Tales from the Earthen Sky

Solis stared upwards at the dark land above, intimidated as usual by the sheer bulk and enormous weight of the looming Earth—a sky of rock and earth, painted green by moss and hanging plants, strange grasses and upside-down trees. It hung thousands of feet above, partially obscured by the mottling of hazy clouds between, tinted by the blue of the sky.

Legend holds that the islands we call home formed from pieces of the great land above . . . the “Earth” as they call it. As water runs to the lowest point and drips below, pieces of the land fell into the sky. Some say the great landmass floats because that is the nature of all that is from the Earth, while others say the gods formed our islands from pieces and set them where they are today, unmoving save for small drift.

So Solis’ grandmother used to tell him. That second story was the one she believed. Her name was Fey, and she was one of the few who had been there and returned. To the Earth and back. When she passed . . . that left only the Magnates, and they keep their lips sealed about the lands above. The misers.

But what is really up there? I will find out for myself, soon.

He sighed, looking back at his home island, and the path on which he now stood. A stonework trail with Datem trees lining the way, it led from the Skyfall to the town of Megeth. I’d better head back to town. Solis skipped his way, and then beat his white wings and took to the air. He flew low, mostly gliding on his way to his hometown. The breeze felt just right on his face, not too chilly and not too warm.

The outskirts of the town rose before him, and then the little houses fell away as he glided past, and the taller buildings drew closer. His brethren, others of the Tapiq tribe, soared here and there, and a couple greeted him with a wave as he passed them. Some of the other tribes could be seen around Megeth as well. Some were from neighboring villages, others lived here.

He was looking for Telsan, who was of one of those other tribes—the Bird Tribe, also known as the Ornis. Solis found him on the south side of town, near the waterfall overlooking the southern edge, or Skyfall, of the island. Solis alighted above him on the branch of a nearby tree, catching himself nimbly with his feet and drawing in his white wings.

“There you are,” Telsan said in his half-raspy, half-squawky voice, looking upward with that weird smile he always made. Solis was never sure what it was, because between his birdlike beak and fully feathered face, Telsan might as well have been wearing a mask. His beak extended about five inches, with two slitted nostrils at the top, near where the small feathers met it, and the top beak hooked over the lower by an inch or so. All it was capable of doing was opening and closing, but with slightly squinted eyebrows and feathered cheeks puckered just a bit, his face made a smile that was always discernable to Solis, even obvious. “Thought you’d never show up, old friend. Our shift starts in only a couple minutes.”

Solis grinned back. “I was busy. I’m all ready, though.” What he didn’t say was that he’d been busy daydreaming, but it wouldn’t take Telsan much work to guess that.

Telsan nodded slowly, scanning the horizon. “Here they come.”

Solis squinted—Telsan’s eyes were much sharper—and was just able to make out the forms of the two scouts coming off of lookout duty. Faridi and Colla, a male and female team of Tapiqs who often worked together, much like Solis and Telsan. He could make out their forms better as they approached, each one’s wingspan the average six paces. They glided for the island of Ameros with great speed, the wind guiding them in. Colla was a Windborn, which helped a lot. Neither Solis nor Telsan had any such inborn talents. Only their wits.

The winged duo alighted to the left of Solis and his friend, catching their footing nimbly and bowing their heads in greeting. Solis returned the gesture. “All yours, fellows,” said Faridi, the Tapiq man of twenty years. “Nothing much to report, as usual. A small storm is brewing on the western horizon.” He shrugged. “We’ll take the report to Temasa.”

With that, they took off once more in a rush of air. Telsan nodded at Solis, and they took flight.

Phoenix watched from atop one of the stone slabs in the southern village square as two shapes took flight at the southern Skyfall. Telsan and Solis? It was about time for their morning shift. Her stone seat stood approximately six feet in height, but its side was easy enough for the little ones to climb—therefore, four of them sat there with her, some clinging to her dress. Passersby garbed in customary greys and browns and clapping sandals turned their heads to smile at the attention she was getting.

