The Fades are full of shadows from the stone hollows and wooden alcoves stacked high. In the richer parts of Ismayah she's heard they build castles. You can't see those over the wall, but you can see spires, slender like silverlights, only uglier. The tops of dark towers that spot the city like bruises. They slant in strange directions as if cursed.
With the Etherics taking her higher, she sees that the twisting shadows are because the spaces carved in dense geometric forms, beautiful up close. Etherics is a dumb word, she thinks. But there's more high in the Fades than low everywhere else. The spaces hide in each others' shadows, like family. Like love.
They're showing me that. She never wants to forget.
She has trouble climbing at first. The Etherics catch her when she falls with their body cradle. That happens three times, then she stops falling hard enough for them to use their bodies, just slow her with their arms so she can land okay. After that the brush cut Etheric nods at her and the wavy boy scampers in in front of her, sliding his body against the jump of an overhang roof. And the brush cut boy grabs her arm, pushes her back and whips her forward and before she can think she's springboarding off his friend's back and her fingers are hooking on the roof's wooden slats and she's pulling herself over. Air rushes into her throat and lungs and comes out as laughter as she tumbles over.
They work together as they climb, always one for the one who needs help and the other going ahead.
She thinks they're going diagonal out from the square to the edges of the Fades. She starts to make a map in her head as they fly, taking in landmarks as she lands in bent crouches and springs off again. The Fades are like a valley, the levels like stone steps to the sky. Beyond the higher angles are shadows she's never seen.
The levels are cluttered with caves of carven stone. Sometimes she sees thin smoke rise from them, a light gray like butterfly wings when it catches in the Bright Circle's light. She's never seen it before. She's looked up before, but she's never strained to see what might be passing over the rooftop edges of sight, intangible as thought. She's never seen the caves hiding behind rooftops, slats and stone carved juts.
Finally they reach a squared rooftop walled in on three sides. Above it a stone overhang planes above them over the far facing wall. There are marks on the wall leading up. She sees them as finger and foot grooves. Light breaks over the wall from a small fissure where it joins the overhang. You could climb it to ascend another level and keep going beyond the canopy. Still, the Etherics skid to a stop, putting their weight into it. She finds meaning in its harshness. Their heels push into dirt and fragments of stone. The lighter fragments plume. She sees dark gray but also bone bleached white.
"Don't feel like going higher today," Brush Cut says. Dirty Waves is moving, slanting low to the ground, in the dirt and the dark and white stones. The dark stones remind her of night but the white stones remind her of the Pale Sliver. She wonders if the Pale Sliver has bones, bones like the Etherics, like her. Bones she could meet.
Dirty Waves kneels. He's pulling away dust and rocks, scooping when he needs to get more of them, finger dragging the smaller bits. There's something carved into the floor before him. It's a wooden frame, splintered jagged along its lines. Dust and rocks are in the splits and Dirty Waves is pulling them out shard by shard, his face dreamy.
Brush Cut coughs and Dirty Waves stretches his arms forward. His fingers scrabble in the dirt and he lifts. The whole frame comes up with him. Troud sees the top face as it rises, obscured by the back of the boy's head. Dust clouds swirl around him as it opens all the way, full horizontal. She remembers the tableau later, the near black of his hair against the spirals and cuts of the frame and the dust smoke.
He turns, back, grins, hands still gripping the frame, fingertips lost over the upper edge. "After you," he says.
She looks back. Brush Cut has drifted away. He's staring past the open square, down the way they just came. For a moment she wonders what he sees. She wants to join him, but then Dirty Waves behind her coughs in the dust and she thinks she'd better keep moving.
She moves past the frame, Dirty Waves still holding it at a perfect straight angle. As she turns past she sees empty space, with light flickering through. She moves her hand over it, seeing the lines between her fingers dance up the skin to where they break away from each other in gentle crests.
She drops down into warmth.
She's landed steps away from a fire. It's couched in a pit of flamestone, but the flamestone isn't the dark gray it is in market rows and crimson palaces she's heard her father speak of. It's pitch black, the fire emerald green. The stone flowers into crystal bursts, like it's reaching for her. She draws closer, then remembers there's more than fire down here.
There are other children, some sitting together, talking in low tones, whispers, some sleeping. Other Etherics. The floor is stone, but it's smooth, like worn seabed. She sees herself when she looks down, though her reflection wavers, and she is standing still.
She sees the walls climb and part the starry sky. Openings are carved on each side and by firelight she can see the hollows, tunnels disappearing into void. Smoke is venting through them. It spreads between all four, so thin she can barely see it. But it gives outline to the shadows dancing across it.
She hears another cough, deeper than Dirty Waves'. It stretches more over his breath. "We want to feel the green fire too," Brush Cut says. She hop steps to the side.
Brush Cut drops noiseless, but she feels the wind blow by her ear. Its tip quivers in the warm air, expectant. Dirty Waves descends even softer, hanging low from the frame as it swings shut. It groans and splinters come off in his fingers. But it doesn't break, the thigh length drop barely making him bend.
The closest vent tunnel is two arm lengths from her right shoulder. She moves to it, not waiting to get closer to the huddled strangers. She waves her arm through smoke. It's like wall spider film, but it shines where it breaks for air drafts. Wall spider film is dull, grained when the older ones spin it, because of their rawer prey.
"Can you climb through it?" she asks.
"Yeah, because the smoke's thin, right? But if you take too long you come out seeing things," Brush Cut says.
"It's beautiful." Dirty Waves, voice quick as she's seen his feet flying over break and boost. "But um," he says, scratching his head, dusting the air, "it makes you lose track of things. That's bad, sometimes."
Brush Cut is bending near another Etheric. A girl, Troud thinks. She can see hair curling around the sides of her hood, climbing finger length, like ivy. He has a hand on her shoulder. It's stiff. She's stiff, and he's not crouching that low. Troud can't hear what they're saying. It doesn't look like she likes him. When she turns to talk to him Troud sees her nose peeking from her hood. It ridges flat but drops sharp.
At least they're talking, Troud thinks. Maybe no one can hate near the fire.
"Want a tour?" Dirty Waves says from beside her. She guesses that's how it works, not knowing a conversation is about to start until the moment it does.
"No," she says. "I want to explore."
He loses his grin, but only for a moment. In the flame light it's like his mouth's been hexed away. It's soon back, the shadows deepening over his cheekbones.
"You'll see sky sometimes as you go," he says. "Get back when darkness falls. That's when when we get real."
"We're not real now?" she says. She probes behind her front teeth with her tongue. Are teeth bone?
"Have you ever felt real?" Eyes thin crescents. Slivers.
"No." Are her teeth getting looser?
"No one's real," he says, "except for the Pale Sliver. She's real. Real bad, girl."
The shadows on his face are too much for him. She turns and starts climbing. The smoke film breaks against her nose. The vapour wets her nostrils. Her head feels light.
She's real bad, girl.
She.
