Free Short Stories 2013 Read online

  At least I kept the catchbag! Hate to lose all those rockbites. The rockbites looked, and to a casual soundping even sounded, like chunks of rock, but inside was some of the best meat to be found on all of Hotwall, and she'd gotten lucky and found a whole bed of the creatures. Whenever she and any of the other midsters – children her age, not quite adults but old enough to do useful things – were out playing Earth Against Sky, or Orekath Chase, or anything else, it was expected they'd bring back something for the Pod, too. And the Archive-reading told me a trick for locating the rockbites without having to guess.

  Heatwaver ahead. She could also hear the squeaky groaning of a vent, and warmer water buffeted her with the sharp tang of ventsmoke and feedfumes. Focused pings gave a return that told her it was a narrow band of waver, so she squeezed Bluntspear's top arm twice.

  The big haulfin gathered himself, taking such a large volume of water in that she could feel his whole body expand, and then blasting it out behind him with such force that she was almost torn off by the roaring passage of water. For an instant there was a flare of heat and stinging, concentrated ventsmoke, and then they were through, much cooler water as they passed over the edge of Hotwall and into the open water beyond.

  The water was much clearer here, a down-current from above clearing the turbulence away. She could see all of Bluntspear easily; in fact, if there had been anything within twenty spears she could've seen it clearly, and probably blurry images for another thirty spears or so. And it was clearing even more. She cut her own glow as much as possible and stroked Bluntspear, who immediately dimmed to an almost invisible ghost.

  Of course, most hunters wouldn't rely on eyesight; skinsight, sensing the very motions and interplay of movement that was life, and soundsight that could pinpoint and track, those were the tools of the hunter. . . and the hunted. She didn't sense anything dangerous near, but this would be the most dangerous part of her trip – farthest from the Pod and the Seven Vents region that was guarded and watched, in open water away from easy shelter. She pressed closer to Bluntspear, alert and tense.

  Suddenly she sensed. . . something. It hummed in her skin, a warm yet piercing sensation that was terribly faint, maybe a thousand spears off, but growing slowly closer.

  From above. Falling, from thousands of spears above.

  Falling, and singing as it fell.

  What is that?

  She focused all her attention in that direction, risked a quick set of pings.

  Nothing! There were no returns, nothing coming back, yet still the singing, haunting skinsight dropped, with a fluttering like a speared flakefish settling to the bottom.

  An involuntary flash of blue-green awe and dread lit the water around her. Dropping from the Sky…

  But that was all stories. Steadyglow and most of the other Elders were clear on that. There were no demons in the ground, they said, and nothing beyond the sky. It was a game, something she and Jetgrab had been playing just a little while ago, one of the games all the people had played when they were young.

  But she'd been raised with the old stories, read them carved on weedrecords in the Seven Vents' Archives, and what was drifting down towards her was like nothing the Elders had ever described.

  Nothing again. . . no, wait. Something. Something tiny!

  The skin-singing thing was barely trackable, something she'd be able to grip between two fingers, but though it was still a hundred spears away its skinsong was like an entire school of brightswimmers.

  And now she could see it. A glow was descending in slow, graceful spiral towards her, a glow of pure white light such as she had never even imagined, something that even the best lightshapers in her Pod would have strained to replicate for even an instant. Yet it glowed perfectly, steadily, shimmering ever clearer and brighter as it swung this way, then that, pirouetted and turned.

  From the Sky. A Skyspark. There wasn't any other explanation; this was no fish, it was no hunter, it was nothing anyone had ever seen or heard or sensed, not in all the Archives, not in all the tales, only in legends that her people had relegated to children's tales ages ago.

  She urged Bluntspear forward and up. Her hearts were rippling in overdrive, and her breath came as quickly as though she had been sprinting away from some terrible threat, so much water passing through her that she had to counterbalance the slight thrust. But I can't miss this! I can't!

  As she got closer, she could see it looked almost like an eye, a round gleaming orb held by . . . something. Another thrill of awe went through here. Straight lines like that. . . smoothness and echo of something like deepglass, touches of spearstuff. . . it looks. . . carved.

