Authors: Brenda Cooper
We stopped for one last handful of grapes before coming out from between the tall rows into the bright early afternoon. We followed a path through a fallow field. I felt exposed as vistas opened before us and on two sides. Four or five fields from the edge of the vinyard, trees marched neatly up low hills.
We were out of water. The hills looked closer than they were. Even the light wings were heavy by the time we reached the trees. Just as we came under the first cover, my wings were tugged backward out from under my arm. I turned to see them hanging in midair. “Induan!”
“Where the path forks, go right.”
“I’ll follow you.”
Induan took Marcus’s wings, too. Better yet, she had water. After we almost drained her flask, we followed the two pairs of wings bobbing through the air to the fork, right, then straight for a bit, left and along two switchbacks, and then back into a ravine. The rough dirt and grass we had been walking through gave way to colorful gardens. On our right, blue, green, and purple mosses lined the banks of a slow-moving stream filled with bright yellow fish. To our left, low-growing wildflowers had been planted in thick stripes, so we walked through purple, and blue, and yellow, and orange, then white flowers. Here and there, we passed stone benches. The morning would produce grand views down the ravine, but right now the sun made it nearly impossible to look directly behind us.
Our wings stopped at the mouth of a man-made cave. The ravine and the cave were situated so they’d have sun from midday through sunset. The mouth was over four times as tall as I was, shielded partially from view by slender trees, but surely it could be flown into. No wonder Marcus thought I’d be happy. We’d found our heritage in a cave in Fremont, used it as a secret place to tryst, and eventually hidden from mercenaries in it.
Surely this cave had its secrets, too.
S
eeyan’s voice sounded reverent as she introduced us to the old man, who kept his eyes down and extended his hand to me. “This is Mohami,” she said, “The Keeper of the Ways of the Fliers of Lopali.”
When he took my hand, the strength of his grip surprised me. He didn’t speak, but turned, and she said, “Follow him.”
I gave her a hug, whispering, “Thanks.”
“Thank you.” And she was gone, with no further good-byes to anyone else, just a wave toward us all, as much a go-on gesture as a parting. Mohami was halfway to the door in the hill. I picked up Caro, Liam hoisted Jherrel onto his shoulders, and Bryan and Alicia flanked us. Mohami led us to a kitchen, where we were feasted in near silence, under the watchful eyes of the man and woman who had carried our packs in. Both had blond hair and warm, brown eyes and friendly smiles, and an eerie habit of silence.
The food was fresh and sweet: grapes and berries that filled the room with scent before we bit into them, and bread so soft it melted warm into our mouths. The children ate as if we hadn’t fed them in a week. After we finished, our two silent Keepers led us down a long thick-walled hallway to a suite of rooms with a single bedroom lined with bunks, a small sitting room, and a bathroom. By this time, it was nearly dusk. “I don’t see a light,” Alicia said. “Is there a candle or something?”
I helped her rummage through drawers. All empty. A few simple
signs pasted on the walls told where to find toilet paper and mentioned that morning services were at dawn and breakfast was an hour later. “So we just go to sleep when it gets dark?”
“Or bump into each other,” Bryan said, sounding slightly amused.
Alicia frowned at him. “I thought Lopali would be like Silver’s Home, where everybody has everything they want.”
He grinned back, nonplussed. “Maybe they do. Maybe we should want less.”
She grunted. “I want light.”
Bryan laughed at her, softly. “I already like it better here than in that big open house.”
It was my turn to frown at him. “At least we were all together there. I hate being separated.”
“Yeah, but you’re always worried about Joseph. He’s a big boy.” Bryan sat on one of the bottom bunks and played with his retractable nails, a habit I’d learned meant he felt tenser than he was letting on.
Last time I’d been separated from him and Joseph. Maybe we’d have time to become friends again. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “We’ll find each other again. We always have.”
Bryan looked at me intently, a little of his ever-present undertone of anger visible in his eyes. “The trick might be to stop letting anyone separate us.”
“Yes,” I answered.
