Chains Made of Stars- ON HOLD

Chapter 6: I'm afraid we'll have to do this the fun way, end part

Mith realised that she didn't know how this worked at all. Would they float straight up into space? What did the Ark even look like?

Her grandparents had told her the most fabulous stories about their own visits to the Ark.

The sky is like a dome studded with diamonds. It arches above you, and you walk under it. You are close to the sky, but not in it, so you still have to look up. Mithali, what we do is gritty work, but what a setting! You can't come that close to infinity and not want more of it. The heavens open up to the vast universe beyond, and it is unforgettable. It sucks you in, because you won't find that kind of raw, untamed beauty anywhere else. Don't tell your ma I said this, but I wish that you get to see it at least once in your life.

That was something Mith's granddad had told her, when he had given her the compass. She remembered his exact words, the exact crinkly smile that had appeared as he talked.

Mith was seeing it now. Holy hell, her granddad's description did it no justice. She angled her head up, trying to take in as much as she could.

Mith and Will rose for a few minutes. Suddenly, Mith felt something careen into her and push her upright.

She thought that she was going to collapse and hurtle down, but incredibly, there was now something solid beneath her feet. She was standing straight in the sky, with the heavens giving way to deep space and an infinite universe above her. She looked up and not down. Her legs shook, but she took a tentative step forward. She was now walking. In the sky.

She held in her delighted laugh. It would not do to make it look like this was her first time. She couldn't help looking up though. The view transfixed her. It was glorious. It was mesmerizing. It was breathtakingly beautiful. This was as close to the Great Beyond as any human could ever get.

Mith had not, however, forgotten that her life was on the line. She dusted herself off and looked at Will, who was staring at her, studying her reaction.

"What are you looking at?" she said with a sniff. "Chop chop, we've got memories to harvest. Or something of the kind anyway. Let's go."

He grinned.

"That's the spirit, love."

And then he sang. It was not a song in the true sense of a word. It was a pure, haunting note that seemed to echo through the skies. Even through his mask, it sounded beautiful.

And as Mith looked up, monsters began to appear.

It's November now, so I should be looking for Eridanus, Orion, Taurus...and what's the other one? Oh yeah, Cetus. The sea monster.

Holy shit. A sea monster!

She held her breath, expectant. It felt like her entire life had been a build-up to this moment.

The sea monster shimmered to life first. Arcs made of some sort of silver mist appeared between the stars of its constellation, the empyrean version of a join-the-dots exercise.

It took a few minutes. The part Mith was looking at was only the head, she realised. The creature's magnificent, scaly body snaked out behind him, curving along the dome of the Northern hemisphere.

Even so, the head was huge. Like let's-shove-a-pod-of-blue-whales-in-there-and-watch-them disappear kind of huge.

It was a like a dragon's head, scaly, with fierce eyes and sharp teeth. One eye swung around and fixed on Mith. She gasped.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Will said. "They don't like showing themselves to Carcerem Society members."

"I know," Mith said. This little nugget of information had actually come from her parents. When Mith was thirteen, she had, for some odd reason, taken to spending long hours inside her room with her door locked. She didn't remember what exactly she had done in there, but she did remember going downstairs only at mealtimes for a couple of months.

Her parents had grown up in the Carcerem Society, so even though they had given it up in pursuit of a normal life, they had still affectionately called her their 'little Ark monster' then.

"Why d'you call me that?" Mith had asked.

"Because you appear only when you want to be fed," her mother had said with a laugh.

Mith thought of this now, and her chest twinged. She missed her mum and dad already.

"They appear only during the Great Feeding," she said breathlessly, hoping she sounded like a well-informed Academy student. "But you can make them appear. How?"

"The promise of a drug that will let them escape wakes them up just fine," Will said dryly.

"The note is just my signal to let them know I'm here. Penetrates whatever eternity-induced brain-fog they live in."

Cetus opened his mouth and roared, a vicious sound full of rage. It was loud, and majestic. Like the roar of a lion, with a more human depth of emotion to it.

Mith was in awe of it.

The force of the roar threw her back several feet, and she picked herself up, too amazed to wince or feel the searing cold that came with being so high up.

"You alright?" Will asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"Never been better," Mith whispered, her eyes still on Cetus. Hells, it was true. She felt a new clarity, and a touch of destiny: like this was where she was meant to be. Like this was her place in the world.