Diamondsong 01: Escape

by E. D. E. Bell

  Dime couldn’t imagine what she had done. Sure, there was the hiring incident with Hara’s nephew—and what a grudge Hara held over that—and there was Dime’s anti-hemsa work, but mostly that just raised discomfort and lost her a few social allies. The peckbeak campaign? No. She propelled the car forward.

  She remembered that unbelievable flying pyr silhouetted in Sol’s light. The large translucent wings bending the light like the valence they created.

  Bottom line: Ok, she now believed in fairies. But what would fairies care about any of the minutia of Dime’s aging and now inconsequential life?

  These thoughts circled as Dime pedaled in the tiny car, bell after bell, though she couldn’t hear any actual bells from here. Feeling naked on the vast plains, far from any roads, she hoped the fairies had not followed this far. Surely they’d need to rest; Dime couldn’t believe she still hadn’t, but necessity drove her onward.

  She hoped the toothcar had decent spikes, as the ground was rocky. Even as the car kept moving, Dime’s eyes drooped and her arms slumped. As the time passed, her mind went blank.

  It truly felt like a dream at this point. She wasn’t sure how long she had pedaled anymore, but it felt like forever. Perhaps it was. Perhaps she had never pedaled at all, and any moment she would wake in her bed at home, and Dayn would say oh my how you pedal in your sleep.

  That sounded absurd. And Dayn, had he gotten away? She would regroup and she would sleep and then she could find him. She thought of him again, as, to her surprise, one of the Construction Circle’s boring sites came into view: tall painted machines pumping sharp blades down into the rock.

  They shouldn’t be mining down here, in the plains. There was no reason for it. Perhaps that’s why Dayn had been so agitated when she brought it up. They were mining in the mountains, where there was endless rock, not down here. She brushed away the first thought that jumped to mind. She wasn’t allowed to repeat the rumors. No one was.

  Except no one was here to listen. Ok. The diamond mines. Agents sometimes brought back rumors that diamond mines separated the Undergrowth, the land of the fairies, from her own pyrsi in Sol’s Reach. The Chief laughed it off and reminded the team to stick to facts. The Great Cliff separated them, not caves. Except they never talked about fairies. But she had seen fairies, in Lodon. This didn’t make sense now. She was feeling so tired.

  And Sol’s light, but she wasn’t going to pee in the car. No matter what stink she was covered in, there were still limits. She pulled the car’s brake. Ducking out, she squatted over the parched plains, wondering how far in any direction she could be seen. Whatever. At least she wasn’t tied by those glittering ropes, whatever they were. Flinching at the sparkle of her own pendant, she shoved it back into her shirt.

  Groggy, she remembered the fairies. She scanned the skies and saw nothing but clouds. She had made it away, or so it seemed. Then all she had to do was get to the den, sleep until she recovered, and then figure out what in Ada-ji was going on. Wishing she had a washcloth, she pulled up her trousers.

  Oh, hurt.

  The flying figures were speeding right toward her like play darts finding their target. With effort, she snapped back into action. She scrambled back into the toothcar and switched its gears, knowing she couldn’t compromise the one place she might have left to hide.

  Turning away from where she believed the den to be, she headed in a new direction, and was stunned to see what appeared to be the end of the land beyond. Had she missed the second den also? Her mind didn’t seem to be working right, ever since she left the city.

  She hoped the cliff wasn’t too close, as she had gone an awfully long way, but it wasn’t as if she could drive toward the pursuing fairies. Except, the fairies lived over the cliff. Why was she driving toward them?

  Dime, pull it together!

  Ok. They’re overhead so they can’t see into the toothcar. She scanned around her, looking for anything that could assist her or divert them. A rocky gully had just started to form to one side, a scar in the land as if carved by the talons of a huge beast falling over the cliff beyond.

  She edged her vehicle toward the gully until she was driving parallel to it, the small dropoff just to her left. She peered over the edge, hoping it wasn’t deeper than it looked, and increased the speed of the car to build its momentum. Giving the toothcar’s steering a hard cut to her right, she cracked open the flimsy door and squeezed through it to the left, sliding into the gully as the car continued to roll down the slow slope, moving away from her.

