From Air to Stone
Lilya awoke to the sound of a light rain echoing off of the tin roof above her. She opened her eyes to see the others asleep on the floorboards around and Clare asleep on one of the few cots the boat had. She stood and walked outside, stretching her arms wide and feeling the drizzle streaming down her palms and exposed skin.
What a beautiful way to begin the day, she thought as she stared out over the tree tops for miles before her. What have you done, Alexander? Lilya smiled. Where have you taken us?
Just as she was thinking these thoughts his wide crimson wings wrapped up around the boat from below. We’re in the forests of Cush, above them actually, he spoke to her through her thoughts. Here we are safe from the world around us and are not at the mercy of the river’s currents.
“I never thought that I would wake up with trees below us,” she almost laughed as she walked to the rail of the deck. She reached out her arm in the sun gazed drizzle and plucked a leaf from one of the tree limbs stretching about them. She held up the leaf before the sun and watched how the sun illuminated its skin and veins.
“Lilya!” Amari called from behind her as he came outside. “Where are we?”
“Above Cush’s forest,” she said, watching as Juniper and Cypress followed out behind him.
“Look to the sky,” Alexander’s deep voice came from beneath the boat, making its boards reverberate as he spoke.
As she looked around through the light rain Lilya saw a vibrant rainbow stretching before them in the distance. It extended down from the sky and came to rest in the river beyond the boughs of the trees. “Clare has to see this,” she said and walked inside to get her friend. “She needs to see the beauty this new day brings.”
Inside, she found Clare curled in her cot and staring blankly at the walls of the structure. “Come outside with me,” Lilya said. “The fresh air will do you good.”
“How could he…” Clare asked, a tear running down her face.
Lilya wiped away the tear and held her for a moment. Her hair fell around Lilya’s arms. “We’re in Cush now, and he is far away. You are safe. We will help you get through this.”
“I…” Clare was beyond words.
“Just come with me.” Lilya took the girl’s hand, getting her to stand, then walked with her slowly out into the sunlight. The drizzle had just stopped. “The green stretching out in the distance is the tops of Cush’s trees. Look at the rainbow stretching through the sky,” she said. “This is our new world, Clare. You are safe with us here.”
Clare walked to the edge of the back deck, just standing and watching the rainbow as it shimmered in the sky.
“So where do we go from here?” Lilya asked the others.
Juniper had gone in their shelter and returned with dried pork and apples he had packed in a bag for them to eat. He passed their breakfast around. “You know these lands better than any of us, princess. Where would you suggest?”
“Can I make a suggestion?” Alexander asked from beneath the boat.
“I’m at a loss, so I would love to hear your thoughts.” Lilya looked down over the railing, through the branches, at him.
“I can take us to The Canyon of Eyes. It would make a good place to rest and hide until we can think of another solution.”
Amari gave Lilya a worried look, “The Canyon of Eyes?”
“It’s a place on the outskirts of Cush, by the ocean, where outcasts live undisturbed. It makes sense to go there. But we don’t know what they are like, whether or not it is dangerous or if they would even accept us. The people of Cush fear The Canyon of Eyes.” Lilya took a bite out of her apple, savoring its juices.
“It sounds as good a place as any,” Juniper said as the rainbow disappeared in the distance. “And we must leave soon. Surely the people of Cush have seen us and are on their way to investigate.”
The boat suddenly rocked and its boards creaked in the tree boughs, causing Lilya to grasp hard to the rail. “Alexander!” she called.
“Sorry,” his voice came as he burst up from the foliage before them, leaves bursting up around his wings and swaying through the air. His handsome eyes looked into Lilya’s own. “We are on our way!” He swooped down and then hovered above them, his wings beating, as he clasped his claws onto the ship’s side rails. He lifted the vessel out of the tree tops and into the pure blue sky.
Cypress looked pale as they rose. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said, walking beneath the shelter and groaning.
Lilya, on the other hand, took it all in as she walked to the boat’s back and put her arm around Clare. “I’ll never get tired of how beautiful it is from up here,” she said as she touched the girl’s hand on the rail.
“You’ll help me?” the girl asked.
“You have my word.” Lilya watched the treetops fall away beneath them before convincing Clare to come to the front of the ship to be with Amari and Juniper.
Soon they were above Cush’s plains, then its vast farmlands where they could see people far below them either running away in terror or pointing up in awe. It was the marshlands they crossed next and then the outskirts of the city itself.
“Where is this canyon?” Juniper asked.
“We are close now,” Alexander answered from above, his claws tightening their grasp as he lifted higher and turned them sharply to the side.
Squinting in the sunlight, Lilya could see the canyon’s cragged edge on the end of a deserted plain. The canyon, she knew, dropped steeply and eventually led to the sea. As Alexander swooped down toward it the wind was dry on her face and she could taste salt in the air. “Don’t take us down into it yet,” she instructed him. “I want to make sure they’ll accept us among them before we enter.” The wind on her face calmed as Alexander flew slower now and hovered down toward the canyon’s lip.
