The Luminous Citadel Chapter 8a

Another part of my ongoing serial fiction

I’ve been averaging about 200 words a day, which is not great for me, but on the other hand, they are words. This isn’t a full chapter, sorry. I will say that I think I have about three chapters left in this. If I can get some of the other tasks cleared off my plate my writing tempo should increase.

If you want to start at the beginning, click here.

Chapter 8

One of many unnerving things about this, Wilt decided a few minutes later when they had stabilized into a glide and he could spare a brain cell to think, was that there was no rush of wind. A skydiver would feel and hear rushing wind as he fell. The air they were passing through was calm and cool, but not chilled. There were clouds, and he suspected those would be unpleasantly damp. There was not even a breeze that he could sense.

They were soaring upwards, relative to the village far below, but downwards toward the other side of the world. He wanted to look around, but was afraid he would throw off the balance and... well, not fall. This was unnatural and unnerving and he looked down, seeing no real pattern in the bands of forests and meadows which were small enough below he could now make out the bowl curve of the world. There were seemingly random outcroppings of stone, thrusting up high above even the massive trees, and it seemed they were heading for one of those.

Dione and Helikon still gripped his hands firmly. Helikon spoke, his voice slightly louder than necessary.

“Be prepared for a slip.”

Wilt didn’t know what this meant, but he tensed. When they were directly over the rocks, or so it seemed from this vantage point, the gravity wave tilted and suddenly they were sideways. It took his inner ear and brain a moment to process what had just happened. The direction of their flight had slipped, as Helikon suggested, at a severe angle to what it had been. Now, they were headed for a new direction. Wilt did his best to look around, but could discern no landmarks. He was lost.

Fortunately, the other two seemed to know just where they were going, and now they tucked their legs and arms closer to their bodies, and Wilt imitated their motions. The descent... or was it an ascent? Wilt didn’t know any longer... sped up. He saw after a moment or two that they were heading for a small town in the canopy of the trees below. It was far larger than the one they had just come from.

Flyers emerged from it, arcing up towards them. Wilt felt that both Helikon and Dione were calm and remained relaxed. He had no choice but to go with the flow, so he just watched the distant flyers until they came close enough to make out features.

“Wilt!”

“Ard!”

They both shouted at the same time. Wilt shimmied in his excitement, and the small flight cluster lost several feet of altitude abruptly.

“Sorry!” Wilt called. “I don’t know how to do this!”

“You were always clumsy,” Ard, laughing, swooped in above him, where Wilt could hear him but not see him.

“I ended up here, didn’t I?” Wilt retorted, not trying to crane his neck and make the situation worse.

“Ayup, and so did I. We have a lot to talk about.”

“On solid ground, please?” It was coming up fast, and Wilt wanted to concentrate on remembering how he’d landed the first, and last, time he’d flown.

Ard’s laughter peeled off to the left, but Wilt was angling his body to land feet first, trying to mimic Dione and Helikon. He stumbled, but they didn’t let go of him, so he managed to walk into the momentum and stay mostly upright. Ard skipped lightly to a stop, then beamed at him.

“Welcome to Elysium!”

“Thanks...” Wilt looked around, feeling his legs wobble. “I have... so many questions.”

Dione and Helikon had released his hands, and Helikon was walking purposefully away, but Dione was staying next to Wilt.

“Oh,” Wilt looked from her, to Ard. “This is Dione.”

Ard greeted her in the local language, and Dione smiled. Behind Ard, a very pregnant woman walked up to them. Ard looked around, and beamed. He wrapped an arm around her and drew her forward.

“This is Meilei, my wife.”

Wilt felt his jaw drop open.

Ard broke up into a belly laugh. When he could manage to speak again, he gasped out, “the look on your face...”

“How long have you been here?” Wilt protested. “I had you for teaching assistant in... invertebrate zoology?”

“Well, you’ll have to tell me.” Ard sobered quickly, and took a deep breath. “If you hadn’t noticed, there isn’t a good way to measure time in this place.”

“I had. I have been here a few days. I think. I’m not really sure. One sleep, but I’m exhausted.”

“Yeah, you will be. Continuous daylight plays havoc with your system, and I am not sure but what it’s part of the problems the, er, indigenous population is having.”

“Which one? The day people, or the night people?”

“You know about them already?”

“I told you. I have a lot of questions. And I need answers, because I think Dr. Sooma may maroon me here.”

“Welcome to the club, pal.” Ard gave him a twisted, bitter little smile. He shook his head, then spoke to Meilei and Dione in their language. Both women looked at each other, then nodded. Ard dropped his hand from his wife’s waist, and the girls went off together, chatting merrily.

“Does she know?”

“You do have a lot of questions. Come on, we may as well do this somewhere more comfortable.” Ard gestured towards the town and Wilt followed him, looking around with wide open eyes at this place.

“What did Sooma tell you when you were on your way here?” Ard tossed over his shoulder as Wilt lagged, too busy trying to take in the buzzing activity all around them to keep up with the other foreigner.

“Not much at all. Not that it was inhabited, for sure. I, well, I chased Dione off a cliff, basically, and she rescued me.”

Ard laughed again, and some of the people turned, looking and smiling. Wilt caught up and fought the impulse to try and hide in Ard’s shadow and turn invisible. “So that’s how you wound up with Helikon.”

“He speaks the language. Really well, actually, I was trying to figure that out, too.”

“Come on up,” Ard waved at a set of stairs, complete with hand rail, that curved around a vast tree trunk. “You are bursting with information, and you don’t even know it yet.”

Wilt preceded his friend, because the stairs weren’t that wide, and found the hand rail reassuring even if he didn’t use it.