I crawl to Casamir. She isn’t breathing. I turn her over and whack her on the back a few times until she vomits.
When I look up, I see Das Muni staring down at us from the front of the craft, eyes narrowed.
I leap for her, and she turns in on herself, cowering. I take her by the shoulders and shake her. “What were you thinking?” I say. “What kind of animal are you?”
“She’s a mutant,” Arankadash says. “Any fool can see—”
“You shut up,” I say. “Das Muni? What’s going on in your head? We’re all in this together.”
Her eyes fill, but she says nothing.
I let her go, exhausted. The watery stuff in the sea is terribly sticky and tastes like rotten flesh and soiled cotton. I pick up Arankadash’s spear and heave it at the nearest tentacle.
“Don’t aggravate them anymore,” Arankadash says. “Sit down.”
“After all that?” I say. “They nearly killed us!”
“They are curious creatures,” she says. “Let them be.”
“Is everyone mad here?” I say. “Every one of you?”
Casamir spits gummy water from her mouth and croaks, “I’m not mad.”
“That’s what a mad person would say!”
“Look,” Das Muni says, pointing.
There, far ahead of us, the stalactite forest ends, and beyond that, I see the curve of what appears to be a shoreline. There’s a gleaming dagger of light there, too, but I can’t figure out what it is from this far.
I sag back down into the craft. “I hope there’s real water over there,” I say.
Casamir stares over the side of the boat, watching the creatures surfacing farther out. “They’re surfacing and filling their bellies with air,” she says, spitting. “They have to come up for air sooner or later.”
“I’d prefer later,” I say.
When we reach the shore, I hurl myself out of the boat. Arankadash leaps out after me, and we haul the boat up onto the shore.
Das Muni is shaking as I pull her out. I’m soaked in brackish bile. Casamir collapses on the beach and takes fistfuls of the sand into her fingers. She’s gabbling in her language, something that sounds like a prayer.
I stare out at the cone of light that pierces the darkness. It paints a great burnt-yellow circle onto the sands.
Arankadash comes up beside me.
“What happened to your child?” I ask, staring up at the hole in the sky.
“I was given a child,” Arankadash says. “The child-bearer came some time ago, and there were a dozen new children in the settlement to raise. It is a gift from the light. But . . . not all children come out right. This is where we take them when they are wrong. We give them back to the sky. We . . . we never know what happens to them after that.”
“Did you ever want to?” I ask.
She doesn’t reply.
I take a moment to consider how much to tell her, and then I say, “I think I threw away a child. I don’t have a clear memory of it, but it was a child, no bigger than my fist, and I threw it into the darkness. I know what it is to want a resolution.”
Casamir whistles softly. “That’s a long way up, Zan.”
“It was a long way here,” I say, shaking away my memory. Arankadash is still not looking at me. What did I expect? “I’m not turning around. How do we get up there?” There’s no wall to climb, no rope, only a blistered hole in the sky, just as Arankadash described it.
Casamir walks over to it, and I follow. We both stand in the streaming light coming in from above. I squint, trying to see the source of the light, but it’s so dazzling, I can’t see what’s making it.
“Ideas?” I say.
Casamir chews her lip. She counts off six paces, then six more, bringing her to the edge of the circle of light. “Huh,” she mumbles, and then she starts doing what I assume are sums in her language.
I cross my arms and examine the edges of the hole. Like the blistered folds of the hole in the Mokshi, it looks like something has burst down toward us as opposed to bursting up and out. That implies plenty of stuff falls in but not much goes out. Only the babies.
“Are you sure they ascend?” I ask Arankadash. “The babies? You’re sure they’re not . . . eaten?”
“I have heard . . . ,” Arankadash says. “I have heard that they go up in the light.”
I stare up again, long enough to be a little blinded when I look away. Whatever power the light has, it doesn’t work on me or Casamir.
Casamir brings her torch over. I feel the heat of it as she raises it high. “I have an idea,” she says. “But it may be a bit . . . labor-intensive.”
“It’s not as if we’ve got anywhere else to go,” I say, “but up.”
“Hot air rises,” Casamir says, tapping the torch. “We’ve made sacs of heated air with torches at home to scout out the upper reaches of the sky and provide transit. It’s a possible thing.”
“You’re kidding,” I say.
“I never joke about science.”
“I doubt a backpack full of air is going to be enough to carry me up,” I say. “Even if we can get one of these airtight.”
Casamir gestures to the sea. “We’ve seen that those things have got sacs they use to surface,” she says. “We can use those.”
“They’d need to be butchered and dried and—”
“I did say labor-intensive,” Casamir says.
“Well,” I say, and sigh, because nothing here is ever easy. “You want us to go back in and fish that thing out, don’t you?”
“Sorry?” she says.
“Better than being stuck here.”
We head back into the boat.
“THE SECRET TO LEADERSHIP IS NOT TO BE A PARTICULARLY INTELLIGENT PERSON. IT IS TO SURROUND ONESELF WITH THOSE FAR SMARTER THAN ONESELF. AND TRY NOT TO KILL THEM.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
27
ZAN
Hauling and drying out the creature is a massive undertaking. I’m not sure Casamir realized what an ordeal it would be. But there are four of us and one creature, and nowhere else to go but up. We make neat work of it.
