Faster Than Falling: The Skylighter Adventures

by Nathan Van Coops

  Atlas had seen airborne trees before. Even in the Rift Valley there were plants that survived off moisture in the atmosphere and didn’t require roots. But these specimens were far larger than anything past the Rift. Great towering spires twisted into the sky spreading broad leaves, or waved in the breeze with thin ribbons that resembled lace. Balls of lifting gases bulged from knotted trunks. There were huge fans of fronds that spread toward the sun, and determined spikes of twisting branches aimed skyward. Smaller plants climbed along with them: kelp, ivy, and plenty of tangleweed, connecting the trees and allowing other platforms for yet more growth. The ensuing wall of life was a slow-moving battleground, each plant clawing its way upward over the bodies of its competitors.

  As the wind blew the Sun Dragon over the first ranks of trees, Atlas searched for the best way through. He cranked the bottom fins in tighter against the hull and readied himself to drop the upper fins as well when things got tight.

  It didn’t take long.

  He first dodged the dry spires of rugged trunks that stubbornly maintained the edge of the forest. Some were twisted carcasses, casualties in the war for moisture and sunlight. Others were the new recruits.

  Fresh seedlings, nestled in the crooks and ruins of their fallen comrades, bloomed with fierce color and broadcasted their lofty intentions toward the highlands. They boldly challenged the hills with all the exuberance of their youth.

  The march of the forest was being propelled from behind. The farther they flew, the denser the push became. The forest was a wave—a swell of green that surged and broke across itself in slow motion. It stretched outward and skyward until it crested and curled beneath its own weight. The efforts left tubes and hollows, long tunnels of dappled sunlight and deep caverns of shadows. Time moved too slowly to display its violence, but this ocean of green was raging against its shores nonetheless.

  Atlas steered through the peaks and valleys as best he could, climbing the thermals over the treetops whenever the wind allowed, and using the air motor when he needed to push the Dragon over a particularly high crest. He donned a blanket for the chill and pressed on, but he finally hit a wall of green he could not hope to float over. The air was already too thin up here. His head felt light and his skin tingled. The altimeter read 12,750 feet.

  “We have to dive through. There’s nothing else for it.”

  Kipling was unperturbed. He merely nodded and kept his eyes ahead.

  Atlas envied his constitution. The Skylighter wasn’t bothered by the cold or the thinning atmosphere. If anything, he looked more comfortable. The skin of his forearms had a faint glow in the fading daylight and Atlas wondered if the chemical reactions inside kept him warm as well.

  The sun was painting the distant cirrus clouds in pinks and purples in a farewell salute on the horizon. Atlas checked that the lanterns were within reach near his sides, then steeled himself and pushed the control wheel forward. He found himself holding his breath as he dove into the shadows of the upper boughs.

  The forest eagerly swallowed them up.

  “We need to watch for whisper wings,” Kipling said. “They get you when you aren’t looking. Too quiet to hear.” He tapped his fingers nervously on the cockpit walls. “And horned tree bears. I’ve heard they have those here.”

  Atlas shivered. He’d learned the local catalog of nightbeasts in school. Every child in the Rift Valley knew the dangers of the dark, but the valley only held a limited number of species. The Sky Forest would bring new threats. Birds were calling one another in the boughs, but there were other noises, too, screeches and caws. Off in the distance, the eerie lilting song of a grim wailer searching for a mate filtered through the branches.

  Insects were already glowing in the canopy. Some of the plants were also shifting into night mode. It was rumored that the height of the Sky Forest rose and fell with the sun. The solar rays fueled lift reactions in the pods and inspired surges of plant life that were not worthwhile in the darkness. As a result, the canopy of the forest could sometimes shift and sink, compressing the already dense spaces below it even tighter. As Atlas guided the Sun Dragon beneath the ceiling of plants overhead, he kept his eyes open for signs of collapse.

  He tapped the vertical compass on the dash. The ball inside bobbed in its liquid prison. They were still headed east.

  “How wide is the river?” Atlas asked. He squinted at his map, but could barely make out the blue line in the dim light. He fumbled in his cargo hold for a box of matches.

