Faster Than Falling: The Skylighter Adventures

by Nathan Van Coops

  Samra knew this was a lie, but she didn’t say anything. Kipling had been ogling the carved wooden horn that Kaleb got to carry ever since he’d won it the year before. Unlike the star lily root trumpets the other patchlings made, the Watcher horn was carved from the sacred wood of the Globe Mother itself, dark heartwood from the core of the patch. Globe heartwood was in rare supply, durable and strong but lighter than any of the types of wood found on the surface. Grounders frequently envied the Skylighters’ tools and belongings and traded eagerly whenever possible for items made of the stuff.

  There was a rumor that the reason Enzo and The Sunshine Express came to the globe patch every year was to pay off a debt to the globe council for a bundle of heartwood from years before. As Samra scanned the fabric-wrapped frame of the yellow and red aircraft, she couldn’t see any parts that looked like heartwood. The ribs and beams she could see mostly had a red hue, and some a caramel coloring. Nothing resembled the dark gloss of Kaleb’s trumpet.

  When the crowd of patchlings thinned to the last sticky-fingered boys and girls, Samra finally reached Enzo and his basket. The weathered old pilot looked up and grinned a patchwork smile at her. He had lost a tooth or two since last year, but his blue eyes still shone with the exuberance she remembered. “Ah, Samra. Let’s see if I can remember what your favorite was.”

  Samra smiled, pleased that the old man had remembered her name. He plucked a paper-wrapped sucker from the basket and held it out to her. “Dazzleberry, if I recall.”

  Samra blushed and took the candy. “Thanks.” She realized her hands were turning red and stuffed them in her pockets.

  “Of course, my dear. Not every day I get to meet the bravest young colonist in the patch.”

  Samra cocked her head in surprise. “Me?”

  “I heard you’re departing on Cirra Sola this season. And what a beautiful new patch colony it will be.”

  Samra only nodded, surprised that this Grounder had taken the time to learn so much about their plans for after the festival.

  Enzo took a quick draw from the mask that dangled from a cord around his neck. A flexible tube ran from the mask down to a little metal canister on his belt. Samra had once asked why he preferred the air in the canister to that of the patch. He’d said it was because he loved the way the ground smelled. Kipling had chastised her later for prying. Apparently all Grounders had trouble breathing for long in the Heights and it was rude to point it out. Enzo hadn’t seemed to mind the question. He’d even let her smell the air from the can. To her it just smelled like him. Like cut grass and rainwater.

  “I spoke to your father when I landed,” Enzo said. “He’s very proud of you.” Enzo reached out and patted her on the shoulder.

  She tried not to fault him for the lie. He was probably just trying to be kind. If her father really were proud of her, wouldn’t he have told her and not a Grounder?

  “And who have we got here? Kipling and Rufustus, yes?” Enzo glanced at Rufus’s buoyancy belt. “Still healthy eaters in the family, I see. Very good. If I could float up into the sky just from eating breakfast, you’d bet I would, too.”

  Rufus had seemed slightly on guard, used to comments about his buoyancy belt not being nearly so complimentary, but as Enzo handed him a bright orange gum whistle, his trepidation faded away. “I’ve only drifted off twice this month. Mother says I’m likely to be able to lose the belt any day now.”

  Samra almost commented at this, knowing that Rufus’s mother had been making this same claim for two years, but she opted to concentrate on her dazzleberry sucker instead. She looked over the aircraft and saw no sign of their other annual visitor. “Where’s Fledge?”

  “Being lazy,” Enzo replied. He stepped onto the lower wing and climbed to the front of the cockpit, reaching down into the seat and extracting a brown and black ball of fur. “I swear all he does anymore is sleep.” The animal in his arms opened its dark orb eyes and blinked a few times, letting out a yawn that revealed all of its pointed fangs. The big ears twitched and it stretched one leathery wing to full length before using its clawed end to scratch its neck.

