by Chloe Garner
Olivia shrugged, looking at the group of Band Rung again.
“What are they doing with the crystals?” she asked.
“Who cares?” Light of Dawn asked. “They take all of them, sneaking through the water where we can’t do anything about it, and our trees fail.”
“What’s in them?” Olivia asked. Cassie grinned without looking at her.
“We will need to look at one of them,” the Palta said to the Band Rung.
“No,” Light of Dawn said. “They are too precious.”
“They must go into the ground whole,” Sound of Ocean Waves said. “If we plant them broken, they will kill the trees.”
“Trace nutrients,” Olivia murmured. “Need to have them dissolve in rainwater over time. But why is it coming out of the ocean? Anything that comes out of the ocean… It’s really salty, here. It would just be mostly salt…” She put her fingers over her mouth. “Oh, that’s very interesting.”
“So fun to listen to you think,” Cassie said. It was honest. Olivia glanced at her.
“I might be able to figure out some of what’s missing, just looking at the leaves and the wood, but I’d need equipment from the lab…”
“I can kludge up just about anything you like with what I’ve got,” Cassie said. Olivia looked over at the box.
“Or we could just go get them,” she said. “If it’s about swimming, we can swim…”
“That’s not a solution,” Cassie said. “It’s a stop-gap for a year, and I’m not a laborer. My time - and yours - is much more effectively spent solving the issue, not gathering resources.”
“I’m not talking about getting resources,” Olivia said. “I’m talking about going out and getting our own samples, if theirs are so precious.”
Cassie turned her head to look over at her, frowning.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I don’t usually read you that badly.”
“Me, huh?” Olivia asked. Cassie looked back at the Band Rung.
“No. You and everyone else. But you especially.”
Olivia shook her head, and Cassie straightened.
“There it is,” she said. “We are willing to help you, but you’re going to have to be willing to let us come and go freely.”
“We don’t need help,” Light of Dawn said. “We are going to get rid of the side-walkers and everyone who moves with them, all on our own.”
Everyone Olivia had seen inside the city had been physically close to other Band Rung, if they were around. There hadn’t been a sense of individual personal space anywhere she’d been. The Band Rung twined around each other and spoke to each other at a distance of inches. She hadn’t noticed it wasn’t going on, here, until it did.
The Band Rung gathered together, weaving themselves one around another, forming a solid wall of dark bodies that faced Cassie.
“We are united,” one of them said. Olivia thought it was Sound of Ocean Waves, but she couldn’t be certain, just then.
Olivia braced herself to run, but Cassie stood her ground.
“You would go to war over this?” she asked. “If there were a simpler solution that would be more permanent?”
“We defend our home,” Light of Dawn said.
“You aren’t built for it,” Cassie said. “Nothing about you says ‘fortification’. It all says ‘retreat’. You’re fast and you’re powerful, sure, but you break too easily. Even I can see that, and if you make yourselves real enemies out in the world, they’re all going to know it, too. You don’t know anything about fighting. Let us fix the trees and keep you out of whatever it is that’s going on out there.”
“Why shouldn’t they fight back, if someone is taking something that rightfully belongs to them?” Olivia asked. Cassie snorted at the ceiling.
“You, of all people, would ask that? You who would throw your wallet at someone who you thought might be thinking about mugging you, just to make sure that they would bend over to grab it and give you enough time to run away? I’m all for helping the little guy win a fight, when he’s right, but I also know that you have to know your limitations, and without me here, their limitations are remarkable.”
“You stole the woman powering an entire city and then left her on her own on an abandoned planet,” Olivia hissed.
“Ah,” Cassie said. “I can see how you would be confused.”
Olivia expected more explanation than that, but she didn’t get one.
“I think it’s time for flying lessons,” Light of Dawn said.
“I think you’d have to catch me, first,” Cassie said. She put out her arm and the box, sitting against the wall, appeared under her hand. The Band Rung startled backwards, and without Olivia even blinking, she found herself… simply somewhere else. There was still beautiful natural light around her, but the room they were in was different, different Band Rung there, Cassie… Cassie took about a half a second to appear, off to Olivia’s right.
“Keep moving, O,” Cassie said. “I can get us from floor to floor, but it’s just going to stir them up.”
“What are you doing?” Olivia asked.
“Getting us back to the beach so you can get your sample,” Cassie said, coming over to grab Olivia’s elbow. She had a briskness to her that bordered on exuberance.
“What?” Olivia asked. “Why? They just threatened to throw us out the window.”
“Because Troy is still here, and because the place is just too damned pretty to let it just die.”
“What are you two doing here?” a Band Rung voice asked. They both turned.
“Thought you’d be out on the sand by now,” Cassie said. Olivia only just managed to figure out that it was Breath of Air as Cassie spoke.
“My mother is stubborn,” he said. “And she’s making mistakes. Would you really help us heal the trees without having to go up against the side-walkers?”
“I lie,” Cassie said. “Sometimes. But I do intend to help you, whether or not you go along with it.”
“Why?” Breath of Air asked.
