The Floating Islands

by Rachel Neumeier

  So there was time for the novices to become acquainted, which had been inevitable. Trei did not look forward to it, feeling himself much the natural outsider, for all he was actually curious about the other boys.

  Besides Ceirfei, Rekei, and Trei himself, there were the three Third City novices. They were Genrai, Tokabii, and Kojran. Genrai was the oldest of all the novices, a quiet, sober boy with a narrow build and a thin face. He’d wanted to audition at thirteen, he said, but his family had needed him until his brothers were old enough to work and his sister to marry. So he’d had to wait until he was seventeen—old for a successful audition, Trei gathered.

  Tokabii was the youngest; he’d turned twelve just in time for this audition. From what Trei had seen of him, he was even more quarrelsome and annoying than Rekei and might have done better to wait for the next audition along; if he’d grown up four more years, he might have had more sense. Kojran was fourteen, dark-skinned, with a flashing grin and careless manner; the grandfather for whom he had been named had been Yngulin, he said proudly. Someday he would fly all the way to Yngul and meet his grandfather’s people.

  “And you?” Genrai asked Trei. “You’re not Third City.”

  Trei felt his shoulders tighten. He said in his flattest tone, “I’m from Tolounn. My mother was Islander.”

  There was a pause. Then Ceirfei said easily, “Clearly the dragons thought you Islander enough. Pass the honey, would you?”

  Trei wordlessly handed Ceirfei the crock of honey.

  The three Third City novices were still staring at Trei, but Ceirfei sent a glance around the table that somehow picked up their attention. “Genrai and I are oldest and tallest; that’s why we landed best.”

  “I’m taller than you, and I still dragged my wing,” said Genrai. He didn’t quite look the nobly born Ceirfei in the face, but he was clearly trying to make his tone matter-of-fact.

  “I’ve been using weights to strengthen my arms for months. We can all do that. I’ll show you how, if you like. Kojran, you turn the tightest; Rekei, you slow and stall faster than the rest of us, that’s why you nearly missed the balcony; Trei has this nice somersault trick for coming out of stalls fast.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Trei to watch the others, certainly not closely; he’d been too lost in the pure delight of the rushing wind and then in the practice of flight. But he somehow wasn’t surprised that Ceirfei had paid broader attention.

  “You didn’t say anything about me,” Tokabii objected. “Or Genrai.”

  “Tokabii, you climb very steeply, more steeply than I could,” Ceirfei said, smiling. “And you dive fast; my instructor wouldn’t let me dive so fast. And Genrai has something better than a steep climb or a tight turn or a good stall: he has sense.”

  Genrai looked taken aback.

  Ceirfei nodded to him, but said to them all, “We all have things we can teach one another. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were the fastest novices ever to earn rank and clear the novitiate?”

  For a long moment, no one spoke. This didn’t signal any protest, however. It was, Trei thought, pure admiration of Ceirfei’s audacity.

  “I think we will be,” Genrai said at last, and Trei understood that he meant that if Ceirfei meant for them to be the best, then they would have to be. Ceirfei understood this, too. He inclined his head a little.

  “It’s quarter till sixth,” Genrai added, and they all got to their feet in a rapid clatter.

  There were lessons some mornings and every afternoon. Each day was filled from dawn until well after dusk. Trei was grateful there was so little time for homesickness, though he hardly knew which home he should miss. But he found he missed his cousin—her quick wit, her boldness, even her sarcastic tone—more than he’d expected. Sometimes Genrai made one or another bitter comment about evenings spent with a crowd of boys. Ceirfei and the others just laughed, but Trei didn’t laugh.

  But they were so busy there was little opportunity to miss anything. The second-ranked kajurai Linai Terinisai spent days showing the novices how to splice damaged feathers and replace broken ones, all the time murmuring a continual monologue about feather selection and dyes, and how to judge where to place a feather in a wing, and how to collect feathers, and a great deal else about feathers that Trei did not remember properly afterward.

