Cloudland (5 page)

‘Protector?' broke in Lucy. ‘A Protector fought this Kazia thing?' Across the Citadel, the Cloudians rocked back, but the statue only paused, worked its head around, and fixed its eyes on Lucy.

‘It is the old song.' The statue lifted its hand and pointed at the Cloudians. ‘They forgot, these ones, happy in the cities and habits they had made. They forgot the old stories. They left the safe heart, their Citadel, empty. Only this year, they came creeping back to us. In dribs and drabs, they crept in weeping for their frozen cities, their citizens changed to ice.'

‘They don't normally live here?' interrupted Lucy.

The statue thumped its fist on the table. ‘A Snow Owl told us of a castle raised at the end of our Forgotten Lands, a castle of ice where the cold lived. Then we knew and it was certain: the Kazia had risen again.'

The statue stared down at Lucy. ‘We sent our Heir in search of you. January sent a message back. We grieved and were glad of what she told us. Our Heir was lost to a shadow-monger. Lost, the one who would have ruled after me.' The statue gestured at an empty niche by its place on the wall. ‘But our Protector –' It dropped its hand on Lucy's shoulder, ‘our Protector was found.'

Lucy saw again that rag-like creature swallowing the cloud boy and, for a moment, her mind turned dark. She pressed her hands against her eyes. Could she even believe the statue – this story of some Ice Kazia freezing all the clouds? Looking across the Citadel, at all those ridged, alien faces, Lucy had a strange impression everything was floating.

Her mind fixed on the phrase her father used to repeat whenever her mother yelled at him: ‘When a sea wind meets cold air, rain will fall.' What the statue had said made weather sense. If this Kazia was freezing the clouds, that would explain Earth's endless rain. But the weather was fact; it was science.

Something squeezed her arm. She flinched and twisted around. Daniel was crouching behind her chair. ‘If this is their hideaway, if they find out you're not their Protector . . .' He glanced up at the statue and his face tightened. ‘Don't tell them. Whatever they call you, whatever they say, go along with it until we find a way out of here.'

Lucy nodded. The statue had raised one hand from the table and dropped it onto Lucy's shoulder. It was so heavy Lucy thought her bones would splinter. She ducked sideways and stood up. ‘I'll go back to Earth for help.'

‘No. The Protector goes to Alkazia.' The statue spoke simply. Lucy saw it was so accustomed to power it couldn't imagine anyone would disobey. It gazed down the table. ‘Who goes with the Protector to Alkazia?' In the silence, Lucy heard the dry sound of cloud sheep grazing on the ceiling. ‘Where are the two we chose to meet the Earthians?'

After a pause, Wist stood up and strode across the Citadel. Standing beside Lucy, he nodded at Jovius, who ducked his head a moment and then rose. There was another long pause.

‘So it's just us,' said Lucy. Her words fell into the silence. She suddenly remembered standing in the doorway at home, seeing her father with his hands in
the sink while her mother, at the kitchen table, sat with tears leaking from her eyes. They had both noticed Lucy at the same moment. Her mother had looked away while her father dried his hands, then stepped across the room and knelt by Lucy: ‘Your mother needs to go away for a while.'
Why have I remembered this now?
Lucy wondered. It was her mother's words, echoing now in her mind: ‘I can't, I'm sorry, I just can't, I can't . . .'

With the memory, all Lucy had felt that day flooded through her again. Despair filled her mind until just standing there, standing still, made her flesh ache. She looked at Daniel, his tight little face, at Wist and Jovius holding themselves in front of the crowd as though they had to concentrate to keep from falling. What could they do against the Kazia? Lucy pictured Earth's flooded cities, the families camped on rooftops setting traps for birds. They were all waiting for the rain to stop – but if the statue was right, it would never stop.

The statue had climbed onto the table. It stalked over the leftover cakes; with every step, kicking pieces into the Cloudians' faces. When it reached its place in the wall, it closed its eyes and settled back into stillness. Across the Citadel, the Cloudians stood up, stretched, and gathered in small groups, talking
and gesturing at Lucy, while the hunched servants swept the table clean.

