mud, but caught his feet and started running, completely confused.

  "What's going on?" he demanded.

  "I didn't want... them to follow me!" Seth panted back. He fell into a brisk walk before collapsing again to the mud, his chest heaving.

  Angbar stopped with him, and a flash caught his eye on the far end of the lake. Whoa. "Did you see that?" Again Seth ignored him, too winded to respond.

  Angbar squinted toward the far shore, but the glimmer was gone.

  As the others caught up, Seth climbed to his feet. "Well?" he challenged. "What are you gonna do, did you tell your mom, Helix? Lyseira? I didn't want you lot to come with, you coulda just let me go!"

  Lyseira shook her head slowly, drawing huge breaths. "Seth," she started, "Mom said—"

  It happened again. The sun found a hole in the clouds, the lake lit up like a torch, and the glow ignited a twinkle on the shore. Then the clouds covered the sun again, and the glimmer died.

  "There's sumthin' there," Angbar urged. He couldn't make out anything. "Did you see it?"

  Syntal tracked his gesture, but shook her head.

  "Lyseira chased you," H
elix protested. "I tried to stop her."

  Seth scowled. "That's fishguts! You were ahead of her!"

  Helix shrugged.

  "I'm goin'," Angbar said. When the others ignored him again, he started walking. If it's a huge pile of pirate gold, they'll be sorry. He saw himself returning to the group, a patch over his eye and a parrot on his shoulder, the richest pirate boy in Southlight. I tried to tell you, he'd say.

  Syntal caught up to him, leaving the others to argue on the beach. "Do you know what it was?"

  Angbar shook his head. "I don't know, that's why I want to go look. I've found all kinds of things down here. There's all this stuff washed up!"

  He told her about the treasures he'd found so far, like the little red horse and the magic wand. He was trying to dig the chunk of colored glass from his pocket when he suddenly wondered if he should say something about the accident.

  Her parents were gone. She had to be sad. But was there any point in saying anything? All he could think to say was, "I'm sorry your parents died." What would that accomplish?

  His thoughts roamed back to more pressing matters. How large would the pile of gold be? How much could he buy with it? He would have to share some with Syntal, since she had come with. But not half. He had seen it first.

  They'd come all the way around the lake. A distant whisper of a child's yell, something about a cheater, floated lazily across the water.

  Syntal pointed. "Is that it? Look!"

  Something metallic jutted from the mud ahead. It might have had a slight blue tinge, but it was so crusted with filth that it was hard to tell.

  "Careful," Syntal warned as he started clearing the dirt off. "There could be sharp parts."

  The thing was huge; bigger than him. As he chipped at the encasing dirt, he saw that the metal was curved.

  "Armor!" he cried. "It's armor, look!" He thought this specific piece of armor was called a breastplate, but he wasn't sure, so he didn't say anything. Syntal was picky about that kind of thing.

  Reams of mud slid off it as they pulled it from the ground.

  "Look at the marks!" Syntal said. Arcane whorls and sigils, the etchings packed with old dirt, laced the metal. "Is that the First Tongue?"

  "I bet this belonged to a pirate!" Angbar breathed. "Or maybe belongs to a pirate!" A wonderful idea came to him. "I bet his treasure is around here somewhere too!" Then a counter-point: "But what if he comes to find it?"

  Syntal traced one of the long lines in the metal with her finger. "I don't think he will. Look."

  The plate had a gaping hole in it, twisting inward right by the heart. Suddenly Angbar was sure he could see blood stained into the metal.

  "He was stabbed!"

  "Maybe," Syntal said. "But where is he then?"

  Angbar's gaze went to the water. "He took it off," he said, "and swam to his death." He nodded solemnly. "I bet he got ate by sharks."

  "No," Syntal said. "Look here." She knelt at the water's edge, soaking her dress up to her knees, and pulled something small from the shallow water.

  "What is it?" He held his hand out, but Syntal didn't give it to him.

  "A buckle." She turned it over. The metal was badly rusted on this piece; chunks of it were flaking off in her hands. "He used it to tie the armor on with. Helix showed me in Uncle's smithy."

  Angbar looked back to the water. "Syn," he said. "I bet this stuff washed up on shore during the storm! That's why we never saw it before. I bet there's more of it down there too."

  Syntal looked annoyed. "That doesn't make any sense. It's big and heavy. It would sink to the bottom."

  "You saw how strong that storm was! If it could rip down a bridge, it could wash up a little piece of armor!" Syntal jerked her eyes away. "There's more down there, I bet you! What if this pirate had a sword too? Or gold? Or—"

  "It's not a pirate, idiot!" Syntal spat. "There's no pirates in a river! Pirates are in the ocean!"

  "You never know if—"

  "And if this storm was so strong that it would wash up an armor, why would there be anything on the bottom of the lake still? You're so stupid. It would wash up everything, not just leave some things!"

  She seemed really mad, all of a sudden. He plowed on.

  "I heard of a wind storm once that destroyed a whole city, a big one like Shientel, but it picked up one cow and dropped him a hundred miles away completely safe and he wasn't hurt at all. So if that can happen—"

  "That can't happen, that's just some stupid nog story you heard. Or made up, maybe," she accused, glaring.

