Faster Than Falling: The Skylighter Adventures

by Nathan Van Coops

  “Grab me another,” Enzo replied. “The Express can spare a few. I’ll see about filling some more tomorrow.”

  Atlas trotted over to the rack of spherical air tanks stacked along the barn wall and selected one of the smaller ones suitable for the trike. He loved any excuse to linger inside this barn. The shining brass nozzles and intricate pipes of Enzo’s air dispensing contraptions looked marvelously impressive arrayed across the barn wall, but the real power of Enzo’s machine lay deep beneath his feet in the underground caverns, and the force of the fast-flowing river running through them. Atlas reverently placed a hand on the copper pipe that protruded from the ground and could feel the subtle vibrations of the river far below. He returned to the trike and secured the air tank carefully in the cargo area.

  “Which pasture will the patch anchor to this year?” Atlas asked.

  “Mayor Fillmore invited them to use his land again, as usual,” Enzo replied.

  “Why can’t they use your pasture? We have enough room. They could anchor to the landing strip.” Atlas followed Enzo around the Express, helping him secure the baggage holds and the fin locks for the night.

  “It’s not ours to decide, Atlas. The villagers make that decision.”

  “But you know the Skylighters better than anyone. You talk right to the high chief and—”

  “Chief Councilor,” Enzo corrected.

  “Yeah, and she likes you best out of all of us settlers.”

  “I’m sure that the Skylighter High Council respects all of us equally.”

  “Did they sing for you when you were there and light up the way they do at the festival? Did they tell you all about the other skylands? Did they have any battles with lightning snakes?”

  “The patch has just begun its descent from the Heights, Atlas. They’re busy getting ready to spawn their latest colonies and release their globe sons. There wasn’t time for all that. But don’t worry. There will be plenty of stories shared during the festival.” Enzo fixed the last strap to the cargo rack of the motortrike and closed the barn doors. “Now get home to Amelia. She’ll be needing you and it’s getting late.”

  “So, we can test fly the Dragon tomorrow?” Atlas asked.

  “If you get your work done and we have time.”

  “I’ll get it done,” Atlas replied.

  Enzo opened the air valve on the handlebars and the motortrike sputtered to life. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” He began to pedal and the trike lurched forward, bouncing and clattering its way down the lane toward town.

  Atlas waited till his grandfather was out of sight before reentering the barn and stealing one more look at his new control wheel in the cockpit of the Dragon. He ran a hand along the seat and down to the fin controls. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll really be flyers.”

  The dirt path through the hills to the home he shared with his aunt seemed to float beneath him as Atlas ran. He could already picture himself soaring above it—the Sun Dragon’s wings spread to catch the wind from the mountainside. He could feel it race along the valley, banking and gliding over the fields of his neighbors and friends from school. How envious they all would be. He would return to school a hero. He’d walk in with windblown hair and the smell of clouds about him. Perhaps he’d fly up to one of the floating kelp patches near the coast and bring down a bunch of star lilies for Heather Lanford. She wouldn’t think he was such a little kid then.

  Cathy was on the porch lighting the lanterns when Atlas trotted into view. The lanterns gave an inviting glow to the sod-covered burrow nestled into the base of the cliffs. His aunt’s partner was still in her work overalls but one shoulder strap dangled at her waist. Her sun-browned arms were sinewy and muscular, lifting the heavy steel lanterns with ease. Setting the most recently lit lantern on its hook, she used her other hand to brush away a moth and spotted Atlas. She raised her eyebrows and gestured for him to come to her.

  “Hey, Cathy. Guess what Enzo—”

  “Tell me later,” Cathy interrupted, her voice firm and low. “You’d best hurry on in. Your aunt is . . . well, you’d just best get in there.”

  Atlas frowned and tried to recall what his aunt might be mad about. Then he remembered the goats. “Oh no! Did they not make it back in?” His heart sank as he imagined the worst. Had they been attacked by predators? He scanned the sky for any evidence of danger.