  Samra had rarely seen a cliff fox in the wild. The mammals were usually reclusive, inhabiting the clefts and hollows of the Miramoor Coast, feeding on insects, birds, and even small fish or crustaceans if they could catch them. They weren’t really foxes, though their faces resembled one. They were actually part of the bat family, though the biggest of the species by far. Samra had heard stories of cliff foxes so large that they could carry off young patchlings who weren’t paying attention. Her father said that was nonsense, but other parents in the patch loved to use the threat of cliff fox abduction to encourage obedience from their less than mindful offspring.

  Fledge, the old aviator’s companion, aided as much as the baskets of candy when it came to Enzo garnering awe from the youngest citizens of the patch. The cliff fox climbed his way up onto Enzo’s shoulder, and after a flap of its wings, settled into a sleepy surveillance of its surroundings.

  Enzo pulled another basket from the baggage hold of the aircraft. This one was filled with reed tubes, individually wrapped with colored ribbons. Samra knew that each one held messages—communications from other patches, and sometimes correspondence from Grounders hoping to reach the Skylighter High Council. Enzo tucked one of the tubes carefully inside his jacket pocket, then hoisted the basket on his hip and grinned at Kip. “I trust your family is keeping the patch in order. Your brother must be near to being a councilman by now, isn’t he?”

  Kipling frowned. “Yeah, I guess.”

  The old man straightened up and gave the formal Altirian sign for visitor. “May the north wind bring you vision to see paths that are clear.”

  Kipling held up his hand as well and dutifully responded. “May the west wind bring us calm to savor the company of friends.”

  “I come as invited guest of the globe council. Would you be so kind as to escort me safely to my destination?” Enzo smiled.

  “The Globe Mother shines brighter because of your presence,” Kipling replied. “You are welcome and received with joy. I will guide you safely to your destination.” The last few words were more of a mumble, but Enzo didn’t seem to mind.

  They both performed the required bow and Enzo smiled again. He ruffled the boy’s hair. “Council can’t fault us for not following protocol. Let’s go see them, shall we?”

  Samra trailed behind the old man and the boys at first, shadowing their steps along the thick vine bridge that connected the landing platform to the main patch, but after a few minutes, she tired of walking. It wasn’t something she did much, and she didn’t care for it, except as a playful diversion when pretending to be a Grounder. She preferred to float and bounce.

  As soon as she was in range of the Globe Mother, Samra took a deep breath and sprang for the canopy of leaves that hung high above the vine bridge. She soared through the air and turned a flip just for the fun of it. When she landed in the greenery and tendrils high over the boys’ heads, she looked back and saw the expression of jealousy on Rufus’s face. His buoyancy belt kept him weighed down and, even if he didn’t have it on, proper aim had never been one of his skills. Freely bounding about the patch was still beyond him.

  She could tell that Kip was wishing he could spring after her, chase her up the outside of the stalks the way they’d loved to do since they were little. Most days Kip could keep up with her, sometimes even outrace her, but he was a councilwoman’s son, and today, proper manners dictated that he escort their guest according to the dignity and limits of his species.

  The old man didn’t seem to mind Samra’s lack of decorum. In fact, he was grinning up at her with a gleam in his eye that she couldn’t help but interpret as envy. The wiry pilot didn’t behave like the other Grounders she’d met at all. Other than needing his own special air on occasion, he seemed every bit as comfortable in the Heights as a Skylighter. With solid bones and no natural buoyancy cells built into their anatomy, most Grounders wou
ld panic and fret at being so high above the clouds, but she had never known the old man to so much as tremble at the drop-offs beneath him, even when the vine bridge narrowed or required him to cling to tendrils and handholds to keep his balance.

  Samra leapt and climbed her way up the patch, taking her favorite paths as high as she could go. She jumped and scrambled onto the massive globe of the Mother herself, then around its circumference toward the grove of the councilors. The smooth membrane of the globe glowed warm under her touch.

  The gigantic orb of the Mother was the primary source of lift for the patch. While the other globe daughters and sons provided added buoyancy, and even the bodies of the Skylighters themselves contributed in a small way to keeping the patch airborne, the Globe Mother’s voluminous interior contained more hot lifting gases than any other object in the northern hemisphere. High above the rest of the patch, Samra felt like the Mother was pulsing with the same joy she felt.