  Her legs aching, she started running through the gully, hoping the winged pyrsi would continue to follow the car. She tripped on the loose rock, cursing as from a distance, they changed direction and came back at her again, with terrific speed, like the wind was behind them.

  “Hurt, are you fairies all this stubborn?” she muttered under her breath. “Well, you’re not more stubborn than me.”

  She ran as best as she could and searched for somewhere else to go, somewhere to hide, but they began to catch up. Grunting, she lost her focus and slid on a growing layer of rocks, slipping onto her rear. The ropes were still in their hands and their faces looked desperate, even from a distance. She thought about Dayn, and Luja, and Tum. She pictured Tum cradling furry little Agni, and Luja’s warm smile. She wanted to see them again; she wanted to go home. These beings had no right to chase her this way.

  She was going to go home.

  Furious, she wasn’t sure what happened, but the ground exploded in front of her, sending dirt and rocks and brush into a huge cloud. She coughed and fanned her arms, and spat the particles from her mouth.

  Stumbling to her feet, she tried to get away, to use the dust as cover to remove herself, finally, from their view. She pushed ahead through the cloud of debris, unsure of her direction. Her ankle wrenched as she lost her footing again, now sliding on her back down a long hill. Her arms flailed as she reached out to grab a nearby branch, something to stop her fall. Passing the tree, she thought she’d grabbed it but instead heard a crack from what she hoped was the branch. Her right arm exploded with pain.

  As she slid and bumped along, she couldn’t see the skies through the dust cloud around her. Was she near the cliff? It was taller than the walls of Lodon; she’d never survive the fall. Unless she could stop herself, she’d die realizing she’d traveled to the one place the fairies were presumably trying to take her.

  In retrospect, that didn’t seem so clever.

  Her last hope of survival vanished before her as she slipped a final time, whisking down a series of slopes and ledges, at first as rocky as the plains but then, as her body gained air beneath it, she felt the whipping and grasping of branches and grass. Again and again and again, she was beaten by fronds of fern and grasped by sticky webs, until she no longer acknowledged them.

  She plummeted down the sloped side of the Great Cliff, too scared to cry for her own death or for Dayn, Luja, and Tum. For Da-da. She was sorry for Da-da’s pain, most of all. Branches whistled as they smacked past with force, and small animals shrieked from the surrounding limbs, jumping out of her way.

  Just as Dime had accepted her mistakes and made her final peace, she smashed down to the bottom of the cliff and the world stopped spinning around her.

  Yet, the landing wasn’t as rough as the journey to it. She fell back onto what felt like an expensive bed, though one that smelled like rot. Her arms rose above her in slow motion as her body sunk into the springy mass, and then adjusted as she bounced back to the surface. Coughing spores and dust from her mouth, she tried to brush the branches away from her face, but her limbs would not respond.

  Just as the mound of decay offered her a bed of luxury, it provided a lace canopy as well. This one green, and made of layer after layer of dancing leaves. Dime blinked her eyes, as crossing boughs dotted with growth wavered in and out of her blurry vision. They extended above her in every dir
ection, obscuring any sign of the sky. Any sign of Sol. Any sign of the cliff above.

  Her head throbbed and a ringing overtook her hearing. Through her shock, she reached for her injured arm with the other, meeting a layer of warm, slick blood.

  Dime had never felt blood like this before. She had never lost her sight. She had never smelled like poop. She had never seen so much green. She had never been chased by fairies. She had never fallen off a cliff. She had only left her career. Perhaps that hadn’t been the best choice.

  The last thing Dime remembered thinking before the pain in her limbs overtook her was, No one will ever find me here.

  Cel sang to herself as she cranked down the wrench. It was an old melody, but she made up new words every time. Kept things interesting.

  “Yallo?” she called out, noticing a shape hovering in the doorway.

