Chapter 1: Such a Silly Place
"No more! I just can't do this anymore today!"
Harmonia screamed the words, but as her voice echoed across the surrounding mountains of Sky, no one was around to hear it. She threw the small tin spade she had made out of scrap bitterly into the dirt. Her hands were covered in mud, her face was smeared with sweat and grime, and above all else, Harmonia was exhausted. What had made matters worse was the realization that this was only one of more than a dozen gardens she had planted throughout the mountains.
It was her second year planting potato and various vegetable gardens throughout hidden spots amongst the hills. It had been no small task finding the right places to do so. The mountains of Sky were wild and it was hard enough finding a flat piece of land, let alone enough to fit a garden. But Harmonia had an ever fortunate friend on her side, Lady Luck. So each spot was picked just far enough from any of the nearby towns to make sure no one would stumble upon her crops.
Harmonia's first season of planting had not gone very well. Most of her crops had not grown at all due to the lack of sunlight. What few had sprouted had either been devoured by silly children, with nothing better to do with their time, or eaten by dogs and coyotes, the only animals left on Sky. Part of her was sad when she thought about the diversity of animals she had seen as a little girl. Now, most species of birds, fish, and even insects, had long since disappeared.
The other half of her, the part that only thought about the importance of food and money needed for survival, was thankful. The mistakes of the past were the lessons for the future. Only having dogs and bothersome children to contend with meant that there was more hope for her food to grow in peace. Her motto quickly became: high enough up and far enough out.
"Pull it together Harmony. You can't just think about yourself," she stated aloud to no one in particular.
It had become an unshakeable habit to speak to the air and then answer her own questions. There was little else to occupy her mind on the long walks home. Even gardening did not sate the need to keep her thoughts occupied. Despite how badly she dreaded gardening, she knew there was no other choice.
Harmonia was no longer a little girl, she was fourteen now. She had become one of the Big Kids. When children in their town turned ten, they officially became a Big Kid, and that meant they were now responsible for taking care of the younger, or older, members of their family. Little Kids still did their part in the estranged remains of the towns the grown-ups had left behind when they were taken away. So that meant with age came responsibility, and Harmonia's responsibility was to no one but her grandfather.
Grandpa George had grown weak and tired with each passing year. A few months before Harmonia's eleventh birthday he had fallen ill, promising he would quickly get better. But weeks passed with no sign of improvement, then months, and then years. Grandpa George could no longer stand on his feet, let alone get out of bed. That was why it was up to Harmonia to make sure they always had enough to survive.
And so Harmonia sighed and turned back towards her crops, talking aloud all the while, "I don't understand why it never rains anymore. I mean, it used to rain after all. I remember when I was a kid there was a storm that lasted for almost an hour once. That was the longest anyone had seen in a long time. Ha, ha!"
Harmonia continued her routine for the next hour or so, discussing different topics with herself and all the while laughing at her silliness. The hour had raced by in no time at all as she mechanically pulled out as many potatoes as she could fit into her basket. She even managed to pack a few into the worn green backpack she had preserved from her childhood. If she put in any more than a few, it would break from too much strain. It did not matter to Harmonia, she had gathered just enough to sell back at the market in town, and still what they would need at home.
The sun was slowly beginning to set behind the colossal stones that would hide Helia until dawn. It was time for Harmonia to set off, descending from her secret grove down the same road that had brought her up in the first place. Luckily there was still enough sunlight in the sky to illuminate the panorama of trees and wild plants that freely grew outside the surrounding towns.
The trees had always been her favourite. Their leaves were an auburn red that transformed into droplets of fire beneath the lingering sun that snuck through the mountains. Sometimes, when they would sway in unison, and when the light was just right, it looked as if the mountains themselves had been set ablaze.
Beneath their crimson canopies, the bark of the trees was all white, or once had been. The younger trees still held a seamless pallid flow along their fresh layers of bark. While the older ones revealed black lines, each displaying a variety of unique patterns. Their lines were drawn by age and came in a variety of intricate shapes, as if they each had their own tale to tell. The trees of Sky were just similar enough to tell they were all part of the same family, yet just different enough so that each one could be distinguished from the next.