  The dozens of smaller globes attached to the Mother were spun out in a vast spiral today, like planets circling a star. The luminescent green spheres bobbed in the wind and occasionally bumped into one another, but the entire collection of them stretched for miles, leafy islands in a sea of blue.

  Samra only perched on the side of the Globe Mother until she could make out Kip and Rufus far below, guiding the pilot toward the Gate of Thorns, the entrance to the council chambers. Forcing all the lift gases from her body and narrowing her eyes, she released her grip on the side of the globe and plummeted.

  It was here that Samra felt most alive, watching the green of the patch blur by, refusing to breathe for as long as she could while she built up speed. Normally she could go faster, but the Gate of Thorns was rushing up to meet her. She flipped herself upright to position her feet below her, and slammed into the walkway just ahead of Kip with a satisfying thud, hard enough to send a tremor through the tendrils around the gate.

  “Goodness!” the old pilot exclaimed, and Fledge flapped his wings to keep his balance on the old man’s shoulder. Rufus had staggered back a step and had to find his equilibrium again as Samra straightened up in front of them. “Aren’t you the acrobat,” Enzo murmured.

  Samra didn’t know what an acro-bat was, but if it was a relative of the cliff fox, she took it to be a compliment. She smiled and moved out of the way for the old man. Kip frowned at her but she knew he would have been doing the same thing if he had the choice. The fact that she was free to do as she pleased and he wasn’t was clearly irritating him, but she merely reveled in the glory of her position. Sadly this was as far as any of them could go.

  The dark wooden door of the council chamber opened without them having to knock. Someone had no doubt heard her dramatic arrival on the walkway. Inside the doorway, Councilman Thur welcomed their guest. The old Skylighter was one of the seven councilors who ensured the welfare of the patch. His bold eyes were hazel and matched the threads of his councilor’s tunic. His skin was a pale brown, so thin in places that Samra could see right through it. She could make out the outline of his teeth through his cheeks, even when his mouth was closed. It was a strange sensation to be seeing someone’s insides. She wondered if other parts of him had become transparent, too. Could you look right into his stomach and see what he ate for breakfast? She shook off the thought in disgust. She was grateful that the council elders tended to stay covered in their ceremonial cloaks.

  Enzo shook each of the patchlings’ hands and he thanked Kip for guiding him, then stepped inside the council chamber. Councilman Thur nodded gravely to the three friends as proper manners dictated, but said nothing. He merely closed the door.

  Samra frowned as the lock slid into place, disappointed not to know what messages might have come from the other colonies. Any private messages would be sorted by the council and delivered to the proper recipients, but she had little reason to expect any letters would be coming to her. Nearly all the people she knew still lived aboard the Globe Mother. Her patchmate, Racha, had flown away two seasons ago when her family colonized a new globe daughter, but she had only written once, and then never responded to the three or four notes Samra had sent. She didn’t care. Racha had been a dull girl anyway. In fact, she hoped Racha’s colony got blown into the North Fang Ridge or sunk by the long-taloned eagles over the misty forests of Gongarra.

  She supposed that if Racha’s patch had really gone missing, someone would have mentioned it, but she liked to imagine it anyway. It wasn’t that she wished Racha or her family any harm. On the contrary, a good catastrophe would have served Racha well and livened up her otherwise humdrum existence.

  The most interesting people all had harrowing stories to tell. Someday Samra was sure she’d be thought fascinating due to all the dangerous adventures she’d survived. Sadly, no one could think that yet, since nothing exciting ever seemed to happen aboard the Globe Mother—except perhaps the imagined adventures she shared with Kip and Rufus.

  “So what do you want to do now?” Samra asked. “We could go jump off the skywalk. Want to see who can plummet the farthest?”

  Kipling shook his head. “No. You always win that. And Rufus wouldn’t be able to play. Plus it’s broad daylight and someone is bound to catch us. You’re lucky Thur didn’t yell at us already for that landing you made.”

  “I didn’t even fall that hard,” Samra objected. “I can go way faster than that if I want to.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not supposed to,” Kipling said. “Nobody is, but you especially.”

  Samra frowned and glanced away.