“Because my friend is here,” Cassie said. “I can’t prove it yet, but I feel it. And because I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong yet, and I’ve got a long score sheet to settle of causing things to go wrong, rather than preventing them. You shouldn’t go to war. You don’t know how, and your people will suffer.”
“I agree,” Breath of Air said.
“The entire panel of elders you just put us in front of seemed pretty sure it was the right thing to do,” Olivia said.
“I was here to catch you,” he answered.
“You knew they were going to throw us out the window?” Olivia asked.
“Give him the benefit,” Cassie said. “He knew they might.”
Olivia rolled her head over to look at Cassie, who had the nerve to seem amused.
“We need to keep moving,” the Palta woman said. “They’re going to be looking for us.”
“Where do you want to go?” Breath of Air asked.
“You have friends who feel the way you do?” Cassie asked.
“Yes,” Breath of Air answered.
“Good. You’re going to take her and this box and you’re going to go find a quiet place to set her up.”
“What are you going to do?” Olivia asked.
“I’m going swimming,” Cassie said, flashing a grin. Olivia widened her eyes at Cassie.
“How are you going to get back across the jumps?”
Cassie tipped her head to the side.
“Tree of Cleansing Fruit, you always forget the things I’m capable of, when they matter most.”
“How will you find us?” Breath of Air asked.
“That box,” Cassie said, nodding toward it. “I can bring it to me or I can bring me to it, any time I need to.”
“Should I get started setting up the lab, then?” Olivia asked. Cassie laughed, going to lean as far out the window as she could get without tipping.
“If you can open the box, you’re welcome to do whatever you want with anything
you find,” she answered, then danced her fingers along her forearm and she was gone. Breath of Air stared.
“She does that,” Olivia said.
“She’s a gap-walker,” Breath of Air said. “I’ve never heard of one.”
“Convenient that you have a word for it,” Olivia answered. He looked at her, and she ducked her head. “Sorry. I get nervous when I don’t know where I am.”
“You’re safe,” he answered. “But we’re going to have to go over the outside of the city. Fewer people will see us, that way.”
“You can’t carry me and the box,” Olivia said.
“You’re right,” Breath of Air answered. “I’ll send someone back to get it as soon as we…”
There were voices, fast ones, and distant, too indistinct for Olivia’s implant to catch what they said.
“Now,” Breath of Air said. “We have to go now.”
He moved to the window in a fluid rush, grabbing Olivia around the waist as he went past and throwing them out into open air and sun with a lack of control that made Olivia bite both her lips to keep from screaming. She gripped his arm hard with both hands, burying her face into his shoulder as the sensation of freefall perpetuated.
He’d missed his grip.
They were going to bounce, very hard, several times, and then it would be the long fall down to the ground. If she was lucky, she’d be unconscious for that part.
There was the feeling of a rubber band pulling taut, then they swung and Olivia’s back hit a wall with controlled force.
“How good is your hearing?” Olivia whispered.
“I don’t know,” Breath of Air said, facing another direction. “How good is yours?”
“I’m afraid they’re going to be able to hear my heart beat,” she whispered, holding herself as still as she could get. Her entire body was throbbing, and she could feel her fingers beginning to shake, where they were digging ruts into Breath of Air’s arm.
“I didn’t realize,” Breath of Air said. “Did I frighten you?”
She didn’t want to admit it out loud, so she didn’t. That and she didn’t trust herself to speak, anyway.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Flying lessons are something we give our young ones, when they’re old enough. We take them to increasingly high windows and throw them out, and they’re supposed to catch the trees on the way down.”
Olivia looked up at him in horror.
“And if they don’t?”
He laughed.
“They do. You don’t do it before they’re ready.”
They were pressed against the building, orange rock curving away from them, with Band Rung voices inside talking to each other. Looking for Olivia and Cassie.
“Your friend is remarkable,” Breath of Air said.
“That’s what they say,” Olivia answered, daring a look down at the trees. “You could catch yourself from this height? Down there?”
“Yes,” Breath of Air said. “I can’t jump from the very top - only a few of us can - but I’m close.”
Olivia shook her head, pulling her eyes up to the horizon again. He was right; the view was beautiful. She just couldn’t stomach - couldn’t believe - that she was seeing it from outside of the building, where a foreign terrestrial, hanging by his fingertips, was holding her.
“So your mom,” she said.
“I was embarrassed,” he said. “I don’t talk about her very much.”
“Is she in charge?” Olivia asked.
“No,” he said. “She’s outspoken among the Bollow, and there are a number of them who look to her for leadership, but no one is in charge.”
“Like your royalty don’t reign,” Olivia said. He shifted and her fingers dug deeper into his arm again.
“Sorry,” she said. “Am I hurting you?”
“No,” he said. “How?”
He shifted again, making a lunging grab for something overhead far enough that he had to jump to get it, and again Olivia contained a scream.
The building came in random juts and jags overhead, not exactly made for climbing, but not intending to prevent it, either, and he made his way up the outside for a time. He jumped from one wall to another, where the building curled in and then back out again, an intentional cleft, and Olivia caught sight of one of the metal plates they used to light the entire building.
