Cloudland (6 page)

Fracta's eyelids flickered. Behind Lucy, two Stratus started whispering. Fracta glanced at them and they fell silent.

‘There is an old rule,' said Fracta. ‘Statues for law and Cirrus for watching, Cumulus for cities and Stratus for work. You have heard this?'

Lucy shook her head.

‘Well,' Fracta tilted her chin sideways, ‘perhaps you know as little as you say. Or perhaps you have Earth tricks I cannot recognise.'

A knot-faced servant whispered in Fracta's ear. ‘No,' she replied. ‘No needless violence. The Stratus can keep her.'

‘
Keep me?
' Lucy's lungs burnt as though she was running hard.

‘Please understand that we deal in necessities.' Fracta spoke in the same impassive voice. She considered Lucy for a long moment. Lucy forced herself not to look away, though her whole body was shaking.

‘Let me tell you a story to make clear what I mean . . . Last year, three Stratus decided they could not work an hour more. They put down their tools and crept from the cellar, buried in a cloud city, where for two decades they had worked without pause. Stepping into the street, they saw the stars: the same stars they had seen in their first decade, living as harvesters on the Stratum. Without much thought, they stole three flight boards and rode down the dark, back to their first home.'

Fracta's voice was soft. The other Stratus sat without moving. Everything was quiet and close. The walls were pressing in.

‘The next morning, the Cumulus called for their breakfast. They waited and grew angry; their breakfast did not come. At last, marching down to the cellar, they discovered those three Stratus had gone. Then the outrage – meetings and messages! They woke a statue and the statue ordered:
Those three Stratus must be put to death
.'

Around Lucy, the Stratus shifted on their heels. The word
death
seemed to make a clanging sound. Pain clasped a steel hand around Lucy's calf. Her leg had cramped. She could hear how the statue would have spoken; she could picture those words issuing from its narrow mouth.
Daniel was right not to trust the statue
, she thought, and loneliness ran through her like a tide.

‘We have watched your Earth,' continued Fracta. ‘We have seen how many ways you have to die. It is harder to kill a Cloudian. Only time will do it, and ice. The statue ordered a Megalith to fetch from the Arctic a fragment of zero: absolute cold. It said:
Find those Stratus and feed them to it
. Some say the Megalith lost its mind, listening to the cries those Stratus made, but that I do not know for certain, for the Megalith has not returned.'

‘What's this got to do with me?' demanded Lucy. Her leg was killing her. She tried to stand but Fracta gripped her arm.

‘I tell you this so you understand we have no choice but to imprison you. If your friends in the Citadel learnt you found us meeting here, they would understand we intend revolution, and they would most certainly kill us.'

‘But you can't imprison me! I haven't done anything wrong!'

Fracta stretched her mouth into a bitter smile. ‘They only saved us from their frozen cities because they could not feed themselves without us. They brought us here to serve them – but in doing so, they brought us together. Strange irony, that their hideaway should offer us our chance of freedom. We must flee to the Stratum now, while they are too fearful to pursue us.'

‘But I won't tell them,' cried Lucy. ‘You can't keep me!'

Fracta shook her head regretfully and signalled to the waiting servants.

The Stratus tugged Lucy's feet from under her. Clamping her mouth, seizing her arms, they lugged her, like a sack, a foot above the floor. She kicked and writhed but their grip burnt her skin.

Everything went white for a moment as they dragged her through the wall. Then the noise of the kitchen opened around her. The servants were still singing.
They'll free me!
she thought, as their voices faltered. But Fracta grunted and their voices filled the kitchen again.

‘Daniel!' she called, but a servant's hand trapped her voice. They forced her upright, facing a door. Beside it, she saw a polished wheel. Three servants
stepped forwards, keeping their heads down, and turned the wheel until the door swung open. Lucy saw a platform stacked with bundles of cloud.

‘We are going on that lift, you and I,' nodded Fracta, ‘down to the Stratum – ten years since I have seen it. The Stratus there will keep you safe.'

Anger exploded in Lucy, but with a servant's hand holding her jaw, she couldn't even shake her head. Before she could take in what was happening, they had unloaded the bundles and tossed her onto the lift. It tipped sideways under her weight. Fracta settled beside her and the door shut with a click. Fracta smiled mildly. Then a rope over Lucy's head whipped loose.