  “It’s big,” Kipling replied. “We can see it easily from the Heights. Plenty wide enough to fly down.”

  Atlas got a lantern lit and hung it on the edge of the instrument panel. It gave a warm glow to the cockpit, but it made the darkness around them even deeper. The line of the river on the map wended its way through the patch of green but forked in two near the heart of the forest. The upper fork continued eastward, while the second bent south. The southern fork was slightly wider, though for some reason, the ink turned from blue to brown partway along its length.

  Atlas brushed a finger over the point where the color changed. An error? Perhaps the artist had simply run out of colored ink? He flipped the map over to check the notes in the legend, but nothing mentioned the color change. Whatever the reason, he wouldn’t be finding out. They would need to take the eastern fork to cross the forest.

  A shrill screech penetrated the wall of plants to his right and brought his attention back to their surroundings. The canopy shuddered and a flock of birds exploded from the foliage. The tiny black birds surged in a cloud and broke around the aircraft, darting away and vanishing behind them in a cacophony of chirps and flapping wings.

  Atlas centered the controls and cast a wary eye toward the place the birds had vacated. One of the boughs shook. Kipling stood up and peered into the leaves. The back of his neck was glowing.

  The thing in the trees didn’t reveal itself.

  After twenty seconds of tense waiting, Atlas eased his power lever forward and steered away. The Sun Dragon glided onward through the trees.

  Kipling pivoted in the front seat, his eyes lingering on the vegetation behind them.

  “What do you think that was?” Atlas asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kipling replied. “But I think it’s following us.”

  The leaves on the trees behind them shivered in spurts. Bits of bark tumbled into the darkness below and something leapt from trunk to trunk above them.

  Fledge crawled out of the front seat and perched atop Atlas’s windscreen. His ears pivoted from side to side and he sniffed the wind.

  “There’s more than one,” Kipling said. He lifted his bone sword and braced himself against the side of the cockpit.

  “You can light up and scare them off, can’t you?” Atlas said.

  Kipling’s head swung upward and he kept his eyes trained on the canopy. “I think you should fly faster.”

  Atlas pushed the control wheel forward and dove for a gap ahead. The Sun Dragon banked and yawed at his commands, dodging boughs and glowing lift pods. He cranked the fins in tight and strained to navigate the foliage, picking out pinpricks of light from distant lantern flowers and the eerie luminescence of ghost beetles. He blew out the lantern in the cockpit so he could see the faint outside lights better, but it was still difficult to navigate. The airship scraped past tree trunks that seemed to spring from the darkness.

  In the front seat, Kipling was glowing steadily brighter. His eyes still lingered on the trees above. “I don’t think it’s nightbeasts,” he whispered.

  Atlas looked up as a figure leapt between two trees overhead. It was tall. A lanky, hairy shape with long arms. The figure swung from branch to branch and disappeared again.

  Two more leapt into view on a wide bough ahead. Their hairy coats barely concealed lean frames and they flashed wide, flat teeth, gnashing them in the direction of the airship. The faces on the creatures were hairy too, with heavy brows and deep-set eyes. They were carrying spears.


  Tree people.

  “Go! Go faster!” Kipling shouted.

  Atlas kicked hard on the rudder pedals, swishing the tail fin back and forth and trying to assist the fans. The motors whirred at high speed but he had to pull back power every time he collided with some new plant in the darkness. He couldn’t afford to suck a bunch of moss or creepers into the blades. He was sure he’d already ingested some by now. Much more and the fans were liable to seize up.

  Fledge took to the air as the Sun Dragon collided with a wall of vegetation. Atlas muttered curses at the net of green blocking their path. They’d run into a dead end. Kipling leapt onto the top of the aircraft and blazed to life, a brilliant white that streamed from his bare arms and face. He gripped his bone sword with both hands, ready to fend off the imminent attack.

  Atlas could now see how outnumbered they really were.

  The canopy overhead was filled with tall, hairy creatures. They began to whoop and chatter, raising their spears and shaking their fists.

  But they didn’t attack.

