Evan Burl and the Falling

by Justin Blaney

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Evan Burl and the Falling

  Justin Blaney

  Copyright 2013 Justin Blaney

  ISBN 978-0-9882510-0-7 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-0-9882510-1-4 (ebook)

  CHAPTER ONE

  I found myself in a kingdom of stars and clouds. It was endless. Deadly. And blue as blood.

  Stretching from one side of the world to the other without blemish, perfect but for a single black speck.

  If anyone was watching, they might have wondered whether I was merely napping on a pillow of thin air.

  But it was far worse than that.

  This was a Falling.

  For what felt like hours, the whole world seemed frozen below me. Except for the wind, everything was silent. I felt as if I could stay up there as long as I like. It was beautiful really, whenever I managed for a few moments together to ignore the fact that I would soon be smashing into the ground at about 214 miles-per-hour.

  I didn't really even feel sick to my stomach.

  Until the last thirty seconds.

  First, the rolling mountains and hills, which I'd always thought so solid and unshakable, were now sauntering up towards me as if they were great bullies begging for a fight with anyone who defied their gravity.

  Then houses and barns began popping out of the ground everywhere, like grasping hands from a fresh grave. Pulling me down into the earth where I belong.

  Ten seconds later, what I thought was a bit of lint stuck to my eyelash transformed into a living human. Before I knew it, there were more. Dozens, even hundreds of people. Working, eating, doing whatever people did when they weren't looking up and noticing me plummeting through the sky directly towards them.

  Far too soon, another ten seconds had passed and the whole world was rushing up at a speed that would turn even the stoutest stomachs to acid.

  But it was the last hundred feet that really tested what I was made of.

  Part of me was happy I'd made it so long without losing consciousness, but I realized in those last few moments I was far less brave than I gave myself credit for.

  Right before the end, I closed my eyes.

  Because no one can watch a falling.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I tilted my head all the way back, staring passed five stories of glass and iron and stone into a cloud spotted sky. A pair of gold macaws jumped from a nest they have been building in the tower's eves and crowed loudly as they flew over the courtyard's walls into the dark jungles that surrounded us, I guessed to find a strawberry guava or a maracuja for supper. My stomach rumbled from the thought of filling my mouth with one of those sweet fruits, but I kept my eyes locked on the sky. High above where the birds twirled and cawed was a little brown speck which had not been there moments before.

  "What do you think it is?"

  My uncle Mazol was on his knees, planting irises in a patch of freshly tilled soil that smelled of oranges and manurer. He wiped his face with the back of his dirty hands and glanced upward, squinting at the bright sun. "I don't see anything."

  Turning back to the soil, he covered a bulb then held his hand out behind him blindly. "Another bulb."

  "Something is is up there," I said.

  Shielding my eyes against the sun, I craned my neck backwards and almost lost my balance.

  "Evan!" Mazol turned to me, his hand still outstretched. "Don't make me wait."

  "Sorry uncle." I rummaged through the rusty wire rimmed bucket of bulbs for just the right one while my uncle shifted his weight from one knee to the other.

  "They're all the same."

  "Found it," I said, pulling out one that had already started to sprout, but as I stepped forward, my foot tangled with a root and I fell on my face.

  "You klutz," my uncle said as he pushed me off the overturned bucket. Grabbing a few bulbs from the ground, he went back to planting as I began to pile them back in the bucket. Just as I put the last one in, my cousin, Pike, ran around the corner and knocked the bucket over before he could stop himself.

  "Did you see it yet?" he said, staring up into the sky.

  "Watch where you're running," Mazol said without looking up.

  "I think it's another chest," Pike said.

  "You had better hope it's not another chest," my uncle said.

  "I saw it first," I said, not wanting to be outdone by my older cousin for the fourteenth time that day. I left the bulbs on the ground and searched the sky.

  "Do you think it will be another girl?" Pike said.

  "I want a little brother."

  "We have enough to look after as it is." Mazol stood and brushed dirt off his knees.

  "You don't seem to mind that Henri's a girl."

  "But we've had two girls fall since Henri. It's bound to be a boy this time."

  "That's enough." Mazol picked up a wheel barrow. "Come along. We need more dirt."

  We followed behind him, the gap between my uncle and us growing larger with every step. I drug my shovel by the end of the handle so it bounced along the ground as I stared up into the sky.

  "I can't see it anymore."

  Pike looked up. "I lost it too."

  Mazol was about 50 feet ahead of us. He looked over his should and yelled for us to keep up.

  "Do you hear that?" I said, stopping.

  Pike stopped and listed.

