Skyland
Book
I
Abominations
by Aelius Blythe
cover by Travis McCrea
First Smashwords Edition
November 2012
ISBN: 1478198583
#FUCKCOPYRIGHT
Contents
Chapter 1
in which there is shit and there is kale
Chapter 2
in which there is more shit
Chapter 3
in which there is water, but only a trickle
Chapter 4
in which there is water (for strangers!)
Chapter 5
in which there is Sky (?)
Chapter 6
in which there is a chair
Chapter 7
in which there is space
Chapter 8
in which there is a space of Infinite Space
Chapter 9
in which there is a sign
Chapter 10
in which there is news
Chapter 11
in which there is tea
Chapter 12
in which there is cold
Chapter 13
in which there is finally rest
Chapter 14
in which there are chains (of some sort)
Chapter 15
in which there is more cold
Chapter 16
in which there is an... informant?
Chapter 17
in which there is Sky!
Chapter 18
in which there is red
Chapter 19
in which there is food... or something like that
Chapter 20
in which there are...? Doors.
Chapter 21
in which there is trust
Chapter 22
in which there is no one
Chapter 23
in which there is not a surprise
Chapter 24
in which there is a spy
Chapter 25
in which there is light, but only barely
Chapter 26
in which there is light
Chapter 27
in which there is a decision
Chapter 28
in which there is a job well done
Chapter 29
in which there is an offer
Chapter 30
in which there is surprise
Chapter 31
in which there is blue
Author
Chapter One
in which there is shit and there is kale...
The bleached needles towered over the city and villages like the long bones of giants dead in the sand. Nine giant ships impaled the Sky.
Harper shuddered.
He squinted at the monstrosities. He crossed his arms and planted his feet far apart and hoped that he looked angry. It was the stance his father always assumed when railing against the appalling sight.
Harper hoped he looked as determined and wrathful as the old man did. His eyes flicked up to the sun, and he adjusted his mental countdown. The folk in the city thought the first ship would leave tonight. They thought they would get off this dried up prune of a planet. They were wrong. Not one rocket would fly, not today, not ever.
"Abomination," Harper hissed, and spat in the dirt. It was an admirable impersonation of his father. He hissed through his teeth again and drew out the word, resting on the syllables as his father did, "a-bo-mi-na-tion."
A hand slapped him hard on the back, and he tried not to flinch. His father grinned, white teeth speckled by the green leaf he was chewing.
"Not for much longer," the old man assured his son. "Not for much longer."
He tore off another leaf, the size of two of his field-toughened hands, from the puckered and chalky-green bunch he held, and handed it to Harper, who was not hungry. But he took it anyway and folded the entire thing into his mouth so he couldn't talk – a gesture that failed to escape his father.
The old man laughed. "No shame in being afraid, son," he said. "It takes fear to be brave instead of foolish. And my son is no fool."
Harper did not answer; his mouth was too busy pulverizing the tough leaf. His teeth ground against grains of dirt. No amount of washing could tease out all the specks of grime hidden in the folds. But it was okay. The remnants added a dirty taste that almost covered up the bitterness of the kale.
Kale: it was one of the only things that would grow on this rock. The farmers grew it in the small patches of precious soil that had not yet been eaten up by the sterility consuming most of Skyland.
The bitterness reminded Harper of why the ships must not fly.
Sterility is the punishment of the Sky. He repeated more of his father's words. It is he punishment of the Sky.
Many times over the past few days, he'd forced himself to remember this.
He'd forced himself to remember because otherwise he would forget. He would forget the sermons he had heard since birth. He would forget the edicts of the Sky Reverends. He would forget the lessons and the tomes and the punishments of the Sky. He would forget the audacity of the ships that flew in Her. He would forget it all in the face of their towering beauty.
Abomination, he reminded himself. Abomination.
Even now – even now – he felt more awe than outrage as he watched the ships towering in the distance. Such constructions were abhorrent and proud, but they were great feats of man. Harper looked up, up past the tall peaks of the rockets, up to the wide blue fields above.
What would it be like? What would it be like to fly... to fly....
The city dwellers who flew in the ships would be trespassers against the heavens, but they would also be closer to the Sky than the most devoted farmers had ever been.
No. He set his jaw and lowered his glare back to the abominations. They are weapons against the heavens.
Harper repeated these sermons to push out ambivalence.
Then he turned his back on the ships. It was easier to focus when they were not within his sight. It was easier to be angry.
It was too late for reconsideration.
