Cloudland (11 page)

White light and a vast silence pressed on Lucy's eyes. For a long time, she lay still. Her hands felt swollen, full of broken glass.
Are they my hands or not?
She couldn't understand why she couldn't move them. Just as she was thinking that, her right hand lifted and pushed the whiteness back. A metre above her, she saw something drab-coloured and solid. She gazed at it a long while.
Cloud
, she thought, and sat up.

She was in a low room, no bigger than a tent. There was a cloud coat piled on top of her. ‘Where am I?' she whispered. The light was so dim she couldn't be certain she was awake.
It might be a dream
, she
thought, though when she brushed her hands across the ceiling it felt rough and ice-cold.

Daniel will know whether I'm dreaming
, she thought, and called out for him. Her skin ached with cold. She looked around the little room. ‘You!' An arm's length away, Fracta sat cross-legged with her back against the wall.

‘Where's Daniel?' cried Lucy. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Shadow-mongers got him,' Fracta answered without blinking. ‘Got them all. They'll be in Alkazia now.'

‘In
Alkazia
?' Lucy felt herself shrinking. ‘You saved me? And left them to the shadow-mongers?'

‘You don't sound all that grateful.'

Lucy suddenly hated that impassive little face, those pallid eyes. She lunged at Fracta, but she had forgotten the ceiling, low overhead. Striking her forehead, she staggered, floundering in shame and rage.

‘What are you doing here, anyway? We left you in the Citadel.'

‘I know.' Fracta's face wrinkled into a smile. ‘You thought you'd escaped. But they are foolish in their pride, those Arcarals. They go in a rush and call themselves the fastest creatures in the sky. On a cloud
board, flying day and night, we Stratus can keep up with them.' Fracta shrugged. ‘It was the snow geese told me a Megalith saved you from the Varactor in Altovia. Simple to assume the Megalith would guide you through its tunnel to the Mist. Where the two met, I waited for you.'

Lucy nodded, suddenly so tired her flesh felt grey. ‘I saw you, I think, when we were going down those steps. Then, of course – you had your cloud board to save you when we fell out of the Mist. I saw you that time, too – only I thought you were a bird or something.'

‘Yes. Like your friends, you see the Stratus and yet you do not see us.' Fracta pronounced
friends
with a long hiss.

‘Why save me, then?' flared Lucy. ‘I wish you hadn't!'

Fracta only looked bored. ‘You are hungry,' she said. ‘You'll feel calmer if you eat.' She held out a piece of Comclo.

Lucy snatched it from her and started gnawing. ‘You don't care about the others. You're like a machine.'

Fracta shrugged. ‘Affection is a luxury of the leisured classes.'

‘Why save me, then?' persisted Lucy.

‘Not for
affection
!' Fracta snorted. ‘You are the Protector, and therefore useful. The sky creatures will follow you.'

‘But I told you – I'm not the Protector.'

‘And I told you, what you are does not matter. If they think of you as their Protector, it will suffice.'

All at once, Lucy saw her opening. A pulse kicked in her throat. ‘You need me, then!' Fracta didn't answer, but Lucy had seen her eyes flicker. She waited.

‘What is it you want?' said Fracta at last.

‘Help me rescue the others!'

‘No. Our first objective is to defeat the Kazia.'

Lucy didn't move. She understood now that, without her, Fracta was alone and helpless – just another Stratus, invisible in the hierarchy of the clouds.

‘Foolish!' spat Fracta. ‘If we're caught . . .' In that small, freezing cave, the two of them glared at each other. Fracta's mouth twisted as though she had eaten a stone. ‘As you say, I need you. At least, I need the illusion that makes you worth more than you are. If I help you rescue your precious friends, you will accept the title Protector? You will lead the sky creatures against the Kazia?'

Lucy nodded.

‘You will keep this promise?' Fracta held her face within an inch of Lucy's. Her eyes burnt through Lucy's skin. Finally, she sat back and nodded. ‘We'll go now. At night, shadow-mongers carry the Kazia over Cloudland. We'll find your friends in the Great Hall, no doubt, with all the other prisoners. We'll have to be quick to cut them out before the Kazia comes back.

‘Here. Take this.' Reaching into a pouch she wore tied to her waist, Fracta handed Lucy a tool like a chisel made of glass. It had a blade so fine it was almost invisible. Lucy raised her hand to test her thumb against its edge.

