Fire in the Wall

by S G Dunster

  People: men, women, children; animals; flocks, contained in grassy domes.

  Animals: fish in water-filled domes. Birds, flying through the treetops. Squirrels.

  Boats. Beaches with manmade sand. A giant, curved dome like the Sydney Opera house, where a million at once could be seated to watch a performance. Flashing lights to signal traffic; stations selling necessities for those journeying a long way. Hospitals. Universities. I pictured every detail as best I could, flitting through them in a flash, a captured moment, before moving on and filling in the next space, the next piece.

  We worked together, standing there for I don’t know how long. My eyes got itchy and dry, the top of my tongue got sticky. My throat ached. My back hurt. I wanted to lie down. I wanted to sleep. But I knew that this couldn’t stop, not until it was finished. We didn’t have time to waste.

  We told, and told, and in the distance gleaming globes bloomed up from the stems of massive steel supports, and connecting roads unfurled and spread out in a spun-glass web, higher and higher, wider and wider, until our city was all that we could see in the sky around us.

  “We need more airships,” I said.

  “Of course,” Eap replied.

  We both studied the horizon some more, and airships blinked into the sky like stars coming out.

  There were flat, bulky tankers, big as three Whippoorwills laid end to end, with giant wormlike balloons keeping them afloat, fans nearly half their length speeding them through the sky. There were smaller passenger ships: cute, round hulls, some with multiple balloons as backup, or for more flexible direction and landing. There were tiny little gnats of ships, zooming over the sky, leaving trails like the rowboats in the gleaming blue water of the Ashton reservoir where my Mom liked to take Lil and me in the summer.

  I heard footsteps, voices, and turned. Marco, my pilot, and Drake, the night shift manager, approached us. They had more than a dozen of the coal boys with them. The kitchen workers. Corinne. They’d all come out to stare.

  “What’re we driving into?” Marco asked.

  “What in the Gulf Stream’s this?” Drake grabbed my shoulder. “Did we drift off into the . . . into a . . . ” he gave up and just stared.

  “It’s . . .” I paused, trying to gather the threads of my stories together, the Whippoorwill and Stratopia, trying to find the best way of knitting them seamlessly. “We’re headed into government territory,” I finally said to Marco, grasping Drake’s hand in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture. “This is a secret colony they’ve been building for a long time. Classified at the highest level.” It became true as I said it, and suddenly two of my worlds shifted together. Astridia, Stratopia. Airships. Gunmetal. Bulbous globes of city in a sky connected by currents of traffic, lit up like Christmas tree ornaments, speckling the space around us like the Milky Way galaxy.

  “A very long time,” Jass, one of the coal boys put in, running to the rail, looking around with glee. “Bet there’s a betting ring somewhere.”

  “Probably,” I said, and added one mentally—a track marked by neon lights, a starting gate, a finish line, and stations all along the route for spectators.

  “What’s the mish?” Marco tore his eyes from the view and looked at me.

  “We’re to rest here and observe. Make sure things are going the way they ought to. There’s been some— “

  “Trouble,” Eap finished, a shine of glee in his eyes. “There’s been some trouble, of course. Witches. Warlocks. A mad serial criminal terrorizing Stratopia with his gory deeds.”

  I gave him a look. “Yeah,” I sighed, “sure. Witches. All that.” I pointed to the map that stretched along the deck. “We’re headed for the center. We’re . . .”

  “Here,” Marco said, bending down to touch the western edge of the map. “Just entering the line of sentinel.”

  I frowned at him, wondering how he knew that. Then I remembered. He knew what I needed him to know. Of course. I needed him to steer, so he would. I told the story. To him, the map made sense. “Three-quarters power. We’ll slow when it starts getting thicker with traffic. Slow to what you think’s good.”

  Marco gave a smart nod, and headed back to the engine room.

  “I’m tapping out,” Drake said, releasing my shoulder. “I’ll send someone down in my place.”

  “Get a good rest,” I told him.

  He gave me a half grin and headed to the front of the ship where stairs led down to the crew’s quarters.