Her short skirt rustled in the wind, its many long tails trailing behind her as she sat. Over her dress she wore a form-fitting leather vest, which continued in a V shape in the front, draping over her skirt. Over the V neck of the dress hung a supple leather strip that matched the belt she wore at her waist, woven with her most precious trinkets. A decoratively trimmed collar folded over the belt. Both dress and vest lacked sleeves and cut away at the shoulder blades, creating a convex shape, a feature that had little to do with looks. The outfit was more comfortable than it appeared, and also functional, being completely heat-and-fire resistant.

She hugged one of the children, a boy of four years named Ed, to her side. She loved children. “What do you see, Eddie?” she asked in a soft voice.

“Big people, flying in the sky over there!” he squeaked.

Phoenix giggled. He was so cute when he called adults, even young ones still in their teenage years—sixteen-year-olds like herself—“big people”.

“Where?” asked one of the little girls, Adina. “I don’t see them.”

Phoenix patted her golden-haired head. “Your eyes just aren’t sharp enough yet.” She pointed out over the horizon, where her two friends had almost disappeared by now. Ed’s vision was unusually sharp for his age. None of these children were old enough to have their wings yet. Some may yet grow them in, or others with a Kinship, like her, might manifest ethereal wings at an earlier or later age. For her, it had been eight years. Hers, made of fiery projections, only showed when she needed them. While she did not need exposed skin on her back to manifest the wings, it helped greatly, so she generally wore a similar outfit to her current one.

Her Flameborn powers—Kinship, they called it—had manifested at age five, but she could not control them until age eight or so, at which point she also discovered her wings. But she didn’t learn to actually fly with them until age nine, which was fairly average for other children as well. By then, most had grown their wings in and were flapping around clumsily.

People of the Bird Tribe, however, like her friend Telsan, hatched out with immature wings already partially formed, and within their next four years had matured enough to use them for their intended purpose. Until then, they just got in the way.

Phoenix stretched, breathing in the morning scent of earthy dust and food cooking in the restaurants farther downtown. Then she patted the backs of the children that clung to her. “You’re going to have to let me go now, kids. I need to practice for the festival.”

“So, Telsan!” Solis said excitedly as they flew. “I had an idea today.”

The young bird-man glanced sidelong at him. “Daydreaming again?”

“No! Well, yes, I suppose. But hear me out. I think our whole world might be . . . upside down.”

“Upside down,” Telsan returned flatly. He clacked his beak, the equivalent of a snort.

“Right. What if . . . what if the Earth was supposed to be down and the sky up?”

“That's crazy. What have you been eating lately?”

“Nothing weird! Not after those mushrooms. But think about it like this: why do we walk on the top of the sky islands, and yet fall the other way? All that green grass and the trees that grow on the surface up there… what if that was supposed to be our world long ago? What if everything just got flipped around and suddenly the islands fell. Whoever was left would have just kinda…”

He trailed off at his friend's mortified expression. That one always came through, beak and all. It was the eyes.

“OK, that does sound kind of horrible,” Solis conceded. “Let's forget I mentioned that one.”

“Yeah,” Telsan grumbled, turning to glide parallel to the southern Ameros Skyfall. Solis followed him, flaring his white wings and holding them at length. “Plus it's insane, Solis. You really need to stop dreaming, or the Magnates are never going to let you go up there.”

“Hey!” Despite their mutual familiarity, Solis was indignant that his friend would suggest that his excitement and passion for exploration, his zeal to know more about the world, was somehow a deterrent that should keep him from being qualified in the upcoming selection. Not to mention he was one of the few who actively wanted to go. Some youths had to ascend, whether they wished to or not. The Magnates always sent at least two.

Never did a single soul return.

And yet…the Magnates were strange, seeming almost to look at him as unfit or unworthy to ascend. They frowned when he got close, frowned deeper when he spoke, and openly scowled whenever he asked them questions. As he grew, so did his mouth, and they grew to dislike what came out of it, all the while maintaining their classic tight-lipped refusal to share any of their boundless wisdom. When his grandmother died, it only grew worse. But . . . it didn’t make any sense. Why send randomly chosen teenagers to a fate they feared? One regarded by many as a death sentence?