  A master named Berinai Cosererè delivered a long and alarmingly detailed discourse on kajurai hierarchy, customs, and law. He also explained the many, many rules that bound novices, and the penalties accruing to any novice sufficiently reckless as to break them. This was also complicated, but seemed of far more practical importance. Even the youngest and most irrepressible novice, Tokabii, was a little subdued after that series of lectures.

  And a truly elderly master named Tobei Kensera began to explain the relationship between dragon magic and natural Island magic. That was at least interesting. Master Tobei gave the first explanation Trei had ever heard for why the dragons had cut the Islands free of the earth in the first place. “There are dragons of earth, generally in the far south of Yngul,” he reminded them. “And dragons of fire in the far north of Tolounn.”

  Trei glanced down, not liking to think about fire dragons. But then he looked up again as the master continued, more than a little smugly, “But our dragons are creatures of air, and I suspect they want places of their own to roost and nest—places divorced from both earth and fire. So, ages past, they lifted the Islands into the sky.”

  “And then we came to the Islands,” Rekei put in. “I wonder what the dragons thought about that?”

  “Well,” said Master Tobei, rather tartly, “they allow us to live here and build our homes into the stone of their Islands. And even though we kajuraihi are not mages, they grant us the use of their magic. So I believe we may assume they were not greatly offended.”

  “Well, but—” Rekei began.

  Master Tobei waved him silent. “In fact, I believe our dragons find us Islanders useful for keeping Tolounnese mages and artificers from troubling their peace, and I suspect they value the kajuraihi as their liaisons between earth and air.”

  This sounded very uncertain to Trei: I believe, I suspect. But Ceirfei, too, had said something about the dragons approving prospective novices. That implied a closer relationship between dragons and kajuraihi than was immediately apparent. But Trei didn’t ask. He was too eager for lessons to be finished so they could fly. And if they used dragon magic to ride the wind, he was only grateful the sky dragons allowed it, whatever their reasons.

  Because flying was glorious.

  The stiffness had worsened over the first few days, but then it eased. The novices learned to fly high enough to brush the clouds; they learned to dive fast and pull out of dives, to turn “on a wingtip” and somersault both forward and backward. They learned how to judge how much lift a particular current of air would provide, and how the wind changed from morning to evening, and how the air over an island behaved differently from the air over the sea. They learned to coax the wind around from the prevailing north to the east, which wasn’t too difficult, or the south, which was hard. Trei and Rekei were hopelessly bad at this; all three of the Third City novices were better. Ceirfei was in between.

  “You try too hard,” Kojran explained earnestly. “You think about it too much. All you up-city boys think too much.”

  “Well, if thinking’s bad for pulling the winds, no wonder you’re so good at it,” Rekei said bitingly. He was the slowest of them all at the trick.

  Tokabii bristled at his rejoinder, but Kojran just laughed. “True words! I never worry about anything; that’s why wind-working’s easy for me.”

  Ceirfei laughed, too, and clapped the younger boy on the shoulder. “Tomorrow, if you see me worrying too hard, you give me a whistle, hear? And I’ll try it your way, all right?”

  So the argument was averted, and in fact Ceirfei and Trei both did get better at coaxing the winds around to different quarters of the sky. Even Rekei improved a little.

&nb
sp; In the evenings, there were lessons to review. Plainly neither Tokabii nor Kojran had ever made any effort to learn anything complicated in their lives and they hated studying the lessons. Sometimes Ceirfei and Genrai would go off by themselves; Trei suspected that Ceirfei was teaching the older boy how to read better and maybe how to write. It was a fine idea, but it meant he and Rekei were sometimes left with the two younger Third City novices in the evenings, and then tempers would flare. Those were the times when Trei found the novitiate far too crowded, even while he still felt isolated from the other boys.

  That might have been why, a week after entering the kajurai novitiate, Trei felt so relieved to receive letters from his uncle Serfei and his family. They made him feel much less set apart.