Amari grinned. “How do we get their attention?” he asked. “Do we just toss something off of the cliff at them?”
Alexander chuckled lowly, his stomach pulsing as he did and the boat jostling in his grasp. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. They’ll find us soon enough.”
Lilya took a step back with the rest of her company as two massive hawks lifted out of the canyon’s depths. The birds were a third the size of Alexander, their deep brown feathers majestically draping their forms. On their backs she saw men twice the size of Juniper or Cypress, their hands grasping ropes that wrapped around the birds so that they could control them.
The man closest to them gave them a deep glare. “What do you want from The Canyon of Eyes?” His hawk opened its beak wide, then snapped it shut and stared down at Alexander.
“We look for shelter and peace,” the dragon spoke. “We flee the land of Havilah and its mad King Thomas.”
“And what are the problems of Havilah’s people to us?” the man replied as he tightened his controls on his hawk and brought it closer.
Lilya spoke up now. “The problems of any man are the problems of all men. One evil will trickle down and affect the lives of many people far from where that evil began.”
“What you say may be true, but you have yet to tell us exactly why you fled Havilah. From what I have heard, it is a peaceful land.”
She thought for a second, then made sure she had his sight locked into hers. “I was born Princess Lilya of Cush. My father abused me and gave me away to Thomas, who is no better than my father. Surely that makes me one of you, an outcast of Cush, possibly the biggest outcast of all.”
The man’s expression changed instantly. “I have heard many things.” He turned his hawk toward the canyon. The other hawk rider did the same. “You and your friends are welcome here. You have more than earned the right to be one of us.” His hawk cawed into the sky and they dove into the canyon’s depths. “There will be people who wish to speak with you!” She barely heard him shouting in the wind left from their birds.
Juniper smiled. “These people should make for interesting company.” He turned back to the boat’s shelt
er. “Hold on tight, Cypress! Something tells me we’re in for a good jostling!”
“Follow them,” Lilya told Alexander and the dragon angled his crimson wings downward, letting the wind whipping through them carry him and their boat down into the canyon. He clutched tight with his claws to the boat and glided the group in a spiral down, coming close to the cliff walls.
She breathed a deep breath as she took in the beauty of The Canyon of Eyes once more. Jewels shimmered from the canyon’s coarse stone walls. People, huddling in caves that had been bored out of the cliff, gave them leery looks as they flew by. “We will have to win these people’s trust,” she told Juniper as he stood behind her.
With a gust the hawk rider, who she originally spoke with, burst up beside her. His long braided hair whipped in the funnel of wind about them. “Tell your dragon to set the boat in the water in the bottom of our canyon. We have ladders there that will allow you to climb into the rest of our city. The dragon can stay with our hawks in their cave if he likes.”
Lilya swept hair from her eyes as she spoke. “Alexander speaks for himself. But I am sure that he’s heard. He is a being just like you or I, and you’d probably do best to remember that in the future.”
“We will see,” the hawk rider spoke, then dove swiftly on his bird.
He didn’t mean anything by what he said, Alexander said through Lilya’s thoughts.
“I know,” she told him. “But you are one of us, and they need to learn that quickly.”
Soon they were at the canyon’s bottom, and beneath them was an inlet of water that, outside the canyon, opened up to the sea. The taste of salt was stronger in the air as Alexander set the vessel into the sea waters. It bobbed and creaked as he let loose his grasp on its rail.
Before them was a vast cave lit by flaming sconces and flowing with a river of sea water. Standing on a stone walkway at the cave’s entrance were the two hawk riders that had greeted them, along with a few other, smaller men, who were stumpy with long beards. The hawks flew in a hover outside the cavern, cawing again and again at Alexander.
“I’ll follow the birds,” Alexander said. “Sail inside and meet these people. I will be listening to your thoughts if you need me.”
The hawks soared above them and Alexander flew in their wake, eventually entering a large cave about halfway up the cliff wall.
To Lilya’s surprise, air suction came from inside the cave before them, drawing their vessel into its mouth.
The two hawk riders leapt onto the deck with a thud, leaving the stumpy men alone on the walkway. “Watch for others,” the man with the braided hair told them. “Who knows if they come alone?”
One of the bearded men gave a nod.
Lilya shook the first man’s hand as the cave’s darkness swallowed them, the sconces barely illuminating the boat’s river-path. “You know my name. This is Juniper, Amari and Clare and we have another companion named Cypress who is in the shelter. What are your names?” she asked.
The braided-haired man looked at her for a moment, as if examining her. “I am Alinar, and my companion is Vansir. Our ancestors came here long ago to be free of rule. We have lived all our lives in these caves, leaving only to gather food from trusted allies on the surface.”