He walked away from the ships, away from the ugly sight, away from that sin against the heavens. There would be time for a closer look later.
Inside in the shack's one room, a dozen villagers gathered. They sat on the floor and a couple on the window ledges, they leaned against the walls, they stood here and there, crowding together, smiling, chatting. An old man sang a creaky song and an old woman rubbed his shoulders. A laugh burst out of a group in one corner. And as everyone celebrated, at the center of the room, a handful of people sat focused, silent in the seats of honor. At the one piece of furniture in the room, a round table with seats all carved from one giant, ancient stump, six villagers worked amid the chatter and the song and the laughter.
Harper's stomach turned at the sight.
Waxy leaves were spread over the table. Mounds of dark earth covered the leaves. Several pairs of weathered old hands pinched the soil between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it into little pouches. The other fingers did not touch the specks of dirt; less was wasted when it was not smeared all over the hands.
On a planet that grew almost nothing, fertilizer was gold. Every bit of waste – human, animal, and plant – was composted to feed the dwindling crops. Bands of hunters searched the sands for the piles of dung left by the few animals that still lived on Skyland. Farmers gathered every bit of inedible vegetation from their crops to feed the soil. Raiders, the most desperate of the country folk, would take by force any scrap that they could sell or hoard. Here, the littlest scrap of organic waste was only as valuable as the littlest nugget of gold.
Here.
In the shadow of the city.
In the shadow of the city – the city where tall buildings reached up to the sky, where water flowed into homes, where tabled creaked under platters of imported foods – here in the shadow of the city, here in the expanses of dust, shit was the best anyone could expect.
And the growing demands of the city population taxed the fields.
The century of drought and soil degeneration had forced the villagers to devise better and better compounds for fertilization. With meager access to the chemicals and the research and the labs of the city, progress stagnated many times. But the farmers dug deep into their inheritance of alchemical traditions and their reserve of tenacity, and they persisted. Without this effort they, and the rest of the planet, would never have survived this long.
Their best formulas, however, were reserved for special purposes. The most advanced, most carefully calculated, most carefully constructed, and most concentrated samples were secreted away, hoarded bit by bit in hidden, underground caverns.
Saved for days like these.
"From the dirt to the Sky."
One pouch was filled.
The old weathered hand that had filled it held it up to the ceiling.
"From dirt to Sky!"
A cheer went up from the others crowded inside the little room.
"To the Sky! To the Sky!"
Harper grit his teeth.
His insides were a snarled mess of trembling guts. He could not watch this ritual. Today, there was only one thing that could calm him.
As the old hands at the table moved over the piles of dirt and picked up an empty pouch, Harper turned away and slipped quietly out the back door. The people inside, laughing and chatting and pinching dirt, did not notice.
Chapter Two
in which there is more shit...
Harper wandered across the dry fields that would not hold crops; he passed the shrinking patches of soil leafy with kale; he walked a mile past the edge of the village. Far beyond even the last solitary house and past the farthest field, he came to the brown trenches.
The reek of them drenched the country, even on the still air.
Harper pulled up the long neck of his shirt that had hung down to his chest. Like most of the folk living outside the city he wore the clothes of the dried up country, clothes made appropriately utile from a hundred years of breathing in dry earth and compost. The long excess of fabric on his shirt would, in theory, block both the stench and the dust from his breath. He took the two ties that dangled down to his stomach from the neck and tied them at the back of his head, securing the material just under his eyes. It did little to repel the wretched stench of the compost, but little was better than nothing.
Gleaming metal platforms traversed the trenches, grey scaffolding held up stages, large and small, with railings at chest height, and here and there shacks stood over precious shade. Walkways connected the shacks and the platforms in an extensive metal maze. A mini-city built above the dark goop.
On the platforms, bent women turned the muck with long poles. Their faces were also covered, and on many the uplifted fabric revealed patterns around the neck and shoulders, dark threads woven into intricate knots and pretty designs. Here and there a real necklace caught the light, little metal pieces delicately cut or gem fragments that hung bright over the dark muck, tiny jewels worn in defiance of the lowly task.
The bits of color brightened the dirty landscape.
Harper smiled as a blue chip caught the light at the far end of one trench. His boots clanged loudly as he walked across shaky walkways out to the platform. The woman on it straightened up and leant her pole against the railing.
"Zara," he said, and took her hands, encased in dirty gloves, in his.
For a moment her eyes brightened and pinched up at the corners, and he could tell she was smiling. Then she looked away, but too slowly; he saw the happy micro-expression fade, replaced by fear widening her dark eyes. She sniffed and stared out over the expanse of waste.