  The novices were not allowed to venture out of the novitiate during the first quarter of their training, but once every week, on Gods’ Day, they were allowed to receive letters. The younger Third City boys didn’t get any, not surprisingly, as probably no one in their families could write. But Rekei both flushed and grinned as he accepted the handful of letters his mother had sent him, and to nobody’s surprise Ceirfei got a whole pile from various friends and family, tied up with a violet ribbon. These were laid aside to wait for him, along with a note Genrai’s sister had paid a scribe to write for her, since neither Ceirfei nor Genrai was in the dining hall when the letters arrived.

  But Trei was surprised to find himself receiving not only a letter, but also a flat, rigid package, two hand-lengths long and wide and perhaps two finger-widths thick. At first he thought Araenè might have sent him something separately from her parents, but that wasn’t so. Trei’s uncle Serfei had written, but Araenè had only scribbled a note at the bottom of his letter. The package was from Tolounn.

  His aunt Sosa had sent it, his other uncle’s wife, from Sicuon. The address was written in her hand: long, graceful slanted letters, full of loops and curls. Trei just held the package for a moment, looking down at it with a kind of numb surprise. His uncle’s voice echoed in his memory: “You can’t stay with us, Trei. I’m sorry, but you know I’m only telling you the truth. You can’t stay here. Your mother has kin in those Dragon Islands in the south, doesn’t she? You’d much better go to them.…”

  And after that dismissal, a letter from Aunt Sosa? Trei carried the package away from the others into the sleeping hall and stood by his bed, turning the package slowly over in his hands. He felt odd, as though Tolounn had been fading from the world over the past weeks and now had suddenly reappeared, looming over the novitiate.

  With sharp, abrupt movements, Trei broke the wax seal and folded open the package, opened the thin leather envelope within, and slid the papers inside it onto his bed.

  The top paper was a letter in Aunt Sosa’s writing. He skimmed down the elegant lines:

  Trei, dear, I hope this finds you well—I hope it finds you at all! It had better: I’ve paid the man enough—he really ought to carry it to you personally. The least he can do is find a ship pointed the right way.

  Trei could almost hear Aunt Sosa’s tart tone in those lines.

  Your uncle recently came across these sketches and studies, which must be from that summer your poor sister spent with us when she was twelve; you remember the year. Your uncle and I thought you should have them … at least a small remembrance … hope you don’t mind that we kept back one of your uncle.…

  The phrases blurred. Trei tossed the letter aside and, his hands trembling, began to lay out the other papers, one at a time.

  Charcoal sketches, yes, and studies done in colored chalk: seven altogether, all of them on the coarse, heavy paper his sister had favored for practice work. But to Trei, they did not look like practice work at all.

  There were five plain sketches, each of which captured a complicated subject in remarkably few strokes: the first was of a tree, nearly dead, the few remaining leaves clinging to its twisted branches blown by a hard wind; the second of a sparrow perched on a balcony rail, its head tipped sideways, its eyes bright and wary as it contemplated a crumby plate laid on a windowsill; the third of Marrè’s own hand, thin and dabbed with streaks of charcoal, holding a stick of charcoal above a sheet of paper. The fourth, larger and folded down the middle to fit in the packet, showed an open door that looked down across the top of an ornate spiral staircase. Light poured through the door to catch every detail of the staircase railing. The last, which Trei looked at longest, showed a sausage vendor surreptitiously dropping a handful of sausages to a thin street mongrel.

  None of the sketches were as good as Marrè’s later work, but even so Trei thought that he could feel the wind that was ripping at the leaves, that he could almost hear the chirp of the sparrow as it prepared to leave its perch, that in the next moment the sketch of his sister’s hand might draw a dark streak across the paper. He remembered the feel of the bobs and whorls of the staircase railing under his own hand as he ran down the stairs.… Aunt Sosa had scolded him for running on the stairs. He recognized the sausage vendor, from whom he and Marrè had bought lunch more than once; the man had pretended to be hard-hearted, but Marrè had said she’d caught him throwing sausages at street dogs when he thought no one was watching. She’d caught that embarrassed, covert generosity perfectly in the self-conscious turn of the man’s head as he glanced over his shoulder while tossing his wares to the dog.

