Cassidian
I had been climbing silently in the mist for minutes on end when I started to lose hope. Wrapped in the cool gray as I was, I had no bearing, no idea how far up I actually was. I moved quickly, trying to hear any sign of Myria or Lei above me, but the higher I went the incessant humming of the desalination tower became louder and louder, like the dim roar of an engine.
But then another gust of wind blew all of my doubt away.
I could feel the mist rip from me like molting skin as the dark sky beyond became visible. I looked down and for a split second panicked as I realized the incredible height I had attained. Pinpricks of color lay far below me – the enraptured audience engaged in the show which was already underway. Back at eye level I could see red glittering bodies somewhat nearer spinning as they descended from above like spiders, entangled in their shimmering ribbons.
Just then, beyond the dim roar of the black tower next to me I heard a scream from above and looked up.
Myria was surprisingly close – perhaps ten rungs up from where I hung. She was looking down, holding onto one of the metal spokes by wedging it tightly into a crooked arm bent at the elbow. Her gray shoes dangled wildly off the lattice as she struggled to find it again. Lei was above her and looked at me with an open mouth, clearly surprised. He had something in his hand which was bright blue and somewhat elongated. At first I feared it was a weapon of sorts, but soon I realized it was only a nanoline gun.
“Hold on,” I screamed upwards in Nahese so she would understand. “And don’t look down.” I wasn’t concerned about drawing any attention with my voice, knowing that both the sound of the tower next to me and my remote location would conceal it from the audience below.
Another inopportune gust of breeze turned our way, bringing a wide tendril of mist back over me as I quickly climbed upwards. Myria and Lei were lost again in the gray, and I continued blindly until I could hear her voice clearly. She was saying my name, and I called out to her repeatedly, telling her I was there.
By the time I reached her feet, they were already firmly planted on the lattice again and I climbed up next to her, feeling her shiver violently as she clutched the metal lattice tightly with white knuckles.
“It’s alright,” I said, putting a free arm around her, standing at her side. She was obviously petrified of the height, refusing to move her arms or body at all, and when she spoke to me, her teeth clattered within her tight jaw.
“I didn’t know where you went,” she said. “Thank the Mother Sea you’re back.”
“I’m sorry I left you. You must be scared and confused beyond belief.”
“What happened to you?” she asked with a hint of anger. “You pushed me out of that place and I thought you were behind me. But when I turned back you were gone.”
“Blue tried to kill me. It slowed me down.”
She didn’t seem surprised or concerned but continued on. “I didn’t know what else to do. That man-” She looked up and pointed to Lei, who was perched a few rungs above us and almost concealed within the mist. “He kept urging me to keep going, kept pulling me forward. He seems decent and he keeps trying to talk to me but I don’t understand his words. I feared I would never see you again, but I kept going-”
“It’s alright,” I said again as I realized she was on the verge of crying. “Everything is going to be fine.”
Suddenly a shout from above interrupted us. “Where is Blue?” asked Lei.
“Gone,” I shouted in reply, trying unsuccessfully to read his expression in the mist. “We need to continue on without him. Are you alright with that?”
He looked at me for a second before I saw the briefest of nods. “Yes. But we need to keep climbing. We are almost there.”
“Almost where?”
“We need to nanoline to level seventy-five of the tower. That’s where the burrow is.” Lei looked down at his launcher, most likely at some elevation gauge which was embedded into its barrel. “Just a few more levels to go,” he said.
“Alright,” I said, but inwardly I worried about Lei. I wondered if Lei been in on Blue’s attack in the ratskeller. I wondered if he had been told to leave The Canopy Garden only with Myria and nobody else. I wondered if he was now plotting to kill me as soon as an opportunity presented itself.
Somehow I doubted it.
Still, I kept Lei in the periphery of my vision and my thoughts, not trusting him, yet still willing to follow him ever upward. He was our only way into Canopy, I reminded myself.
Knowing that Myria would never take her arms away from the lattice without proper encouragement, I ducked down between it. Squeezing my body between the bars, I passed through the square space and oriented myself on the other side of the plane of the lattice. This way I could be facing her directly with the thin cables in-between us. Placing my arms around her body, I brought her to me and let her head rest on my shoulder.
“You’re warm,” she said as I could feel her body shake in my arms.
“You know I need you to climb up a little bit higher. We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?”
“Nahi.”
She nodded and then let out a short laugh. “I’m sorry. I’m usually not this afraid, you know. Everything’s so different here.”
“It’s alright. I’ve got you.”
We stood there facing each other in the gray silence when all of a sudden loud explosions echoed out from far away. Forms of bright color bloomed through the mist. But then they dissipated immediately once I tried focusing on them, like image burn-ins after one closes their eyes. The loud booms became more frequent, and I could hear the applause from below like a thunderclap rolling across the horizon.
“What’s happening?” Myria asked, opening her eyes again.
“I’m not sure. I think it’s part of the show-”
The wind blew back again, pushing the mist away like a curtain from a stage, and Myria gasped, this time in delight rather in fear.
Beyond the lattice, beyond the energy curtain separating Canopy from the empty night sky beyond, there were massive blooming circles of color falling into the sparkling sea. They filled the open area in their multitudes and I could see their pulsing light in Myria’s sandy open eyes.
“Mother Sea, they are beautiful. What are they?”
“Fireworks,” I said, smiling at her innocence.
“They are birds of some sort? Wild birds-”
“No,” I said. “Chemicals.” The word didn’t translate and I shrugged my shoulders, looking at the falling embers while trying to come up with a word. “Fake,” I said eventually. “They’re fake. Like everything else around us.”
At that point I made a direct connection between her and the throng below. At first both Myria and the audience were the same to me – equally enraptured by the simplistic beauty of what blossomed before them. But then I realized their differences - as stark and as vast as the empty Torsian air separating the two.
The infinitesimal Torsians below were hypnotized as if innocent, but they were far from it. They were being played like puppets, as if each one of them were tied within the same glittering strands as the acrobats in red falling from above. I had sympathy for them, yet part of me knew they let themselves be caged this way. Part of them let their freedoms evaporate like the mist, and be replaced with a hatred of those who still possessed them.
Myria, on the other hand, was purely innocent (if any adult could be called innocent). Ripped from another world so very far away, she had no expectations, no concept of Cassidian’s modern fabrications. Fakeries were something unknown to her, as if she was a wild bird of many colors flying out of a deep forest, stumbling upon a sparkling cage in the sunlight for the very first time.
“I’m real,” she said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “You’re real. We’re real.”
She gently kissed me then between the lattice and we lingered there for a moment or two. Even though my eyes were closed I knew the Torsian sky was lit up around us, the sound of explosions making my body shake.
“You know,” I said after a while as I pulled back gently, “I used to think the opposite. Back in the Still when I followed your footprints in the sand, I feared that I was following a ghost. That everything was just some dream. Some implausible future that never happened.”
“Anon,” Lei called out suddenly from above. “We should keep moving.”
Knowing he was right, I ducked down, slipping back through the open lattice and coming up behind her.
“We’re almost there.” Giving Myria a tight squeeze before whispering into her ear again, I added, “Are you ready to finish this?”
She nodded. “Ready as ever.”