In the silence that stretched between them, Solis soared alongside his friend in the great sky, some five hundred feet above the village. Below, winged people the size of songbirds walked and glided to and fro. The island was around ten miles in length and vaguely oblong in shape, the largest by far in this southeasterly quadrant of the sky. The Sun blazed from its position a quarter of the way down its arc. As it did every day, it crept clockwise from the brown-and-green upper horizon to the lower horizon—a thick cloud layer thousands of feet below island altitude. Therein raged the angry storms, deterring any and all from falling or gliding down so far. To do so was considered suicide. The Sun traveled in a low orbit left-to-right from its upper night position, which was arbitrarily called north, down slowly toward the south, Hiding behind the thick clouds that only mostly obscured it. Thus they had full darkness in the six night hours and relative darkness during the six hours of the Hiding, before the Sun arose over the opposite horizon. The current time was considered morning, before the Sun Hid for the day.

They were out for morning scouting, which was more a matter of protocol than of duty. The other tribes hadn’t attacked for decades, and all was largely peaceful in the sky. At this very time, they would all be getting ready for the upcoming festival.

“For what it’s worth, Solis,” Telsan said at length. “I hope they do pick you.” He flapped his bronzy wings and picked up speed.

Solis hoped so too. Oh how he hoped.

Back on the island, it was midday as Solis walked beside his friend toward Megeth’s western gates, having saluted their replacements a minute prior with passing palm-slaps. The sky was darkened by the Hiding, although the Sun’s dim light that filtered through still reflected off the lands above, far more dimly where the shadow of Ameros and the neighboring islands blotted all light from below.

The late spring day was still warm, cooled only a touch by the Hiding. Birds still chirped and flitted about between the evergreens and leafy Datems, and a jittery squirrel glanced at the two boys as they walked by.

When they reached the village, a few residents greeted them with friendly waves. They passed the outer side streets and the modest houses of the middle-class Tapiqs—built mostly from deadfall wood and stones from the Earth. Even now, Solis saw a streak in his upper-left peripheral, and swiveled his gaze to see a long, brown shape hurtling toward Megeth from above.

Solis nudged Telsan and stopped to watch, as did a few other folks. Solis almost always flinched at the sight, despite knowing full well that the wards placed on the village by the Magnates long ago would hold. Sure enough, the shape stopped with a dull thump and a shudder. It hung roughly one story above the tallest houses, not a hundred feet to their left near the next intersection. It was the bole of a large, mostly dead tree.

“Deadfall!” shouted a man from behind them, running up and repeating the word. Solis recognized him as one of the Watchers, those with the innate ability to sense and manipulate the force that held the defensive wards. Two other Tapiq hurried to aid him, beating their wings and taking to the air.

“Do you suppose they have it?” Solis asked his friend.

Telsan nodded. “Looks like it.”

The three men grabbed the tree trunk and pulled it down, lowering it carefully onto the stout thatched roof of the building underfoot, shouting, “Look out below!” They tipped the huge log as townspeople backed away, sending it to thud into the street below. Carpenters were already approaching to decide what to do with it.

The town had plenty of trees, so wood was not a rarity, but they relied on the deadfall from the Earth to supply their demand, in order to not expend their own natural resources. It was, after all, a small ecosystem.

“There must be some high winds up there,” Telsan commented, moving on. “That’s the fourth one today.”

Solis hardly heard him. He was staring up at the Earth as though trying to see where exactly the tree had come from, despite that being impossible from this altitude.

“Solis!” Telsan squawked.

“Oh.” Solis wrested his eyes from the Earth, realizing his friend was already a dozen paces in front of him, and hurried to catch up. He didn’t use his wings, as they would collide with multiple pedestrians. It was an unwritten rule in Megeth: don’t use your wings except when absolutely necessary. The same went for elemental abilities, for those with a Kinship.

No sooner had he caught up to Telsan than an unwelcome sight graced his eyes: Melka, one of the three living Magnates of the Tapiq, stood in the western square just ahead, speaking with two men. Though her face would appear to be that of a thirty-year-old, gray hairs flecked her long blonde hair. Her expression rarely changed from its fine mix of subtly surly and impossibly imperious, though right now she seemed to lean toward imperious.

