by Lisa Gorton
It was impossible to imagine where she lived from this distance. She kept picturing a toy-sized house surrounded by a plastic forest. The picture made her lonely, as if she was shrinking too. She sat back and rubbed the skin around her eyes.
‘Daniel? Where do you live?’
She thought he wasn’t going to answer. He was hunched over the binoculars as though he could pour himself through them. ‘Boarding school, really,’ he said at last. ‘My parents keep a place in the Cotswolds but they loathe it, they’re hardly ever there. Except my father says it gives us pedigree. Like horses.’
‘Where do they go?’
He shrugged. ‘Wherever it’s summer. My mother claims the heat’s good for my father’s lungs. Really, she likes to prove she can still carry off a bikini.’ He blew air through his nose. ‘She wears one to lunch.’
‘But there’s no summer left.’
He nodded. ‘And the government’s cancelled their travel credits. They’re in the Cotswolds now, no doubt working their way through a crate of whiskey.’
‘What did you do, anyway? To get kicked out of school?’
He sat back and smirked down at his hands. ‘I set fire to a hedge.’
‘A hedge!’ The answer took her by surprise. She had to keep herself from laughing. She thought back to the first time she had seen him: in the bus stop, with rain sliding down the walls and an envelope burning in his hands. ‘Why would anyone set fire to a hedge?’
Daniel was still watching his hands, folding the fingers in and out. ‘There was this one boy, Peter Watson. He had these pointy little teeth with gaps between them, like a cat. His family had been going to this school for five generations. Everyone thought that was fantastic – that his family had never managed one original idea.’
‘What’s that got to do with the hedge?’
He shrugged. ‘And the sports songs! They hardly even won a game. Everyone went round pretending they thought the school was so great when really they just thought they were great because they went there.’
‘No-one likes school.’ When Lucy looked around the room again, she was surprised to see how small it seemed. Outside, the wind made a hollow sound as it blew across the valley. Night was falling. The wall facing the valley glowed, orange and crimson, in the sun’s last rays. Was the Varactor still waiting out there, she wondered, in the dark? She shrank into her cloud coat.
Wist and Jovius were slumped against the wall, asleep. Their faces gleamed in the dark. Asleep, they looked more alien, sunk in their strangeness. Daniel was still crouched over the binoculars. She settled on the floor next to him, with her back to the pillar, and closed her eyes.
At once, she remembered waking at home, the morning after her mother left – how the silence had spread through the house. She had been aware of it even in the far rooms: armchairs and tables floating on it like ships in deep water. That morning, she and her father had faced each other in the kitchen, feeling an almost social awkwardness. At last he had said, ‘Toast?’ and she had nodded. After that, all their conversations had been single words. She had minded at first, she remembered. She had thought of the gap between school and sleep as a desert space she had to cross, but in the end she had grown used to silence. She had lost hours sitting in her armchair with a book on her lap. None of her friends at school knew that her mother had left. Now, when she tried to remember her friends’ faces, all she saw was a soft blur, which spread and filled her mind until, finally, she slept.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Waking
Lucy heard a scrabbling sound and sprang awake. For a moment, forgetting where she was, she thought it was a mouse burrowing through newspaper. Then a match caught and Daniel’s face floated from the dark.
He touched her shoulder. ‘I saw a city. Through these binoculars. Istanbul, maybe. All the squares were flooded. There were people on rooftops, cooking on smoky fires.’ For a moment, Lucy tasted the smoke of cooking fires: a bitter taste of longing. ‘They were fighting – fights all over the city. They had rigged up searchlights. I saw this man in the water, trying to swim to a boat. A raft, really, loaded with people. He was holding a child, trying to keep it above the water.’
Daniel pressed his fingers against his eyes. ‘They shot him. I saw this curl of blood in the water, black under the lights.’ He glared at Lucy. ‘They could have saved the child. They didn’t need to leave the child.’
The match died. Daniel stretched and staggered sideways. Lucy guessed he’d been sitting up all night, watching Earth in a haze of rain. He kept speaking without looking at her, mumbling so she could hardly catch the words. ‘I thought you were making it up. When you said there wasn’t anywhere safe.’