  They were all waiting for something. The eyes of each would-be attacker turned repeatedly in one direction. Atlas followed their gaze to a gap in the leaves high overhead. A figure was hunched over and studying her palm. She was big. Streaks of gray lined her beard and scars shone through the hair on her shoulders. She stretched a hand toward them, fingers opened wide. Atlas caught the hint of a smile on her lips as she clenched her fist shut.

  A heavy net fell overtop the Sun Dragon. Atlas tried to push it off and Kipling slashed at it immediately with his sword, but the cords were too thick, and before he could cut his way through, the swarm of hairy creatures was upon them. Tips of fire-hardened wood spears menaced them from every direction.

  There would be no fighting their way out of this.

  They were prisoners of the tree people.

  21

  THE TREE PEOPLE

  Kipling had to be smart. That was the key now.

  Anyone could wield a weapon. Not everyone could survive without one.

  As he and Atlas were escorted through the canopy along twisted pathways of linked boughs, Kipling tried to recall anything he could about their captors. His culture lessons in school had seemed dull and useless at the time, but as a chief’s son, he’d been expected to learn the basic customs of the various sentient species from other altitudes in case his family had to interact with them.

  The forest folk, known as the Horokim in the patch, weren’t killers. Not arbitrarily anyway. But they had a reputation for being territorial and superstitious. To them the world was a frightening place full of creatures bolder and cleverer and more capable than they were. Evolution had left them wallowing somewhere in the depths of the intelligence spectrum. They weren’t smart enough to compete with other sentient species on the planet, but they were smart enough to notice the disparity. It was a circumstance that made them dangerous.

  “Where are they taking us?” Atlas asked from ahead of him. Despite having his hands bound, he was doing a good job of keeping his balance on precarious footing. Their route was taking them steadily downward, sloping from tree to tree via lashed together branches.

  Kipling couldn’t see far enough ahead to spot a destination but he did have a few ideas. “They might want to display us.” He kept his head bowed, doing his best to look defeated. “We might be prizes.”

  “They aren’t going to eat us, are they?”

  “No.” Kipling reassured himself with the fact that Horokim were plant eaters—one of the cultural similarities they shared with Skylighters. The presence of all the spears did make them look like a hunting tribe, but in the Sky Forest, defense was nearly as essential as food. Weapons were not always an indicator of diet.

  Their captors had rifled through the items in the aircraft they could reach, but had been uninterested in most of it. They found Atlas’s supply of dried fruit and ate it immediately, but hadn’t seemed particularly concerned with having captured an airship. Kipling wondered whether they realized how valuable it was. They had certainly understood the warhook, but that had more practical uses. The weapon was now slung around the body of one of the leaders of the group. Kipling kept an eye on it. He’d be needing that back. They hadn’t found the pruning knife lodged in the waistband of his trousers. He was grateful for that as well.

  Despite Kipling having waved a warhook at them, the bulk of the group now seemed intent on guarding Atlas. They chattered back and forth around him and prodded him roughly with their spears.

  Trailing the group, Kipling was certainly a prisoner, too, but he felt like a mere afterthought. One of the smaller troop members had been assigned to guard him and even she didn’t seem all that concerned he might escape. Kipling appreciated the lack of abuse, but a part of him would like to at least be considered a threat.

  The group proceeded into a clearing arranged in the tangled boughs, not unlike a grove aboard the patch. It appeared to be a group habitation, individual nests collected in a circle and tucked into nooks of trees. Similarities with his home ended there. This grove was filthy. The nests of stripped tree bark and marrow leaves were heavily bedecked with fur. Clumps of matted hair clung to any available surface. It had done so for a long time, judging by the smell. The pungent scent of rotting fruit mingled with an odor of stale urine that wafted up from somewhere beneath his feet. The Horokim themselves seemed fairly clean, but now he understood the grooming it must take to remain so in this environment.

  Kipling and Atlas were guided to the bottom of a central tree and pushed to a sitting position to wait while one of their group climbed into the canopy. Kipling could only assume it was to notify the rest of the troop of their arrival. His suspicions were confirmed when a few minutes later the grove began to fill with tree folk of all ages and sizes.