  She reached out towards it, even as Bluntspear shied and slowed, uncertain.

  Without warning the Skyspark blinked and vanished; it seemed to her that it had first compressed, collapsed into itself and then exploded, a perfect shockwave of light and sound and skinthrill achingly beautiful in its purity. She felt a stinging in her high ridgeline and tasted something sharp, alien, bitter in the ocean.

  The Skyspark was gone, the last echoes of its mystery dying away. She reached back and felt along her ridgeline, found . . . something stuck there. She couldn't quite pull it out, but it didn't hurt much.

  She looked back up, into the empty, black void from which it had descended, and wondered. But now she also sensed faint skin-echoes approaching from farther out, and knew the Skyspark's beautiful death had called other things to it, and she felt a spurt of fear. Orekath!

  She turned Bluntspear and urged him homeward as fast as he could swim, casting one last glance behind and up towards the place from whence impossibility had come.

  ii. Questions.

  "Vuundi!" came her mother's voice. "Oh, thank the Seas you're all right."

  She let her mother twine arms and fingers around her, and didn't even protest the use of her given name this time. For a moment she just lay there, letting herself pretend to be a child, and breathed a ripple of relief. The Seven Vents still stand, the pod's all right.

  "Hmmm, yes," said Steadyglow, his massive form slowly catching up to Heatdancer – Blushpark's mother. "We were concerned, especially when young Hurunnda got here ahead of you."

  "Jetgrab's here? Good." She extricated herself from her mother's grip. "Is. . . is everyone else okay? Was anyone hurt?"

  Steadyglow pulsed reassuringly. "A few minor injuries, and the east netcage pulled apart, so we've lost part of the farmschool, and the Archives will have to be reinforced again. But no serious injuries." His colors rippled pensively. "But unless fortune of the Sky has echoed widely, I fear we shall hear worse news from other pods."

  She fumbled at her side and pulled the catchbag off Bluntspear's harness. "Here, Elder. Thirty rockbites."

  "Ho, now, well done, and much needed now. But. . . what do I smell on you, Vuundi? Your shining flickers oddly, and your voice is trembling. Were you attacked?"

  She saw the quick flash of rose that gave her the nickname of Blushspark; it always happened when she was nervous and embarrassed around the elders, and sometimes around the other midsters. "Not really, though there were some hunting orekath close once. But…"

  She turned her ridgeline towards Steadyglow. "Elder Pollesi," she said, being properly formal, "Something is stuck in my ridgeline, and I . . . don't want to say anything until you look at it, smell it, sense it. I'm. . . not sure what is real, right now."

  There was a reason the Elder was called 'Steadyglow'; nothing fazed him, nothing surprised him, and he never acted in haste or without great forethought. She could see him recognize just how serious she was by the fact that she was never this formal, and that meant that she felt this was important enough to speak of even with the need to recover from the worldshake.

  "Very well, Vuundi-Blushspark. Hold yourself still, then."

  He drifted over to her and concentrated on her; she could feel as well as hear the vibrations as he directed his own soundsight upon her.

  "Extraordinary," he said
after long moments. "It is . . . an object, a fragment, of something, perhaps a finger's width and length. I have never sensed anything quite like it, and the smell that clings to it is…" he trailed off, then flickered a smile. "Unique. Sharp, deep, strange. It was driven into you with considerable force; you are fortunate indeed that it has done no real damage. I can see where it has penetrated and if you wish I will remove it."

  "Let me do that, Elder," her mother said, to her relief. Steadyglow was wise and kind, but one of the things he wasn't was a trained healer, unlike Heatdancer. "Now hold still. Let me get out a stickyseal." She pulled one of the squashy blobs – squeezed from one of the creatures that lived right on the edges of the Vents – and held it in the fingers of one arm as she gently twined fingers of the second around the fragment of the Skyspark and then braced herself with her third arm and her tailgrips to give a quick pull. There was a spark of pain, echoed in her own light, and then the stickyseal was pressed down, stopping the bleeding and soothing the pain.