Liam, who’d been playing on the floor with the kids, looked up and said, “We’ll make the dark an adventure. A good night’s sleep won’t hurt us. Caro’s all done in.”
She was. She sat still, slumped, rubbing her eyes.
I sighed, worried. “Maybe they have a Wind Reader or two here. I’ll ask in the morning.”
He pulled me down for a kiss, and then farther down, so we sat cradling Caro. Her eyes were bright, as if she were fevered, although her forehead felt cool to the touch.
After we finally got everyone settled in, the room darkened so much the starlight barely made black-on-black shadows. The thickness of the hill above us, and around us, made me feel like we had been tucked into a dark, safe place. As I drifted off, the sound of so many of us breathing together in the same room comforted me.
My last waking thought was hoping that the children wouldn’t need anything before first light.
I shouldn’t have worried.
A drum sounded three times right outside the door, jarring my eyes open. The sky had become a starless gray, barely touched by night. I rolled over and put an arm over my eyes. Caro must have moved from the bed she shared with Jherrel to mine sometime in the night. She stirred next me. “Get up, Mommy. They’re coming for us.”
That was more efficient than the drums. I sat up and stroked her cheek. “Who?”
“The Keepers. It’s okay. It’s time to say hello to the morning.” She hopped out of bed and went around the room, greeting everyone. She was usually cheerful in the morning, but this was over the top, even for her.
In no more than the time it took to get everyone dressed and shod, a knock sounded at the door.
The pair who had been with us last night waited expectantly outside in the hallway, dressed in long one-piece robes, and with clean, alert faces. I remembered the sign on the wall, and decided we were going to find out what morning services were.
“There you are,” Caro told them, and then turned to the rest of us. “We should follow them.”
Well, we would have figured that out, but Caro looked so serious it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. Our guides looked like they were having the same trouble, since both of them looked away for a few minutes. As soon as we were all ready, the girl leaned down to Caro and said, “Please tell everyone to be quiet. We will explain the services later, over breakfast. The other people you’ll meet have all been here a week or more already, and are beginning to understand. You won’t want to disturb them with noise.”
Understand what?
Caro nodded, but then looked at Jherrel, who was standing beside me holding my hand. “He might not listen to me. Will you tell him?” She turned away and started down the line to carry out her task.
This time the girl couldn’t manage not to laugh. Her laughter
sounded unusually sweet and deep. She looked younger than me, but I reminded myself looks meant nothing here. “I’ll tell him,” I told her. “I’m his mother.”
“Chelo.”
“Yes.” Apparently, I was never going to have to introduce myself here. “And you are?”
She hesitated. “Kala.”
“Thank you.” I looked down at Jherell. “Did you hear your sister?”
He nodded, shy at Kala’s gaze.
Seriousness fell back across Kala’s face like a veil. Caro loudly told every one of us to be silent and came back to stand at the head of the line with her chin up and her blue eyes locked on Kala’s.
This time, there was no long walk down a hall, but instead a shorter traverse to the far side of the hill, the side we hadn’t seen yet. As we emerged through the door, the land in front of us was still shrouded in the gray before dawn, but even so I felt like we walked into a field of art. The garden was a grand circle, half the size of the whole central area in SoBright. Even the dull predawn light hinted at a riot of colors in curving geometric shapes, much like the ordered chaos of the fractal math I’d learned on one of the ships between Fremont and here. The words organic and structured both leapt to mind.
So did a few lines of poetry, and a snatch of song or two.
Beside me, and visible, Alicia drew in a deep breath. Caro clapped a hand theatrically over her mouth as if to emphasize how hard it was to be silent, and brilliant curiosity lit Liam’s eyes.
Was this the garden of the soul Seeyan had told me about the first day I met her?
Other groups emerged from doorways all around the circle of the garden. I watched carefully, hoping for some children for the kids to play with. I spotted a few smaller figures across the vast circle from us, but all of the people closest to us were adults. Maybe one in ten was a flier. Helpers or also tourists? Or students? I couldn’t tell.