  That stung a bit. What is she so upset about? "I don't make things up!" he sputtered.

  "You—"

  "Hi Angbar," Lyseira said. She and the others had finally caught up.

  "Hey, Seira," Angbar said, grateful to drop the argument with Syntal. "Look what—"

  "Wow!" Helix raved. "This was on the shore?" The boy grabbed the breastplate, nearly twice as wide as he was, and held it against his chest as if to try it on.

  "Yeah!" Angbar said. It was good to see someone as excited as he was. "A pirate was wearing it and he got stabbed!" Wait, what had he figured out exactly? "While he was on his ship, I mean, and then he fell in and died a hundred years ago. And then in the storm, it got washed up!"

  The breastplate slipped crooked as Helix freed a hand for an imaginary sword. He swung it a few times as the decrepit armor slid through his grasp.

  Even Seth looked a little impressed. "That wasn't no pirate," he said. "Pirates ain't honor-bull, they don't wear armor anyhow."

  "This was a knight's armor," Helix declared. "I could be a knight now."

  "You can't be a knight!" Lyseira said, incredulous. "Knights don't pee on people."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because knights are supposed to be chivalrous!"

  Helix gave her a look that said, You made that word up.

  "I wonder if there's more down in the lake," Angbar mused.

  Syntal scoffed. "Would you just forget it? There's not, there can't be. That doesn't make sense."

  Seth glared at Syntal. "What do you know?" he snapped. "Like you were ever a knight anyway." He looked at Angbar. "Let's dive down and see."

  Lyseira gaped at him. "You can't dive down there! It's dangerous! And the water's dirty, you won't be able to see anything!"

  "I can see fine," Seth said, peering into the filthy water. He clenched his teeth and glared at Syntal. "I'm gonna go."

  Angbar grinned and kicked off his sandals as Seth pulled off his shirt. Helix took one look at Lyseira, saw her indignation, and broke at once into his wicked smirk.

  "You're all crazy!" she said. "Helix, I'm gonna go back'n—"

  "What, tell my mom again?" he snapped. "Go ahead, blabbermouth! By the time you get back to my house we'll be done anyway."

  "Yeah," Angbar said. "And you can't have any of the treasure if you don't help." Standing in his underpants, he found the lake's breeze a bit chillier.

  Lyseira shut her mouth. She was giving up.

  Seth sloshed past Angbar. When the water had reached his chest, he took a deep breath and dove. Angbar waded in behind him, but hesitated.

  There probably wasn't anything in the lake; it was just fun bugging Lyseira with the other boys. That game was losing its appeal fast, though, in the face of the wind. He found himself hoping Seth would surface and tell them he couldn't see anything, so they could all get their clothes back on.

  Seth broke the surface maybe ten feet out, thrashing his head like a dog. "There's something glowing down there!" he exclaimed, and dove again.

  iii. Seth

  An avalanche of silence crashed over him, obliterating Lyseira's nagging and Angbar's prattling. The sun's constant stare shattered into secret, drifting shafts of light. It was an alien landscape, where everything else—every rule, every intrusion—simply ceased.

  Here he had no one to appease but himself; no needs to attend but his own. The blind anger that had plagued him for days, the constant desire
to get away, was suddenly and completely satisfied. He reveled in the water's isolation, drinking it in until he could drown in it.

  Far below, fathoms into the lake's darkness, gleamed a beacon. It was shapeless and small, a washed out, bleary glow of blue and white fading to grey. The light was so miniscule that it may have been a trick of his eyes, deceiving him with a phantom of the sun. It was impossible to interpret and impossibly out of reach.

  But here, he was sovereign. He dove toward it.

  The sun beckoned him back, screaming of folly; but as he descended, its warnings dimmed until the water strangled them. In the ensuing darkness the surreal glow warped beneath him, expanding into hues of violet and green as it fluttered in the lake's currents.

  Without it, he would be blind.

  Beyond the veil of his grief, that ethereal light clamored with portents. As he dove deeper something rose up in him: a ludicrous, serene hope. They're alive, he realized. Or they're dead, and they'll take me with them. But they are there.

  They are there.

  His lungs began to ache. It was too late to turn back, but he didn't care.

  His chest burning, he came to a wall of rock that ended maybe five feet above the lake floor. Kicking, he swam underneath it. Suddenly the glow magnified, but it was coming from above him, behind the rock shelf and upwards. His lungs on fire, he kicked off from the wall and streaked away from the lake floor.

  As if in a dream that would not let him drown, his head broke the surface.

  He sucked in a mouthful of dank air, gasping as he trod water. A rock ledge jutted from the murk in front of him; he latched onto it, his body in the lake but his head mercifully clear, gulping air like a crying newborn.

  When he finally caught his breath, he opened his eyes and forgot to breathe all over again.

  He had surfaced in an underwater cave. The light emanated from the glowing patches of lichen on the walls. They were violet and azure, scarlet and veridian.

  He pulled himself out of the water slowly, too stunned to rush. The cavern unfolded for twenty feet or more before twisting away to his right. The lichen pockmarked all of it, its light glistening on the rock like the blood of a rainbow.