The Cloud Roost (Jekua Book 5), page 37
“Oh, believe me, I remember,” said Wasaaru. “Cassandra’s the only modern singer she’d listen to.”
That was true. Their grandmother railed on modern-day music all the time when she drove them around during their visits, since that was all they wanted to listen to. She would complain about how little real talent the singers had, how there was no passion in the vocals or instrumentation anymore. According to her, everything was “made with computers,” which automatically made it less good than the music she grew up with. The only exception was Cassandra, whose voice was admittedly massively impressive. Their grandmother thought she was the last true singer, a woman who seemed to be trained in how to make the most out of her voice. Cassandra’s vocal range was astounding, and she also spoke at length in interviews about how all her instrumentation was recorded live by a band in the studio. She had soft-retired about ten years earlier, only releasing one album since then, which received mixed reviews and was quickly forgotten.
The two of them bopped along to Like Fire, and Wasaaru asked, “You remember what her all-time favorite song was?”
“By Cassandra, or by anyone?”
“Anyone.”
Balt mulled it over for a few moments. The answer had to be something pretty old, since Cassandra was the only recent-ish musician their grandmother had enjoyed. He thought he recalled her favorite genre being jazz, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of any of those guys’ names. As a kid, he’d liked the music his grandmother put on, but he hadn’t revisited any of it in the past eight years.
He had to admit defeat. He opened his eyes, turning his head (and scraping it on that hard object) toward Wasaaru. “No idea.”
His cousin grinned. “It’s Next Year, We’ll Meet Again by Vic King.”
Vic King certainly sounded like an old-ass jazz musician’s name. Balt asked, “How do you remember that?” Even after hearing the song and artist name, he could not conjure the faintest melody in his head.
In reply, Wasaaru dug through his bag beside him and produced a plain white card. It was about half the size of a regular sheet of paper, with dreamy blue text printed on the front and black markings on the back that Balt couldn’t discern from his angle on the ground.
“She gave me this one day, just out of the blue. A gift she thought I’d appreciate.”
“Why didn’t she give me one?” Balt asked.
Wasaaru shrugged. “Guess she thought I was more cultured than you.”
“Yeah, right. What is it?” He held his hand out and Wasaaru passed him the card.
He read it over. The blue text was a verse and the chorus of Next Year, We’ll Meet Again. It was printed in a classy, curling script, and the text was metallic. The ink gleamed in the sunlight, reminding Balt of Alani’s shineink tattoos. Reading the lyrics still did not bring any memories of the song to mind, which sort of disappointed him. Why had he forgotten his grandmother’s favorite song?
“I always carry it with me,” Wasaaru then said, his voice quiet. Like he didn’t want to admit to something so sentimental.
Balt sat up. Not all the way, just enough to be able to roll over and unzip the front pocket of his bag and fish out the small, metal card he kept there. He turned back over and plopped his head on his bag again and handed the card to Wasaaru.
“What’s this?” Wasaaru asked, taking it. His brow furrowed as he flipped the card over. “You kept your teleportation card?”
The date of travel and the destination were both engraved directly on the card, so there was no doubt what it had been intended for. Balt nodded.
“I have to call the police and report you,” said Wasaaru.
“That’s fine,” Balt said, smirking. “I’ve always kept that close, too. When I left Tanepke, I felt like I needed to take it with me. My way of bringing her along on the journey, I guess.”
While Wasaaru looked at the teleportation card, Balt read Vic King’s lyrics once more. Then he turned the card over to get a good look at the marks on the back.
As it turned out, the markings made up a crude illustration of some mountains. It looked hand-drawn, not actually printed on the card like the lyrics were. “What is this?” Balt asked, holding up that side of the card.
“Just something Grandma drew,” Wasaaru said, not tearing his eyes away from the teleportation card. Reading the destination over and over.