When it is done, I’m still not convinced this is going to be successful. I sit down on the beach and wipe my face on my sleeve as Casamir stuffs the torch into the end of the animal’s sac.
We wait. Casamir seems utterly confident. She crouches next to the thing, muttering to herself. Arankadash is already asleep a few paces away, probably the smartest one of us. Das Muni is still picking her way up the beach, putting shiny baubles into her pocket.
I’m not sure when I first notice the bag inflating. It seems like an age has gone by. But there it is, sure enough: a rippling there at the end of the organ.
Casamir claps her hands and comes over. “It’ll be a while,” she says. “Let’s eat.”
We sit down to eat and watch the organ slowly inflate. Above us, the canopy of green fungi shifts color again. I fear another rain of little snake creatures, but there’s nothing this time, only a dimming of the light.
“You still up for going this far?” I ask Casamir.
She leans back on her elbows, grins. “This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. Wait until they hear about it back home. No one has gone this far.” She gazes up at the halo of light.
“Maybe there is a reason for that,” Arankadash says, sitting down next to us. She rifles through Casamir’s pack for an apple and peels away the outer skin. I wonder why I haven’t thought to do that yet.
“Don’t be superstitious,” Casamir says.
Arankadash says, “Not everything can be explained with the mind. There are larger things than our mind, things so great we cannot comprehend them.”
“Believing that is what keeps the mind weak,” Casamir says.
“I know only what I’ve seen,” I say, “and I’ve seen other worlds just like this one, hundreds of them, hanging in the darkness.”
“Well, you’re mad,” Casamir says, “but I’m getting used to
you.”
“It’s no madder than this idea,” Arankadash says, nodding to the half-inflated balloon.
“It’s simple science,” Casamir says. “Hot air rises. You’ve never made a paper lantern?”
“What’s paper?” Arankadash says.
“It’s so strange,” I say, “that we all live in the same place, but everything is so different from place to place.”
“Not really,” Casamir says. “If everything is the same, we wouldn’t be living in a free society. It would be a tyranny. Who wants to live in a hierarchy? When you have hierarchy, someone always has to be at the bottom. I can’t live comfortably, knowing someone is always suffering so I can have more.”
“Maybe you’d be at the top,” Arankadash says. “The priests get more resources in our city. They do important work.”
“I can’t speak for everyone, obviously,” Casamir says, rolling her eyes.
Arankadash snorts and finishes the apple. “You tinkers, always thinking you’re so much better. If we didn’t kill the mutants before they stormed your level, you would all die of stupidity. You cannot even pick up a club.”
Casamir says, “It’s not a club getting us up there to see what happened to your child, is it?”
Arankadash says nothing.
“Sorry,” Casamir says.
I glance at Arankadash. “You’re coming with us?” I say. Had she told Casamir this when I was asleep? When did she decide this?
She gazes up at the hole in the sky. “I want to know,” she says. “I want to know what happens to our children. What happened . . . to my child.”
“I’m not sure you’ll be able to get back,” I say.
“I have nothing to go back for,” Arankadash says. “I want to know what’s up there.” She gets up. “You sleep,” she says. “I’ll keep watch.” She does not look at Casamir as she walks away, back into the halo of light.
“I’m not trying to be mean,” Casamir says.
“Intent doesn’t always matter,” I say.
She’s still trying to talk to me as I doze off. Sometimes it’s just best to let her ramble.
It’s Arankadash who wakes me. I’m not sure how much time has passed, but the fungi overhead are brilliant green again, and I see the pale, billowing form of the ballooned organ behind her. It squirms like a fat maggot, still rippling as it inflates.
Casamir is by its side, counting off the rope again. She holds tight to it, though it’s tied off behind her on a jagged piece of metal jutting up from the beach.
“Something wrong?” I ask Arankadash.
It’s Casamir who answers. “I’m not sure it’s going to hold me,” she says.
I walk over. “It’s not full yet. Maybe—”
Casamir shakes her head. “I’m too heavy,” she says. “We’ll need to . . . I don’t know, construct a second balloon, maybe sew it to this one?”
“Sew it with what?” I say.
She is gnawing on her lip, which I haven’t seen her do before.
I glance over at Arankadash. We are both far larger than Casamir. I’m broader and taller, and though Arankadash is leaner than me, she’s much taller than I am. If the balloon won’t hold Casamir, it won’t hold either of us.
“What about Das Muni?” I say.
“What?” Casamir says. The look she gives me tells me she didn’t even consider that option.
“Das Muni’s half your weight,” I say. “She can get up there.”
“And the rest of us?” Arankadash says.
“Casamir?” I say.
She shakes her head. “I don’t . . . a pulley, maybe? But that’s complicated. We can rig another line to the balloon. She gets it up there, puts it over something, and from down here, we can help pull up another person. Might save us some climbing time. Honestly, that’s so far up, I’m not sure I can even do it on my own, just climbing.”
“So, we’ll put together more rope,” I say.