She heard him stumble across the room. He lit another match. He was facing her. Behind him, his shadow leapt up the door.
‘Well?’ he whispered as the match died. ‘Do we go?’
As the light of the flame faded, Lucy saw it was almost morning: the room was filling with grey-blue light. She pictured pushing the door open and stepping into an immensity of sky. Her heart bumped against her throat. ‘What about the Varactor?’
He nodded. ‘But it’s the first chance we’ve had.’
Wist’s head slipped sideways. He made a snuffling sound. Lucy and Daniel waited, watching each other.
‘That morning in the Citadel, when you thought I’d disappeared? I went into the kitchen. Those servants trapped me; they were going to keep me. And then one of them, Fracta, said she’d help us fight the Kazia. But she said if we tried to run …’ Lucy drew in a breath.
‘So where is she?’ Daniel darted looks around the room as if he expected to see Fracta creeping from the shadows.
‘I think we left her behind when we went on the Arcarals.’
‘So we should leave now, before she finds us.’ Daniel slid the latch across and eased the door open.
Lucy glanced at Wist and Jovius, asleep still in the shadow of the door. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. She looked through the door at a sky so vast she pictured it emptying overhead into the whole universe. Daniel had stepped outside. The light glazed his hair. He slid down the side of the valley onto a path sunk in steel-coloured shadow. Loneliness tugged at Lucy’s chest. She imagined herself left behind, fading into nothingness. In a daze, she followed Daniel. The cloud was icy underfoot. At the bottom of the valley, the air felt heavy and damp.
‘You can see where the Varactor hit.’ Daniel pointed at a gash across the path. They both looked in the same instant at the sky: a pale green stretch of silk, decorated by a few rags of cloud. They had to string their conversation across their strange, floating strides.
‘Where are we going?’ called Lucy.
‘Just get away, first. Then we can figure out how to get home.’ Daniel tapped his pocket. ‘I’ve got the Comclo.’
‘But we should have left them some!’ The alien beauty of the cloud valley frightened her. With every step, the silence tightened around her like dread.
At last, turning a corner, they stepped out of the valley. Ahead of them, there rose a fabulous city: domes and spires walled in by cloud. It was probably only a kilometre wide, and yet it held so many ornate, high buildings it had the crowded glamour and power of a great metropolis.
‘Quiet,’ whispered Daniel, though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Don’t move.’
She searched the sky. ‘I can’t see –’
‘Not a Varactor. Down there, near the gate.’
‘But that’s cloud, isn’t it?’ she started, and then gasped, as the pale mound she was watching stretched and took a step. She looked automatically for Wist, waiting to hear his voice telling them what to do, but there was only emptiness and silence. ‘This is all wrong.’ The unease she had felt, walking down the valley, settled now in her stomach like a lump of wet clay. ‘We shouldn’t have left.’
‘It’s the size of an elephant,’ said Daniel, his gaze still fixed on the pale creature. Dragging its stomach, it trundled through the city gate a
nd vanished.
‘Wandering again?’ Wist stepped around the corner with Jovius close behind. ‘Another early-morning stroll?’
Wist fixed his colourless eyes on Lucy’s face. Shame spread across her skin like a rash. She stood with her mouth open and could think of nothing to say. What had she been planning, anyway? It was like waking and trying to remember a dream.
‘You have the Comclo, I take it?’
‘I’ve got the Comclo,’ said Daniel. He was standing very straight, two red spots burning high on his cheeks. He pointed at the city. ‘Wist? Down there, we saw this huge creature.’
‘So I heard,’ sighed Wist, flicking his ears back and forth. ‘You saw a Megalith. Primitive but well intentioned.’ Just then, the sun rose over the edge of the cloud. It was so bright it made the air shake. The city, a hundred metres ahead of them, seemed to rise and tremble like a mirage.
‘We’ll go through Altovia,’ said Wist, nodding at the city. ‘We’ll find shelter there if the Varactor returns.’
‘And the Megalith?’ asked Daniel.