Harmonia rarely felt time when she was walking through the natural landscape of Sky. There was never a path that led straight for long enough to bore her, and never a road that did not lead to another. If the path did not provide the fun she needed, Harmonia had other games. Slipping between shadows cast down from unreachable summits to avoid make-believe friends, while other times sliding down dirt covered ridges as clouds of dust swallowed her whole. Nature had truly provided the best playground.
The last shards of day clung to the sky as Harmonia reached the end of the trail that guided her home. But in truth, her town did not feel like a real home in any sense of the word. The place had once been known as Ridgetown, a small scattered pile of stones and steel stacked atop one another, all centered around a bustling market. When the grown-ups had still been around, the town had been known for its skill at cutting down the most trees every year; although Harmonia always felt that had not been much of a skill at all.
The children had renamed the town Ralph's Castle, after Ralph, the one dog that chose to linger in the square. After the grown-ups had been stolen away, the Big Kids had taken over, but that did not last very long. The Corporations of Sky which controlled the military, along with most of the resources on the planet, continued to lower the age of conscription. By the time Harmonia had been ten the age had already been dropped from eighteen to sixteen. The world was now in the hands of the children that had been left behind. This had become the land of the lost.
"Oh bother Harmony," whispered Harmonia to herself, tightening the grip on her potatoes as she neared town. "It seems they have gotten a hold of the Silly Juice again."
Silly Juice had been a drink the grown-ups had invented. They had left more of it behind than they had water or anything else for that matter. Grandpa George had explained that grown-ups had needed it to feel like kids again. It was the only way they could forget their responsibilities, but it always seemed to make them behave even sillier than children. Harmonia had never understood any of it. All children wanted to do was grow up, and all grown-ups wanted was to be kids again. It was all rather ridiculous.
As Harmonia pondered her thoughts aloud, she stepped into town ready to fight off anyone who hoped to steal a potato from her basket. But the other children were all too busy with their own nonsense to bother with a pile of potatoes.
A group of nearby boys, no older than eight or nine, passed around a bottle of Silly Juice, gulping it down as if it were water. One of them had been caught in a fit of laughter by a boy who had slipped in one of the many small piles of garbage that littered the streets of Ralph's Castle.
Another cluster of children, that appeared even younger than the last, were amidst a game that did not appear to have any rules. Each took a turn running around in a circle while the others all jumped on top of the runner. It appeared that the only purpose behind the pile of children was to bury the poor runner beneath their combined weight. Then, with no clear reason for it, one of the children in the pile would pop up and declare themselves the runner. They did this over and over again. Harmonia could not figure out how anyone could win the game, or if there was any point to it at all.
Next a girl walked by on her hands, followed by a small boy of no more than six who held a nearly empty bottle of Silly Juice. Beside them, two girls rode by mounted atop Ralph the dog, who was far too old to be carrying children on his back. Further along, a young girl too innocent to understand her actions kissed a boy, and then a second one, followed by a third; next thing she knew it, she could not understand why the boys had started fighting amongst one another. And the silliest of all the children was a boy who stood off to the side simply kicking the same spot in the dirt with his shoe. No doubt he hoped to tunnel his way to the other side of Sky.
Then a sound emerged above all others. A boy of about the same age as Harmonia had mounted the small slanted stage in the center of the market. In his hands he held an aged violin that had been left behind by the grown-ups. Despite its wear and tear, the boy made the violin sound serene, as if each note was intentionally played, joining together to tell an unseen story.
The violin made the most beautiful music Harmonia had yet to hear in her short life. It had been enough for her to forget about the potatoes and Grandpa George. So she placed them down as she gazed up at the boy, enraptured by the graceful movements of his bow upon the strings. This was something new, and if there was one thing that had not left with age, it was Harmonia's unquenchable curiosity.
All eyes were fixed on the fiddler as he began swaying to and fro along to the rhythm of the music. Soon all of the carefree children, with their bottles of grown-up juice, and even the Little Kids, ending all of their senseless games, were all singing along. The only problem was no one knew the fiddler's song. Instead each sang whatever they felt like singing, shouting random words through the air, rather than any sort of melody.
"I lost my shoes! My elbow's bruised! I drank today...what more should I say?" shouted a nearby boy waving a bottle of Silly Juice above his head.
Next Harmonia spotted a nearby girl, no older than six, spinning about as she looked up towards the sky, "Bah-bah, bah- bah! Toot-toot, toot-toot! La-la, la-la! Ra-ra, ra-ra!"