Daniel edged closer. ‘Lucy, listen. I've saved some food. As soon as we get out of here, we can find our way back to that trapdoor in the cloud.' He paused, waiting for Jovius to look away again. ‘There'll be another mist, sooner or later. We'll just have to hide till it's safe to climb down.'

His face wavered. She saw he was attempting a reassuring smile. She looked at him, his pocket full of cake. ‘But there isn't anywhere safe, Daniel. Not anymore. Not for long.'

‘Protector?' A potbellied Cloudian waddled up to Lucy, carrying cloud coats in his arms. He was short, and the coats were so thick, only some tufts of his hair rose over the pile, and his legs stuck out beneath it.

‘Coats and boots.' He bowed, laying them at Lucy's feet. When he looked up again, his eyes were greedy. Suddenly, with a darting movement, he snatched up Lucy's hand and tapped one of her fingernails. His touch sent a shiver up Lucy's arm. The Cloudians, watching in a half-circle, squealed. He scurried back to them and they clustered around him, touching his hand and exclaiming.
Lucy turned away, feeling how their stares pressed against her back.

‘Are these for me?' Daniel picked up a coat and boots. The coat swallowed him. Only his face emerged from it. Lucy looked at him – his pointy nose and cheeks flushed with sudden warmth – and felt reality settle around her again.

The boots came up to her knees. They felt cool, almost damp, when she put them on, and the blood stung through her numb toes. Her coat was so light it tugged her upwards. A cloud sheep sank slowly from the ceiling and hovered in front of her, looking narrow and cold.

‘Thanks for the coat,' she murmured. The creature only blinked its pale eyes.

‘Get away, shoo!' cried Jovius, flapping his arms. The cloud sheep gave Lucy a last stare of bland resentment and floated back to the ceiling.

Wist stalked towards them. ‘Should get some rest,' he said, waving his hand at the ceiling. Its dome was the colour of ash. Day was almost over. He guided their little group across the Citadel.

The Cloudians clapped when Lucy passed. Her tiredness, or the softening light, made her feel as though she was wading through still water. Passing under a low arch, Wist led them into a room so dim
Lucy couldn't tell its size. ‘The Sleeping Cavern,' said Wist. ‘Take any snug. We're first to bed.'

There were clouds in the room: a row of them, evenly spaced. They were the same grey colour as the light, which explained why Lucy hadn't seen them at first. Egg-shaped, but the size of cars, they hovered a foot above the floor.
Snugs
, Wist had called them. Lucy walked a little way and saw another row, with another behind it. Every row looked the same, rising from the dusk until Lucy started to feel they were rising to meet her.

‘We'll leave early,' said Wist. His voice seemed to come from far away. He was already kicking headfirst through a door high in one of the snugs. His toes disappeared with a jerk and his snug lit up, the colour of clouds at sunset.

‘Well.' Lucy paused in front of one of the snugs. Jovius grabbed her ankles and hoisted her up. Like Wist, she went headfirst through a snug door. When she landed, the walls shone as though they were melting. Outside, she heard a muffled thump. Daniel must have gone to bed.

Curling up in a ball, Lucy found her mind taking refuge in memories of home. It was strange, what she fixed on. She remembered her mother, in the years when she lived with them, drawing all the curtains
in the house at five, even in summer, and turning on the lights. Her father had mocked it and Lucy had joined him, and yet now Lucy found herself longing for those closed-in rooms her mother had made, filled with shadows and amber-coloured light. She fell asleep very slowly, the way things fall through water: drifting down without the smallest sound . . .

She woke gasping. She'd been dreaming she was under water, swimming over the tiled floor of some flooded building: past a pile of empty shoes, between shirts and dresses that waved at her with their arms full of water. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. She was too disturbed by her dream to sleep again. With an awkward, kicking wriggle, she tumbled out of her snug. Around her, the other snugs glowed. The Cloudians must have filed in here while she was sleeping. She thought of waking Daniel, then realised she had no idea which snug was his.

She ducked under the arch. Now that the Citadel was empty, she saw how big it was. It was almost dawn. Deserted, the Citadel had the forlorn look of a place where people have been celebrating the night before. Lucy saw one of the flying boards and stood on it, but it only twitched irritably.

