The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,34

sure she’s trying to gauge my response—perhaps it’s a sacred word, and if I were from here, I couldn’t help but react.

But I’m not, and I’m left creasing my brow, confused, partly because I don’t know what mice are either. “Their own personal what?”

“Lightbringer,” she says, more slowly. “The god who will end this cycle and begin the next. The one who will remake the world.”

“Of course,” I say, slapping at an insect trying to bite my neck. I haven’t got a clue what she means. I’ve heard of the worship of gods—it was a part of my education. Something my people did, long before the time of the Ascension. We had a whole club of gods then, according to the stories. Once, I asked my heartmother why we didn’t have them anymore. She said that we probably stopped believing in them once we came into the sky ourselves and discovered nobody else was there.

The girl’s eyeing me strangely, and I wonder just how out of place I sound right now. Who, or what, she thinks I am.

“Do you worship the Lightbringer at the temple we’re going to?” I try.

“Among others,” she says. “The temple is about a day’s journey from here. By tomorrow night, you will see for yourself.”

I’m not sure I like that answer. It’s too smooth—and reveals too little. Whoever this girl is, at least one thing about her is familiar—she’d fit right in on the council at home. She considers every word before she speaks it. She isn’t telling me everything. But I don’t call her on it—not yet. No matter why she’s taking me with her, it’s better than standing in the middle of the lake with a broken glider and hungry monsters all around me. “What will happen when we get there?” I ask.

Nimh steps over a rotting log, the cat creature leaping over it in one fluid move. “There,” she says, “we will search for someone who knows how to put a man back up in the sky.”

It sounds fantastical when she says it, but I can’t help craning my neck back to catch a glimpse of my home. The stars are blocked from my sight by the canopy of leaves overhead.

“You mentioned Sentinels,” I say. “You said they might have an idea of how to get me back up in the sky. Who are they?”

“A story for children,” she replies. “But stories often have a seed of truth, however long lost—it is said that they were a secret society of magicians who once guarded the way between worlds. The archives are vast—if any texts about the Sentinels still exist, you will find them there.”

The archives are vast. My brain’s still just about short-circuiting at the possibility of some kind of tribe down here, clinging to life after all these centuries, and they’ve got vast archives?

“The temple, is it in a camp or a village, or something larger?” I ask.

“It sits above the city,” she replies. “There is not much land here that stays dry—we are just leaving the rainy months now. The temple is on a rise overlooking the forest-sea, and many of the houses in town leave during the wet season.”

A city? But that would mean thousands of people. My brain starts spitting sparks and threatens to catch fire. But something she’s said doesn’t compute. “The houses leave?”

“Of course.” She glances sideways at me. “The temple remains, but most other places float. To find food, to trade … It is a rare and treasured responsibility, to spend all your life in one place.”

Understanding clicks into place. If most of the surface is flooded, then cities would need to sit on top of the water. “Our cities move too—we just move the whole of them, rather than individual parts.”

“Do they glide, like your craft?”

“No, they use engines, it’s a different kind of propulsion.”

“Engines,” she says slowly, as if tasting the word. “Propulsion.” Her face is keen, curious, intelligent—but my heart sinks. She clearly doesn’t know what I’m talking about. How am I going to find a way to repair the Skysinger if these people don’t know even the basics of aeronautics?

“What is engines?” she asks, not seeming to notice my dismay.

“They’re, uh … I’m not sure how to explain it,” I admit. My tired mind isn’t sure where to start. “They’re a thing you can build that creates energy, the way wind pushing on a sail does. Only you can summon the energy whenever you want, instead of waiting for the wind