It felt as if no one was sincerely interested in the boy, or his song for that matter. The other children just wanted a chance to behave even sillier than they already were. And once they had started, there would be no stopping them until the late hours of the night.
A nearby girl, who was acting much more ridiculous than most of the others, rushed the stage with a broken guitar in her hand. She did not wait for anyone to give her permission to join the fiddler, but without so much as a word, she began to frantically bang across the three strings of her guitar, paying no attention to the rhythm. To make matters worse, the silly girl was not in tune. Each string had its own estranged sound, resembling more noise than music at all. It was enough to make Harmonia cover her ears.
The other children did not appear to notice the guitarist's presence. They had spun off in their own direction, each giving in to the senseless mania that they had begun. None held any thought behind their wild actions, each seemed more content than the next in their purposelessness. As bad as she wanted to be a part of their group, something did not sit right with Harmonia. None of them seemed to care about the consequences of what they did, or why they were even doing it in the first place. It seemed their only guide was their lack of direction, and that made the least sense of all.
Harmonia had had enough. The noise was starting to give her a headache and Grandpa George would be waiting for dinner. But as she turned to pick up her basket from the spot where she had placed it, there was nothing to be found. A foot away, with red stained teeth biting into a raw potato, there stood one of the culprits.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't Mother Harmony. Have you, have you..." hiccupped the troublesome boy. "Have you come to lecture us again? Tell us we are all...all...what did she call us?"
A fat boy by the name of Willie, who never went anywhere without his own bottle of grape flavoured Silly Juice, was quick to answer, "She'd called us Little Fools, but that don't make no sense to me. I'm ten, and that means I'm a Big Kid now...so how can I be a Little Fool?"
The fat boy's lips curled down in a grape stained frown that did little to hide his confusion. Harmonia wanted to laugh but she was in no mood for their games. It was all true of course, she had named the six boys, The Little Fools, because they were always acting sillier than all the other children of Ralph's Castle. There was usually six of them, sometimes more, who all followed their ten year old leader that had renamed himself, Butt-Kicker.
"Give me back my potatoes!" demanded Harmonia.
"No!" yelled Butt-Kicker. "We need to eat too you know."
"And maybe we can trade some for more Silly Juice," suggested purple lipped Willie.
"That's, that's not..." Butt-Kicker could not control his hiccups, "...that's not a bad idea. Looks like you're out of luck today Mother Harmony!"
"Why don't you boys go trade some of your Silly Juice for food if you are hungry? It isn't good for you in the first place, not to mention when you haven't eaten for days." Harmonia knew she would say just about anything to make the Little Fools disappear, "There are plenty of vegetables in the market that you could even steal if you weren't so afraid."
"Vegetables!" yelled Butt-Kicker as he wildly flailed his arms. "These aren't just vegetables Mother Harmony. These are potat'rs! And everyone knows potat'rs aren't vegetables."
Harmonia could only shake her head and hold back the laughter, "You silly boys. Potatoes are vegetables, a root vegetable to be precise."
"No they're not!" protested Butt-Kicker. "You think you know everything don't you? Well you...you are only...only..." He stopped for a second to count on his fingers, "...only four years older than I am. You aren't so smart! Potat'rs are potat'rs and that's that!"
Their leader's unfounded stubbornness had sparked a moment of inspiration. Harmonia had never been interested in fighting the other children when they got in her way. Violence seemed pointless when all it ever caused was more problems. No, she had other methods when it came to dealing with silly children.
"Well, it seems we have a problem then, don't we? You think potatoes are 'potat'rs', and I think potatoes are vegetables. Clearly there is only one way to solve our little problem, isn't there?"
Butt-Kicker was already confused, "There is?"
Harmonia only smiled before turning towards the fat boy, "What do you think Willie? Are potatoes vegetables?"
If she had only his expression to rely on, it appeared that Willie had not heard their discussion. Yet an answer spilled through his grape stained lips all the same, "Well, when I was little, my mom told me potatoes are vegetables. They were good for me. But I never liked them. So I decided they wasn't good for me."
"Shut up you idiot! Potat'rs are not vegetables!" shouted Butt-Kicker.
Harmonia had them right where she wanted them.
She stood up and looked at the other Little Fools, "What do you all think?"
