Cloudland

by Lisa Gorton

  After a pause, Wist stood up and strode across the Citadel. Standing beside Lucy, he nodded at Jovius, who ducked his head a moment and then rose. There was another long pause.

  ‘So it’s just us,’ said Lucy. Her words fell into the silence. She suddenly remembered standing in the doorway at home, seeing her father with his hands in the sink while her mother, at the kitchen table, sat with tears leaking from her eyes. They had both noticed Lucy at the same moment. Her mother had looked away while her father dried his hands, then stepped across the room and knelt by Lucy: ‘Your mother needs to go away for a while.’ Why have I remembered this now? Lucy wondered. It was her mother’s words, echoing now in her mind: ‘I can’t, I’m sorry, I just can’t, I can’t . . .’

  With the memory, all Lucy had felt that day flooded through her again. Despair filled her mind until just standing there, standing still, made her flesh ache. She looked at Daniel, his tight little face, at Wist and Jovius holding themselves in front of the crowd as though they had to concentrate to keep from falling. What could they do against the Kazia? Lucy pictured Earth’s flooded cities, the families camped on rooftops setting traps for birds. They were all waiting for the rain to stop – but if the statue was right, it would never stop.

  The statue had climbed onto the table. It stalked over the leftover cakes; with every step, kicking pieces into the Cloudians’ faces. When it reached its place in the wall, it closed its eyes and settled back into stillness. Across the Citadel, the Cloudians stood up, stretched, and gathered in small groups, talking and gesturing at Lucy, while the hunched servants swept the table clean.

  Daniel edged closer. ‘Lucy, listen. I’ve saved some food. As soon as we get out of here, we can find our way back to that trapdoor in the cloud.’ He paused, waiting for Jovius to look away again. ‘There’ll be another mist, sooner or later. We’ll just have to hide till it’s safe to climb down.’

  His face wavered. She saw he was attempting a reassuring smile. She looked at him, his pocket full of cake. ‘But there isn’t anywhere safe, Daniel. Not anymore. Not for long.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Snugs

  ‘Protector?’ A potbellied Cloudian waddled up to Lucy, carrying cloud coats in his arms. He was short, and the coats were so thick, only some tufts of his hair rose over the pile, and his legs stuck out beneath it.

  ‘Coats and boots.’ He bowed, laying them at Lucy’s feet. When he looked up again, his eyes were greedy. Suddenly, with a darting movement, he snatched up Lucy’s hand and tapped one of her fingernails. His touch sent a shiver up Lucy’s arm. The Cloudians, watching in a half-circle, squealed. He scurried back to them and they clustered around him, touching his hand and exclaiming. Lucy turned away, feeling how their stares pressed against her back.

  ‘Are these for me?’ Daniel picked up a coat and boots. The coat swallowed him. Only his face emerged from it. Lucy looked at him – his pointy nose and cheeks flushed with sudden warmth – and felt reality settle around her again.

  The boots came up to her knees. They felt cool, almost damp, when she put them on, and the blood stung through her numb toes. Her coat was so light it tugged her upwards. A cloud sheep sank slowly from the ceiling and hovered in front of her, looking narrow and cold.

  ‘Thanks for the coat,’ she murmured. The creature only blinked its pale eyes.

  ‘Get away, shoo!’ cried Jovius, flapping his arms. The cloud sheep gave Lucy a last stare of bland resentment and floated back to the ceiling.

  Wist stalked towards them. ‘Should get some rest,’ he said, waving his hand at the ceiling. Its dome was the colour of ash. Day was almost over. He guided their little group across the Citadel.

  The Cloudians clapped when Lucy passed. Her tiredness, or the softening light, made her feel as though she was wading through still water. Passing under a low arch, Wist led them into a room so dim Lucy couldn’t tell its size. ‘The Sleeping Cavern,’ said Wist. ‘Take any snug. We’re first to bed.’

  There were clouds in the room: a row of them, evenly spaced. They were the same grey colour as the light, which explained why Lucy hadn’t seen them at first. Egg-shaped, but the size of cars, they hovered a foot above the floor. Snugs, Wist had called them. Lucy walked a little way and saw another row, with another behind it. Every row looked the same, rising from the dusk until Lucy started to feel they were rising to meet her.

