City of the Falling Sky

by Joseph Evans

  “Did you see Mobbin’s face when he got out of his pod?” Tenk said, popping open a packet of crisps. “He was absolutely livid!”

  “I don’t think you helped his mood by teasing him in front of everyone,” said Tippian.

  “Yeah, well the oaf deserved it. He would have done the same to me.”

  “I think you took it a bit too far when you threw that chunk of hotdog at him, though,” said Loca.

  “Are you kidding? That was the best moment of my life!”

  “Seckry, what pop do you want?” Loca said to him. “Red, blue, white, green?”

  “I’ll have some blue. Thanks.”

  The team had been given access to the Friction training room for two hours for post Meltdown celebrations and the school had provided them with all manner of drinks, sweets, and snacks. They’d also let Eiya in with them as a special guest.

  During that time, Kimmy explained to them all how he’d been attacked down his corridor by artificial intelligence robots and had been knocked unconscious which is why the commentators had thought he was out of the game. Then he’d come back around and the bots had disappeared, leaving him to trek through a series of obstacles before finding the gravity gun and retracing his steps with it.

  After nearly two hours of talking and laughing and reminiscing about the game, Loca stood up and said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to do all night.”

  “What is it?” Tenk asked.

  But Loca said nothing. She put her pop down and slowly made her way over to Kimmy, who was staring at her with glazed eyes. Then she placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him for what seemed like a lifetime.

  When she stopped, everyone was silent. Tenk’s mouth was hanging wide open and Tippian was wiping his glasses and frowning.

  “Well done today, Kimmy,” Loca said eventually. “You’re my hero.”

  Kimmy stammered and looked as though he was about to faint, but their shock was cut short.

  “Well done tonight, guys,” said the school janitor, poking his head through the door. “You did us proud, but I’m gonna have to close this place up now.”

  During the following two weeks, Skyfall City was treated to a few bursts of snow which unfortunately melted before anyone could play in it, but which got everybody excited about Seckramas, the celebration of the coming of Seckraman, son of Gedin, which was only three weeks away.

  Seckry’s mum had been swapping recipes with her colleagues at work and flicking through Skyfall cookbooks for the last week and a half, compiling a list of ingredients she needed for half a dozen recipes she was planning to cook for Seckramas day.

  One weekend she asked Seckry to pick her some things up at the market, most of which he had never seen or heard of in his life; some pillowpuff crackers, two coliground roots, a pound of lumpenlock, and a sprig of binyon, amongst others. Seckry was beginning to wonder what in Gedin’s name his mum was planning on making, especially since the coliground roots seemed to be wriggling in the corner of his eye every time he looked away.

  As Seckramas drew closer, the school began buzzing with excitement, and when there were only a couple of days left before the holidays, not much work was getting done. Most lessons were filled with chatter and some teachers let them watch a film. The only teacher who was having no part in the merriment was Mrs Cutson, to nobody’s surprise. In fact, she seemed to be taking the jolliness of everyone around her as a personal insult and had decided to give the class extra homework as revenge.

  Seckry and Eiya spent most of their free time playing video games with Tenk and Tippian, and Kimmy and Loca were nowhere to be seen.

  “I bet they can’t pry their lips apart,” Tenk said. “I bet they’ve been locked in a kissing fest for weeks.”

  During lunchtime on the last day of term, Seckry and Eiya almost bumped into Ms Butterkins, who was storming down the corridor clutching a handful of freshly picked carrots and swinging them so violently that spatters of dirt and earth were showering the corridor walls.

  “Oh, hello Seckry, hello Eiya,” she said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare food processor on you, would you?”

  “Uh . . . sorry miss, no,” Seckry said, patting his pockets as if searching for one.

  “Hmmm,” Butterkins said. “I guess I’ll just have to use the old one. Just a bit slow that’s all. Right gotta go. Very important business to attend to.”

  “Where are you going?” Eiya asked.

  “To the sanctuary, where else?” Butterkins made to rush off, but paused momentarily. “You know, I could use a couple of spare hands,” she said. “Would you like to join me?”

  Seckry and Eiya both nodded. They had no other plans.

  When they reached the sanctuary, Butterkins popped the carrots into her own blender and got Seckry and Eiya to add a bit of water and purify them while she fetched some kind of baby bottle from a distant cupboard.

  “What’s this for?” Eiya asked.

  “It’s for Bubble,” Butterkins said. “The newest member of our team, and possibly the most important.”

  “Bubble?” Seckry said.