  A pyr crept in, wringing xyr manicured hands and looking side to side. Cel snorted; she’d met the type before. Thought pyrsi like her were contagious.

  “Fe’Cel?” xe inquired. “My, uh, car got bent up.”

  “Yep,” Cel responded. “And you are?” Irritated her something serious; pyrsi thought just because she had a hemsa and had to work down here in the low city that common manners didn’t apply. Who talks to someone without introducing xemself? I mean, other than hand-wringer here.

  “Ma’ . . . Ma’To.” See, that annoyed her more. To? He said it like he was asking her. Not his real name, then. Fine. She was used to that too.

  “Look, I’m not going to ask who sent you and I don’t use signed notes. But if you’re looking to get a toothcar repaired, I can take care of it for you.” And at twice the speed and a tenth the rate you’d get from lawful sorts, too. But, he already knew that or he wouldn’t be here. Consorting with her kind.

  The pyr’s eyes caught the car she was working on and he straightened up. Circling the raised car, he ran his hands just over the top rim, respectful enough not to touch the freshly bent metal. At least he had manners for cars.

  “All custom,” Cel bragged. “Top of the line night in the city. Two drivers, two pass’, and a thick curtain for privacy.” She bent down to the wheel and tapped her nails against one of the spikes. “Sharp as needles, these. Won’t bend, won’t bump you around, and don’t even tear up the roads. In case you got a private drive.”

  Cel stood and slapped her hand on the car’s shoulder rod. “Full metal frame; only wood in the seats. Side doors in the back.” She scowled. “I tried to get them to pay for front doors or at least a front shield, but I guess the drivers can just eat dust. I’d add them anyway, but then they’d run me for overcharging. Pyrsi down here, we can’t take risks. Though—I did give ’m the smoothest pedal motion I got.”

  The pyr stepped back, snapping out of the car-spell that had distracted him from her hemsa. “What’d you do?” he blurted.

  Cel rolled her eyes. You could just read it; it’s right here on my face. “Got creative with some connections on gear parts. Didn’t realize my sources were pouring themselves a few extra off the MC molds.” Noting his confusion, she clarified. “Maintenance Circle.”

  “Stealing!” Ma’NotHisRealName whispered. “Stealing’s like the Violence.”

  “Yeah, like, they didn’t call it stealing since they were just borrowing the equipment. Anyway, I was wrapped up in it and now I’m down here.”

  Cel tried to make light of life with a hemsa, but truth told, she still hadn’t adjusted. She didn’t trust the pyrsi around here; some of them played a real “nothing to lose” bit and she never knew who meant it. There was always housing, and she could get whatever she needed from the freeshops. Folks thought that was enough.

  Even going into the city, the best she could do was stay at street level, listening to even more clanking toothcars, like, wasn’t that already her life.

  It wasn’t worth the glares. Not for a dipped longfruit anyway. Though, finding a high spot to gaze at the mountains— Sometimes that was worth it.

  So she made what she could and donated most of it to the freeshops.

  No longer averting his eyes, the ma’pyr was downright staring at her. “Why didn’t you just tell them no? To the hemsa. What . . . what could they do?” Realizing what he had suggested as his eyes shot open wide, the pyr took one longing look at Cel’s mods and rushed back out into the street.

  “Killstroke,” Cel murmured, the thought never having occurred to her.

  Over the Cliff

  ime had no idea how long she’d slept in the muck, but her skin itched, her arm stung with fury, and her ankle throbbed. She smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in disgust, wishing she could rinse out the taste of stale blood, or the smell of her filthy clothes.

  Using her less painful arm, she fumbled to twist around and feel her opposite ankle. As she suspected, it was swollen and tender. From the intense pain in her injured arm, she feared the cut ran deep. Without much medical training herself—Luja was the one with the calling—she only hoped no bones had been broken.

  “Everything else will heal,” her father had always said. Except it didn’t, not the way the others healed. Dime’s cuts always healed more slowly than her friends’; her aches lasted longer.

  And this was one rockpile of injuries. It had been a while since she’d had a bruise, and now her bruises had bruises.