Wist pulled his thin lips back. ‘The least of our concerns, I assure you.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Altovia
They stepped through a circle of polished cloud – the gate to Altovia. Every step they took rang out like a bell, breaking the silence into tiny pieces.
‘The Varactor will have heard that,’ said Wist. ‘Not much time now.’
All the same, looking around her, Lucy could hardly tell fear from wonder. They were standing on a street that ran straight across Altovia. The street was paved in mosaic tiles. Each wall and doorway, street and window, glittered with reflected light. Everywhere, Lucy saw sculptures of such weird beauty she thought of stunted mountain trees covered in snow.
‘Altovia used to change every day,’ sighed Jovius. He waved a hand at the sculptures. ‘Every day, these Altovians would turn the Pattern Wheel and move the city into a new shape.’
‘But that’s stupid,’ said Daniel. ‘How did they find their homes?’
‘They lived anywhere! Why stay in the same place? The city belonged to each of them –’
‘Those sculptures are Cloudians?’ interrupted Lucy. ‘They’re frozen?’
The sun rising over the eastern wall shook rays of light onto the Cloudians’ faces. It looked almost as though they were turning their heads. Lucy found herself waiting for them to start walking again. She crept so close to one her breath left a dull print on his cheek, which faded to reveal glistening skin and then showed again, like a slow pulse beating.
‘This one’s crying,’ said Daniel.
‘Not crying,’ said Wist. ‘Melting.’
Lucy noticed a dripping sound, mournful and low, and the skin on the back of her neck prickled. It was the sound of these Cloudians wearing away. Already, they had maimed shoulders and three-quarter faces. She pressed her fingers against the skin over her cheekbones, half-expecting to feel her own face melting.
‘The Kazia’s frozen most of Cloudland,’ said Wist. ‘Now it’s all melting.’
‘That’s the rain on Earth?’ said Daniel. He smudged his thumb across a Cloudian’s cheek, leaving a curved mark. Holding his hand to the light, he let liquid gather and swell on his nail.
Wist watched him with a strange expression. ‘If the Protector defeats the Kazia, these Cloudians might come back to life,’ he said. In the dripping sound of melting cloud, Lucy heard the word impostor, and imagined the frozen Cloudians shuffling closer. ‘But they’ll have forgotten everything,’ continued Wist. ‘Even their names.’ He nodded at the Cloudian Daniel had touched. ‘That one will carry your mark.’
‘That’s disgusting,’ said Daniel, darting a furtive look at the Cloudian and sliding his hand into his pocket.
‘The Varactor!’ cried Jovius.
Panic exploded in Lucy. She was running so hard she thought her chest would burst open. Beside her, the air turned white. Snow geese. They swept past her, a rush of wings. Their slipstream dragged her sideways. She flailed, panic beating at her ribs. Pain shot up her leg, and the cloud tilted sideways beneath her.
She was a mess of arms and legs, the cloud ice-cold against her cheek. Above her, the air hissed. Looking up, she saw one globular eye, pale as a cataract, blocking out the sky. Blank terror lifted her up and sideways. Crack! The Varactor slapped a tentacle against the cloud where she had been.
‘It’s slow moving sideways!’ Daniel screamed in Lucy’s ear. ‘Wait till it’s almost down. Then run!’
They crouched, watching the Varactor billow up and search for them, swaying its eye from side to side. With loose movements, it drifted sideways until it was directly overhead. Then it started sinking.
‘Now!’ screamed Daniel. They broke into the open.
Light burst from the Varactor’s tentacles and for a moment, everything turned black and white. Lucy felt the force of the blast in the small of her back. The explosion had shot the Varactor into air. It hung there, shimmering against the sky.
White cloud engulfed Lucy. The sky somersaulted around her and Daniel’s elbow jabbed her side. She saw his face, an inch away from hers, and had a strange sensation of floating.
‘The Megalith!’ gasped Daniel. ‘It scooped us up.’
As her mind took in what Daniel had said, Lucy realised that she wasn’t floating – she was sunk in the boneless flesh of the Megalith’s back. It was carrying them away from the Varactor. Its soft, jolting stride made Lucy feel her ribs had loosened. She couldn’t stop gulping air.