Balt scanned the image again and realized there were what appeared to be random landmarks drawn on various parts of the picture as well. Near the top was what he assumed to be the nest they were looking for. The drawing near his thumb looked awfully familiar, too. It was a tree with a trunk that broke into three thick branches that interweaved each other.
They had passed that tree earlier in the day. He was sure of it.
He pointed at the tree and asked, “Doesn’t this look like a tree we saw earlier?”
Wasaaru examined it, letting a smile creep across his face. “You know, I think so,” he said. “That’s cool. I guess it’s a drawing of these mountains.” He exchanged the teleportation card for the lyric card and stared down at the illustration. “I never realized before. She never said that’s what this was. Maybe she drew it while she was here, or something.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Balt said, gazing up at the sky and fiddling with the metal card in his hand.
Like Fire faded out and transitioned into something else, something that was unfamiliar at first until the beat really kicked in and brought a smile to Balt’s face. It was something that would be more of a classic to him than his grandma, something by Asaya Williams that was popular in the mid-90’s. He actually remembered listening to it in the car after leaving his grandparents’ house the day he was gifted the bestiary. Asaya’s vocals had blasted from the speakers as he flipped through the book’s weathered pages, his heart thumping wildly, his mind still unable to wrap around the fact that the book was his now. Maybe he indeed wasn’t cultured enough for a card commemorating her favorite jazz song, but she’d given him the book.
Sure, he was meant to share it with Wasaaru, but—
Suddenly a thought occurred to him. It was maybe a stretch, but the idea was itching at his brain now. He needed to scratch it.
He sat forward and returned the teleportation card to the front pocket, zipping it up. Then he outstretched his hand and requested the lyric card.
Wasaaru handed it over, and Balt placed it in his lap while he opened his backpack. He pulled out their grandmother’s bestiary, which was the large, hard object that had been digging into his skull for the past ten minutes. Asaya Williams crooned while he flipped through the book’s pages.
“What are you doing?” Wasaaru asked.
“I have, uh…a weird idea,” was all Balt said.
He turned to the entry on Sawarestao, and his eyes were immediately drawn to the collection of dots his grandmother had drawn on the bottom of the page.
“I’m gonna need your help,” he told Wasaaru. “Could you hold this up for me?” He shoved the bestiary his way.
Wasaaru took it and held it aloft. Then Balt took the page with Sawarestao on it and held it so that the sun was shining through the thin paper. The sun was already setting, but there was hopefully still enough light for this to work. Then he positioned the lyric card underneath it, with the mountain illustration behind the dots.
It took a few seconds of readjusting for him to position the two images together in a way that he thought made sense. When they were lined up, a smile cut across his weary face.
His cousin was staring at his dopey expression, but couldn’t see what he was looking at. “What is it?” he asked.
Balt took the book from him and lowered it, in the process learning that the paper was thin enough that he didn’t need the sun to see through it. The mountain’s dark ink was perfectly visible behind the page.
Wasaaru leaned in to look. His mouth hung open a moment before he said, “It’s a map?”
“Maybe,” said Balt. “I mean, I think so.”
“And the dots are…?”
Balt shoved him playfully. “Warp Points,” he said.
“What makes you think that?”
“What else would they be?” Balt asked him. “It’s a drawing of the mountain where Sawarestao lives, and Grandma always talked about finding that Warp Point on her way to the roost. I think she came back here and planted a bunch of Warp Points all the way up the mountain, in case you and I ever came here.”
But his cousin remained skeptical, which Balt understood. “I don’t know…” said Wasaaru, taking the bestiary into his lap.
Balt pointed at the tree illustration, which was only one of several distinctive landmarks peppering the mountain. There was a dot drawn just beside it. “Let’s go back here tomorrow and see if there’s a Warp Point,” he said. “It won’t be that much backtracking if it turns out to be bunk, but if that’s what this actually is, it could be the key to reaching the top.”
Wasaaru stared at the page for another moment. “Fine,” he relented. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
Balt grinned. He couldn’t believe the discovery. Assuming it actually was what he thought it was, anyway.