One of the men turned, and Solis realized he vaguely recognized him as a frequent messenger from the neighboring village of Tray, which lay a few miles south of Megeth. Since all ten villages of the Alliance would be participating in the upcoming festival, he could only assume that was what they were conversing about. Though he knew few details about this year’s festivities, other than that there would be a competition held, greater than those of the last few years.

Solis and Telsan skirted as widely as possible around Melka, but she still turned her head and eyed Solis, subtly glaring at him before turning back to her conversation.

“What is her problem?” Solis muttered. All three Magnates seemed to disapprove of him in some way, and all he could think of was that it must be due to his being the grandson of the late Magnate Fey. Did they somehow blame him for her death? It wasn’t his fault she’d grown old and died, after all.

But . . . he did wonder how the other three Magnates never seemed to age. It was possible that Grandmother Fey had ascended before they had, but still they must be at least in their . . . sixties, seventies? Grandmother had never said, other than that those who ascended and returned as Magnates usually gained long life as one of their new traits.

Usually. What did that mean?

Telsan tapped his shoulder once they were out of Melka’s sight. “I wonder what Phoenix is up to?”

“Oh, probably practicing for the competition.”

“Like we should be, if you want to win,” Telsan said, finishing his thoughts.

Characters

Solis (SOLE-iss)—The main character, a white-winged boy of unceasing curiosity who longs to see inside the forbidden Earth.

Telsan (TELL-suhn)—Solis’ best friend, a young man of the Bird Tribe.

Phoenix—Longtime friend of Solis and Telsan, a Flameborn girl of sixteen years.

Faridi (fuh-RID-ee)—A Tapiq man who frequently volunteers for lookout duty.

Colla—A female Tapiq; often works with Faridi.

Melka—One of the three living Tapiq Magnates.

Donnor—Said to be the eldest of the three living Magnates.

Spore—One of the three living Magnates. Doesn’t say much.

Fey—Solis’ deceased grandmother, a former Magnate.

Terms

Megeth (Meh-GETH)—Hometown of Solis and his fellow Tapiq people.

Skyfall—The edges of an island.

Ameros (AM-uh-ros)—Largest island in the southeastern quadrant of the sky, where the Tapiq village of Megeth lies.

Tapiq (tuh-PEEK)—The tribe of winged men who dwell in Ameros and the surrounding islands. As with most tribes, they have adopted some from other tribes and races as their own, while others are visitors.

Ornis—Also called the Bird Tribe, though this isn’t entirely accurate, as there are multiple; most simply live farther north.

Datem (DATE-um)—A species of tree native to the island of Ameros. Deciduous, with shaggy leaves.

Hiding, The—The six hours in the middle of the day when the Sun’s low-angled course takes it behind the infinite cloud layer that looms beneath the sky world.

Earth—Ground, dirt, namely the gigantic continent that looms above the sky. Forbidden to all save those whom the Magnates choose each year.

Magnate—One of the three living souls of the Tapiq tribe who have ascended to the Earth and returned, bearing supposedly infinite knowledge that they choose to keep hidden.

Deadfall—This refers to any large or otherwise harmful trees, branches or sometimes rocks that fall from the Earth, caught by the protective wards and subsequently used for timber or fuel.

Alliance—The Alliance of Wings is a group of ten tribes encompassing most of the charted sky. They have had a peaceful history for the past decade.

Wards—Magical barriers put in place by the Magnates and managed by the Watchers.

Watcher—One with the inborn ability to control the invisible wards that protect Megeth and other sky villages.

Windborn—Those blessed with Kinship to wind. Unlike others with an elemental Kinship, these often grow wings just like any other, though some have been blessed with a heightened ability allowing them to fly without wings—and thus lacking them.

Flameborn—Those blessed with Kinship to the power of flame. They are characterized by their lack of wings, as they form their own as needed from tongues of fire that sprout from their backs.

Kinship—The intangible, inexplicable bond between certain children and an element or other force of nature that follows them all through life. Kinships can be neither changed nor banished, but they can be quite useful.