  The chalk studies were more detailed, and one of them was far more precious, because though the first was only of the house in Sicuon, the second was of Trei’s parents. Marrè must have either brought this study with her from Rounn or else done it from memory, because it showed their mother seated in her favorite chair, at the kitchen table, with their father, framed by the doorway that led into the rest of the house, standing behind her.

  Marrè had done most of the background simply as a vague wash of color. This indistinct background simply called attention to the figures in the foreground: Mother was looking up at Father, smiling, her hand over his where it rested on her shoulder. Father was looking down into her face. He was not smiling, his expression was even somber, and yet even so Marrè had somehow made his deep affection plain in her drawing.

  Trei very carefully slid the drawings back into their protective envelope. He laid the envelope aside on his bed—then changed his mind and picked it up again—then put it carefully down once more.

  The young Third City novices, neither of whom had gotten any letters, were teasing Rekei about his mother writing him, and his answer that they were just jealous that their mothers hadn’t written them was probably a little too true, and suddenly they were all three shouting, and Trei had no patience or tolerance for any of them. He walked out without a word.

  He went down a stairway and then along a rough-hewn corridor almost at random, and then along another, and down another stairway, even though he suspected he might by now be out of the bounds of the novitiate. He didn’t care. He followed the taste of salt in the air around a corner and found himself on a wide balcony. After a moment, he recognized it: there was the long, low-arched bridge of floating stones, and there in the distance the rugged crags of Kotipa, the Island of Dragons. The faint, insubstantial glitter of wind dragons was perceptible around and above the sharp-edged peaks; the crystalline wind was everywhere streaked and layered with complicated changes of pressure and temperature and movement. Beyond Kotipa was nothing but the sea, stretching endlessly north. Trei stared out into the blue distance.

  Trei found he was clenching his fists so tightly his nails were cutting into his palms.

  “She’s dead! They’re all dead! What do I care about seeing the wind now?” Trei said, and only realized after he heard his own voice that he’d spoken aloud. He was trembling, but didn’t know whether he was furious or frightened or grieved. He couldn’t decide what he felt, far less what he should feel. Except he wanted very badly to go home, only he was caught in confusion because he did not know what he meant by “home.” Except it was not here.

  Novices we
ren’t allowed to venture out of the novitiate. Trei hesitated for a moment, thinking about that—or not really thinking about it, but aware of it and also aware that he did not, at the moment, care. Then he headed for the wide stairway that he knew led from this balcony to the open city. From there, he was sure he could find his way back to Uncle Serfei’s house. He wasn’t sure why he felt so strongly that he had to go there. But he ran up the stairs.

  It was late, late enough that he met no one to stop him, or even ask where he was going. But Ceirfei caught up to Trei before he had gone even half a mile through the moonlit streets of First City. Trei heard the rapid footsteps coming up behind him and spun around, then stared in surprise. He didn’t know whom he had expected, but not Ceirfei. The other boy was breathing hard. He’d been running. Trei didn’t understand how the older boy had even known to look for him, or where.

  Then he realized he did know, and flushed.

  “Rekei showed us the letter and drawings,” Ceirfei admitted. He had stopped some distance back and now stood still, uncharacteristically tentative, as though afraid Trei might bolt.

  “Rekei—? He had no right! You had no right!”

  Ceirfei gave a little nod, not arguing the point. He said instead, “He was worried for you. So were we all. We didn’t know whether you might have gone to fly or just someplace to be alone. Rekei and the younger boys went to search the novitiate, Genrai went to look for you on the flight balcony in case you’d gone to get wings. But—” He hesitated. “We also thought if you had a package like that from your Tolounnese kin, you might very well want to go find your Island kin, so I came to look for you out here.”

  Trei barely listened to this. “Do you know why they sent me away?” he asked furiously. “They sent me away because they didn’t want to pay the tax to register me on my majority! That’s why! I thought they liked me, and then they—” Trei stopped, swallowing.