The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,45
huffing an answering wisp of laughter, rubbing my hands over my face.
How strange, I think, feeling how warm my cheeks are. To be huddled for our lives beneath tons of stone and find myself laughing with a divine messenger from the clouds.
“If only I’d thought to study ‘elements of Below’ at the academy.” North’s voice is still bright with amusement as he leans his head back against the rock.
Curiosity prickles at me. “Academy? Like a school?”
North nods. “Exactly. Do you have schools here?”
“There is a seminary in the temple for acolytes who wish to become priests.” I shift around until I can lay my spearstaff down, stretching fingers that had been gripping it far too tightly. “And the riverstriders have a sort of floating school where different clans gather to share and pass on their knowledge to their children. They call it learning to walk the river.”
“So you’re one of these river people?”
I glance at him, then away. “My mother was.”
“But not you?” North’s voice is quiet, with a gentler curiosity as if, somehow, he senses my reluctance to continue down this path.
“Not me, no.”
North is silent for a few breaths. “So these mist-storms—I take it everyone just builds everything out of this sky metal? Because I wouldn’t want to be sitting outside unaware when one of those things shows up.”
“Sky-steel is too rare now. How the ancients found so much of it, or how they scattered it throughout the stone they built with, we do not know. But we have enough to protect our villages, after a fashion. And the river protects the temple, and the riverstriders.”
“We’re lucky you know about this place,” North grants. “I guess I’m lucky.”
For years, this was my place—where I could play unsupervised, for there were no people here to touch me. Daoman considered the expeditions educational for a young deity. My guards and acolytes always had too much dignity to crawl around in these tunnels, and I never told the high priest about everything I found here, for even as a child I longed to keep a few small things for myself.
So why do I want to share them with North?
“Come,” I say abruptly, before I can change my mind. “I will show you something I have never shown anyone before.”
EIGHT
NORTH
Half crawling as we head deeper into the ruins, every part of me hurts in new and unique ways—gashes from my crash landing, a thousand stings from the insects of the jungle, bruises and aches every time I try to flex my wrist.
Also, I’m completely convinced there are still particles of that animal I ate stuck between my teeth. I shudder, trying not to think about it.
What I’d thought was a cave in the rubble of a long-collapsed building has turned out to be a passageway that twists and turns its way into the hill. “Who built this tunnel?” I venture, watching the cat’s fluffy hindquarters disappear from view around a bend ahead of Nimh.
“My people,” she replies, without looking back—how she doesn’t trip, I have no idea. She has even less of the glow from my chrono than I do.
“But they didn’t build the city that’s ruined here.”
“No, the city is from the time of the ancients, when the gods walked among us.” She steps over a fallen section of the ceiling, then moves aside so I can do the same without coming too close to her. “The tunnels were created about two centuries after the Exodus—when the gods left.”
I cling to that idea, tucking it close against my heart. My people left here once. They left ruins. There’s no reason to believe they didn’t leave behind some hint of how they launched the sky-islands, some ancient record. If they did, I’ll find it.
“Why did you build the tunnels?” I ask now.
“My people were trying to reclaim sky-steel to use for protection, but for the most part, it is spread too thinly through the stone.”
I reach out, letting my fingers trail across the cool tunnel wall beside me. It’s simple poured cement, I’m sure of it. No doubt mixing it with fragments of this metal of theirs made it stronger, and somewhere down the centuries her people began to believe it had some kind of power.
Something about this place feels oddly familiar, but I’m too tired to grab hold of it. I try instructing my brain to sift through old memories, run a subprogram in the background. Maybe it will come up with what this place reminds me of.