  Letting her head loll back into the mud, she groaned, hoping some of the bugs strolling by would at least express a little sympathy. She couldn’t walk with her ankle like this. But she was as thirsty as she could remember ever being, and now her stomach pinched with hunger. She couldn’t stay here. Feeling like one of the kitapillars lining the branch to her side, Dime wriggled out of the maze of sticks and vines—at a dreadfully slow pace and with the ground squishing beneath her—until she freed herself from the tangle.

  She gazed at the scenery around her. So it hadn’t been a dream. Or a nightmare. She couldn’t see the cliff itself, only tall trees which seemed to reach all the way to Sol. The light was dim, and what reached her bounced and hopped through the layers of . . . the forest. This was it. The Undergrowth. The land of the fairies.

  All her life she had been taught to fear and avoid thoughts of this wicked place, yet even in her beleaguered state, nothing felt wicked in the symphony of drops, swooshes, and whispers. The richness of the color—greener than any festival banner in Lodon—sang within her heart. It was familiar, welcoming. This was a sacred place, and she felt . . . robbed.

  What she had been taught was at best a half-truth. Every ch’pyr learned that these fairies, who called themselves Fo-ror, had stolen from Sol’s own creatures, the Ja-lal. Their incitement of the Violence had nearly destroyed Ada-ji, culminating in the Great War, an event so heinous that it was scarcely discussed beyond its existence and consequence.

  All anyone needed to know was that the Ja-lal had won, driving the wicked fairies out of Sol’s great land and into the Undergrowth, where they stayed, wallowing in mud. That the only way to stay the Violence was a lack of contact, of knowledge, of anything but a hidden fear, lodged in the back of every pyr’s mind.

  No one had spoken of the Undergrowth’s beauty. Dime questioned, even, how it was said that the Ja-lal had won. Even here, as she wallowed in the mud herself, richness surrounded her—in the colorful flowers, wide fronds, and the dancing of the light. Woodsy scents intermingled, punctuated by clicks, chirps, and whirrs.

  She had also been taught that the fairies were nothing like pyrsi. That they were big-eyed with menacing screams and beast-like manes. Over time, she’d doubted whether they even existed. Yet the ones she had seen looked just like Ja-lal, excepting the wings and the handsome locks of hair.

  Two things, inherently false. And so, what else was false? The canopy swayed above her, as if whispering in reply.

  Also, then, what was true? Was the Violence ended here, as well as in Sol
’s Reach? Or did it thrive? What danger was she in?

  For the moment, she was alone, without sign of any pyrsi: fairy or not. Above and around her, green-covered branches creaked and swayed under the bounce of furry, chattering squips and the occasional falling fruit. Fronds and ferns entranced her with their delicate patterns and slow movement. Her hand sunk into a patch of moss, its softness welcome against her scratched fingers. The ground was as wet as Sol’s Reach was dry.

  The forest was quiet and loud all at once: busy yet calm. Even over the brew of rot and Dime’s own epic stench, it smelled like a boutique. And, as her eyes adjusted, she saw, dotting the green, every color of those parchment sleeves that she had kept in her office drawer for all those cycles. If they really were from here—she’d assumed that was just a story—how had they even been purchased?

  She’d never seen so many trees. A grim image flashed in her mind of these beautiful trees being cut and made into lumber, as had been done across Sol’s Reach. Dime shivered, a protective feeling settling in. Yet lumber built homes and beds; it built the ramps and bucketpulls that allowed all pyrsi to climb the towers. It made art, and paper for learning. Sol’s Reach took care of all its burgesses through building and sharing; did the fairies not care for theirs?

  Called by the peaceful beauty of this vibrant land, even her feelings for the fairies—whose actions had not dispelled the teachings of their evil and greed—felt confused. Blurry. Or perhaps it was just her light head from lack of food or drink.

  At this point, there was no more running left in Dime, so while she wasn’t willing to give up, she conceded she had not much left to give if the fairies were to suddenly arrive. She knew she should try to move, though, at least away from where she had landed after her fall.