“You want to leave her up there alone?” Arankadash says, low. I look for Das Muni. She is sitting far down on the beach, hugging her knees to her chest.
“She can do it,” I say. “She’s stronger than she looks.”
“It’s not her strength that concerns me,” Arankadash says.
“I have more reason to trust her than you,” I say. “Yet here we are.”
Arankadash huffs out a breath of displeasure.
“All right,” Casamir says. “We’ll get more rope.”
Making rope takes a lot of time, but when it’s done and Casamir has explained the pulley to Das Muni, we tie her into a makeshift harness made of rope and hook her to the balloon.
As I check the knots, I say quietly, “Are you sure you can do this?”
She nods. She gazes at me with her big, glassy eyes. Her large ears twitch in the folds of her cowl. “I would do anything for you,” she says softly.
“Don’t do it for me,” I say. “Do it for you.”
“All right,” she says.
I cannot bear her looking at me, so I step away. Nod at Casamir.
“Hold on,” Casamir tells her. I get behind Casamir to help her guide the rope, and the balloon with it. She unties the balloon from the metal crag and Das Muni slowly begins to rise.
As Das Muni’s feet leave the ground, she squeezes her eyes shut. I watch her ascent, so slow and laborious that I don’t believe she will reach the hole in the sky.
Casamir does not take her gaze from Das Muni. She shifts her weight back, righting the balloon’s course to ensure it doesn’t hit the edges of the hole but goes up clean through it.
“Not bad for a tinker, huh?” Casamir says.
“Not for a tinker,” Arankadash says.
The balloon continues drifting upward. I hope there’s something for Das Muni to affix that rope to up there, because I’ve just started really imagining the climb up. It’s at least twice the height of the climb that Casamir and I did back in the recycling pits.
Casamir hisses and steps back again. “Help me right her!” she says. “There’s a wind up there!”
Das Muni is tugged hard to the left of the hole. I grab the rope and help haul the balloon back. She’s only a few body lengths from the top now.
“All right, let go,” Casamir says.
I do. The wind has died down and the rope is no longer pulling in the other direction.
“Think she’ll get eaten by something up there?” Arankadash asks.
“Too late for that now,” I say.
The balloon rises into the crack in the sky.
“All right, help me pull it flush against the side,” Casamir says.
We pull against the rope so Das Muni can get her footing on the rim of the hole, but we can’t see much of anything anymore. The light hurts my eyes, and by now I’m a little blinded from staring up at it for so long.
“Now what?” I say.
“Just hold it.”
We wait. Sweat pours down my face. Casamir wipes her forehead on her sleeve.
I can’t stare up anymore without pain, so I look down, trying to clear my vision. Arankadash is right. There could be anything up there. What’s making the light? If it kills Das Muni and pops the balloon, we’re stuck. What then? Turn around? Find some other way up?
“Little help!” Casamir says.
I grab the rope. The balloon is tugging more strongly now.
“That mean she’s free?” I ask.
Casamir doesn’t answer.
I suppose it could mean all sorts of things. It could mean something ripped her off the balloon and ate her.
I see something fall from the sky. I step forward, instinctively, ready to catch Das Muni falling.
But it’s not Das Muni. It’s the rope. The one we need hooked up there so we can haul each other up.
Arankadash grabs it as it snaps down. It’s just barely long enough for her to reach.
“I’ll go up,” I say.
“No,” Casamir says. “Me first.”
“The heaviest
person should go first,” I say. “That will give us two people on the ground here to help haul me up.”
“Yes,” Casamir says, and sighs as if I’m an idiot, a sigh I am getting used to. “But if the heaviest person waits until last, then there will be three people to help pull them up from the other direction.”
When I work it out, it makes sense, but the idea of leaving Casamir and Das Muni together, or Casamir, Arankadash, and Das Muni together without me doesn’t sit right.
Casamir folds her arms. “It’s science,” she says.
I gaze back up at the hole in the sky. “Well,” I say, “I can’t argue with science, now, can I?” No more than I can argue about gods with Casamir.
We work together to pull the balloon back down and get Casamir strapped to it.
Arankadash and I pull on the rope affixed above, and with the balloon’s help, we send Casamir up into the light too.
She yells something down at us when she gets up there, but I can’t make it out. I only hear the second part: “Send Arankadash!”
Arankadash and I haul the balloon back down and knot her up.
“This seems to be the easiest part,” she says.
“I like easy,” I say. “We deserve it.”
I haul from the bottom, they haul from the top, and after a few minutes, Arankadash, too, disappears into the halo of light.
I’m alone on the ground for the first time since I fell into the recycling pit. I should enjoy the silence, but I can’t help but stare out at the water and the floundering boat, which has fallen over on its side.
I walk over to it and right it, then push it back into the water. It paddles off happily, hopefully back to the other side.
There’s yelling from above, so I run back and haul on the balloon so they don’t think I’ve been eaten.
I tie off the balloon on the metal crag while I knot it around me. By now, the rope is slippery and frayed. I chance one last look up into nothing, then yank the rope free and call, “Haul me up!”
The balloon lifts me just enough so my toes brush the ground, but that’s it. I have to admit Casamir’s reasoning about weight is sound.
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