  I turned to my left, looking for the source of a high-pitch whistle that was ringing in my ear. The sun passed behind a cloud and I felt suddenly cold. Pulling my thin shirt around me a gush of wind hit my face, nearly knocking me over. I looked up and saw a streak of light split the sky as a huge wave of water shot into the air from the lake shallows. Pike and I took one look at each other before sprinting to the lake's edge, then splashed into the water.

  I waited a moment to see if it would bob to the surface, but it must have been to heavy to float. I ducked my head into the cool water and spotted it. Lodged in the sandy lake bottom, was a small iron cased chest. As we drug it from the lake, a strong wind picked up and I began to shiver. I glanced up and
saw mean looking clouds blowing in from the sea. A storm was coming.

  Mazol waited for us with a scowl, holding his collar up to protect his neck from the wind.

  "Bring it here," he shouted over the whoosh of swaying branches.

  Dropping it with a grunt into the grass, I fell to my knees and pushed on the latch, but Mazol shoved me out of the way. I looked up into the sky as a heavy drop of water fell on my face, making my skin sting. The last of the blue sky was almost gone. Turning back to the chest, Pike and I crowded around Mazol as he fumbled with a ring of keys. Finding the right one—the key that came in the last chest--he pushed it into the latch.

  I listened carefully over the plinking of rain on the lake's surface for the distinctive click and pop of the chest. The latch sprang open and the lid rose slowly; this was my favorite part. I checked Mazol's hands to be sure, but he wasn't touching the lid. It was opening on it's own, just like the last three chests that fell from the sky.

  We knew what was inside, but it was a shock just the same.

  A sleeping baby.

  We'd gotten three already, each with a thin black anklet above their right foot. The first came when I was only a year old; her name was Henrietta, but we all called her Henri.

  "Is it a boy?" I said, checking the pillow, surprised to find that it was dry after landing in the lake.

  "Can't you tell the difference between a girl and a boy?" Mazol said.

  "I can," Pike said, "A boys got a—"

  "I know that." I said, shoving Pike in the shoulder. "Anyways, it's not a boy. She's really tiny, isn't she."

  The baby reminded me of Henri. Same dark hair, same pale yellow skin. A drop of rain splattered on the baby's forehead and she startled from sleep. Squishing up her face, she stretched her arms and began to cry. Mazol lifted the baby, shielding her from the rain with his back. "Better go inside to check the kitchens for something she can eat. We've got another mouth to feed tonight."

  I lifted the pillow she was sleeping on and found another key. "Guess this means there's gonna be another chest."

  "We won't have enough money to feed you all if they keep falling," Mazol said as swayed the baby to sleep.

  "What should we name her?" Pike said.

  "She's so tiny."

  "It's a baby. They're always small."

  "Not like this one. I think we should call her Little Sae."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Three years later

  Little Sae was special.

  She was only four-years-old, but she could climb better than me—and that's saying a lot. Maybe it was because she was so small. The way she jumped form branch to branch reminded me of the chimpanzee's that came over the courtyard walls looking for mangoes.

  I watched her tiny body shaking the top of the great Balizia tree, with it's thick curved trunk that bent out over the lake, 200 feet into the sky. I hated when she climbed alone, but Little Sae did what she wanted. It would have been easier to stop the Balizia tree from growing than to make her do something she didn't want to do.

  Or maybe I was just jealous I had to stay inside while she got to go out and play.

  "I should tell her to come down," I said.

  "Uncle told us to watch the little ones while he's trading with the men from town," Pike said. Eight more chests had fallen since Little Sae; in all we had twelve, black haired, blue eyed orphaned sisters. I called them fallings. Pike and I were the only ones who hadn't come to Daemanhur in little iron chests from the sky.

  "But she's getting to high."

  "She'll be fine." He tried to feed a pinch of bread to one of the girls, but she spit it out on her shirt. Henri, Pike and I, the three oldest, were watching the kids who were too young to look after themselves.

  "You shouldn't waste food," he scolded. "We're lucky to have enough to go around."

  "She doesn't understand," I said without looking. My face was pressed up against the glass.

  "Sometimes I think she does," Pike said quietly so Henri couldn't hear. "There's something different the way she looks at me."

  It wasn't the first time Pike and I had talked about how the fallings were different than us. The only thing we knew for sure was they didn't float in water, but other than that there were no sure signs of how different they really were.

  I glanced back at the baby sitting on the floor in front of Pike, wondering if it was possible a child so young could understand words. As I watched them, I felt a shiver run up my back and knew something bad was about to happen. "I'm going out there to bring her down. She's all the way at the top."

  "You can't—" but he didn't finish his sentence. His jaw hung open as he stared out the window behind me.

