City of the Falling Sky

by Joseph Evans

  Seckry’s mum took the news of the money as even more of a shock. She gripped the kitchen unit and steadied herself, as if she was going to collapse.

  “You . . . in this flat . . . the whole time . . . how much?”

  It took her a few days to fully grasp the situation, but when she got over the shock, she was elated.

  “I would say it was dirty money,” she convinced herself. “But if you hadn’t accepted that job, we wouldn’t have Eiya with us right now, and that Danney Plum would still be a prisoner of that evil man, so it’s money well earned in my opinion.”

  Both his mum and Leena rejoiced at the prospect of being able to stay in Skyfall. They had made friends themselves in work, and the idea of going back to such an uneventful village after the last few months in the city made Leena’s skin crawl.

  During the following week, Seckry and his mum made all the necessary arrangements with the Housing Initiative and Skyfall Properties to secure the flat, and on that Friday it was the Friction match that Tenk, Tippian, Loca and Kimmy had bought Seckry and Eiya tickets for.

  On the way to the stadium, Tenk raved nonstop about a new Friction player named Bryon Durkamp, who he believed was the best thing since Kolda Kod.

  Being back at the stadium brought back all the excitement of Seckry’s first Friction Mega Meltdown, and this time, he was able to enjoy the food and the drinks and the sweet things that he had to abstain from last time due to competing.

  As they were waiting to go inside, Seckry bought a sizzlingly hot hotdog, oozing with tomato sauce and mustard, and a giant cup of refreshing iced cherry pop to wash it down. Afterwards he and Eiya shared a bag full of sugar coated doughnuts, and Eiya sucked on a huge, circular lollipop that was made of swirls of ellonberry candy and cream.

  Before entering the stadium, Tenk decided to grab another hotdog to take in with him and left the group waiting.

  “Join the queue!” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Loca said as Tenk jogged away. “That’s his third one!”

  “They are pretty good though,” Seckry commented.

  They joined the queue behind a girl who’s t-shirt had been printed with the words ‘Durkamp, our new champ!’ She seemed to be waiting on her own.

  “Oh Gedin,” said Loca, “When Tenk sees that it’s gonna start him off about Durkamp again.”

  The girl turned around, hugging a milkshake, some doughnuts, some candyfloss and a bag of chips to her chest.

  “You know someone who’s a fan of Durkamp?” she asked them.

  “Do we ever,” said Loca.

  “Wow, that’s cool,” said the girl. “He’s so underrated.” She picked a chip out of its bag and dunked it into her milkshake so that it was completely covered.

  “Sorry,” she said before popping it into her mouth. “It’s disgusting, I know.”

  Seckry and the others all looked at each other with wide eyes before Loca said, “This guy’s gonna really want to meet you.”

  “Me?” the girl said. “Why would anyone want to meet me?”

  At that moment, Tenk came jogging out of the crowd, shouting, “I got it half price ‘cause the guy dropped it in the candyfloss vat–”

  He stopped mid sentence and the hotdog he was about to bite into slid out of its bun and landed with a wet slap onto the ground.

  “Chip and Milk Girl,” he said.

  Seckry enjoyed the game and so did the others, though he couldn’t speak for everyone because he wasn’t sure that Tenk actually caught any of it amidst incessantly chatting to the girl from the queue, the girl he had waited all this time to meet again.

  That night, after arriving at the flat, Eiya took Seckry’s hand and said, “Come with me, I want to give you something,” before leading him back out into the warm spring night’s air.

  “Where are we going?” Seckry asked, but Eiya just smiled at him, her eyes glistening in the orange lamplight.

  She led him to the monorail station and they boarded an empty carriage. When they reached the stop for Estergate, Eiya led him off and danced around in the street in front of him, just like she had on the night of the ball, and they eventually arrived at the same place they had on that night, the disused reactor.

  “The glowflies will be out again,” Eiya said. “The weather’s warmer now too, there’ll be even more of them.”

  She climbed down into the chamber and Seckry followed.

  Eiya was right, climbing down into the chamber was like diving into a waterless ocean filled with thousands of tiny fish. As soon as they began to walk around, glowflies began settling in their hair and on their skin, making them both giggle with ticklishness.

  Eiya shook her head and the glowflies dispersed.

  “You know, we should never have gone back to the school that night of the ball,” she said. “We should have stayed here. It was perfect.”

  “Yeah,” Seckry said, brushing a glowfly from his cheek. “Away from reality, away from everything. Just us. What was it you wanted to give me?”

  “Something that was taken away from us that night,” Eiya said, stepping closer to him.

  “What was taken awa–”

  Eiya pressed her finger gently to Seckry’s lips and said, “Shhh,” just like she had so many times in his dreams. With a slight tremble, she let her finger drop and pressed her lips against his. They were so light and soft that they felt like jelly, and a sensation unlike any other spread through Seckry’s body, making the hairs on the back of his neck and his arms stand on end. He had dreamed of this moment nearly every night for the past three months, and now that it was here, it was even better than he had imagined.

  Seckry touched his hand to Eiya’s cheek and then ran his fingers over her small earlobe and through her soft, smooth hair. As they continued to kiss, Seckry lost all concept of time. Everything that had gone before and everything that was to come meant nothing to him here and now. The only thing that existed to him was the present, and the sweet, intoxicating taste of Eiya.

  Seckry barely remembered the journey back that night because all he could see and all he could hear and all he could feel, were Eiya. Every time their eyes met, Seckry had to tense his legs so that they wouldn’t give way and collapse.

  His mum and Leena were in bed by the time they got back, and the flat was silent aside from the distant chirruping of a few crickets outside. Seckry went to use the bathroom, and by the time he came back to the bedroom, Eiya was sound asleep.

  The room was warm, so he opened the window and leaned on the sill for a while, watching the far away sparks of the monorail tracks lighting up the city. There were only a few weeks left of school before the summer holidays, and he was looking forward to them now more than ever.

  In a rough pile next to Seckry’s elbow were his birthday cards from when they had just arrived in Skyfall. He shuffled them so they were neat, and thought about how much had changed since then.

  As he did so, a single card slipped out of his hands and onto the floor, a card he had long forgotten about.

  The card with no name.

  Seckry picked it up and opened it once more, running the tip of his finger ponderingly over the ink that said ‘Happy Birthday.’ He could feel the indentation where the pen had pressed. He let his fingers drift across it, and then he shut the card. But immediately after he did so, he opened it again.

  He had felt something else. Something underneath the message.

  He pressed his fingers to the page and sure enough, there were more indentations, just one or two words, very light and with no ink at all. Seckry peered as close as he could, and held the card out into the air, trying to angle it so the light would catch the text.

  He tilted it backwards and stopped.

  After some time, a teardrop specked the windowsill below him.

  Written in the moonlight were the words, “Love, Dad.”

  Epilogue

  The Combination