City of the Falling Sky (26 page)

“
I’m sure. That’s it, just
like that with the wings and everything. What do you think this
means?” Seckry asked.

Vance wiped a chunk of snow from his
jacket.

“
What this means, Seckry, is
that Endrin’s Divinita project seems to have more religious
undertones than I first imagined. If Endrin have decided to use
this symbol for their project, the story of Seckraman must be
somehow at its core.”

“
But . . . why does
Seckraman have a symbol on his robes?”

“
There are many
interpretations of what Seckraman was wearing that day, and most
paintings of him have him dressed in some sort of decorated,
patterned, or symbolic robe. The fact that Endrin have borrowed
this particular symbol is interesting, because being one of the
earliest paintings, this is probably also the most
accurate.”

Seckry glanced back at the table, where Eiya
flashed him a smile.

“
She needs to know,” Seckry
said. “She needs to know what’s going on, who she is, and why she
was being kept at Endrin. But none of it makes any sense. The white
chip, the worms, this innoya thing, and now the coming of
Seckraman? What are they doing?”

Vance put his large hand on Seckry’s shoulder
and gave it a firm squeeze.

“
Right now, Seckry, I don’t
know. But I promise I will find out.”

Over the following few days even more snow
fell on Skyfall and the monorails were temporarily taken out of
service. Seckry and Eiya spent most of their time making a fat
snowman out in the square.

One night, Seckry awoke to find Eiya standing
at the window, listening to Mrs Plum’s lullaby.

“
There
is
a nice tune
to it, isn’t there? “ Eiya said.

“
Yeah,” Seckry said,
yawning.

“
She looks frozen,” Eiya
said with concern. “You can see her breath.”

Seckry got up and joined her at the
window.

“
How about we take her down
a blanket to keep her warm?” he said. “I’ve got the spare one under
the bed.”

“
Yeah, we should definitely
do that!” Eiya said excitedly, and her enthusiasm was
infectious.

“
I never use that flask that
we’ve got, either,” Seckry said. “Maybe we could put a bit of tea
in there for her.”

Eiya smiled. “I’ll go and make it!”

Once they had filled the flask with hot,
steaming tea, they crept across the square in their slippers,
hauling the rustling blanket with them. As they approached, Mrs
Plum’s lullaby gradually came to a halt.

“
Hi Mrs Plum,” said Eiya,
tentatively. “We thought . . . uh . . . we thought you might like
something to keep you warm. You know, while you’re out
here.”

Mrs Plum smiled. “I don’t really feel the
cold, dears. But thank you.” Suddenly she looked flustered. “Oh my,
I haven’t woken you up have I? I’d hate to think you could hear me
singing away out here.”

Seckry and Eiya both looked at each other for
a moment before saying “No, no! Of course not. We were . . . up
anyway, you know, playing video games.”

Mrs Plum smiled at them politely.

“
We’ll just leave this
here,” Seckry said. “Just in case you feel like it.” He rested the
blanket on the rim of the fountain and laid the warm flask on top
of it.

When they were back up in Seckry’s bedroom,
shivering next to his heater, they saw Mrs Plum pull the blanket
around her and have a tiny sip of the tea before resuming her
lullaby from the exact place that she’d stopped.

Seckry and Eiya lay awake together more and
more often, sometimes listening to music and snacking, sometimes
playing video games, sometimes playing thumb war, but most often
just talking.

“
Seck, tell me a secret,”
Eiya said one night, as they were sat on the floor, wrapped in
their blankets.

“
A secret?”

“
Yeah, anything,” Eiya
said.

From where Seckry was sitting, he could see
underneath his bed, and the stacks of books that he stored there.
He reached over and pulled one out.