  Once the carrots were purified into a smooth, thick liquid, Butterkins filled the bottle with it and led them to an incubation tank at the far end of the sanctuary.

  “Seckry, Eiya,” Butterkins said, “say hello to Bubble, the world’s first gimmypug hybrid.”

  The baby gimmypug was tiny and was blinking its eyes as if waking up from a nap. It sniffed the air and tried reaching its head out to them and one of its overly large ears fell down across its face.

  “It’s so cute!” Eiya said gleefully, clutching her hands together in front of her chest.

  “What do you mean by a gimmypug hybrid?” Seckry asked.

  “Bubble is a cross breed between a short eared gimmypug, the kind you see over here, and the almost extinct long eared variety.”

  “Extinct?” said Eiya.

  Butterkins nodded sadly, before letting Bubble suck hungrily on the tip of the bottle.

  “Long eared gimmypugs are native to Phary, and poaching is common there. The long eared gimmypug has been hunted for its ears for years and years. They use the tough gristle to make leather. The institute of animal care there has done all it can to prevent the extinction of the species but it’s been a losing battle. There’s only one female left. She’s being looked after by an expert team over there, but . . . she’s dying.” Butterkins looked away from them and stifled a tear.

  “That’s awful,” said Seckry.

  “We’ll never have pure bred long-eared gimmypugs again,” Butterkins explained. “There is no chance of it. The institute have been trying to get male short eared gimmypugs to mate with Petra all season. They believe this is the last year she will be able to bear offspring. Giving birth to a new hybrid breed of middle-eared gimmypugs would be the least we could do to give the long-eared gimmypugs any form of existence. And their existence is very important, because the people of Phary have long believed that the long eared gimmypug's blood holds special healing powers.”

  “So they got a short eared male gimmypug to mate with her?” said Eiya.

  “No. They couldn’t. They couldn’t do it. They tried, but it was pointless. It’s not mating season for gimmypugs. They only mate in spring.”

  “So how . . . how does Bubble exist?” Seckry asked.

  Bubble yawned and curled up into a ball.

  “Well, that’s where a certain friend of ours came into play.”

  “Who?” Seckry asked.

  “Well the gimmypugs in Phary have a kind of built in seasonal clock. But if a gimmypug had never been a part of that, had never felt the heat of a Phary summer or the moisture in the air, then it wouldn’t have a set mating season, it would be able to mate any time of the year. So I took our very own gimmypug and gave him the holiday of a lifetime.”

  “You mean . . .” said Seckry.

  “Yep. Bubble’s daddy is our very own Mr Peanut.”

 
; “It was you that stole him!” Eiya exclaimed.

  “Cutson went absolutely ballistic over that!” Seckry said. “We thought she was going to have a mental breakdown.”

  “Well I knew she’d never let me have him,” Butterkins said defensively. “It was the only way. You won’t tell her it was me, will you?”

  Seckry and Eiya both laughed disbelievingly. “No miss, we won’t tell.”

  “Did she like her magnet?”

  “I think you can probably guess the answer to that one,” Seckry said.

  After helping Butterkins take a small amount of Bubble’s blood with a syringe for testing purposes, to which Eiya had to look away, they headed back through the corridors and turned up, slightly late, for their next lesson.

  At the end of the day, before leaving, Seckry ran into Mr Vance.

  “Seckry,” he said, “I’m afraid there’s been no update in the search for Ropart Sanfarrow and Kevan Kayne.”

  Seckry’s heart sank a little, but he wasn’t going to let it ruin Seckramas.

  “We haven’t found anything either,” Seckry told him. “What are you doing for Seckramas day?”

  “Me?” Vance said. “Oh . . . I imagine I’ll just be spending it reading a good book if I’m honest with you, Seckry.”

  “Don’t you . . . have any family around here?” Seckry asked, hoping he wasn’t probing too much.

  “I’m afraid not,” Vance said simply. “And I’m not a particularly religious man. Science and religion aren’t the friendliest of concepts.”

  As Seckry was about to wish Vance a merry Seckramas and head off, he suddenly thought of something.

  “You can have dinner with us!” he blurted.

  Vance was taken aback for a moment. “That’s very kind, Seckry but I’m sure–”

  “No, please,” Seckry interrupted. “Our whole square is having an open kind of feast. The rule is, the more the merrier. And my mum would love to meet you.”

  Vance looked as though he was about to protest again, but a glimpse of a smile appeared on his face.

  “It would be nicer than spending it alone. Will your mum be making another one of those ellonberry tarts?”

  “Are you kidding?” Seckry said, laughing. “She’s already lined the tin.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Familiar Symbol