  Cathy jabbed a thumb toward the front door and Atlas followed the gesture. The already heavy wooden door seemed weighted further by the dread of his impending fate. Atlas navigated the labyrinthine tunnels into the hillside home and followed the sound of running water to the kitchen. His aunt was at the sink, her back to him, with a stream of water exiting the copper pipe in front of her and trickling into a high-sided pot. Her back was taut, her thin frame a tensed coil he feared to release.

  Atlas stalled at the threshold of the room and shifted uncomfortably as he attempted to think of an opening.

  “I don’t ask a lot, you know.” Amelia set her hands on the edge of the sink. Her shoulder blades protruded sharply against the back of her shirt, her tight brown braid hanging between them.

  “I’m sorry I forgot to pen the goats,” Atlas muttered. “I meant to. I just got distracted because—”

  “There’s always an excuse, Atlas, but that doesn’t fix the problem.” Amelia turned around to face him and propped herself against the sink, crossing her arms. Her lean face looked tired. Her shirtsleeves were rolled up past her elbows and one of the buttons was misaligned on her shirt. Her dark brown eyes weren’t angry, they were disappointed, and that was worse. Even Brody, Amelia’s herding dog, had his head down on his paws and seemed afraid to look up. Atlas fixed his eyes on his shoes.

  “I got most of the herd back inside but two are missing. I want you to get the pens clean and dry tonight before bed and in the morning you’re going to find Tildy and Murph. If we’re lucky, they just wandered into one of the gullies here in the canyon. They might hunker down for the night and stay safe that way. We’ve already suffered too many losses this year. You know how much Tildy matters to us right now.”

  Tildy the goat was pregnant for the first time in years, and Atlas knew that their herd numbers certainly needed the boost.

  “I could go out now and look for them. Maybe they’re close by and I could—”

  “No.” Amelia turned around and presented him with her back again as she scrubbed the pot. “It’s getting too dark. Cathy will keep an eye out for them if they wander in. You’ll do your chores and help me make up for the time I spent chasing them this afternoon. Then you’ll do your schoolwork and get to bed.” Atlas suspected that it was Brody that did most of the work this afternoon herding the goats, but the tone in her voice left no room for argument. “Tomorrow I’ll need your help getting the weeds out of the vegetable garden. We’ll add them to the goats’ feed and maybe try to keep them off the willows for a bit. The saplings are getting bare and we’ll need them healthy this summer.”

  “But tomorrow I’m supposed to meet Enzo and . . .”

  Amelia twisted to look at Atlas and fixed him with a stare that made him trail off.

  He scuffed his shoe on the floor and turned toward the tunnel that led to the goat pens.

  “There will be a plate for you in the cupboard when you get back,” Amelia said, returning her gaze to the sink. “You can eat when your chores are done.”

  The passage down to the pens sloped slightly and Atlas kicked a pebble ahead of him dejectedly as he walked. He passed through the two gates that kept the herd from wandering into the rest of the warren, then trudged into the pens.

  Pens was a loose term. Caverns would be more apt, since the goats climbed the walls and wedged themselves high in the clefts of the underground cave, sometimes licking the minerals that seeped through the ceiling of the cavern and washed down the sides of the rocks.

  The caverns were divided from one another by means of wooden gates affixed to the tunnel walls, although most of the goats were corr
alled in the center cavern where an underground stream had dug its way across the floor. This cavern also had a skylight—a section of the cave ceiling that had collapsed many years ago and been shored back up. One of his ancestors, likely his deceased grandfather, had been the one to block it off again. Iron bars now crisscrossed the opening, preventing access to all but the last glow of twilight and the checkered view of the sky.

  Atlas stood in the circle of dim light on the cavern floor, surrounded by the smell of wet goats and their droppings. The bars may as well have been there to keep him in. The sky was never more out of reach than here. His thoughts wandered to the Sun Dragon, under wraps in his grandfather’s barn, wings stowed and static. He ought to be out there, high in the evening clouds, looking down on the world. But that vision was fading. The sky was nearly dark now.

