Wingbound, page 9
“A sick ward.” I pick up a bottle and inspect it. Tolliver doesn’t confirm. There is shelving on the entrance wall where bottles, drying herbs, liquids and powders fill the shelves.
He steps closer and says, “We’ll have to show this to Kava.”
We inspect room after room that branch off to the right and the left of the inner hall. I heave the last door on the outer wall of the castle open. The thick metal scrapes the ground causing my head to ache.
Gasping, I recognize the tools and crafts in this large blacksmithing workshop. The front half is partitioned off by a counter that butts out into the room. It is clean and neat with displays of swords, axes and other useful tools and weapons. There is an upper shelf with strange metal objects of which I don’t recognize. I want to touch them, but Tolliver says, “Come on.”
“Wait,” I say, peering into the cluttered workshop behind the counter. The spectacularly built forge centered on the back wall entrances me. It is an enormous rock edifice built in a half circle. There is a hole in the ceiling above it and there are two large bellows that protrude from either side. I imagine all the things I could make as I inspect the tools hanging on the wall, laying on the workbench and the few on the floor beside the forge. Some I recognize. Some I do not.
“Ledger, it’s time to move on,” Tolliver says. His voice is tense but quiet. Leaving the beautiful mess behind, I follow him out the metal door. We circle back into the center courtyard and enter the dining hall.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You may.” Tolliver searches my face.
“Why did you come?” He looks away, quiet for a moment. Tolliver pulls a torch from the wall, lighting it with ease. Maybe he is formulating an answer. Maybe I should already know the answer. “I am glad you did,” I offer to fill the silence.
“Ledger,” he stops me. “I know what it is to be in love.” My throat constricts. I want to deny my love for Alouette, but he continues, “Mother said you would go whether I helped you or not. She was worried you would kill yourself trying.”
I suddenly wish I hadn’t asked. My shame is now out in the open.
“She still thinks of me as a boy,” My voice echoes down the stale hall.
“I told her that,” Tolliver says with a half smile.
“Really?”
“You proved to me—to the whole village—that you are resourceful and inventive.”
I puff up my chest at his compliment and follow him to the back of the dining hall down a stairwell to a large kitchen. There are three stone ovens, each on their own wall, with a large worktable in a horseshoe in the middle of the room. The room is roughly hewn, and the ceiling is jagged and cave-like. It arches upward with a hole in the center, probably a vent of some sort. Around the room are several rough openings that lead off the kitchen. We follow the first one, which ends at several storage rooms with grain and preserved meats and one with a rotten grain smell. My stomach churns at the sour stench. We walk down another hallway leading around the backside of the ovens. My body is tired, and my throat is cottony, but I press on down the passage. It tapers gradually to a sharp dead end. Tolliver abruptly turns and faces me.
“Why do you suppose everyone else came?” I ignore my thirst and sticky spit.
“I’m not responsible for their choices. You’ll have to ask them,” he waves me off and tromps past me.
He used to be quick to tell me his opinion. Then I realize he derailed me with his compliment. There is something he’s not telling me. I analyze each person aloud, hoping he’ll open up. “Hollis will follow me anywhere,” I analyze.
Tolliver chuckles lightly, “She is like a lost puppy. Remember that mutt you kept feeding outside the garden gate and mother commanded you to deny it?” I catch up, walking beside him.
“Yes.” I shake my head at the sad thought.
“Father made you drag it in the woods and kill it,” He laughs loudly, and it echoes off the stone walls.
I halfheartedly laugh as I think about the fact that I didn’t kill it. I hid it in the hollow for a few weeks and kept feeding it. One day I returned, and it was gone. I imagined that it moved on and found a new home.
“I found it living in the hollow,” Tolliver stated, “and put it out of its misery for you.”
I jerk as he disrupts my pleasant delusion. “You did?” I stop in the middle of the kitchen with a hand on his arm.
He nods and winks at me. My mouth hangs open as he walks away.
I dismiss the thought. “So why did Kava come? She can barely stand my presence. I don’t understand.” I stop mid-thought, remembering that he admitted being in love. “You love Kava.”
Tolliver doesn’t say anything to my bold statement. He walks through the last opening in the kitchen wall nearest the stairs. This passageway is wider than the others.
“Do you think we will find the Sky People?” I hope he is as optimistic as I am.
“Maybe,” he replies, lifting the torch above his head. “Maybe not.”
“Don’t you care if we find them?” I am annoyed that he won’t give me a straight answer.
He just shrugs.
“I don’t get it then,” I say. My voice bounces back in my face. “Why help search for them?”
“Not everyone has the same goal as you, little brother.” Tolliver steps into a wider part of the tunnel. “Hey, look at that.”
I push him out of the way to see what he’s found. It opens into a rounded cave. On the far side of the room there is a knee-high ledge holding back a pool of water. The light from the torch reflects off the surface and bounces around the room.
He laughs, and I join in, reveling in the joy of our find. Water. Beautiful water.
We waste no time scurrying to the water’s edge. Getting on my hands and knees, I stick my face in and suck the cool liquid. I guzzle it, satisfying the lack in my body. It’s been three days since the last drop from my pouch.