“
Okay, this here,” he said,
“is a copy of The Monster of Magoria. It’s a kid’s book, aimed at
five to eight year olds, something like that. When I bought it back
when I was little, my mum took one look at it, and thought it was
horrific. There’s loads of pictures of gruesome monsters in it and
a big battle at the end where this pulsating mass of pus bursts all
over the hero. My mum said she was going to take it back the next
day because it wasn’t suitable, but I hid it under my bed and told
her I’d lost it. I read it and reread it and reread it again when I
was a kid. Eiya, it was my favourite book in the world, like you’d
never believe. And I still read it sometimes now. It’s the best
book I’ve ever read, and my mum knows nothing about it.”

Eiya giggled.

“
Seck, do you think I had a
. . . boyfriend before I lost my memory.”

“
I . . . uh, don’t know,”
Seckry replied.

“
Do you think I’d make a
good girlfriend?” she said ponderingly.

Seckry swallowed, slightly embarrassed. “I
think you would. I mean, you like good music, you like playing
video games, you’re fun to be around.”

“
Have you . . . ever had a
girlfriend?” Eiya asked him softly.

Seckry automatically started to lie and said,
“Yeah, I–” but he cut himself off. “No, I’ve never really had a
girlfriend,” he admitted sheepishly.

Eiya smiled and her eyes glistened. “I wonder
what it’s like . . . being with someone like that. It must feel
like nothing else in the world to be able to touch the skin of this
person that you love so much, and to taste their lips, and to hold
them so close that you can feel their body heat warming your own.
It must feel amazing.”

“
Yeah,” Seckry said in a
daze, “Yeah . . . it must.”

That night, once Eiya had slumped slowly to
the floor and curled herself up into a small, cosy ball, Seckry got
up and wandered over to the window.

The monorail glided past, sending its usual
fiery sparks into the smog and momentarily lighting the metal
framework of the square in a flurry of warm strobe. Floating
distantly in the sky were a couple of pink, helium balloons, their
ribbon tails trailing them loosely. Far away he could hear the
distant sounds of sirens and construction.

A few months ago, he had been plagued with
homesickness, but now, as he looked out across the city, he felt at
home.

When Seckry eventually lay down, he fell
straight into a warm, deep sleep.

“
Seckry,” Eiya said. She
shut the bedroom door and put her finger to her lips.

“
I thought you were at the
library,” Seckry said.

“
I couldn’t be away from you
for a moment longer. I had to come back to you.”

“
But you wanted to find out
about the innoya root,” Seckry said.

“
Shhh,” Eiya objected,
shaking her head. She was walking towards him, holding her finger
to her lips, and reaching out to touch his face gently with her
other hand.

“
Eiya,” Seckry said,
smelling the sweetness of her fingertips. “Eiya, I think I’m . . .
I think I’m falling in . . .” Seckry could barely speak, it was as
though his whole body was floating weightlessly. It was the best
feeling in the world. “What is this?” he asked. “This feeling? It’s
amazing.”

Eiya laughed gently and Seckry felt another
wave of weightlessness erupt through him.

“
Don’t you know?”

She leaned closer to him, her big, deep
pupils looking into his.

“
Close your eyes,
Seckry.”

“
Why?” Seckry
asked.

Eiya smiled. “Just do it,” she said, in
barely more than a whisper. “I’ll close my eyes too.”

“
What’s going to happen when
we close them?”

“
Something special,” Eiya
said.

Seckry woke with a start and immediately
froze. He was sitting up in bed, his heart pounding.

It took him a moment to realise where he was
and that he’d been dreaming. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Eiya was still asleep, thank Gedin. Her chest was rising and
falling slowly underneath her bedcover and Seckry could hear her
breath, soft and slow.

He lay awake for a long time that night,
watching her, and wondering what was happening to him.

Seckry began to find that every night he
seemed to have the same dream of Eiya coming closer and closer to
him, putting her finger to her lips, shaking her head gently and
saying, ‘Shhh,” until her face could barely be any closer to his
without them touching. One time he woke up to find Eiya kneeling
beside him.

“
Are you okay?” she said
concernedly.