‘No!' Fracta seized her wrist. ‘Try it against that wall.'

When Lucy rested the blade against that hard-packed ice, it slid through it like a knife through water. Lucy drew back her arm and stared at the blade in astonishment.

‘An ice-razor,' said Fracta. ‘A cloud the size of a city compacted to make that blade. It will cut anything in the clouds.' She looked at Lucy. ‘Including you.' She handed Lucy a sheath. Lucy was still fixing it around her waist when Fracta cut a gap in the cave wall.

They stepped into the dark.

Above them, the sky was fierce with stars – pure light smashed across its empty reaches. Lucy couldn't stop shivering. Alkazia was a dark shape against the sky, a door into some other world. While Lucy stood there, gazing at it, the moon slid over the top of Alkazia and the whole plain shone. For one moment, Lucy was suspended, part of the sky, feeling the stars burn in her own flesh. Then Fracta tugged at her arm and they started walking.

The silence was astonishing. Lucy could hear tiny crystals grating against each other under her feet. What she felt, above all, was the unreality of fear. She might have been suspended an inch above her body,
noting with curiosity how her hands were shaking, how her bones felt hollow.

Fracta signalled the entrance was on the far side. They walked around Alkazia. The entrance was a cutout square, darker even than the walls. Holding her ice-razor in front of her, Lucy walked into Alkazia. Inside, it was dead cold. Moonlight, glimmering through the door, showed Lucy she had stepped into a vast hall, its ceiling and corners lost in shadow.

Fracta tapped against Lucy's back and pointed at one wall. Then she pointed at her chest, and the opposite wall, and scurried away. Splitting up, they edged along opposite sides of the hall. The wall showed Lucy's reflection – her face, distorted on the uneven surface. When Lucy stepped closer, her reflection rose and blossomed, opening as she leant towards it, until she leant into her shadow. Then her reflection vanished. Where her face had been, she saw someone else's face.

Her cry echoed in the silent hall. It was the Heir, like him in every way; only there was no life in him at all. The ice gave his skin a marble sheen. He had his hands raised, fingers splayed. For a moment Lucy was in the aeroplane again, watching him press his fingers against the window. Then the memory faded and Alkazia gathered around her again.

The Heir was in a cell cut into the wall. A layer of ice held him, its dirty translucence pitted with bubbles of air. He was frozen; she could not save him. Still, she couldn't bear to leave him there, staring at nothing. Her ice-razor sliced easily through the wall.

He was surprisingly light. Lucy lifted him easily from his cell. His flesh was so cold it froze to her fingers. She had to blow on them to ease them free. She suddenly imagined finding Daniel like that, and felt the cold glaze her own skin. Setting the Heir down, she took another step and peered into the wall. Again, her reflection blossomed and vanished. Again, where her face had been, she saw another's face. It wasn't Daniel; it was the face of a Cloudian, his plump cheeks stretched with pain. Stepping forwards, she saw another Cloudian, and then another. The hall was a gallery lined with true images of suffering.

Lucy searched the length of the wall, looking into stricken faces until her nerves dulled. At the far end, she came upon an oversized staircase, with every step an ice-plank wedged into the wall. She looked up at it and dark filled her eyes. Some part of her longed suddenly to see the Kazia, face to face.

Fracta tapped on Lucy's shoulder. ‘I have found them. The two Cloudians I have cut free, but your
Earth friend is awake and I would not shock him.'

‘Daniel's alive?'

‘You must be quick to cut him out.' Fracta glanced up at the door. ‘Already, the moon is sinking.'

Lucy was running. Fracta had propped Wist and Jovius beneath their broken cells. Jovius lay spreadeagled, just as he had been. In the next cell, Daniel slumped against the back wall. When Lucy rapped on the ice, he didn't even blink. Four slashes, and she pulled the ice wall out.

‘Daniel!' She reached into the cell and wrapped her hand around his wrist. His skin was so cold it felt like laminex. ‘Come on, quick!'

‘I'm so tired.' Daniel's voice sounded like a slow-motion recording.

‘Cold's all through him,' said Fracta, behind Lucy. ‘You'll have to drag him out. I'll get the others.'