  ‘We’ll leave early,’ said Wist. His voice seemed to come from far away. He was already kicking headfirst through a door high in one of the snugs. His toes disappeared with a jerk and his snug lit up, the colour of clouds at sunset.

  ‘Well.’ Lucy paused in front of one of the snugs. Jovius grabbed her ankles and hoisted her up. Like Wist, she went headfirst through a snug door. When she landed, the walls shone as though they were melting. Outside, she heard a muffled thump. Daniel must have gone to bed.

  Curling up in a ball, Lucy found her mind taking refuge in memories of home. It was strange, what she fixed on. She remembered her mother, in the years when she lived with them, drawing all the curtains in the house at five, even in summer, and turning on the lights. Her father had mocked it and Lucy had joined him, and yet now Lucy found herself longing for those closed-in rooms her mother had made, filled with shadows and amber-coloured light. She fell asleep very slowly, the way things fall through water: drifting down without the smallest sound . . .

  She woke gasping. She’d been dreaming she was under water, swimming over the tiled floor of some flooded building: past a pile of empty shoes, between shirts and dresses that waved at her with their arms full of water. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. She was too disturbed by her dream to sleep again. With an awkward, kicking wriggle, she tumbled out of her snug. Around her, the other snugs glowed. The Cloudians must have filed in here while she was sleeping. She thought of waking Daniel, then realised she had no idea which snug was his.

  She ducked under the arch. Now that the Citadel was empty, she saw how big it was. It was almost dawn. Deserted, the Citadel had the forlorn look of a place where people have been celebrating the night before. Lucy saw one of the flying boards and stood on it, but it only twitched irritably.

  In a corner, in a patch of floor between the armchairs, Lucy saw a square of dark. Another trapdoor, she thought, and excitement kicked in her chest. She ran between the armchairs, under a sleeping herd of cloud sheep, and looked down. There was a woman peering up at her, an arm’s length away.

  The woman’s eyes were dull. When Lucy cried out in surprise, the woman didn’t even blink. Lucy knelt by the trapdoor and reached down to touch the woman’s cheek. Her hand bumped against something smooth and cold, and the woman’s face shivered like the sky’s reflection in a lake.

  Lucy whipped back her arm, which bumped against some lever. With a click, the woman vanished. In her place, Lucy saw darkness patterned with lights – like a night sky, only the lights formed grids, squares and rectangles of different sizes: a geometric zodiac. An ache filled Lucy’s chest, even before she realised she was looking at Earth, a city at night; families keeping their lights on against the dark. Across one corner of the square, Lucy saw a black expanse of floodwaters and imagined Amphibians floating on rafts out there in the rain.

  It’s a telescope, she thought. They must watch us the way we watch television. The woman she had seen was as far away as Earth – not staring at Lucy, staring at the rain.

  Lucy felt something stroking her cheeks and realised she was crying. She sat back on her heels and hugged her shins, tucking her face into the hard bundle of her knees. She imagined the floodwaters far below her turning to ice, squeezing the asphalt and dragging the houses down. Grey wind, grey rubble – a world for cold and ice creatures.

  Huddled there with her eyes closed, Lucy heard the silence breaking into small, separate sounds: her own breathing and, somewhere behind her, a bustle like steady rain. But I’m above the rain, she thought, and looked around. Through the arch behind her, in the kitchen, sh
e saw a flickering of activity. Desperate to escape her thoughts, she stood up and walked towards it.

  In the Citadel, the walls and ceiling shone, but in the kitchen the ceiling was low and even the light looked damp. The walls sagged and the floor felt mushy. Lucy thought of walking in the pine forest at home, lifting branches out of leaf rot; there was always a smear of white mould stuck to the wood. The kitchen floor might have been made of that stuff. Taking a step, Lucy half-expected to see spiders scuttling from under her boots.

  The servants crouched at low tables whipping up bowlfuls of cloud. Their hands turned in unison like interlinked cogs. Along the far wall, a line of servants worked like pistons, beating swathes of cloud into glossy ribbons. Lucy felt she had stepped into the secret machinery of clouds. She kept imagining the clang of metal striking metal. Instead, she heard a soft, even beat. Near the far wall, a servant dancing on a platform tapped his heels and moved his arms like wings. He looked like a puppet jerking in time, moved by a spirit of obedience that seemed very like despair.