  Eap and I stood there, watching carefully. In fact, we were making things more detailed and painting them in as we got closer to the city’s edge.

  Lights were coming on in the city. From here, the domes lit up bright. A night sky seemed appropriate to go with it.

  “Can we make the sky?” I asked.

  “Why not?” Eap said. “We own the sky here. Nobody else has claimed it.”

  Immediately it was dusk—pink and gold shading to violet and deep indigo. Airship lights flicked on, casting moving funnels of beams ahead and behind them.

  I frowned. Electric headlights. On my steampunk airships.

  And why would Eap think of such a thing? He left the crust decades before electric lights were invented.

  “Derivative,” a voice sneered. Lil had come out of her cabin and was walking slowly along the deck toward us.

  As she approached, she lifted a hand, flicked a finger, and another ship lit up—one of the giant tankers—a gleaming, bright strip all along both sides of its hull, and another on top of the balloon, flashing red and white.

  “Where’d they get the electricity from?” I challenged.

  She wrinkled her nose and gave me a good glare. “Steam, like everything else, of course.”

  “This is steampunk. They use candles, lamps. Old-timey stuff.”

  Lil shrugged. “Candles would set the ships on fire. And they need more light than that.”

  “Right.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “I’ve never understood it,” she exploded. “Why do they have to use candles, Logan? They’re making electricity. Those giant paddles. Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be, okay? We’ve got enough crap on our plate. I don’t care about steampunk. I care about dinner, all right?”

  “Speaking of crap on our plate,” I pointed up at our balloon, now lit on top with a line of flashing lights. The moth’s silhouette, etched clear and precise in the light, cast an elongated shadow on the deck like some horrible avenging angel. “Your friend found us.”

  She glanced up, and the edges of her mouth curled. She looked at me, and the smile spread into a grin—as menacing as any I’d seen on her face.

  “Um, nope,” I said.

  “We need to split up. It’s more efficient if we go through and paint the details separately. Eap can tell from here, and we’ll fly around and tell in other places.”

  “No freaking way.”

  “Efficiency, Lo.”

  “I’m not touching it again.”

  “I’ll make a saddle for you. Then you won’t have to.” She put her fingers to her mouth and whistled—a shrill, ear-splitting noise. High above us, the balloon jostled and swayed.

  I clung to the rail as the ship swung on its tethers. “A moth saddle?”

  “What? That’s worse than a horse saddle? Or a donkey saddle? Don’t people ride, like, wild bulls for fun? Moths are just like any other people.”

  “Moths aren’t people,” I muttered.

  “Smiley,” Lil shrieked, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Stop sluffing! Hurry and get your hairy butt down here!”

  The breeze picked up considerably as the thing loomed into our vision and dipped down beside us. The smell made me choke—cantaloupe and rust. Lil’s idea of moth sweat.

  Eap made a tsk-ing noise but didn’t break his concentration. We were getting close enough to the globes that I could see into them. Filigreed metal vined down over the globes, sectioning them, making them seem even more like giant, curved lamps. Spires, sharp
and prominent, rose up from them, a glow on top of each. They were like giant, eerie Christmas ornaments, hanging there in the sky. It seemed like it should be getting towards dusk, so I made it happen, brought the brightness down, added dark, velvety purple along the horizon.

  “That’s not how I thought of the domes,” I said to Eap. “You’re changing them.”

  “We all think, Logan,” he murmured, narrowing his eyes and raising a hand, bringing more spires up from the curves of glass as we passed through them. “And we are telling this together.

  “But if you cover portions of the glass, the shade will block out sections of light. Not as efficient for heat or growing things. Or vitamin D absorption.”

  He squinted at me with that last one. “But more interesting.”

  We were close enough now that I could distinguish the stories sectioning the domes, the curved sweep of staircases inside, leading up, and up.

  I hadn’t pictured staircases either. My sky city had instant, air-pressurized elevators to take people from one level to another. But Eap was right. It was more interesting. Made things seem older. Lovelier. Maybe a little menacing.