  She didn't have to ask for the shard; her mother knew her well, and handed her the sharp-pointed thing, curved and white and strange.

  Many of the others had gathered by now, and were staring in confusion at the tiny enigma. "You have a story to tell us, I think."

  "Yes, I do." She breathed in and out, letting the water flutter around her, calming herself, remembering. Then she began to speak.

  When she was done, even the less-excitable members of the Pod were flickering in rose and blue. "A Skyspark?" Steadyglow said finally, slowly. "A light that fell from the Sky?"

  "I don't know what else to call it, Elder," she said. "It sang in light and skinsight. I can't even echo that light, really. It was something like this," she did the smallest, brightest, purest pulse she could, "but that's nothing, not even close, it's muddy and unclear and dull compared to what the Skyspark was like."

  "Hmm, yes. May I see that . . . shard again?" He took the extended object, passed it near his sensing spiracles, down his own senseline, held it close to his eyes and shone light on it from all angles. "Blushspark, you have always been truthful, and this is indeed something beyond our knowledge. Yet. . . this thing looks to me as though it was made, though I cannot imagine of what, or how. It does not seem to be part of – if you will pardon me for speaking what is obviously in your mind – some ineffable creature from the Sky, that helped place our Middle World between the Earth and Sky."

  She couldn't restrain the blush at all this time, and the water around her was rosy for a moment. "Sir, I –"

  He laughed gently, pulsing in red and orange. "I am not making fun of you, Blushspark. Your description. . . was almost poetic, and you have gone through something indeed vastly stranger than I think any of us can understand, so it would be even more strange if thoughts of our legends did not come to you. But you yourself have sought understanding as much as any your age, delving into the histories, reading the Archives until your mother dragged you out on more than one occasion. What do you think?"

  She smiled gratefully at the Elder. "I. . . don't know, Elder. Nothing I've read is anything like what I heard and felt. I just know it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I will hear that song forever. I want to know where it came from."

  He sighed, a rippling flutter through the water. "As would we all, I am sure. But the Sky. . . you know it is not a safe journey. Often breath is short there, short and painful, for the feedfumes and ventsmoke accumulate in the high, until brought down by the great currents. And with this great worldshake, the predators will be agitated, in patrols for the injured and confused for some time.

  "And you know of things that fall from the sky. Stones, usually, yes, but we also know that any who have sought their origin have never found anything. . . or, if they did, they never returned to tell what they had found."

  She bobbed her understanding reluctantly. "You're saying. . . there's no point in looking."

  "I hesitate to be so absolute about it, for this is no rock, that is certain. But we have much work to do for the Pod of Seven Vents, and surely you understand we can spare no people on a risky expedition to the Sky without some reason to believe there is more than this single mystery." He smiled gently. "If there truly is something there, something so wonderful, it will not disappear tomorrow, or the day after."

  Blushspark's heart wanted to argue, but her mind knew the Elder was right; he usually was. Suddenly she felt exhaustion sweeping over her; terror, awe, and shock were taking their toll. "Yes, Elder. M. . . mother? Can I go rest?"

  "Of course you can, Vuundi."

  She found their weave-house and curled up on her perch; the memory of the pure, impossible song echoed through her mind even as sleep took her.

  iii. Mysteries.

  "Pull! Pull!"

  Blushspark drew in as much water as she could and charged, gripping the braidrope as tightly as possible. It grew taut, fighting her and the other five midsters as they, in turn, fought to get to their anchor positions.

  This time she just made it, clamping her tail gripper onto her designated anchor-rock in the shaping line.

  Glancing back, she saw the others were also firmly locked down. The huge blade-shaped leaf of cultivated, pure spearweed, more than twenty spears long, curved now, bent into a half-circle. Elders, directed by Steadyglow, hooked their own lines on and began pulling slowly and steadily to bend it more.