It was several meters wide and two stories tall, bent to reflect light down a long shaft of the same metal that went down inside the building. The geometry of the problem they were solving was astonishing to her.
They went up further and then Breath of Air landed on a window sill and set Olivia down on her feet.
“I’m going back for the supplies,” he said. “I won’t be as long with just me.”
“Be careful,” Olivia said. What she’d wanted to say was that he should stay with her and ask someone else to get it, but that was the wrong plan. Even she knew that. They needed Cassie to be able to find them, and that box was the beacon for her to do it. If he didn’t get to it before another Band Rung did, Cassie would jump herself into a room full of Band Rung who wanted to throw her out a window, and while it was apparently harder to kill a Palta than that, it meant that Olivia was on her own.
She looked around the room she was in, feeling very awkward as she identified it as a bedroom. Storage bins were built into the walls, and there was a rope hammock in the corner that was slightly too big for Olivia. There was another bronze mirror built into the wall, and stones in a tray underneath it. Feeling like a voyeur, Olivia went and picked one of them up, finding it soft and chalky, almost a talc feeling, but wetter. It gave her fingers an oiled feel, even though she couldn’t see any residue on them when she put it back down.
“I thought I might find you here,” a voice said, and Olivia stumbled back, tripping on her own feet and falling onto the floor. She scrambled back, getting up again as she looked at the slender Band Rung in the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” she said. It was a strange thing to say, given that she was still terrified that the Band Rung would just throw her out the window, but she was in a bedroom where she didn’t belong.
“Why?” the Band Rung asked. “He’s the one who dropped you here.”
“What?” Olivia asked, looking at the window.
“Let’s start again,” the Band Rung said. “I’m Moonlight on Still Water. Sound of Ocean Waves at Midnight is my father.”
“The one who just tried to throw me out the window,” Olivia said, fight or flight kicking in. She didn’t need to antagonize the Band Rung before Breath of Air got back, but she was feeling cornered and angry and like reasoning with these people wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
Cassie had abandoned her.
“You’re safe here,” Still Water said. “Breath of Air knew that you would be safe.”
“I thought this was his room,” Olivia said.
“No,” Still Water said with a casual arm motion. “They went there first.”
“They know he’s helping us?”
“There’s a reason he and his mom don’t get along,” Still Water said. “My father still thinks that I’m a good girl who will climb the vine I’m told to.”
Olivia sat down on the floor against the wall by the door, where no one going past in the hallway would incidentally see her.
“What’s going on here?” Olivia asked. “My friend could see that the trees are suffering, but surely it’s more than that.”
“Why does it have to be more than that?” Still Water said. Olivia paused.
“You would defy your parents over trees wilting?”
Still Water made a soft whistling noise.
“You are definitely a ground-walker,” she said. “There’s nothing more important than the trees. When they begin to sicken and die, there is no more hope for the Band Rung. We have to abandon our home and go start somewhere else, at the ground.”
“Why not plant more trees?” Olivia asked.
“Could you walk with one leg half
as long as the other?” Still Water asked.
Olivia pursed her lips.
“Is that really the same thing?” she asked.
“It is to us,” Still Water said. “Why is Breath of Air helping you? What did you do to make them all angry?”
“Climbed,” Olivia said, twisting her mouth to the side. Still Water put both of her palms to her forehead.
“Spies,” she said.
“Yes,” Olivia said. “That’s exactly what they thought.”
Breath of Air pulled himself into the room with the case and pushed it against the wall next to Olivia.
“Making messes again,” Still Water said.
“Need to get her to the lost rooms,” Breath of Air said.
“You think you can burn torches down there and no one will notice?” Still Waters asked.
“No, but they’re going to search the colony,” Breath of Air said. “They aren’t going to be safe here.”
“Would we be safe out there?” Olivia asked. “Just go find a spot under a tree somewhere to work?”
“No,” Still Water and Breath of Air said at the same time. He looked at her and she motioned.
“Out there, we can find anything. The trees tell us where it is. You need to be in stone, if you’re going to stay in one place.” She looked over at Breath of Air. “What is it you’re hoping to do? Keep them alive?”
“They’re going to help us,” Breath of Air said. Still Water glanced at Olivia, who felt very underwhelmed.
“With what?”
“To stop the war.”
Still Water flicked her fingers at him.
“There is no war.”
“They’re going to start one,” Breath of Air said. “I talked to my father last night.”
“And I talked to mine.”
“Your father doesn’t have as much power with the Bollow as my mother does,” Breath of Air said. “She’s going to attack the side-walkers.”
“How?” Still Water asked. “They’re underwater. We can’t reach them.”
“They come to shore,” Breath of Air said. “And then…”
“Then what?” Still Water pressed. “What would we do?”
“Kill them.”
“How?”
Olivia didn’t have the training or mentality that Cassie and Troy did, but she could immediately come up with some ways to kill something that she was pretty sure would work.