"So much to be done," she said, keeping her eyes stubbornly away from his, "and for so little."
"Zara..."
"This trench will not be good for growing for another two years at least." She pulled her hands out from his and took up the pole again.
"My Sky... in two years, we won't need this trench."
She laughed, bending over the compost once more, leaning on the gleaming railing, to rake the filth below. It was a hard laugh with no trace of humor. "And let the waste go to waste? No, we'll need it."
"But things will be different when the city dwellers are gone."
"Different...so everyone in the country says."
"So I say. I promise."
"There is another option, Harper."
He didn't answer. The muck oozed.
"Harper..." Her voice was very soft, a plea, or placation. "We could go on the ships and leave Skyland. They need more farmers. So many from the country are refusing to go."
He shook his head. "No. There is no need for us to leave. When the ships and the people in them are gone, then there will be more food, more resources for the villages. Without the city's greed, there will be enough to feed everyone. The barren fields will have time to recover, and there will be plenty, like there was before the drought. The punishment of the Sky will end."
"But what if it is a natural degeneration of our world and not punishment?"
"No, you'll see. When those who build unnatural contraptions and fly through the air piercing our Sky's beautiful fields are gone, then this will end. She rains drought and famine and misery on us for their assault. We will be better when they are gone."
His fathers words rang out in Harper's own voice.
He shuddered at the sound.
Zara shook her head. "Not we," she said and looked at him again. Tears were beginning to soak the shirt neck tied over her cheeks.
Harper tightened his jaw and swallowed his own tears.
"My Sky," he whispered, because he knew his voice would break if he raised it even a little. He hugged her awkwardly as she stood leaning on the railing, holding tight to the muck-rake. He put an arm around her, ignoring the waste smeared on her clothes.
"When you are gone," she said, "maybe I will go on one of the other ships."
"No!" Harper flinched. He pulled away from her and she turned back to the rail, but he grabbed her arms and turned her back to face him. Beneath the film of tears over her eyes, there was a hardness, a spark of... of anger or something worse. "My Sky, don't go on the ships. My Sky, please...."
"I may."
"No... please. When I've destroyed the first, then the Sky Reverends will come for the remaining eight. Not one of them is safe. Not one."
"My plan is not to be safe."
"I can't leave you thinking that you will be destroyed with the ships."
"Then don't leave."
"I have to. Otherwise, we will all be destroyed." He repeated more rote sermons. "The city will suck away all our resources and we will starve. I can't let that happen. Not to you."
"No." Zara shook her head. "When I'm left here alone, listening to the ramblings of zealots and racking filth for the rest of my life, then I am destroyed." She flinched under Harper's grip.
He let go of her arms. He took the muck-rake out of her hands and leaned it against the railing. Then he put his arms more gently around her.
"Zara..." he whispered. "I can't think of you on the ships."
She leaned against him and he could feel the tear-soaked cloth of her shirt soaking into his own. He held her tightly to still his own shaking limbs. He took a heavy breath, then another, and a third, but his voice still shook when he spoke again.
"There is another choice, too..." He swallowed. He inhaled, choking on the air. "Another choice besides leaving you, and besides leaving together... Your father would be very proud if you came with me... into the Sky." The words barely made it out of his mouth, more sobs than syllables.
Zara froze in his arms.
Her head shook against
his chest.
"No. No."
"We could..."
"No." It was more a pained moan than an answer.
"Zara..."
"No!" Then she was crying openly, her sobs shaking her body violently. "I don't want to see their faces. I do not want to see them..."
"My Sky–"
"I don't want to see their faces!" She hiccoughed the words between sobs. "Harper, why not just destroy their ships? Then they couldn't fly, and the Sky wouldn't punish us – if that's what she is doing."
"That wouldn't help. If the people still live, they will build more ships. We must wait until they are full."
"No." Her head shook again, wobbling fiercely amid her trembling.
"Yes. It's the only way. Everything... everyone on the ships must go. But you could... we could–" No. You can't ask for her help! He shook his head. "You will not rake muck in the trenches for the rest of your life."
"I will. Without the ships, that is the only thing that will happen." She sniffed. The trembling was gone and her body was still again. Then she pulled away, took up the pole, and hunched over the waste-filled trench yet again.
Harper put a hand on her shoulder.
"It will be better" he said. "Do you think I am doing this for my father? Do you think I am doing this for the Sky?"
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