Their silly leader was still shouting at Willie who stood unresponsively drooling down his chin. One by one they each looked at one another, some fearing the wrath of Butt-Kicker, others not even considering the consequences.
A voice from the back broke their silence, "A potato is a vegetable."
Another of the other boys snapped back, "No they're not. They don't look like carrots, or tomatoes, or other vegetable type stuff."
"What do you know!"
"More than you...you...you dumb person!"
And so it had begun. The Little Fools had divided themselves in their silly stupor. Before long, they had forgotten the original purpose of their argument all together; they were all far too delirious from the grown-up juice they had drank. Butt-Kicker was the first to throw a punch but only hit the massive belly of the larger boy. Willie on the other hand did not even flinch. He simply proceeded to take a swig of his Silly Juice only to find it was empty. A purple stained frown was his only reaction as he slouched his shoulders and simply stood in disappointment.
As the Little Fools fought amongst one another over the proper place of potatoes in the town of Ralph's Castle, Harmonia slipped between them and stole back her basket. Only three or four potatoes had fallen out amidst the commotion. The rest were safely tucked beneath her arm. Without another moment to lose, she quickly escaped the madness of the market and ran home.
The moment she shut the front door a feeling of relief passed over her. Harmonia was finally home, or whatever you could call the odd assortment of rocks and junk that held the place together. The tiny shack at the outskirts of town had always felt more like a hovel than a home. It was the way the town had been built up on top of itself that had created the feeling of discomfort. Even when Ridgetown had been filled with grown-ups, the town had felt cramped between the surrounding mountains.
Most of the building materials had always been owned by the Corporations; wood for their ships, and steel for their weapons. That left only the stone of the mountains for the people to use. They fashioned bricks out of the rocks, using mud and clay as mortar, and building each house atop the next having so little flat land upon which to build. Makeshift doors were made from random chunks of steel scavenged from junkyards, windows from what few trees had been left, and clay for the fires to keep them warm at night.
Harmonia's parents had brought her to Ridgetown to stay with her grandfather when she was only four. Although most of her life had been spent there, it did not mean she had forgotten the faint but distinct image of the life she had left behind. There had been a real house, with real parents, and all of it had felt like a real home. It was the one image that could not fade with time.
What had faded with time had been the innocent veil that had been thrown over her eyes during childhood. There was no fabled world like that which had been promised to her by Grandpa George in all of his stories. One of the first of many hard truths, ones she had come to realize of her own accord, had been that her parents had not left because they wanted to help the poor, it was war that had taken them away. A part of her was angry that her Grandpa George had made her learn that truth all on her own.
"Little Harmony, is that you? Where have you been gone to for so long?" called Grandpa George from the small corner where they kept their beds.
"I was getting us food grandpa. So we don't go hungry or starve," answered Harmonia rolling her eyes.
"My sweet little girl," a look of sadness came across his face. "You work so hard while I'm over here pretending to be a rock to fit in with the rest that rolled down from the mountains."
A smile crept across Harmonia's face as she busied herself with peeling two potatoes for their dinner, "I don't know how you always keep your smile Grandpa."
"Ha, ha," laughed Grandpa George. "That is yet another secret my darling. One that most people do not even think of. I talk to myself!"
Harmonia took some comfort in knowing it was a family trait and she was not the only crazy one, "You and your secret lessons about life. You have something to say about everything, don't you grandpa?"
"I do indeed," he edged towards the end of the bed, moaning and groaning as he tried to pull himself up. "For example, I remember a story about a man who asked for eternal life, but not eternal youth. In the end he lived forever but only as a voice. Now there is a lesson in that one."
"Whatever you say grandpa," answered Harmonia while trying to hide her annoyance.
Grandpa George could see his granddaughter was preoccupied, but it was not enough to stop him from rambling on, "I know one you haven't heard before, it's about a little girl who thought she was much older than she really was. Perhaps you would like to hear that one?"
She answered while refusing to turn away from her task, "I'm not a four year old girl anymore. You know I don't like hearing stories. And before you saying anything, no, not even the ones with the ships in them."
Grandpa George only smiled, "And when you were a four year old girl I remember you saying you were not a two year old girl anymore, and did not need to be taught about the planets. And tomorrow you will be saying you are no longer a kid at all, won't you?"
"We all have to grow up some time."