Lilya marveled at Alinar and Vansir’s massive builds and height. It was amazing to see people who dwarfed even Cypress and Juniper, amazing and unnerving at the same time. “Who rules here?” she asked.
“No-one,” Alinar replied as he touched a feather that hung from a chain on his neck. “We are free, like our hawks, making our own rules for our lives, and respecting the others around us. We live by the basic rules of man, and any who cross the line are voted out by our society and sent to live back in the lands of Cush. That is enough to keep the deviants at bay.”
“Then who will we be meeting with?” A blue iridescence from beneath the vessel’s hull illuminated the darkness. Lilya looked overboard and saw jellyfish glowing vibrantly about them.
Alinar watched her as she watched the fish. “They are from the deep waters. We don’t know why they come here, but they are certainly beautiful.” There was silence for a moment before he spoke again. “To answer your question, you will meet with three of our elders. They will decide if you can stay. From there you will live under your own rule.”
Bats flew through the cavern overhead, shrieking, their wings beating together in the blue iridescence created by the jellyfish. Cypress came heavily out of the boat’s cabin, his face looking sickly even in the darkness. “I think I’ve had my fill of flying,” he said while eying Alinar.
“You shouldn’t have to fly for quite some time.” Lilya gave him a smirk.
He walked to the deck and looked to the illuminated waters beneath them. “If it comes down to it, I’ll walk to wherever we go, or ride a horse instead.”
The boat was pulled slowly in the waters by the suction around them. Long moments of silence passed as it sailed, until finally they came to a dock cut out of stone. Alinar and Vansir leapt from the ship as they came close, using a rope connected to the deck to tie the vessel off to a stalagmite.
“Come with us,” Alinar said, reaching down his hand to give Lilya a lift up.
“Thank you.” She took his hand, stepping to the cavern floor. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vansir reach down to help Clare. The girl stepped back on the deck, away from him. “It’s nothing personal,” Lilya told him. “Help someone else, Vansir.”
“I’m sorry, milady,” Vansir told Clare, then reached a hand to help Amari up.
Amari gave Clare a hand.
Juniper and Cypress grabbed a few sacks of necessities and began to follow the group through the cavern.
Lilya shivered in the cold walkways cut out of the cavern’s depths. They walked in silence, not sure what to say to each other, still feeling one another out. Fire licked the walls from sconces as they passed. Then, moments later, they entered a room with a vast ceiling. In its center were three people standing side by side in the emptiness. Only stalagmites, stalactites and torches marked the floor and ceiling of the chamber.
One man was larger than Alinar and wore a flowing blue robe. “Welcome,” he spoke in a booming voice. “What a surprise it is to see you here, young Lilya.”
She looked at him for a moment, measuring him. She knew this man from somewhere.
He took a step toward her. “Do you recognize me? Years ago, I frequented your father’s castle halls, to beg for donations of food for the poor of Cush’s countryside. I did not look like this, though.” He motioned to his clothes. “I came wearing rags, so that he would believe I was one of them.”
“I remember you now.” She came up to him, shaking his massive hand and feeling dwarfed by his size. “I apologize for his lack of caring for others.”
“Do not apologize for your father. I have heard that you were very different from him in Havilah. It is an honor to have you among us.”
Lilya looked closer at the other two elders now. One man was short like the two who greeted them at the cavern’s entrance. He was wrinkled with age, but still looked extremely strong. The other, dressed in a cloak and a red hood, was about her size. Beneath the hood she saw gentle eyes looking to her own.
Those eyes, she thought. How could those be the eyes of an elder?
“Greetings, my name is Felicia,” the cloaked one said, pulling her red hood down to reveal a youthful woman’s face. Her beauty was entrancing, even to Lilya. Who was this woman?
Lilya shook her hand. “How can you be an elder?” she asked. “You are so young.”
“I am very old. Perhaps I will explain why I look like this, at some other time, perhaps not.” Felicia grinned, something unreadable behind her eyes. “Regardless, I welcome you to our world. I have heard much of you, and even of your companions. I assume that these two with you are two of Thomas’s guards from Havilah.”
“We are, milady,” Cypress said, kneeling, as if to kiss her hand.
> “Stand,” Felicia said. “No-one rules here. Remember that.”
The tall elder reached into a pocket in his robe and pulled out something. “Here is a map of the tunnels, although they stretch beyond what is scribed here. By the way, my name is Afaris. I apologize for not giving my name sooner.”
Lilya reached out, taking the folded parchment in her palm. “And where do we stay?”
The short old man, dressed in worn workman’s clothes, stepped up to greet her. “I am Coal.” His shake was firm. His hand felt like stone as it formed to hers. “I will show you to your rooms.”
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