  In his mandatory diplomacy lessons in school, Kipling had done his best to keep his teachers happy. His tutor, Master Freebold, had a favorite quote: ‘Communication is the backbone of peaceful coexistence, so never enter a conflict without your spine.’ For more evolved species, communication sometimes meant being able to tell the difference between sarcasm and sincerity, and in other species, the fine line between a snarl and a growl. Kipling expected that communication with the Horokim would involve more of the latter, especially from the look of the gray-bearded female that lumbered toward them. He recognized her as the same scarred tree-woman he’d spotted before.

  She snarled at Atlas before sniffing the air around him. She was definitely a force to be reckoned with—muscular, intimidating, and a powerful leader. That was why Kipling was surprised when she stepped aside and a young female behind her worked her way into the light and began to sign to him in High Altirian.

  The girl was covered in light-brown fur but she hadn’t yet grown a beard. In terms of tree folk years, she was likely only Kipling’s age, but the big, gray-bearded matriarch was very clearly deferring to her now. The girl scowled at Atlas with unveiled hostility but seemed less offended by Kipling’s presence. Her hands formed the question: “Are you his prisoner?”

  Kipling shook his head.

  “Slave?”

  Kipling lifted his bound hands and attempted to sign a response but he lacked the range in his wrists. The girl chattered something at his captors and one of them untied him. He looked up at the hulking male who had freed him and nodded. The tree-man nodded back. Atlas was watching the action with curiosity, but no one made a move to free him. Kipling caught his eye and tried to read the boy’s expression. It wasn’t fear yet. That was good.

  “We are travelers,” Kipling said the words aloud as he signed them, so Atlas would at least be able to follow part of the conversation.

  The tree girl concentrated on his hands, then signed her next question. “Why here?”

  Kipling tried to recall the sign for rescue but couldn’t remember it. He signed out an alternative. “We’re searching for friends.”

  “The Horokim do not have them.”

  K
ipling nodded. “We know. They were taken by . . .” He didn’t know a sign for raiders. He couldn’t sign pirates either. “Sky ships,” he concluded. “Big sky ships.”

  The girl pointed a finger at Atlas and signed something Kipling didn’t understand. He signed for her to repeat it. Her fingers flashed again but he still didn’t understand.

  “What is she saying about me?” Atlas asked.

  Kipling frowned. “I think it might mean dirt-man?”

  The girl signed the word once more.

  “Oh. Maybe it’s her word for Grounder,” Kipling said. “But it’s got the sign for sand in it.”

  Sand man? Desert maybe.

  Kipling signed an explanation. “Not desert. He’s from the mountains.” He pointed west. “Fanged Mountains.”

  The girl eyed Atlas skeptically, but her glare softened slightly. She grunted something to one of the others and the group chattered back and forth in a guttural debate. Finally the girl signed again. “We’ll take you to the Knower. He’ll decide.”

  The troop whooped and hollered and one of the big males promptly hoisted Atlas over his shoulder. Atlas blurted protestations but they were lost amid the shouting. The group broke into a run and leapt off the edge of the clearing. Kipling was prodded forcefully with a stick, and before he could think, he was plummeting over the edge with the rest.

  Kipling was used to falling. The buoyancy belt hampered his usual agility, but he did his best to follow the troop. Even with the added weight, he had to minimize his breathing to try to keep up. The tree folk were fast. They dropped from bough to bough and took huge leaps into the open, only to catch themselves on trailing vines or ricochet off a tree trunk before dropping downward again. For creatures without the ability to float, Kipling couldn’t help but be impressed by their courage. It took all of his speed to stay with them.

  Atlas was not faring nearly as well. The big tree-man who held him was not being especially gentle in the descent, and with his hands bound, Atlas had little chance to fend off the leaves and creepers that lashed him in the face. By the time the troop reached its destination, the boy’s head was festooned with shreds of greenery, cobwebs, and sticky wads of tree sap. His face bore multiple scratches, though none of them looked deep.