  One of the goats tugged on his pant leg and bleated for his attention. He shoved her away and looked back to the skylight. A shadow passed overhead, flickering across the sky in silhouette, wings spread. His eyes strained to make out the shape, but it was gone.

  Out in the darkness, some creature screamed.

  6

  THE STAR PARK

  Kipling stared at the Watcher horn on the table and wished he could light it on fire with his mind. The fact that Kaleb seemed unable to keep his hands off it tonight had something to do with it. Kipling tried to look elsewhere, but his brother kept fidgeting with the prize, repositioning it on the table, always somewhere Kipling was sure to have a clear view.

  “I really think it’s best if we find a way to get the globes to the other colonies directly . . .” his father continued sharing his suggestions about the growth of the patch over dinner. “If we can find a way to transport them . . .”

  The conversation around the table wasn’t much of a distraction for Kipling. His mother and father had praised Kaleb again for his victory—a bit longer than he felt was necessary—and then launched straight into council business and the issue of the missing globe sons. While his parents seemed to welcome Kaleb’s inclusion in the conversation about the best way to pollinate the colonies with their remaining supply, every solution Kipling suggested went largely ignored. He finally slumped in his chair and resigned himself to being irrelevant.

  “Can I be excused?” He inserted the question into the first lull in the conversation he could find. “I told Samra I’d help her with her schoolwork tonight.”

  His mother arched an eyebrow in a skeptical appraisal of his request, but his father nodded vaguely and gestured toward the doorway. “Stay out of trouble, and be able to get inside at the warning signal. We’re not in the Heights anymore.”

  The globes had already started to glow as Kipling ran through the grove and out the eastern tendril gate. He leapt into the canopy of leaves surrounding the Globe Mother and took a shortcut past the group of adults enjoying the view on the vine bridge. He swung overhand through the canopy till he could reach another less-used vine bridge and raced up it to the softly glowing sphere of Jana Luna on the far end. At roughly two hundred feet in diameter, the mid-sized globe was nearing full maturity, but in the last few years had become almost entirely covered in star lilies—more so than any other globe in the patch. As a patch buoyancy globe, Jana Luna had no one living aboard her, but had become a popular destination for loners, lovers, and those looking for an out of the way place for conversation.

  For Kipling and Samra the ‘Starpark’ was for secret business, resolving mysteries, and making plans. He and Samra avoided the wide flowery top of the globe where couples did their stargazing among the night-blooming lilies. Instead, they had made their own more exciting hideout down amid the foliage at the equator. As Kipling climbed down the thick vines and tangles of umbrella leaves to the usual spot, he listened for any sign of movement ahead. He might be early. Maybe Samra hadn’t finished dinner yet and he would have to wait. When Kip rounded the globe to the hideout they’d constructed in the creepers, he did spot someone sitting in it—but it wasn’t Samra.

  Rufus’s legs swung beneath him as he sat perched on the bundle of roots at the doorway of their hideout. He’d changed his trousers and shirt and his tawny hair was combed back smoothly against his head. Between his clenched fingers he held a bunch of purple spring glories and a handbound journal made of paelae leaves. The flowers weren’t wilting yet so Rufus must have picked them sometime today. Kip didn’t have time to consider what he might be doing with them because Rufus spotted him and started.

  “Oh! Hey, Kip!” Rufus floated off the vines and grabbed for the nearest root to steady himself. “Didn’t see you there.”

  Rufus wasn’t wearing his buoyancy belt and it took him a moment to settle back down.

  “What are you doing out here, Rufe?”

  “I finally found Samra after you guys left the council grove. She said she’d be meeting you here tonight. Thought I would come, too.”

  Kip swung into the hideout, glanced around the empty interior of the hollow, and took a seat next to Rufus. While Rufus occasionally tagged along to their hideaway, he had thought it would just be Samra he was meeting tonight. The intrusion wasn’t unwelcome exactly, but he’d been looking forward to it being the two of them just the same. He studied the approaching horizon with his friend in silence.

  The clouds were parting ahead of the patch and Domino, the smallest moon, was brightly reflected on the water tonight. The cliffs at the base of the mountains were definitely closer. The patch had also lost another thousand feet in altitude since the afternoon.