  The dancer kicked up and landed on two feet with a thump. Without looking up, the Stratus started setting out the food they had made. As they poured the creamy stuff into hundreds of small bowls, they started singing in time with the dancer’s soft tapping beat. They sang in low voices but there were so many of them their song flooded the room. Listening to it, something caught in Lucy’s throat. She imagined sitting in her armchair at home, watching the green colours of the pine forest melt down her rain-wet window. She sank back against the wall – and fell through it, too surprised to make a sound.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Fracta

  A white blank pressed on Lucy’s face. Panicked, she scrabbled in front of her, trying to clear a breathing space. An instant later, she plunged into air. At first, she couldn’t see anything. She felt cloud, damp beneath her knees. Then her eyes cleared. Around her, she saw a circle of servants crouched in a tiny room.

  There were six of them staring at her. ‘This is that Protector they were shouting about,’ murmured one. Beside him, a wizened servant nodded and said nothing. ‘Fracta?’ the first one continued. ‘This is one of the Earth creatures.’

  The one called Fracta had a face as shrunken and impassive as a tortoise. Skin hung in ruffles down her neck. ‘Better for you that you had not found us,’ she said, keeping her eyes on Lucy. ‘Tell me, what do you think of our Cloudland?’

  Lucy opened her mouth to answer and found her thoughts had broken into single words. ‘Beautiful,’ she forced out. ‘Strange.’

  ‘Beautiful and strange.’ Fracta tasted the words. ‘Yes.’ There was another pause. Lucy saw again the long table in the Citadel where the Cirrus and Cumulus feasted while the servants waited at their backs. ‘And unfair. Why do you serve them? Why should you do all the work?’

  Fracta’s eyelids flickered. Behind Lucy, two Stratus started whispering. Fracta glanced at them and they fell silent.

  ‘There is an old rule,’ said Fracta. ‘Statues for law and Cirrus for watching, Cumulus for cities and Stratus for work. You have heard this?’

  Lucy shook her head.

  ‘Well,’ Fracta tilted her chin sideways, ‘perhaps you know as little as you say. Or perhaps you have Earth tricks I cannot recognise.’

  A knot-faced servant whispered in Fracta’s ear. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘No needless violence. The Stratus can keep her.’

  ‘Keep me?’ Lucy’s lungs burnt as though she was running hard.

  ‘Please understand that we deal in necessities.’ Fracta spoke in the same impassive voice. She considered Lucy for a long moment. Lucy forced herself not to look away, though her whole body was shaking.

  ‘Let me tell you a story to make clear what I mean . . . Last year, three Stratus decided they could not work an hour more. They put down their tools and crept from the cellar, buried in a cloud city, where for two decades they had worked without pause. Stepping into the street, they saw the stars: the same stars they had seen in their first decade, living as harvesters on the Stratum. Without much thought, they stole three flight boards and rode down the dark, back to their first home.’

  Fracta’s voice was soft. The other Stratus sat without moving. Everything was quiet and close. The walls were pressing in.

  ‘The next morning, the Cumulus called for their breakfast. They waited and grew angry; their breakfast did not come. At last, marching down to the cellar, they discovered those three Stratus had gone. Then the outrage – meetings and messages! They woke a statue and the statue ordered: Those three Stratus must be put to death.’

  Around Lucy, the Stratus shifted on their heels. The word death seemed to make a clanging sound. Pain clasped a steel hand around Lucy’s calf. Her leg had cramped. She could hear how the statue would have spoken; she could picture those words issuing from its narrow mouth. Daniel was right not to trust the statue, she thought, and loneliness ran through her like a tide.

  ‘We have watched your Earth,’ continued Fracta. ‘We have seen how many ways you have to die. It is harder to kill a Cloudian. Only time will do it, and ice. The statue ordered a Megalith to fetch from the Arctic a fragment of zero: absolute cold. It said: Find those Stratus and feed them to it. Some say the Megalith lost its mind, listening to the cries those Stratus made, but that I do not know for certain, for the Megalith has not returned.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with me?’ demanded Lucy. Her leg was killing her. She tried to stand but Fracta gripped her arm.