The lift fell through a blur. Lucy felt as though she'd left her skin behind. The lift stopped with such a jolt it flung her face down on the platform, gasping for air. Light angled in as the door opened. Lucy looked out at a group of Stratus. They started back when they saw her, and one of them screamed. Fracta spoke some quick words. ‘Linneus,' answered one, pointing at his chest. That was all Lucy understood. He might have been speaking a different language, all clicks and grunts. With her mind still reeling from the fall, Lucy pushed past him and stumbled onto a cloud plain.

The light was astonishing, blue and immense. She took great breaths and felt her mind stretch out to the horizon. The lift shaft behind her rose to a glittering cloud: the Citadel, floating on nothing. At her feet, the cloud frayed into air and, at its thinnest, shone yellow and grey.

Fracta stood arguing with Linneus while the other Stratus cowered, whispering and pointing at Lucy. They had no coats and they shivered with cold. Still talking, Linneus hurried away. After a few steps, he gestured for them to follow. Fracta seized Lucy's arm.

‘Let go,' snapped Lucy, and shook her off. Side by side, they followed Linneus down some steps into a cavern where the air was so hazy it made Lucy think of asphalt, fuming in the summer heat. In the sudden gloom, she found it hard to see anything. Fracta's eyes must have adjusted more quickly. She stumbled back, almost falling against Lucy.

‘What is this?' she gasped. ‘Why are they sitting like that?'

It was the first time Lucy had heard Fracta sound uncertain. She rubbed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw the cavern was crowded with Stratus, slumped on the ground, all staring straight ahead. There were hundreds of them. Linneus started
flinging his hands about, pretending to drink from a bottle. He was almost shouting – but the Stratus in the cavern didn't stir or look around.

‘Too late.' Fracta stumbled back up the stairs. Lucy followed her, glad of the open air. It was eerie to think of that gloomy cavern, those half-dead creatures, buried in the cloud beneath her feet.

‘We are too late,' repeated Fracta.

‘Too late for what?' demanded Lucy, but Fracta had turned away. She was dragging herself over the cloud plain: a little crooked figure.

‘You can't leave me here!' called Lucy. ‘I won't stay.'

Fracta swung around. The look on her face made Lucy flinch. ‘I won't leave you,' she said. Just as suddenly, she dropped her head and muttered, ‘But Linneus should have told me.' Tilting her head towards the lift, she sighed, ‘Get on. I'll take you back to your friends.'

Linneus had stopped a few metres behind them. He was silent, staring at his hands. The last of the Stratus clustered around him, turning their backs to the wind.

Lucy waited in the lift, clutching her ankles, and felt relief rise through her like warmth, knowing soon the lift would carry her back to the Citadel. Daniel's
sharp face floated into her mind.
He must be awake by now
, she thought. He would be afraid she had left without him. When she pictured his face, twisting with panic, she felt a quick surge of impatience.

‘Hurry up!' she called out the lift door. ‘They'll be looking for me!'

Fracta was still talking to Linneus. She fixed her eyes on Lucy. After a pause, she nodded and climbed into the lift, leaning out to give a last order: ‘Listen, Linneus! I'll help this Earth creature fight the Kazia. I'll make sure she succeeds. Tell your Stratus! Tell them that!'

‘Earth creature,' grumbled Lucy, as Fracta slammed the lift door. Ropes creaked through a wheel; slowly, in jerks, the lift climbed. Fracta sat with her eyes closed and her chin propped on her knees.

‘So you'll help me against the Kazia?'

Fracta's eyes flicked open. ‘Yes, and I will see you defeat her. This once, their war is our war.'

‘Their war! Your war! Why don't you fight it yourselves, then? I can't do anything against the Kazia! If you really want help, send me back to Earth and I'll get it for you – a proper army.'

Fracta shook her head. ‘Not one person on Earth would believe you. Here, they think you are their Protector. Here, you can raise an army.'

‘Oh yes! Wist and Jovius!'

Fracta blew air through the side of her mouth. ‘Not Cirrus and Cumulus! They can't even feed themselves; but the other sky creatures – birds and Arcarals – and the Stratus will follow you.'