  We were passing into the web of roads. In the distance, it looked like a mess of spun glass, spider-webbing across the sky. But up close they grew into tubes—corridors, swooping over us, under us, across, and past us. We flew under the first of them, and a tiny line of streetlamps wove their way along it inside, turning the eerie bluish glow I’d pictured to warm, gold light. It spread along the threads around us and circulated through the city like warm blood, spilling into the globes, haloing them. As we passed close by another dome, curls of metal filigree grew along its underside as well, and another beveled metal steeple sprouted from its top.

  “I like it,” Lil murmured, raising her hand and scattering another sprinkling of airships across the dusk. “It’s much better this way. Come on, Lo. He’s got things covered here. Let’s go.” She pointed down at the moth, who was hovering directly underneath us now, his wings gleaming bright gold in the reflected light of the city. He was acting twitchy, darting this way and that, obviously wanting to go toward the lights, straining against Lil’s will.

  Lil climbed up on the rail, teetered for a moment, and flung herself off. The bug hunched its grotesque body and shot toward her, wings a frenetic, epileptic blur, and nudged under her, catching her on its head. Lil crawled down to sit on its back, gesturing to me. “Jump!” She shouted.

  No freaking way. No way in this world. No way. You’ll have to pry me finger by

  finger from the railing.

  But Lil looked so happy, her knees behind the disco-ball-eyed, furry head with its giant mouthful of sucking tubes and whiskers. I’d never seen her so happy.

  Shaking, teeth chattering so loud I’m sure Eap could hear it, I climbed to the edge of the rail, screwed my eyes tight, and flung myself off, sucking in my scream. I thought of landing on the thorax, just behind Lil. I pictured the arc of my trajectory, the bug coming up under me slightly so that I could . . .

  . . . land so hard on the thing’s tough exoskeleton I couldn’t breathe for several panicky seconds. I gulped and grabbed spasmodically for huge handfuls of long silky moth hair, and we soared, dipped, and flicked this way, that way, all at a terrifying speed. I yelped with every change of direction. The bones in my hand ached from gripping, the bones in my jaw from gritting. We hovered around the lights, and I grabbed so hard I felt I was holding on with every muscle in my body, every ounce of my strength, as it smacked, full-tilt, into a glass dome, with a deep buzz of vibrating steel. It crooned like a humpback whale, collected itself, and flew off.

  “A smart moth,” I murmured, letting out a breath, trying to relax and just keep a tight hold.

  There was a saddle under me now. More like a fat band of leather, with a handle for me to hang onto, and stirrups to slide my feet in and wedge myself against the thing. I stretched out and did so, just in time for a wild loop-de-loop as the critter veered, again, for one of the bright domes.

  I heard Lil’s ecstatic whoops ahead of me, and burrowed my face against the smooth leather surface. Gold lights were winking on all around us. Like lightning bugs.

  One exploded into gold right next to us. There were people in it, walking up the curves of stairs, clustered in the open commons, walking through the gardens and trees. They were traveling through the circles of corridors that ringed every level, leading off to fans of more corridors that touched the domes of living quarters.

  As we swept up high again, and the lights collected and shrank below us, a thrill burst through me. Stars winking above—a great, milky smear of them like you could see on a clear summer night back at home. That’s what we needed to make it complete.

  Stars above . . . a city like a chandelier below. The thin, icy air, scorched my throat. Mr. Smiley’s huge wings glittered silver in the moonlight and gold in the city lights.

  We spent a long time out there, touching on each part of the city, adding details. Firming it up. Lil tinted some of the globes with color so they looked like large soap bubbles caught in the grim, lacy filigree Eap had managed to spread to every tiny thread of the city. We flew under, over, around the threads of connecting streets, and then we were surrounded on all sides by it—levels and levels, reaching up high into the sky.

  Lil was just a shadow above me. I couldn’t see her face or even her body language, but I knew her thoughts, her feelings. I felt them, too. Pure wonder. That Christmas Morning feeling you’re never supposed to have again once you’ve left childhood behind.

  We hovered in the center for a while, flitting this way and that. Then, with a sudden stomach-abandoning swoop, Mr. Smiley was off again, hurtling toward an airship. My airship.