“
Uh . . . yeah. I’m fine . .
. thanks.”

“
You were talking in your
sleep.”

Seckry gulped.

“
Really? What did I
say?”

“
You were saying that you
think you’re falling into something.”

Seckry grabbed his bedside glass of water and
took a few sips. “I must have been . . . um . . . dreaming about
falling into the river. Every time I go past that thing I’m sure
I’m gonna lose my balance and trip head first.”

It was the only thing Seckry could think of.
He gave Eiya a nervous smile. Just a few seconds ago he had been
dreaming that her lips were only a few millimetres away from his
own.

At lunch time, on their first day back at
Estergate after the holidays, while Eiya was getting some food with
Loca over the other side of the canteen, Seckry pulled Tenk to one
side.

“
Tenk, have you ever felt,
like, as if a girl can make your insides do back flips?” he said,
rather embarrassedly.

“
Yep,” said Tenk
immediately.

“
Really?”

“
Yes, my friend. It’s what I
call The Fall.”

“
The Fall?”

“
Yep. You’re longing for
her, you’re dreaming about her, you’re getting nervous around her,
am I right?”

“
Yeah.”

“
That’s it. The Fall. It’s
the act of falling in love. It’s a shock if you’ve never had it
happen to you before. It’s that same feeling you get when you’re on
a rollercoaster and you’re just going over the edge. It’s like
you’re completely weightless. Falling in love is like literally
falling hundreds of feet through the air. That’s why I call it The
Fall.”

Seckry glanced around him. “I suppose you’re
going to ask me who I’m talking about.”

Tenk put a hand on Seckry’s shoulder.

“
Seck, I know who you’re
talking about.”

“
You do?” Seckry said,
perplexed.

“
It must be a shock to you,
but . . . to tell you the truth . . . we’ve been kind of been
noticing it for a while now.”

Seckry blushed and laughed nervously. “You’ve
all been watching this happen?”

“
Well, let’s put it this
way,” said Tenk. “Do you remember me telling you about the new gun
I bought for Basher while we were in the plaza last
week?”

“
No,” Seckry
admitted.

“
Well, that’s because your
eyes were glazed over and you were staring into the distance like a
new born puppy. When I turned around to find out what you were
looking at, guess who I saw?”

“
Am I really falling in love
with Eiya?” Seckry said, looking over at her. She was slurping a
giant cup of milk, and even though her mouth was concealed by it,
Seckry could tell that she was smiling at him by the shape of her
eyes.

“
All the evidence is there,”
Tenk said. “How do you feel right now?”

“
It kinda feels like my legs
are gonna give way or something. Just being over the other side of
the room from her, it’s like I want to get back to her as soon as I
can, just to be closer to her, to hear her voice.”

“
Oh man, that’s The Fall
alright,” Tenk said with certainty.

That day, Seckry could barely take his mind
off Eiya, but one thing did jolt him out of it for a moment. As he,
Eiya, Tenk and Tippian were heading to their fourth lesson of the
day, they passed the headmaster’s office and saw Ms Butterkins
leaving the room, crying tears into her open, grubby hands.

They all looked at each other silently and
decided to call in on the headmaster to check everything was
okay.

“
There’s been some bad
news,” Gobbledee said grimly after they questioned him. “The board
of education need to cut costs and they have told me they’re
closing down the animal sanctuary here in Estergate.”

“
What?” said Eiya. “What
about all the animals? What will happen to them?”

“
Some may be relocated. But
others . . . others may well be put down.”

“
Put down?” said Seckry,
aghast.

Gobbledee stood up. “Don’t worry, you lot.
I’m going to fight for this, believe me. I’m not going to let them
just storm in and close it down. I will oppose this with all my
effort.”

They left the headmaster’s office feeling
worried. The thought of all those animals being put down was
horrendous.
And what about Bubble?
Seckry thought. They’d
just have to hope that the headmaster had enough power to prevent
it.