"Nonsense, that's not true at all. Take me for example, I may look like an old man, but that is a trick of the eyes. In fact, deep inside still lives a child who is always eager to poke his head out to take a look around."
"I'm busy right now, maybe you can tell me the story later...after we eat...."
But her reply fell upon deaf ears, the gears of Grandpa George's imagination were already turning too quickly, "Once upon a time there was a little girl who did not much like the other children in her town. In fact, she disliked people her own age so much she refused to have any friends but for grown-ups. As she grew older, she always tried to keep up with whatever her older friends were doing. The only problem was that the older she grew, the older they grew as well.
Finally, there came a day when she was a grown-up herself, but by then, all of her older friends had disappeared. The hands of time had taken them before she could catch up, and now she was alone. With everyone gone, she had no one to turn to, since she never had any friends who her own age."
"Enough of your stories!" the take was an all too familiar one, it that had finally pushed Harmonia over the edge. "What are you talking about anyways? You always say there is some lesson to be learned about the world, but none of your stories are true. The situations you put these characters in, gods, fate, destiny, none of those are real!"
"Harmony, of course they're...." Grandpa George was cut short.
Harmonia refused to let him finish, all of the anger had she bottled up was waiting to burst, "You made me believe my whole life that everything would be okay one day. You told me Sky was a magical place full of good people and great adventures. I really thought that I could do anything as long as I believed it." The tears were already running down her cheeks, "And above all else, you made me believe that I would see mom and dad again...and they're not...they're not coming home."
Grandpa George was defeated. In that moment he could feel his heart break deep within his chest. The sight of his granddaughter crying her eyes out was only worsened by the fact that he could not step out of bed. He could not help but shake the notion from his head: this is not living, this is dying.
"Harmonia, I know you're sad, but don't think for a moment that I'm not either. I miss your parents as much as you do. But there is nothing we can do to help them...wherever they are...at least they are together," Grandpa George said the words with a smile that revealed only concern and caring.
Yet despite his best efforts, Grandpa George could not relieve Harmonia from the weight of her sorrow. Without a word, she simply turned away, refusing to reveal her tear stained sadness from behind her hands. The sobbing was uncontrollable and had left her breathless. The thought of fresh air carried her back out through the front door and into the night.
She turned to face the stars, the way she always did when she sought comfort for her soul. Something in the vastness of space had always made her feel so small, that no matter what she did, the world would go on regardless of how many bad things took place. And that one day, just maybe, she would sail out into space and touch those very stars. But an unfriendly reminder of how wrong she truly was crept into view.
Gaia's Tears were the clearest she had ever seen them. They were the hovering remains of the second planet that had once stood between Sky and Oceanas. When Harmonia had first learned about war, the endless fighting, the destructive weapons, and above all else, the killing, she never fully understood what it was all for. Although she had learned many things on her quest for truth, there were some she could not yet comprehend.
When the Corporations had nearly milked Sky dry of all of its resources, they had invaded Gaia, knowing all too well that their only threat would be the wildlife. But it had only been a matter of time before Oceanas, the furthest planet from Sky, caught wind of their plan. It was then that the war began upon the surface of Gaia, long before its destruction, in a time when the planet had still been whole. Finally, after decades of fighting, it had been the planet's decision to put an end to the conflict.
No one had ever fully explained what had happened, but the planet of Gaia had one day exploded. Despite the explosion, its remains did not drift away into space as had been expected. Scattered layers of the planet's plates still hovered around a fading core, alongside mountains ripped away and still clinging on by some unseen tether through the emptiness. All the rest had just drifted off, forever lost to the darkness of space.
After the explosion of Gaia, most of Sky's army had been destroyed, that was when the Corporations began conscripting their own people. All of the grown-ups that had stayed behind were now forcefully enlisted, pulled from their very homes by enraged remnants of the military that had survived Gaia's destruction. With the age of conscription already at sixteen, it would only be a matter of time before the age dropped again. After all, it had been the Corporations' ability to view people as no more than tools and numbers that had cost so many their lives.
So Harmonia stared off at the distant remains of Gaia slowly creeping across the veil of the night. All the young girl could do was keep hope alive, praying to whatever gods would hear her, that her parents were still somewhat near. If by some chance they had survived, then maybe, just maybe, they would see each other again.