Skyland Read Free

Destroying them is our best hope to end
this punishment and make this land livable again."
    "Our hope? I don't even think we have that
if we build Skyland on the smoldering corpses of the city."
    Harper shook his head. He had chosen this road. It was not a certainty. But it was their only option.
Destroying the ships that wrecked the heavens and begging the
forgiveness of the Sky might not bring back the old days of
Skyland, but it would end the new days. And the new days needed to
end.
    It was the plan of the Sky Reverends, the
plan of his father.
    Harper hated it. But he did not have a
better one.
    He had chosen.
    Every summer, the plots of arable land
shrank. Every summer, the buildings of the city grew taller. The
country folk grew fewer as the young abandoned the farm life to
seek better in the city. The city grew more as it absorbed the
refugees from the country. The demands of the city grew with their
population. And the plots of land grew even smaller.
    Even the kale was becoming scarce.
    The sun had sunk to the horizon.
    It was orange, like the fruits in the
stories of the old Skyland. Harper had never seen any outside of
mosaics. Only kale, some tubers hidden under the ground from the
sun's angry heat, and a few strains of dark berries, bitter and
shriveled things, had survived the years of drought.
    Fruits the color of the sun... they will
grow again after the ships are gone.
    He repeated this to himself to quiet the
dissenting shades in his mind, shades that whispered in Zara's
voice. As he stared into the sun – he would not need to worry about
his sight after today – his gut trembled. The orange globe started
to slip below the edge of the world.
    "My Sky, it's time.

 
     
    Chapter
Three
    in which there is
water, but only a trickle ...
     
    The horizon sucked the sun lower and lower
and lower. Half of it was gone now. Harper kept his eyes ahead,
watching the sun set and listening to his own life's clock tick
down. They were walking west towards the city, to the expanse on
its northwest side where the docks sat.
    The docks.
    The seat of the assault on the Sky.
    Heresy... heresy... Harper reminded
himself.
    Again.
    He reminded himself, again, as he looked at
the towering ships reaching up to the heavens, the very tips
brushing the Sky Herself, he reminded himself of how wrong they all were. Just wrong.
    Monstrous contraptions. Trespassers in the
Sky.
    The sun shone on the city, lighting up one
side of the glass and steel metropolis with an orange fire. On the
other side, the shadows hung long off the buildings.
    Abominations...
    He squinted at the towering sheets of glass
of the city's tallest buildings, many reaching higher than the
monstrous ships. The orange glare of the sun danced on the windows.
The glittering surfaces threw the light back onto the smaller
buildings, so that even at this distance Harper, when squinting,
could see the squat clusters of older neighborhoods squeezed in
between the new. And the giant facades were mirrors: old stone
walls and tile roofs reflected in the glass, the glass reflected on
the stone and the tile.
    It was beautiful.
    Wasteful constructions ... Abominations... No better than the ships.
    He shook his head as if he could shake out
the dissent.
    Zara's hand was in his. He squeezed it, but
he could not look at her. She had come to see him off – to the
bridge at the edge of the city, not any farther. Her presence made
the long walk easier. In his peripheral vision he watched her dark
hair, down to her waist, bobbing with each step. The tiny blue gem
that never left her neck, the chip of sacred color, the marriage
gift from the Sky Reverends, that gem was hidden under the long
neck of her shirt. The neck hung down, like his, unnecessary now
that they were away from the stench of the brown trenches.
Unnecessary until the next dust storm, anyway.
    Harper would never need his again.
    He could not meet her eyes.
    So he stared at the sun instead.
    Behind them, several paces back