  ‘I tell you this so you understand we have no choice but to imprison you. If your friends in the Citadel learnt you found us meeting here, they would understand we intend revolution, and they would most certainly kill us.’

  ‘But you can’t imprison me! I haven’t done anything wrong!’

  Fracta stretched her mouth into a bitter smile. ‘They only saved us from their frozen cities because they could not feed themselves without us. They brought us here to serve them – but in doing so, they brought us together. Strange irony, that their hideaway should offer us our chance of freedom. We must flee to the Stratum now, while they are too fearful to pursue us.’

  ‘But I won’t tell them,’ cried Lucy. ‘You can’t keep me!’

  Fracta shook her head regretfully and signalled to the waiting servants.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Stratum

  The Stratus tugged Lucy’s feet from under her. Clamping her mouth, seizing her arms, they lugged her, like a sack, a foot above the floor. She kicked and writhed but their grip burnt her skin.

  Everything went white for a moment as they dragged her through the wall. Then the noise of the kitchen opened around her. The servants were still singing. They’ll free me! she thought, as their voices faltered. But Fracta grunted and their voices filled the kitchen again.

  ‘Daniel!’ she called, but a servant’s hand trapped her voice. They forced her upright, facing a door. Beside it, she saw a polished wheel. Three servants stepped forwards, keeping their heads down, and turned the wheel until the door swung open. Lucy saw a platform stacked with bundles of cloud.

  ‘We are going on that lift, you and I,’ nodded Fracta, ‘down to the Stratum – ten years since I have seen it. The Stratus there will keep you safe.’

  Anger exploded in Lucy, but with a servant’s hand holding her jaw, she couldn’t even shake her head. Before she could take in what was happening, they had unloaded the bundles and tossed her onto the lift. It tipped sideways under her weight. Fracta settled beside her and the door shut with a click. Fracta smiled mildly. Then a rope over Lucy’s head whipped loose.

  The lift fell through a blur. Lucy felt as though she’d left her skin behind. The lift stopped with such a jolt it flung her face down on the platform, gasping for air. Light angled in as the door opened. Lucy looked out at a group of Stratus. They started back when they saw her, and one of them screamed. Fracta spoke some quick words. ‘Linneus,’ answered one, pointing at his chest. That was all Lucy understood. He might have
been speaking a different language, all clicks and grunts. With her mind still reeling from the fall, Lucy pushed past him and stumbled onto a cloud plain.

  The light was astonishing, blue and immense. She took great breaths and felt her mind stretch out to the horizon. The lift shaft behind her rose to a glittering cloud: the Citadel, floating on nothing. At her feet, the cloud frayed into air and, at its thinnest, shone yellow and grey.

  Fracta stood arguing with Linneus while the other Stratus cowered, whispering and pointing at Lucy. They had no coats and they shivered with cold. Still talking, Linneus hurried away. After a few steps, he gestured for them to follow. Fracta seized Lucy’s arm.

  ‘Let go,’ snapped Lucy, and shook her off. Side by side, they followed Linneus down some steps into a cavern where the air was so hazy it made Lucy think of asphalt, fuming in the summer heat. In the sudden gloom, she found it hard to see anything. Fracta’s eyes must have adjusted more quickly. She stumbled back, almost falling against Lucy.

  ‘What is this?’ she gasped. ‘Why are they sitting like that?’

  It was the first time Lucy had heard Fracta sound uncertain. She rubbed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw the cavern was crowded with Stratus, slumped on the ground, all staring straight ahead. There were hundreds of them. Linneus started flinging his hands about, pretending to drink from a bottle. He was almost shouting – but the Stratus in the cavern didn’t stir or look around.

  ‘Too late.’ Fracta stumbled back up the stairs. Lucy followed her, glad of the open air. It was eerie to think of that gloomy cavern, those half-dead creatures, buried in the cloud beneath her feet.

  ‘We are too late,’ repeated Fracta.

  ‘Too late for what?’ demanded Lucy, but Fracta had turned away. She was dragging herself over the cloud plain: a little crooked figure.