Then Wasaaru looked at him, mirroring the stupid smile on his face. They both shoved each other back and forth, laughing giddily to themselves.
For almost a minute, Balt said nothing while he watched Wasaaru examining the bestiary. His heart swelled, but he didn’t know whether it was with excitement or dread. Without thinking, words started spilling from his mouth. “I gotta tell you something,” he said.
Wasaaru looked at him curiously. “Are you cooking up another revelation over there?”
“Not quite,” said Balt. Then, “I, uh…I’ve been keeping the bestiary from you.” He awaited some kind of reaction, but Wasaaru remained impassive, wanting further explanation. “When Grandma gave it to me, she said that you and I should both make use of it. It wasn’t supposed to just be a gift for me.”
Wasaaru processed what he was saying, the smile vanishing from his face. He still gripped the bestiary in his hands. He looked down at the drawing of Sawarestao, then back up at Balt. “Why didn’t you share it?” he asked, hurt in his voice.
Balt’s lips trembled as he searched for the right words to say. “I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “I was just an asshole kid. I didn’t wanna share. I was obsessed with the book, you know that. We both were.”
Wasaaru nodded, saying nothing.
“I’m sorry,” said Balt. “I should’ve shared it with you, and when I never did, I should’ve told you sooner. I’m really sorry it took me this long.”
They sat in silence. The only sounds were of Alani and Aeiko laughing at Niona’s futile attempts to teach Brine that dance. Balt waited for the impending explosion from his cousin.
It never came, though. Instead, Wasaaru let out a deep sigh, averting his gaze from Balt. Then he said, “It’s alright.”
Balt couldn’t quite understand what was going on. He couldn’t understand the words his cousin had said, nor could he figure out why they had been so soft and not ear-splittingly loud.
He said, “What?”
Wasaaru rolled his eyes. “I forgive you,” he said.
Still, Balt could not process what was happening. This was not the turn he’d expected the conversation to take. “You do?”
Wasaaru nodded. “Yeah. I mean, what’s done is done, right? Can’t change that.” He sighed again. “No use dwelling on it.”
“…you’re sure you’re not mad?” Balt asked meekly.
Another nod. “I already spent my time being mad about this years ago,” Wasaaru said. “Really, it’s okay. I forgive you.”
Balt didn’t know what to say. Finally, he muttered humble thanks. He didn’t feel deserving of his cousin’s forgiveness, but he was grateful for it all the same.
It looked like Wasaaru was gearing up to say something, inhaling deeply and letting it out slowly. “I’m sorry too,” he eventually allowed himself to say.
An apology, an admittance of fault, was quite a rare occurrence coming from Wasaaru Vana. Balt almost pointed that out, but he didn’t want to undercut the moment. Instead, he remained silent, letting Wasaaru get out what he had to say.
“I know that we’re both to blame for how things have been between us the past few years. I felt bad, so I lashed out and treated you like shit, but that’s no excuse.”
It seemed the words pained him, so Balt took his pause as an opportunity to jump in. “It’s okay,” he said, smiling. “I forgive you too.”
Wasaaru gave him a half-smile. They sat there for a moment, and Balt was positive that his cousin was in just as much disbelief about what they’d said to each other as he was.
“You know,” Wasaaru then said, lifting up the lyric card, “she gave me this near the end of Winter, just a few weeks before everything went down on Pakree.”
That was almost a year after she’d given Balt the bestiary. Almost a year of him not sharing it with Wasaaru, which she had surely picked up on. She wasn’t an idiot. But she had never said anything to him, never demanded that he let Wasaaru use the book. Instead, she had given Wasaaru that card, with the drawing of the mountains on the back.
She’d gifted each of them a piece of the puzzle. She had always intended for them to someday come together to reach Sawarestao’s roost.
He knew his cousin would hate it, but Balt leaned over and hugged him. To his surprise, Wasaaru hugged him back.