‘But I keep telling you, I'm not the Protector!'

Fracta shrugged. ‘It's enough that they think you are. War makes lies useful.'

‘So why do you care, all of a sudden? What about your revolution?'

‘Why ask me to explain? You saw those Stratus, so drunk on phumooze they cannot see or think. What good would a revolution do them?'

Overhead, the ropes rattled and the lift bumped to a stop. The door opened and they looked again into the kitchen: sunken, dingy and crowded with Stratus. Before Fracta could stop her, Lucy had slid from the lift and started dodging through the crowd, running for the Citadel.

Near the arch, Fracta seized Lucy's wrist and tugged her to a stop. ‘If you tell your friends what you have seen, I will make sure you suffer,' she added with her gentlest smile.

Lucy stepped through the arch into the Citadel. Glittering and empty, it gave her a sudden sense of freedom. She glanced into the dreary kitchen with a feeling she was looking back into a dream.

‘Where have you been?' Daniel grabbed her wrist. His face looked waxy. She could tell he'd been crying. ‘You can't just –' He broke off and sucked his cheeks.

‘Daniel is right.' Wist loomed behind him. ‘This is not a time for wandering.'

The contempt in his voice lit a flare in Lucy's chest. ‘I wasn't
wandering
,' she started. She would have told them everything then, in the recklessness of sudden
anger, but over Daniel's shoulder she saw Fracta shuffling across the room with a platter on her back. Though she affected the mild and patient manner of a servant, Fracta shot a look across the room that made Lucy shiver and fall silent.

‘Breakfast!' exclaimed Jovius, settling at the table. Lucy sat beside him and started spooning up the sweet, lumpy soup she had seen the kitchen Stratus preparing. Daniel sat so close to her his elbow bumped her arm when he lifted his spoon.

‘Ready?' Wist stood up and chafed his hands together.

With a jolt, Lucy realised they were leaving the Citadel. She looked up at the statues, all still and silent now. ‘But what's the plan? Where are we going?'

Wist frowned. ‘The statue ordered us to the Forgotten Lands, where the Kazia has raised a castle of ice.' He turned away.

‘But we don't even know what the Kazia
is
,' Lucy protested to his retreating back.

Daniel rested a hand on her arm. ‘We just need to get into the open,' he whispered. ‘Then we can slip away. I've got food.' He patted his pocket.

Lucy glanced up. ‘Listen! This morning –'

Fracta reached between them. ‘Are you finished?' she said, scooping up the bowls. She stood behind
Lucy in a humble attitude, but her eyes were like glass.

‘What?' said Daniel, glancing from Lucy to Fracta. ‘What?'

‘Nothing,' Lucy shrugged. Fracta nodded once and turned back to the kitchen.

‘Come on.' Lucy stood up and felt suddenly desolate, too exhausted even to feel afraid. She followed Wist and Jovius across the Citadel. The floating pause in every stride added to her sense of isolation. She found herself thinking back to when the rain started. They had wept, she remembered, when they read that some floodwaters had swept away a two-year-old girl. Before long, they had listened in boredom to lists of the missing and dead. How quickly they had grown dull to suffering. The dullness had filled their minds; it had felt like forgetting . . .

They stepped from the Citadel into a chamber where the walls were so thin Lucy saw sky all around. She looked through the floor at blue air and cloud wisps, drifting over the cloud plain where she and Fracta had stood that morning, and felt she had lost a layer of skin. It was a relief to have Daniel beside her, solid in all that emptiness and light.

Jovius struck a transparent gong, suspended from the ceiling, and a note sounded the way the
sky looked: high and clear. Wist stretched his hand towards the horizon.

‘Here they come!'

Far off, Lucy saw a white wave rise out of the sky and rush towards them. It broke over the chamber. She saw curve-necked, long-tailed creatures with manes that tangled in the wind.

‘Arcarals!' Wist stood at the window, calling in a language of whistles and shrieks. One by one, four of the creatures drifted into the chamber, tossing their manes and staring at Lucy. Their eyes were round and shiny, backed with grey light like tinfoil. They were wild creatures, pieces of sky.

Watching them, Lucy's skin tingled. All her tiredness left her. She felt exultant suddenly; everything seemed possible. ‘What are they?' she whispered.