The Megalith stopped so suddenly its skin rippled. It had landed in the circle gate that led out of Altovia. Looking over its shoulder, Lucy saw polished steps dropping from the gate into a sea of air. Fathoms down, the cloud plain was pale like a sea floor, patterned with shadows and light. The Megalith’s flesh tightened. Then it jumped.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Megalith
It was more like surfing than flying. The air was made of currents and sudden falls. The Megalith’s soft flesh gusted around them as it swooped, slipped straight down and swooped again. All the time, the wind made a hollow roar; but the glittering emptiness they fell through gave Lucy the impression they were falling in silence – falling through a gap in time, even.
Daniel inched forwards hand by hand, digging his fingers into the Megalith’s skin. He peered over its shoulder and his face tightened.
‘Hold on!’ he called as the Megalith’s paws swept back and the wind roared. They thumped down; the shock of landing sent waves across the Megalith’s back. Lucy half-fell, half-scrambled down to the ice-hard cloud plain and collapsed onto her back, staring at the sky, where Altovia floated like one of those oversized cruise ships on a still sea. We’re safe! she thought, and wondered what had happened to Wist and Jovius. Had they escaped the Varactor?
The wind tossed a flurry of rain against her cheek – from Altovia, she realised, and its frozen Cloudians. She jerked to her feet and plunged her face into her sleeve, wiping it dry.
‘Are you alright?’ Daniel was bent double, clutching his chest, winded from the fall. She pressed one hand against his back and felt his ribs shuddering like buried wings. She had almost forgotten the Megalith. Now she saw it a few feet away, watching them with glass-bead eyes, set close together at the top of its snout. Its body sprawled behind it, spilling in lumpy folds onto the cloud plain. The body of a slug, the size of an elephant, with a colourless mole face – the Megalith should have been absurd but something in its gaze made Lucy feel she was in the presence of some ancient, endlessly patient creature.
‘Lucy?’ Daniel caught her elbow. His breath was still coming in jagged gasps. ‘Could it carry us to Earth?’ They both looked at the Megalith. In the same instant, it stretched out a long white tongue and licked its snout.
‘I am hungry,’ it said. ‘Will your friends be long?’ Its voice was reedy, piped down its snout, and oddly precise. Following its gaze, Lucy saw a white speck swooping from Altovia.
Soon she could make out two figures: Wist and Jovius, standing with their coats stretched out behind them. They were riding a carpet like the ones she had seen in the Citadel. Wist was steering with tiny movements, tilting his hands this way and that.
The thought of Earth had filled Lucy with longing. Images gathered in her mind: waking late on Sunday, walking in the green-shadowed pine forest. They were memories she could hardly have described to anyone – out of focus somehow, as though she was remembering hundreds of days at the same time.
They stood watching Wist and Jovius drift down towards them. ‘So they escaped the Varactor,’ said Daniel. The bitterness in his voice startled Lucy. She looked at him, a pale, wind-bitten figure. On Earth, she would have dismissed him as a privileged little mess-up, yet now, when she looked at him, her breathing settled and things took solid shape again. She shook her head, confused, and looked back up at Wist and Jovius just as Wist bent one knee and slid the carpet through a half-circle. It skidded to a stop a little way above the cloud plain. Jovius bounded towards Lucy and Daniel and clapped their backs with his soft hands.
‘All safe!’ he cried.
Daniel shrugged him off. Jovius blinked up at him with the same smile fixed, uneasily now, on his face. Stretching up on his toes, he gazed around him at the empty cloud plain. Lucy thought of her father, standing in the kitchen, staring at familiar things – the toaster and kettle, their beaten-up chopping board – with exactly that vacant expression, and something twisted in her chest. She felt sad suddenly, and impatient. Jovius annoyed her, running after everyone like a poodle; and Wist annoyed her – the way he stood rolling up the carpet now without even a greeting.
The carpet compressed as he rolled it, shrinking to the size of a fold-up umbrella. He put it into his pocket. At last, he looked up.