39
Adam’s Wheelhouse
It had been four days since Makénu learned the truth of Tano’s training: that his kaylackt was equipped with one of the Facet’s most powerful Artificial Jekuas, modeled after the world’s legendary Jenus, possessing the power of teleportation.
Each of those days, he had subtly introduced organic pathways in conversation for his son to speak on the subject. Either Tano was denser than Makénu liked to believe, or he was uninterested in divulging to his father what he was doing. Both scenarios were unideal, although for the latter, Makénu couldn’t blame him. There had been a treasure trove of things in his life that he’d never wanted to tell his parents when he was a child living with them. He had always been lost in his own world, apart from them, and them not knowing about it was what made it special.
But there was a stark difference between, say, illustrating his own comic book and attempting to harness the power of a Jenu. Artificial or otherwise.
Yesterday, Makénu had broached the subject with Marissa, marching down to the lab where she worked and demanding to know what was going on. He wasn’t told where San had taken Tano for training, so he couldn’t ask her directly; her twin sister was the next best thing. At some point, she had mentioned that she and San told each other everything. Hopefully that included summaries of their work days.
Marissa gave him an apologetic frown and pulled him aside to an empty room where they could speak privately. “Yeah,” she’d said. “Sorry I couldn’t really say anything. You know how it is around here.”
“Sure,” he said, not mentioning that he personally thought the organization’s policy on secrets should probably make an exception when it came to children. But that was just his opinion, not that anyone had asked.
Apparently the confidentiality agreement did not exist between sisters, only parents and their children, so at least he was able to pry some information out of Marissa. She relayed to him what little San had told her, which was that Tano was making great strides every day. According to San, he was a natural when it came to summoning. His mana reserves were nothing to write home about, but they were deepening with each session, and evidently he would not need them to be all that deep when the time came anyway.
“Why not?” Makénu had asked.
Marissa shrugged. “I’m not really sure. I guess I can ask her. As far as I can tell, though, it has to do with the fact that it’s gonna be such a quick thing. Like, he’ll summon the thing, cast the spell, and immediately withdraw. It’s not like he’ll need to use the Jekua for a long period of time.”
That was good. That meant no one, neither San nor Madelaine, was planning on using Tano in combat. He didn’t actually know if the Facet would be battling anybody, or when that would happen if so, but it was a small comfort to know that Tano would not be a part of it.
“But he’s…he’s doing okay?” Makénu had then asked. Whenever his son got home from a day of training, he seemed like his normal self. Happy, unhurt. No harm in asking, though.
“Yeah, no, don’t worry about that!” said Marissa, offering him a kind smile. “Using a kaylackt produces a more…what’s a good word…intense connection with a person’s soulclay than using a regular old kayet, so I’m sure he’s absolutely pooped by the end of the day. You’ve probably noticed he’s more exhausted than usual. That’s it, though. Nothing to actually worry about.”
Another relief. He’d heard that the Facet’s Summoners typically expended mana at a faster rate than normal Summoners, but he didn’t know about this supposedly harsher soulclay connection. People had been using kaylackts for a while now, though, so surely it was fine. Like Marissa said, nothing to worry about.
Now, more than twenty-four hours later, he sat in the tiny residence assigned to him upon arrival and watched Tano as he lay flat on the floor with his head resting on a square red pillow, playing some mindless game on his linkpad. With his previous one being broken in the lab, Marissa had gifted him her old one that was no longer connected to the internet but was already loaded up with some mobile games. After a long day of summoning, his favorite leisure activity was lazing about playing his colorful (and loud) games. He still wore his kaylackt, minus the mask. He loved wearing the damn thing and always refused Makénu’s suggestions to change into something more comfortable now that he was home. It stayed on until shower time every night. Thin, black streaks slithered across the white suit’s surface.
Again, Tano had come home with nothing but ambiguity on his lips, replying monosyllabically to every question Makénu had about his day. Was Madelaine sitting in on these training sessions with him? Was she coaching him in how to succinctly answer a person’s questions without really saying anything at all?