  This was a delicate operation, despite the massive strength of the spearweed; pulling it too far could cause it to snap rather than bend, which would be a terrible waste of such a fine leaf and could be dangerous to those nearby. But it had to be bent farther than the actual intended shape, or it would spring back too far. You could tether it into shape to some extent (and you usually did to give the support rib some resilience), but no one wanted a building that was trying to pull itself apart.

  And as this was the main arch for reinforcing the Archives, it was especially important.

  Blushspark kept her grip, though her arms were starting to ache from the fingers down. This was the last of the major repairs; a dozen cycles had gone by while the netcage had been painstakingly rewoven and restocked; some of the tame fish and other animals had stayed, a few more had been recaptured or wandered back, but catching enough more to support the Pod had taken the most time. Other minor damage remained, but overall the Seven Vents had taken the worldshock well.

  As Elder Steadyglow had feared, some of the other pods had not been so lucky; over in the healing weavehouse, her mother was tending the three survivors of Linewall Pod; she'd heard part of the story the exhausted, terrified Elder Yiinimi had gasped out, that when the worldshake hit, the entire Linewall had split open and obliterated their whole valley in boiling ventwater; had the three of them not been on the ridge they would have died instantly, and even then they had been badly burned by the uprush of deadly liquid.

  "Release!" came the command, and she gratefully let go. The spearweed uncoiled. . . but only to the limits of its restraining ties, and the tension they could hear when the ties were pulled showed it had accepted the shaping. A whistle of triumph echoed through the valley.

  Able to relax finally, Blushspark took out the shard and looked at it again. The alien tang was fainter, but still there. No one she'd shown it to, not even the scouts and messengers who'd visited from the other Pods, had ever seen or sensed anything like it – except one scout who had been not too far from their valley, who thought he might have heard, very faintly, the song she described, or something like it. This had been just before the Skyspark had burst, because he also thought he'd heard something pop.

  "We could go see if we could find any more pieces," Jetgrab said, drifting around in front of her to see the shard.

  She blinked all three eyes in surprise and pleasure. "Would you? I mean, there's probably nothing to find, I was at least forty spears above the earth and I'm not exactly sure where. I mean, I'm pretty sure, but not exactly, if you know what I mean."

  Jetgrab
flickered rapid green amusement. "I know just what you mean, but hey, we've done our work and both old Steadyglow and Designer Turnwheel say we're free. And maybe the smell will lead us to them."

  She saw the Elder passing by. "Elder? May we? Go look for more pieces of my Skyspark?"

  Steadyglow rocked his body back and forth. "It was near the end of the Hotwall, hmm?" At her affirming bob, he flickered indecisively. "A bit dangerous for two midsters. But. . . all right. Take Bluntspear, and watch yourselves. I do not want you taking chances. The Pods have lost enough people in this last tragedy, none of us want to lose more; yet we know that to seek answers is one of the highest callings."

  "We'll be careful, Elder Pollesi, I promise!" she said earnestly, using the old one's given name to show how seriously she took this.

  "All right, then."

  Getting Bluntspear from the grazing nets took only a short time, and then the two of them headed out of the valley towards the far end of Hotwall.

  She felt her tension rising as they got closer – unreasonable and silly of me, she reminded herself. This was something that's never happened to anyone before; it won't happen to me again.

  "Are we in the right spot?" Jetgrab murmured with the dimmest speech he could manage. They were mostly dark now, watching with skinsight and with sound for anything approaching.

  "I'm. . . not sure." She tried to think back. There was a heatwaver. Very narrow, one I could get through rather than have to swim a hundred spears to get around. She listened and risked a few probe-pings.

  There! On that ridge! The sound was right, and if it was in that direction then…

  "Here. It was right about here that I saw it." She remembered the echo-navigation sights she'd gotten in those moments. "And I swam up to meet it there. So…"

  "Hmph. I see what you mean. Lot of water for it to fall through in little pieces, and there'll be plenty of muck down here. Still, worth a try. I'd like to have a shard of my own, and if we get enough pieces we might even be able to put it together for the Archives."