Sky Lands: The Gift Stones

by TL Rese

The winds blew like thunder and I was torn into the violent air. I opened my mouth to scream but it was ripped from my throat. Cold blazed through me, biting.

  Then everything was still.

  I fell hard onto solid ground. I gasped in my breaths, inhaling a clean air I felt I’d never breathed before. Though a chill wind blew, the biting ice was gone. Gradually, the darkness solidified into the shapes of trees and brush.

  Slowly, I noticed the grating sound of breathing was not my own but came from beside me. Looking over, I saw Audrey propped on her hands, the spike wet with her blood.

  She threw herself onto her knees, her face tilted to the branches above. She clutched the spike and pulled it from her body with a cry. She hurled the spike against a tree where it shattered into ash, leaving the air tinged with the scent of fire. She collapsed onto her hands again and was still, the only motion being the heave of her loud breaths.

  The tree beside Audrey was familiar. And then it struck me like a fist thrown into the mouth.

  Turning around, the building was there, clear in the dark, simple and pleasant. I stared at it, unbelieving. A joy choked my throat as I realized where I was. It was the Berkeley music building. I was home. Above me, the Campanile tolled with a fresh sweetness.

  Audrey stirred and the dim light shone on her wound. The fabric of her dress was torn into a singed circle. The flesh itself was charred black, no different than coal, ringed with a line of crimson blood.

  She leaned against the tree. Though she was motionless for a time, she seemed to struggle. Unsteadily, she rose to her feet, a hand clutched at her ribs. She staggered forward with lame steps, stumbling past a lamp that lit her into a temporary brightness. Her dress was torn and burnt beyond recognition. Her slippers, once soft and satin, were thick with dirt, ripped so the soiled flesh of her feet could be seen. Her crown was gone. I hadn’t even noticed when it had fallen off. I could only guess that it was lying somewhere back on the scorched grounds.

  Looking at Audrey, I saw that the fair beauty she had in her world had vanished. The pallor of her skin had disappeared into the regular tones I was accustomed to. Her hair didn’t seem as sleek as it was, but ordinary, disheveled and crusted with earth. And her eyes were no longer filled with a silver luster, but were colored in with a darkness that matched her hair. Between her common features and her torn attire, she looked no different from a street beggar. Had I not known it was her, I could never have identified her as the princess at the coronation ball only earlier that same night.

  She found her way into a strip of nearby trees. As she lay down, she heaved a final sigh beneath the shelter of the trees, a sigh that was half-pained and half-contented. Her rasping breaths stopped and she made no further movement, not even the rhythm of breathing.

  Nothing stirred. Only shadows thrown by the moon came and lay themselves over her, covering her in a blanket of darkness. At times, I heard a night creature in the bushes, or the far voice of a pedestrian. When Audrey didn’t rise, I reached around her neck above her beaded necklace, searching for a pulse – but she didn’t feel like flesh, more like a statue.

  Daylight came and went, reminding me of the old temple when it had crumbled to dust before my eyes. In the daytime, talk mixed with laughter beyond the trees, the sounds of students past the edge of the foliage. I could hear them clearly and discern the words of their conversations. For the first time since I had been thrown into Audrey’s world, I felt no awe for what was happening. I felt only homesickness, a desire to return to the world I’d left behind.

  The wind had half-buried Audrey beneath a layer of dried leaves so she blended into the shrubbery. I wondered how much time had gone by since she first fell here. Most of all, I wondered how many days had passed since she had brought me into her strange world.

  And then all was blackness.

  • • •

  To this day, I don’t know how long I lay there.

  I heard her airy voice.

  When I finally woke, I was fit enough to walk again. Though I felt weak, my wound had healed completely, the flesh whole and the pain gone. My limbs were cramped; it was a great effort to rise and brush the layers of dirt and leaves from me. From the trees, I staggered out into the brilliance of day; I was startled to see that my skin looked odd, different in the light of this new place. When I wandered onto the streets, I noticed that beggars were not unique to my world; here, they proliferated. I looked no different from the common beggar, and such I became. It was begging that got me through the first days.

