The Cerulean (The Cerulean Duology #1) - Amy Ewing Page 0,1
hasn’t needed tending in years and years. That was the whole point of attaching our City to that planet down there in the first place.”
The City Above the Sky wasn’t like the many planets of the universe—it was not a planet at all. It wasn’t round like a ball, but flat, a floating oval disk with a temple in its center and two sprawling gardens at either end. A fine membrane of magic protected its outer rim and encased it like an egg, securing its edges so no mindless Cerulean would wander off it and fall into space. Since it had no rain, or snow, or any discernible weather, the City must attach itself to a planet by means of a tether, a tangible, finely wrought chain of magic in links of gold and silver and blue, invisible to the human eye, but perfectly visible to every Cerulean. This tether gave the City life—it drew nutrients up from the planet, minerals and molecules of all kinds, the way grass draws water up from soil. It kept the Great Estuary full and the orchards watered. It kept the air pure and the animals healthy.
Sera’s green mother had told her of how dangerous the journey to this planet had been, nearly nine hundred years ago, after the Great Sadness had happened and Cerulean life had changed irrevocably. It had taken so long to find the green-blue-brown orb below, the Estuary had nearly dried up and the moonflower fields had withered and blown away and the seresheep had begun to die.
“How can we be sure the tether is still healthy?” Sera said to Koreen. “My green mother told me that there used to be Cerulean who would look after it and warn the High Priestess when it was time for the City to move again. Our City used to move all the time, didn’t it? And now we’ve been stuck here for almost a millennium.”
“Because Mother Sun gave us a great gift,” Elorin said piously. Elorin would definitely end up as a novice. “This planet has so many resources to share, we need not move at all.”
“But we’re meant to move, aren’t we?” Sera said. “In all the oldest stories, the Cerulean would move from planet to planet, sometimes even twice in one year!”
“I don’t know what your green mother has been teaching you,” Koreen said. “But mine has never said anything about any Cerulean tending to the tether.”
All green mothers were educators, imparting to their daughters the history and stories of the Cerulean people, passed down from generation to generation. The Cerulean had no books or written language, just the symbols on the temple doors, the language of Mother Sun that only the High Priestess could read.
“Maybe that’s because you never asked,” Sera muttered.
“Not to mention the fact that we are safe here,” Koreen continued. “What if we go searching for another planet and can’t find one? What if we move and there is another Great Sadness? Is that what you want, Sera?”
She felt stung. “Of course not.”
The Great Sadness had happened on the last planet the City had been attached to. It was the single worst tragedy in Cerulean history—two hundred Cerulean had been murdered by the humans who lived on the planet, and the City had been forced to move before its time.
Sera would never want that to happen again. She loved her City, she truly did. She just felt a bit . . . bored sometimes. She had become so familiar with the planet beneath them, the shapes of its two countries, Kaolin and Pelago, etched into her brain. She could probably draw them in her sleep—Kaolin was a hulking swath of land shaped like a lopsided star, Pelago a myriad of islands. Besides, she had already gleaned every scrap of information about them that she could from her green mother, who could only tell her what her green mother had taught her, and so on and so on. Sera always wondered what stories might have been lost or changed over the generations. For now, she felt there was nothing left to learn. As long as they were attached to this planet, the tether was the only mystery that remained to her. She could see it from the edges of the City, the fine bluish-silvery-gold line cutting through the darkness of space. She wondered what it looked like where it stuck into the underside of the City, if it attached like a spiderweb, or simply thrust out proudly from