In a corner, in a patch of floor between the armchairs, Lucy saw a square of dark.
Another
trapdoor
, she thought, and excitement kicked in her chest. She ran between the armchairs, under a sleeping herd of cloud sheep, and looked down. There was a woman peering up at her, an arm's length away.

The woman's eyes were dull. When Lucy cried out in surprise, the woman didn't even blink. Lucy knelt by the trapdoor and reached down to touch the woman's cheek. Her hand bumped against something smooth and cold, and the woman's face shivered like the sky's reflection in a lake.

Lucy whipped back her arm, which bumped against some lever. With a click, the woman vanished. In her place, Lucy saw darkness patterned with lights – like a night sky, only the lights formed grids, squares and rectangles of different sizes: a geometric zodiac. An ache filled Lucy's chest, even before she realised she was looking at Earth, a city at night; families keeping their lights on against the dark. Across one corner of the square, Lucy saw a black expanse of floodwaters and imagined Amphibians floating on rafts out there in the rain.

It's a telescope
, she thought.
They must watch us the way we watch television
. The woman she had seen was as far away as Earth – not staring at Lucy, staring at the rain.

Lucy felt something stroking her cheeks and realised she was crying. She sat back on her heels and hugged her shins, tucking her face into the hard bundle of her knees. She imagined the floodwaters far below her turning to ice, squeezing the asphalt and dragging the houses down. Grey wind, grey rubble – a world for cold and ice creatures.

Huddled there with her eyes closed, Lucy heard the silence breaking into small, separate sounds: her own breathing and, somewhere behind her, a bustle like steady rain.
But I'm above the rain
, she thought, and looked around. Through the arch behind her, in the kitchen, she saw a flickering of activity. Desperate to escape her thoughts, she stood up and walked towards it.

In the Citadel, the walls and ceiling shone, but in the kitchen the ceiling was low and even the light looked damp. The walls sagged and the floor felt mushy. Lucy thought of walking in the pine forest at home, lifting branches out of leaf rot; there was always a smear of white mould stuck to the wood. The kitchen floor might have been made of that stuff. Taking a step, Lucy half-expected to see spiders scuttling from under her boots.

The servants crouched at low tables whipping up bowlfuls of cloud. Their hands turned in unison like
interlinked cogs. Along the far wall, a line of servants worked like pistons, beating swathes of cloud into glossy ribbons. Lucy felt she had stepped into the secret machinery of clouds. She kept imagining the clang of metal striking metal. Instead, she heard a soft, even beat. Near the far wall, a servant dancing on a platform tapped his heels and moved his arms like wings. He looked like a puppet jerking in time, moved by a spirit of obedience that seemed very like despair.

The dancer kicked up and landed on two feet with a thump. Without looking up, the Stratus started setting out the food they had made. As they poured the creamy stuff into hundreds of small bowls, they started singing in time with the dancer's soft tapping beat. They sang in low voices but there were so many of them their song flooded the room. Listening to it, something caught in Lucy's throat. She imagined sitting in her armchair at home, watching the green colours of the pine forest melt down her rain-wet window. She sank back against the wall – and fell through it, too surprised to make a sound.

A white blank pressed on Lucy's face. Panicked, she scrabbled in front of her, trying to clear a breathing space. An instant later, she plunged into air. At first, she couldn't see anything. She felt cloud, damp beneath her knees. Then her eyes cleared. Around her, she saw a circle of servants crouched in a tiny room.

There were six of them staring at her. ‘This is that Protector they were shouting about,' murmured one. Beside him, a wizened servant nodded and said nothing. ‘Fracta?' the first one continued. ‘This is one of the Earth creatures.'

The one called Fracta had a face as shrunken and
impassive as a tortoise. Skin hung in ruffles down her neck. ‘Better for you that you had not found us,' she said, keeping her eyes on Lucy. ‘Tell me, what do you think of our Cloudland?'

Lucy opened her mouth to answer and found her thoughts had broken into single words. ‘Beautiful,' she forced out. ‘Strange.'

‘Beautiful and strange.' Fracta tasted the words. ‘Yes.' There was another pause. Lucy saw again the long table in the Citadel where the Cirrus and Cumulus feasted while the servants waited at their backs. ‘And unfair. Why do you serve them? Why should you do all the work?'