  I eventually found a shelter for beggars that took care of me for quite some time. Your language was easy enough to learn, and it wasn’t long before I knew it. Over time, I found myself a simple job and rented a cheap room in a house. Though first I found your world sick with a decaying ugliness, I grew to see its beauty and it became amazing to me. I’ve spent most of the past years looking for the White Stone, but so many stones here resemble it – pearls, you call them – that it became like looking for a grain of sand in a desert.

  Always, I missed Alhallra and thought often of my city, Hallia, and of my castle and the room I grew up in. And of course, Hallain. I’d think back on my Alhallren life and yearn for it with a hollow longing, usually before sleep took me in the darkness, that time when one is most alone with one’s thoughts. In those times, I’d even miss Satine, though she had cast me out into a strange life. But I knew the difficult position my betrayal had put her in. She broke the law when she chose not to kill me for treason, for I aided a traitor, and so she put her reign on a difficult beginning with the councilors and the people.

  Since then, however, she has done more than recover from the damage that her favoritism towards me had cost her. She made the decision to end the war and the last of the knights were withdrawn from Moreina. The original border between Alhallra and Moreina was re-established, as though the Dabian War had never occurred.

  Perhaps to regain her repute, or perhaps to recover the people’s minds from the defeat of war, she did what no other monarch before her had done. She sent forth envoys to establish revolutionary routes of trade that increased our wealth. She commissioned the building of vast ships to explore the world beyond the Endless Seas. No one had ever known what exactly existed past those seas. My sister tells me they found a great country there, with immense trees beautiful beyond dreams. Such new ventures made the Alhallrans uneasy at first, but wealth quickly puts the heart at ease. For her treaties and explorations, my sister is now one of the most beloved monarchs to sit upon the throne.

  As for Hallain, he had been right about Tekran. The Emperor took him and housed him in his palace, honored as the savior of Moreina. Without Hallain, most Moreinans believe they would have lost the war and have no country. Hallain tells me Tekran treats him as a son.

  Though my brother and sister write to me, I have not seen them since the day I came to your world. My brother, too, has not seen Alhallra since he fled. He says he understands how I miss it. The last I remember of the Krystalline, it was splendid in the décor of the after-coronation. I wonder if either of us will ever see the lands of Alhallra again.

  • • •

  Her voice faded and she seemed gone into nothing. Gradually, as if waking from sleep, I felt myself rising out of the dark.

  The objects in my room fluttered in a haze, mixing with the drowsy blur at the edge of wake and slumber. Through a daze, I saw my desk and dresser, and felt a piercing joy at their familiarity. Closing my eyes, I could feel myself in my bed, the mattress curving beneath the weight of my body. Everything made sense again. It had been a dream. But with the realization came disappointment; once I opened my eyes, my life would return to the drum of normality, to the simplicity of mundane routine, to the endless cycle of class and work and bureaucracy that I knew too well. All the wonders that I’d seen would disappear, fading with memory.

  I opened my eyes. The reality of my flesh was plain, the solidity of it firm. My room was exactly as I remembered it. My l
aptop was in hibernation, the pictures that normally scrolled across the screensaver blank. My walls were decorated with my usual swimming posters.

  Traffic was buzzing warmly outside my window. I threw back the drapes to see Telegraph Avenue spread below. The sidewalks were filled with students heavy with backpacks. Among the pedestrians were the common specks of homeless people freckling the crowds; one turned a corner. Briefly, I wondered if the vagrant was someone like Audrey from another world.

  “Audrey?” I called aloud. But my room was empty. I sniffed my shirt and detected a damp smell. My clothes were crusty as though they’d been wet and hadn’t dried properly. I grabbed my cell phone, scrolling to the date and time. November 20th, 2:13pm. Not even a whole day had passed. If it had been a dream, it still lingered in my mind like the memory of something real. I was aware that I sympathized with Audrey and Hallain in their longing for Alhallra. I dwelled on that thought. Perhaps I missed an imaginary world.

  My stomach growled. It was time to go downstairs to buy food.

  As I walked out the door, I wondered about my clothes smelling like rain.

  Chapter 17