  Lil leapt off as soon as we were close enough. It took a few dips and rises to gain the courage to break my death-grip on the bunches of moth-hair I was holding. I crawled to the thorax and hurled myself over the rail and onto the deck.

  We stood there, staring, the three of us, as Mr. Smiley looped away. I didn’t even bother to grab the rail as the boat rocked in response to the draft.

  The cloud of glowing orbs—like heavenly bodies—surrounded us, the bright threads that attached them like jewels on a necklace. There were scatters of winking lights moving through it all; hordes of airships like ours.

  It was worth it.

  Wherever I was, whatever I was doing in real life—even if it was tied to a chair in a facility—being here, in this moment, was worth it.

  Chapter 20

  “It is vast.” Eap broke the silence. “We’ll have to choose which details we make most important. And we must choose a very small portion to focus most of our effort on. The rest of this can serve as confusion. A barrier. A boundary.”

  We looked out at our profusion of sky-bubbles, Christmas ornaments, grim filigree, and skyways. Ships poured through in streams like luminescent fish in currents. It was beautiful. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to forget this.

  “We’ll have to move about in it a long while, too.” Eap continued. “It isn’t firmament until your feet touch it.”

  I nodded.

  He gave us a sidelong look. “But that’s a task for tomorrow. We’ve done it, and now, it’s time for sleep.”

  “Yeah. Sleep would be good,” I agreed. A heavy dose of tranquilizer coursed through my veins—the aftereffect of pure joy mixed with complete exhaustion. “We’re safe?” I asked. “We’re safe here?”

  Eap didn’t answer. He tipped his head, gave me a weathering look, and loped off toward the main cabin.

  I turned and saw Lil slip down below, through the large door in the prow that lead down to the engine rooms. And the chokey.

  She was going to see Hans. By herself. For the first time since their talks through the barrier, when we were still on the crust.

  I was tempted to follow her. I was curious. Lil was such an odd thing. Her feelings, apparently, were deep and intense, though I’d not been subjected t
o many of them.

  Before Eap said what he did, I’d never thought about how she might miss having a dad. And up until very recently I’d only thought of Hans as a sculpture, a painting. One of her imaginary obsessions. A feature in her collection of fixations, along with baobabs, toast, and Madagascan fauna.

  It struck me then, thinking of times when she’d sat there with him, a canvas in front of her, murmuring things. And the way she spoke of him. “The Grey Man,” with such fierce pride, such an edge of stubbornness. He was important to her, and she didn’t care who else he was important to. She didn’t care, on the crust, about anyone’s opinion of her or what she chose to like and do.

  But here, she did. Suddenly, there was someone whose opinion she cared about. Who she cared for enough to breach worlds.

  I went to the hatch and stopped there for a while, thinking. Considering. I decided, in the end, not to follow her. I was curious, but Lil deserved her privacy.

  Laying down, I couldn’t keep guilty thoughts from sliding up and overwhelming me. This bed. It stilled smelled of Selah.

  Exhaustion finally relieved me, taking me into welcome sleep for a few hours, I woke somewhat refreshed, and went to my little water closet to take a lukewarm chain-pull shower. It felt good. I could almost imagine I was in the little bathroom off the hall above Mom’s studio. I closed my eyes.

  That small space . . . blue tiles, some falling off, the mildew-touched ceiling nearly brushing my head. I caught myself as the room began to change. I finished up quickly.

  I decided to make new clothes for myself. I didn’t feel like gold cord and stiff, tailored coats. I chose a leather vest, buttoned with metal brads all up the front. I added straps to hold a gilded bazooka and a small ebony-trimmed pistol.

  Make it real, Eap had said. Tell as many stories as possible. Might as well tell the ones that made me enjoy myself.

  Lil and Eap were already on deck. Lil had changed into rainbow parachute pants and a blue shirt patterned with clouds. Eap was in his usual drab, dark, saggy clothes. The glass curves of the domes were nearly invisible in the clear morning light. Lil looked at me.