Tolliver, with torch in one hand, scoops the water with his other hand, scoop after scoop. He splashes it on his head and wets his face. His light curly hair darkens and stretches to his shoulders. He shakes it off like a dog and a relieved laugh escapes his lips.
“Here,” Tolliver tosses my pouch and dunks his own into the pool. I do the same and watch the bubbles trickle out of the opening.
“We will survive,” I encourage. “We will find them, and we will bring them home.”
Tolliver sighs. His eyebrows pinch together with seriousness. “Your contraption has one flight, maybe two flights left before it falls to pieces or goes up in flames. You will not go searching the ground to find them and risk not being able to get back on the island. We barely made it last time.”
He replaces the lid on his water pouch and heads back down the hallway. My heart sinks as the reality of what he is saying hits me. I want to argue. I want to blurt out some ingenious idea, but I have none. I am flying blind on this wandering island.
FINDING SOLACE
14
Day 18
The chilly morning air wakes me, wafting down the stone walls. Even though I have the king’s bed curtains drawn, the cold air still seeps through, sinking deep into my bones. I haven’t been sleeping well and wake unwillingly each morning with numb fingers and toes. It is shifting to winter sooner than I expect, maybe because we are high in the air. It is always colder the higher up the North Mountain Alouette and I flew.
Pulling back the curtains, I blink several times adjusting to the light. The sky is clear outside the tall gaping windows. I should close the shutters to keep out the cold and the light, but I don’t. I kick the blankets of silk and stretch my tired muscles. A pain shoots through my arm. I wince trying not to tear my scabs again. I think of Alouette and wonder where she lived on this frigid island.
I snap out of my daze, throw on my boots, and Grandfather’s cloak. I head for the dining hall to check the maps. We still haven’t drawn out every level. Tolliver found it to be a waste of time after the tenth floor of living quarters that were exactly the same as the last. But I am keeping a tally of how many floors there are and place a stone on the location of the last dwelling on the map I visited so I would remember where I left off in search of Alouette’s home.
I grab my pouch and descend into the kitchen to get water. There is a noticeable water line about four hands above the surface. Tolliver thinks that their water source may be drying up and it’s possible they left on their own. But Alouette would have told me if they were planning on leaving. She would have said something.
I drown my empty pouch in the pool, filling it to capacity. Without Tolliver, Hollis, Angus or Kava, I will continue my search in the upper floors. I avoided Hollis at breakfast so she wouldn’t follow me. Tolliver and Angus have taken it upon themselves to unload the spoiled grain from the kitchen storerooms. They’ve already hauled several bags from the kitchen, through the Great Hall, down the front steps and pitched them over the side of Ellery. I pass them as I ascend the kitchen stairs. They nod as we scoot around each other.
From the courtyard, I ascend the main stairwell that circles the inside of the castle tower. I climb to level twelve and walk along the stone railing on the left side overlooking the courtyard below. The doors are on the right, usually around twenty homes all the way around.
I search for any sign of Alouette. Each dwelling is made up of a series of rooms that extend to the outer wall. Heading toward the back is a narrow hallway with several rooms leading off it. In the sleeping quarters, richer families have real beds, but the poorer families only have sacks of feathers on which to lay. Some of the rooms have a window with shutters.
There is not much difference in the ninth, the tenth, and eleventh homes on this level. After searching the twentieth home, I am bored. My mind is numb and I’m tired of seeing nothing but the same thing over and over again. I want to quit but there isn’t much else for me to do.
When I ascend to the thirteenth level, my lungs labor over the air. Lightheaded, I draw deeper breaths but it doesn’t help much. I stop by the railing overlooking the courtyard thirteen levels below. I am a little over halfway up the tower. Shaking my head in disgust, a distant squawk disrupts the tedium. I look all the way up into the blue sky and wait as the sound gets closer.
Geese. I don’t see them, but I can hear them approaching. There are no animals on this entire rock in the sky and I am yearning to see life. Dashing into the first home, I run straight to the back hoping for a window to see the birds in flight.
I sprint down the hall to the back bedroom, reaching the window in time to see a perfect arrow of geese streaking across the blue heavens. I inhale the crisp air and listen to them calling to each other in the sky, all following one leader.
The birds disappear over the southern horizon and I explore this home in reverse. There is an ornate bed with four wooden posts. I run my hand along the beautiful craftsmanship. On the headboard is a carving of a woman with a winged child in her hands that looks like a cherub with chubby cheeks and little wispy wings. A small table stands on the far side of the bed and something catches my attention. I recognize it in an instant. I gasp as I step around the end of the bed and approach the bedside table. It is my small metal windmill—the trinket I gave Alouette at our first meeting. I pick up the precious object.
This is Alouette’s home. I look around at the stone walls, the black and green woven rug on the floor. Finding it brings relief. It’s almost as though I have found a part of her. I hurriedly look around for any other signs of her life here. A large box in the corner holds clothes and blankets. Not much else.