‘The Heir, too,' remembered Lucy. ‘Near the door.' She was straining to lift Daniel. His arms and legs flopped. ‘Come on,' she pleaded.

Daniel kept staring at some point a hand's breadth in front of his face. When his left foot caught on the side of his cell he tumbled forwards. Lucy's knees gave way under his weight. He crashed down on her; he hadn't even put out his hands to break his fall. Rolling him off her and grabbing him under the
arms, she started lugging him backwards across the hall. She was sweating and her lungs hurt. Halfway, she had to stop and catch her breath. Her gasps tore at the silence.

‘Get up, Daniel. Please get up.' She glanced back at the door.

‘I'll take his shoulders.' Fracta appeared beside Lucy. ‘You get his feet.' With a quick sideways heave, Fracta pulled Daniel across her hunched back. Lucy grabbed his ankles. Together, they half-walked, half-staggered across the hall, bumping Daniel between them.

When they stepped outside Alkazia, Lucy thought she heard the stars ringing out one high note, like a bell. Her skin tingled with painless pins and needles. They set Daniel on the cloud plain by the cave where Fracta had stacked the Heir, Wist and Jovius, one on top of the other.

‘Three hours to sunrise,' said Fracta. ‘Keep out of my way while I remake this cave.'

Lucy crouched next to Daniel and wrapped her coat around him. Shivers ran the whole length of his body. He held his crooked hands in front of him and started whimpering as the blood burnt a path back through his fingers. The sound he made tugged at Lucy's throat.

‘Can't we stop it hurting?' she cried.

Fracta was working frantically. She had pushed the cave walls out. Now she was slashing chunks of cloud out of the plain, piling them together to plug the gaps. She barely glanced up.

‘You should be glad he's suffering,' she said. ‘Means he'll recover. Worry about them, if you feel like worrying.' She flicked her head in the direction of Wist, Jovius and the Heir. Wist was still pointing, blindly, at the sky.

Fracta sealed the door. Now, only narrow lines of moonlight angled in through chinks in the roof. It was eerie to sit in that uncertain light with the still forms of Wist, Jovius and the Heir propped against the wall.

A shudder ran through Daniel's body every time he took a breath. Lucy told him about Fracta and the rescue but it was impossible to know how much he understood. He only nodded, dull-eyed, and blew into his hands.

‘We have a bargain.' Fracta pressed one finger into Lucy's arm. ‘I have done my part.' Drawing a flask from her pocket, she took a swig.

‘I said I'd do it,' snapped Lucy. She pictured Alkazia looming over the plain, its walls lined with frozen Cloudians. In her mind, she saw again those still faces rising from her reflection.

It was strange – she felt more shivery now, thinking of them, than she remembered feeling at the time. Then, fear had been all around her: an electric charge in the air. Now, it had burrowed into her skin. She felt it stir and scratch there whenever she moved. Daniel's broken whimpers made everything seem intimate and real. She was afraid of suffering the way he had suffered. All she wanted now was to wait in the still quiet of the cave. Her home felt too far away to want, or even imagine.

‘Can I have some?' Daniel reached for Fracta's flask. The skin tightened on her face but she handed it to him. Daniel's hand was shaking so much the flask bumped against his teeth. When the liquid poured down his throat, he choked and broke out coughing.

‘What is that?' he rasped, rubbing his throat.

‘I do not drink it often.' Fracta snatched the flask back.

‘I don't care whether you have it for breakfast.' Daniel sat straight up. His eyes, which a moment ago had looked as lifeless as sand, gleamed in the pale light. ‘I'm sure that's alcohol. We could light it.'

‘Do you still have matches?' Lucy asked.

‘I think so.' He fumbled in a pocket of his jeans and raised the little box like a trophy. ‘It's almost full.'

Fracta sat watching, suspicion wrinkling her forehead. ‘Matches?' she said.

‘Hand me that flask again,' said Daniel. Fracta looked at Lucy, who nodded. Drawing the flask once more from her pocket, Fracta passed it to Daniel. He scuffed a hollow in the floor and tipped in a few drops of liquid, which pooled and glittered. Grinning at Lucy, he scraped the match. Blue and then red, it flared. After so long in the cloud's cool light, the fire's colour and dry rustling made Lucy's courage leap up like her shadow on the cave wall.