  Some days she regretted telling him. Other than Kip, only her parents knew what Doctor Kesh had said. Dangerous lack of air circulation. Prone to blackouts. Hereditary.

  The patch all knew what had happened to her mother, but nobody talked about it anymore. Not even Samra.

  “Okay. What do you want to do then?” Samra asked.

  Kip stepped to the edge of the walkway that led back to the center stalk of the Globe Mother. Samra joined him in contemplating the view. Somewhere far below, a woman was laughing and the breeze carried the spicy scent of sun pepper stew simmering in someone’s kitchen.

  Rufus was still staring at the sturdy heartwood door to the council chambers, his hands resting on his hips. “What do you think they’re talking about in there?”

  Kipling plucked a tangleberry from one of the dangling tangleweed tendrils and started to suck on it. “Just council business. Nothing exciting.”

  “It could be exciting,” Samra countered. “Maybe Enzo is coming to tell them that all the colonies have been blighted with horn worms and we’re the only patch left. Could be he’s in there delivering the terrible news right now.”

  “Horn worms can’t bring down a whole colony,” Kip replied. “You just dust them with sea salt powder and they shrivel right up.”

  Samra scowled. “Yeah, but these might have been giant horn worms that hatched after a plague of locusts ate all of the globe greens. Maybe the citizens of the patches were so weak and famished that they couldn’t dust the globes with sea salt in time and then a swarm of flying sand lizards came to eat the worms and their talons punctured the globes. They all went down in a horrendous tangled mess.”

  Rufus went pale and his mouth hung open. “Could that happen?” he stammered. “Would they die?”

  “It depends on if they went down in the water or over land,” Samra explained. “If they went into the Western Ocean, they might have been attacked by dappled cape sharks. Out there I hear the sharks get so big that some can swallow a globe son whole. I heard one got ahold of a whole sack of globe sons before they’d spawned and it became so buoyant from eating them that it could fly through the air. It learned to swim through the sky and attack Grounders in their boats. Then it swam up even higher and sank its teeth into the Loma Dura globe daughter. That’s why it went missing all those years ago. The flying cape shark ate it all up.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Rufus,” Kip said. “She’s just trying to scare you.”


  “You can doubt me if you want,” Samra said. “But you know as well as I do that no one has ever heard from Loma Dura again. I’m telling you, it was a flying shark.”

  She put on her most serious expression. “But that’s not the most terrible fate. If your patch goes down over land, it can be even worse. I bet some of the patches got caught in a cyclone over the Sea of Sand. Down south, in the Somorian Desert, they have cyclones so big and so fast that they reach up into the sky and shred the globes with razor sand. Your patch gets sucked straight down into the desert and it doesn’t stop there. The cyclones are so powerful that they even reach underground. They siphon you right into the sand. By the time anyone notices your patch is missing, the whole colony is a hundred feet deep, lost forever in the desert.”

  Rufus’s eyes were as wide as they could open. He looked to Kip in horror. “Do you think we might be the last patch left?”

  Kipling merely shook his head.

  “Enzo had a special message tucked into his jacket,” Samra said. “I bet it was from some lonely survivor of the disaster who used the last of his strength to nobly get word to us, just before he died of thirst in the desert. I bet if we climbed up onto the grove tendrils we might even be able to hear them read out his final warning.”

  Kipling frowned at this. “We’re not allowed to climb the council grove.”

  “You really think they’ll notice, when they’re listening to Enzo tell the story of all those dead people?” Samra had gotten so into her story that she almost felt it was true. The line between her imagination and reality was blurring again. Even now her heart was racing, thinking that Enzo might really be detailing the end of their civilization somewhere on the other side of the tendril wall. “Let’s go check it out.”

  She didn’t wait for the boys. She leapt onto the wall and started to climb, looking for a cleft or hole in the tendrils that she might be able to see through. A moment later, Kipling flew up onto the wall beside her. “Not that way. There’s a dead tendril bundle on the windward side. It’s all shriveled and brittle now. We can listen there.” He climbed left and started to circumnavigate the thick grove in that direction. Samra smiled and scrambled after him. There were benefits to hanging around the chief grower’s son.