  “Is it okay I came?”

  Kipling turned back to his friend. “Yeah. Sure. What’s with the flowers?”

  Rufus’s round cheeks began to glow faintly and he looked away again toward the horizon. “I was just thinking, you know. Thinking about the festival?”

  Kipling studied his friend and tried to put the pieces of this puzzle together. “What about it?”

  “I thought that maybe this year I would go to the festival ball.”

  “We never go to the ball. We always make fun of it and go out to the Grounder fields and go exploring.”

  “I know. But I thought that this year . . . maybe we would go.”

  Kipling stared at the flowers in Rufus’s hand for another second before the situation finally dawned on him. “Wait, you want to ask Samra?”

  “Well, I thought that—”

  A keening wail came from the foliage along the vine path. Rufus jolted and scrabbled to find a handhold as Kipling leapt to his feet and spun to face the sound. In the shadow of the umbrella leaves, something was moving. The shape hissed in the darkness and shook the leaves. Next came a series of clicks and slurps.

  “Is it a grim wailer?” Rufus exclaimed, backing against the tendril wall. “What do we do?”

  Kipling looked around the hideout for anything that could be used as a weapon, but nothing was handy. As the foliage continued to shake, he balled his fists and concentrated. His skin warmed as he stared at the darkness. Heat radiated through his body and the light poured out of him, first from his hands then all through him, a faint glow that blazed rapidly to a brilliant yellow, illuminating the darkness.

  The laughter from under the leaves preceded the face that emerged into the light.

  “You’re getting pretty good at that, Kip.” Samra grinned in the glow and reveled in her success.

  “Oh sweet mother!” Rufus exclaimed, and he drifted slowly toward the ceiling of the hideout as he got his breath back. He kept one hand on his chest as the other reached for a handhold.

  Kip dimmed back down and finally let himself smile as Samra vaulted over to their position and dangled from the vines on the top of the hideout. “I got you guys good. If I was a real wailer I would have eaten you up.” She contorted her hand into a claw and reached for Rufus. “Beware the clatter of claws at night, what clicks and screeches outside the light—”

  “Don’t,” Kipling said. “You know he hates that rhyme.”

  Samra gla
nced at him, then back to Rufus, who was a bloodless shade of pale.

  “Just joking around.” Samra turned a flip and landed right side up in the doorway of the hideout. “What were you guys talking about?” She picked up one of her feet and noted the purple petals stuck to it. “Where’d all these come from?” The floor of the hideout was now littered with purple flowers, though the bulk of the bouquet had fallen out the door and into the sky below.

  “I think . . . I think I’m going home,” Rufus said, keeping his eyes off the petals. He maneuvered cautiously around the doorway and onto the vine path.

  “Was I really that scary?” Samra asked. “I was just playing around.”

  “I’ve just got to go,” Rufus mumbled. He extended a shaky hand toward Samra and offered her the little paper journal. “Here. I made you this.” As soon as Samra took it, he retreated. “I’ll see you guys later.”

  “But I just got here!” Samra called.

  Kipling watched his friend pick his way up the vines and pulled Samra back into the hideout. “Let him go.”

  She squirmed out of his grasp immediately and looked like she might attempt to argue, but finally just shrugged. “Okay, whatever. His loss.” She exhaled heavily and plopped down on the floor of the hideout.

  Kipling considered Samra for a moment, then eased himself down next to her, letting his legs dangle out the doorway. “He just doesn’t do well talking about the nightbeasts.”

  “He’s never even had a family member attacked, has he?” Samra said. “If anyone should be terrified of nightbeasts, it should be Cepil Mayer or Jojack Pento. They both had brothers get eaten. I heard a spotted skymander took Jojack’s brother right in front of him. The venom from their fangs eats right through your—”

  “It wasn’t just the talk about nightbeasts. Rufus is . . . never mind it anyway. He’ll be all right.”

  “Kind of being a baby, though.” She picked the little journal back up. “What’s this about?”