  Through the corner of my eye, I saw something flash outside the window. Jerking my head in the direction Pike was staring, I threw myself against the window. A tiny body was tumbling from the highest branches of the Bazilia tree, plummeting into the lake. I heard the faintest sound of a splash when her body hit the water.

  "Little Sae!"

  I ran. The lake was a long way from the castle, it took me at least two minutes to get to the dock that jutted out from the base of the tree. My lungs were on fire when I reached its edge. Stopping for a moment, I tried to guess where Little Sae hit the surface. Gasping, I dove head first into the water. It was cloudy and I came up for air four times before I found her. When I pulled her body from the water, Pike, Henri and several others were running over.

  She had fallen over 150 feet and had been under water for at least 5 minutes. No one could survive that. I listened to her chest, but couldn't hear anything.

  "Little Sae!"

  Pike rolled her onto her side. "We've got to get the water out of her."

  I felt numb. I'd never seen a dead person before; she was so small and young. My head was swimming.

  "Evan!"

  I snapped out of it.

  "Hold her still." He shoved his hand against her stomach. Nothing happened. Henri started crying. He pushed harder and I put my weight behind her back to keep her from rolling over. We were kids. We didn't know what to do. I rolled her onto her back again, then Pike put all his weight onto her stomach.

  With a gag, her eyes snapped open and a bucket of water gushed from her mouth. I lifted her head up to keep her from choking.

  "You're alive," I said, gasping for air like I was the one who had just been underwater for 5 minutes.

  "What happened?" she said.

  "You fell, you should be dead."

  She looked up at the tree swaying in the breeze above us. From where we were sitting, we couldn't even see the top of it.

  "You were under too long. No one can hold their breath that long."

  Little Sae flexed her stomach and got to her feet. I held out my hands to keep her from stumbling, but she didn't seem to need me. It was like she hadn't fallen at all.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  One year later

  My heart almost stopped when my uncle walked into his bedchamber. I slipped the small leather book behind me and tried to casually slide so I was sitting on top of it.

  "What are you doing in here?" He eyed the spot where I was sitting suspiciously.

  "Looking for my cousin," I said, thinking quickly.

  "He's looking after your sisters." The way he said sisters told me he thought it was ridiculous that I considered them my family. They were orphans, like me. But we were as close as I could imagine any family being.

  "He's his father's boy," I said, shaking my head. Saying things like that made me sound older, I thought. I was only ten-years-old, but my cousin was twelve. That meant he was always in charge when my uncle wasn't around.

  "Let's see it then," my uncle snapped, "What have you got?"

  I tried to look surprised and held out my hands. "See what?"

  "I know you're sitting on something. So what is it? Something shiny? Something sweet?"

  I scooted off the bed and managed to push the book off at the same time. I made a show with my han
ds to distract my uncle as I caught it between my knees for a moment, then shifted my weight so it fell inside my left boot. I always wore them over my pants so I could trample around outside without getting soaked. We lived in the middle of a jungle and it rained almost every day. That meant lots and lots of puddles, not to mention the stream and the lake.

  He pushed me aside as he checked in the folds of the ruffled bedsheets. I fell to the floor, trying to be as dramatic as possible. If he thought I hurt myself already, he might not hit me.

  "I told you," I said, moaning a little for effect.

  He hrumphed. "I suppose a magician like you could have just made what it was disappear." Even a ten-year-old could pick up on the sarcasm in his voice.

  "Do you want to see a trick?" I said, knowing he did not, but hoping to distract him from the book in my boot. I stood up slowly, holding my knee like it hurt really bad.

  "Have I ever wanted to see one of your tricks?" He spotted a yellow jacket the size of a tangerine buzzing around in front of him and slapped the air. It fell to the floor with a small thud.

  "No, sir."

  "No one wants to see your tricks. Now go and call Pike for me." He never referred to Pike as my cousin, Uncle Mazol didn't like to remind himself that I was related to him. "I need to talk to him about a chalk drawing I found on the marble in the entrance hall this morning. You better not have had anything to do with that." He wagged a dirty puffed finger at me menacingly, I couldn't help but think that it looked like a pork sausage.

  "Maybe it was the delivery man."

  "Have you been hanging around him again? He'll put stupid ideas into your head; running away from the castle, traveling to town, or who knows where else."

  "I like him. He's been teaching me some new magic tricks."

  "You listen up. The world outside those walls is more dangerous than a boy like you could ever believe, even with a foolish imagination like yours. You'd end up a meal for someone, or something, in 5 minutes flat. And not a very good one at that." He poked me hard in the side to illustrate how skinny I was. I grimaced from the sharp pain, this time not pretending, but didn't make a sound.