As much attention as we gave to being quiet, the other groups were more silent, some actually gliding like our Keepers and the old man who had greeted us when Seeyan dropped us off.
Early-morning cool enveloped garden and people. A stray wind puffed a strand of hair about my face.
We followed the example of the other nearby groups and spread out around the edge of the circle, holding hands, creating a continuous line of life enfolding the living mandala in front of us.
The last clasping hand seemed to be the signal. At least twenty fliers, who must have been hidden behind the rolling rises of the hills, leapt into the air as one. Only then did I notice that the hilltops were also ringed unevenly with watchers, winged and unwinged. So this was a big deal.
The fliers came together and spiraled up, fast and high, like an explosion out of the darkness. After flying myself, I could barely imagine the strength it took to rise so fast. They seemed so close together I half-expected them to hit each other and tumble, broken, from the sky. They might have been smoke rising from the fire of Lopali’s soul.
Their precision made me forget to breathe.
Sunlight flashed and glowed in the highest flier’s wings, and they were all high enough for the sun to bathe them, to flash on their jewels and illuminate the many, many colors of their many wings.
They came down again, synchronous, fast, plummeting toward the garden. Just as I wondered if I should grab the children and shelter them, two fliers dipped near the ground and back up, turning impossibly sharply with arched backs and an odd twist to their wings. The lot of them came back together in the center of the great garden, once more below the light of the sun, duller.
They rose again, slower this time, almost straight up, yet threading between each other. Surely a trick of the eye made them seem to be holding hands. This time the sun touched them lower in the sky. At the apex, when all of them were bright with morning, they darted away from each other all at once, flying until we could no longer see them.
I glanced at Alicia, expecting her gaze to be as rapt as mine. Instead, her brows were drawn together, and a bit of her old fury painted her mouth into a tight line and sealed her jaw taut.
I would think about her later. This was my first moment here, and I wanted a pure impression.
Around us, a chant started. Caro started right off in tune and in
time, and we ended up following her as much as the more experienced Keepers and students who surrounded us. Her voice was clear and sure, and as innocent as the fliers had been beautiful.
“The beauty of flight.”
“The pain of flight.”
Voices spilled down the hills as well as from either side of us, a measured cadence. These were well-known and well-loved words.
“The light of flight.”
“The joy of flight.”
The old man who had greeted us the night before, the Keeper of the Ways of the Fliers of Lopali, rose from the bench in the center of the circle. Only then did I notice the strangeness of age here, where almost everyone looked young until they died. So much more about Mohami had been strange that his age had seemed unremarkable. Or perhaps it had just seemed to fit him.
He extended his hands up above his head, taking in the open circle of sky just in the moment it switched from gray to blue.
Voices spoke an answer to his gesture. “The joy of flight and the pain of life. The spiral of strength and love.”
So many people speaking the same words all at once seemed to make them far more powerful than they should be. Peace and acceptance flowed through the group of people, as if it passed from hand to hand. I felt big with it, full of compassion and appreciation for the beauty that surrounded me here.
Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, startling me.
There were almost as many people here in this garden as in all of Artistos. They spoke in one voice.
I had never imagined such a moment.
Each and every one of them had an inner beauty. We were all perfect, all as perfect as the fliers, regardless of the pain we might have felt in our lives, the people or animals we might have hurt or killed, the wars we might have started.
The garden rang with one feeling, one voice, one peace, one magical note of song.
I didn’t want to look at anyone, didn’t want to break the powerful, personal spell. Liam’s hand rose to my shoulder from behind me,
and I knew he knew I was crying and that he didn’t care, that he understood my tears.
We had grouped together, inexorably drawn to each other like the family we were. As if we connected to all of the other people around the circle, who simultaneously moved like we did, our feet began to tread the garden paths. At that moment, sunlight touched the tops of the hills farthest from us.
A circle of hundreds of people stepped together, drawing from the outside in, like a river flowing downhill. Tall and short, winged and not, from all of the five planets that otherwise prepared for war.