The storage room has mostly the same food items as all the others. The front room has a table near the hearth with a cushioned bench. On the opposite wall is a long seat with padding along the entire thing, large buttons along the back, and a footrest at one end. It is leathery, yet soft to my touch.
I sit. Alouette sat here. I leap from the seat and sit at the table. She sat here too. I rush to the hearth. She probably stirred stew in this pot. I grab a ladle and stir the empty pot. Dropping it with a clang, I run my hand along the mantle.
My heart is racing, stomach churning. I want to find her so badly it hurts. I pound the mantle with my fist and growl into the empty echoes of this cavernous tower. I have fooled myself into thinking I had gotten closer to her, but now it feels as though we’re even farther apart.
I hear a scrape on the stone floor and look up. Hollis is in the doorway peering at me with a quizzical look. We stand in silence for a moment.
“Hollis.” Embarrassed that she may have seen my silly antics, I look away to avoid telling her about Alouette.
“I found keys,” she says eagerly. She must have run up the stairs to find me because she is out of breath.
I snap to attention and realize what it means. The belly of the island is yet to be discovered. We found several stairwells leading downward, one led to a grinding mill, none that went as far down as the one past the prison, and only one that had a locked gate. Hollis holds up the dirty metal keys.
“Where did you find them?”
“Level six,” she says panting. I try to remember searching level six, but they all blend together in my mind. Truth be told, I was not looking for keys. A smile plays at the edge of her mouth, “Let’s go!”
Looking around the room, I don’t want to race out this door. I want to savor the moment. I want to find solace. I want to sleep in her bed, eat at her table. But what I really want is to eat with her and talk with her. Yet, Hollis is hurrying me along. She jogs into the room, gets behind me and pushes me to the door. I linger for another moment.
“Ledger, come on! I have got to see what is down those stairs. It has been killing me for weeks,” she says with another shove.
Heat rises in my neck and face like I am a pot she has placed over a fire. “No,” I balk. “I can’t. Not yet.” “Why?”
“I just—”
“Why?” she pesters.
“I just can’t leave this one yet,” I snap.
“This room? Why? There are hundreds exactly like it.” She tilts her head to the side and looks around.
“No, there aren’t.” Realizing I’ve said too much, I shut down. In an instant, I decide I should just go with her. With a deep breath, I rush out the door toward the stairs, releasing the tension a little.
She races after me and turns up the heat again. “What makes this one any different than any of the other crazy Ellery dens?”
I whirl around and boil over in an instant. “They aren’t crazy!”
She pauses at my outburst and laughs. “They are our enemy, Ledger. Most of what they do is crazy.”
I force myself to stay silent and bottle it the way I always do. But I can’t put back in what just came bursting out. I want to walk away but a small voice inside me tells me this conversation is bound to happen.
“Not all of them.” I wring my hands.
“Not all of them are our enemy or not all of them are crazy?”
“Both.”
“And how would you know? Have you ever met them?” Hollis stops and crosses her arms; doubt is all over her face.
“Yes.”
Her eyes widen. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Hollis is never speechless.
“I met her when I was twelve.” Heat reaches my ears and my head aches.
She lets her arms drop. Her eyes dart around, considering my words. “Who?”
“Her name is Alouette. She has visited me each year.” Once the words start rolling from my mouth, they won’t stop. “And when she didn’t return this year, I couldn’t go a whole year wondering if she is dead.”
Her shock explodes into a fiery question. “So this isn’t some ridiculous diplomatic mission to make peace with the Sky People so they stop stealing our crops every year?”
“No.” I look at her, pressure building in my head, waiting for it to sink in. “Who told you that?”
“No one. I just thought,” she interrupts herself with another thought. “Are you—is she the one you were telling your Grandmother about?” Reality simmers to the surface, and then gradually, seething anger.
I look away. My mouth spouts on its own, “Yes.”
“I thought you were talking about someone in the village. I thought we were leaving whoever it was behind in Balfour.” Hollis is breathing hard, and I sense her agitation rising.
I stare at the ground as the truth of this expedition erupts full force. She stomps her foot. When I look up, her lips tighten into a line, and she speaks in a strange semi-growl ending in a violent scream. “We are spending an entire year away from our families in search of some girl?”
IN THE DEPTHS
15
Day 21
For three whole days Hollis ignores me. Not a single word. The best I can get out of her are angry eyebrows and flared nostrils of disgust. She hasn’t even told anyone about the keys she found. We sit in silence in the grand dining hall eating the strange porridge Kava prepared in the main kitchen. My stomach is grateful for this odd gray mush, but the flavor is repugnant. I find myself gagging several times attempting to make it go down. I swish with water after every bite.
“We need to find some honey to put on this before I lose my appetite and stop eating permanently.” Dropping a clump back into my bowl, I laugh and say, “It’s like feces dropping into a hole in the ground.” Tolliver swats me on the back of the head.
“I found some keys,” Hollis blurts without her usual fanfare.
“Really?” Tolliver asks. “Let me see.”
She tosses the metal ring of keys nonchalantly over the table and Tolliver catches them right before they land in his mush. His eyes brighten, and he takes off running. The rest of us look at each other for a moment and dart after him, fumbling to catch up.
