Chapter Three: Hepthys

Hepthys surfaced slowly into consciousness—something she never thought she would experience again. The muddy sounds of the world about her permeated the black dreams that had dragged her down. Then, a pungent scent of something cooking over fire, though what that was, she couldn’t identify. And the fire itself, redolent with smoke, popping and crackling.

I should be dead.

The thought was a stark one. It was true. There was no space for error in her plan, and an error there had been. She dove hard for the uncharted blue world under her, and opened the hatch to bail out, thinking she could catch the air currents and fly to safety. Her ship was a Heru-class skiff; it could survive a crash landing, but there was no guarantee she wouldn’t turn into jelly in the process. So she had opened the passenger hatch and jumped. The back end clipped one of her wings. She saw a flash of white, and then nothing.

Death was next. It had to be.

This was not the afterlife. It was far too dark. She wasn’t dancing on the surface of the sun with Atumites from antiquity to modern day, her feathers become sunlight. Instead, it was the velvet blue-black of night, with the only light coming from a crackling yellow flame she couldn’t quite see.

She took stock of herself first. Her clothing was moist and stiff. It chafed when she tried to move. Her wings felt heavy against her back, pulling at the places on her shoulders where the alchemists had attached the wing struts. She was on her back, and didn’t try to move them. She was too scared.

She lay on a hammock stretched between two trees. She knew trees from her Academy trips to other Fire Worlds, and from the occasional wealthy Atumite eccentric who kept them in pots. She was positively surrounded by them here, and more extended behind and to both sides of her. In the direction of the fire, she could hear a rushing sound that took her a long time to identify. She had only ever seen oceans once, on a trip to Tethys. It had been terrifying, that much water in one place, all sloshing around. She’d clutched Shabunet’s hand reflexively, unsure of what to do. It wasn’t until she saw the native Tethyns surfacing, their blue-green skin glistening, their alchemical gills pulsing, that she calmed herself. This wasn’t Tethys. This wasn’t even a Fire World. But, she told herself, it is nothing you have not seen. Nothing you have to fear.

The hammock was comfortable, a cleverly-woven net of vines. They retained a springy elasticity even though they were dead. Having no color of their own, they were drinking in that of the night, or of the campfire. The hammock was sized for someone much bigger than she.

She was growing bolder. As she moved only slightly to check her surroundings, she found that every part of her was mobile. There was no blast of white-hot pain. Aches, certainly—her entire body ached. In the flickering light, she imagined she saw bruises over her smooth skin, but nothing like the kinds of injuries that should be sustained after a high-atmosphere emergency bailout. She should, by all rights, be dead.

The rattle of a man clearing his throat made her freeze.

She couldn’t depend on the mores of Atum-Ra to work here. Many Fire Worlds that didn’t understand what she and the other Atumites did: that men were shortsighted and emotional, and had to be protected from their own worst instincts. She would have to tread lightly in this place.

That impression was reinforced when she finally realized what she was looking at.

The light from the fire was largely blocked, and she had assumed the object blocking had been a looming boulder. It was, in fact, a man. In the dim light she could see bare shoulders and a shaven head, in a size she had seen only rarely.

Hepthys looked at her situation rationally: she was dressed, she had been taken care of. If this man intended her harm, he would have done something already.

She shifted, sitting up and dangling her legs over the side of the hammock. Her wings felt queerly heavy. When she attempted to move them, she felt the first jab of pain, a warning from her expanded body not to attempt that again. She must have let out a grunt, because the man-mountain sitting by the fire half-turned.

The first thing she saw was his teeth, large and white and blunt, showing in a friendly and pleased smile. The man’s face was open and honest, his features broad and inviting. A shock of hair came from his chin, bound by several leather thongs. She’d learn later that it wobbled whenever he spoke. He wore a second leather thong around his bullish neck, this one decorated with black glass beads and white teeth, triangular and serrated, obviously from the mouth of a predator. His arms were long and covered in muscles like rock formations. Intricate tattoos ran halfway down one of those arms, turning it into breathtaking art.

“You’re awake!” he said with genuine pleasure. “How you feelin’? Better?”

He had the rough dialect of an Ash Worlder. He spoke her language, but it was, to her ears, a debased version.

“I am,” she said. “I suppose I have you to thank for that?”

He waved it off. “Nah, I just did what anybody’d do when someone falls out of the sky.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her lip. “Thank you anyway.”

“Name’s Kono,” he said. “You hungry?”

“I’m Hepthys. And yes.” This last was met with a rumble from her stomach. She put a hand over it, embarrassed. A true Kheremun would never have allowed such a display. Good thing she wasn’t Kheremun. And never would be without more discipline, her internal scolding voice reminded her.

“Come on then. Siddown. Little fire probably just what you need.”

Hepthys dismounted the hammock. She was standing on dirt. She never quite got used to that, and only ever saw it on her Academy trips. If this was indeed an Ash World, she would soon be used to dirt. Tired of it, even. For now, it was a wonder, like everything else in this place.

Hepthys hobbled over to the fire. Though her movements were met with more aches, she mostly moved that way out of caution. Whatever Kono had done to save her, he had done quite well.

The fire was built in a hole in the sand, bordered by craggy lava rocks to keep the hole’s integrity intact. Sticks blazed merrily inside, and over it, Kono had erected a scaffolding where he was roasting long strips of meat. This was the source of the pungent smell that had helped wake Hepthys, like something between raw meat, mushrooms, and the pleasant sting of citrus. Despite the unfamiliarity, her stomach moaned again.

Hepthys sat nearby Kono, but just out of reach. He felt like someone to trust, and he had done something to earn it, but she couldn’t escape the thought that he was a savage, and a large one at that, and she was unarmed and injured. She should have jumped out with her staff. But, she reminded herself, she would have lost it in the fall anyway.

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As she sat, she got a better view of her would-be rescuer. If anything, he was even more massive in the light. His legs, though short for his arms and torso, were nonetheless as powerfully muscled as his arms. He carried an impressive belly and posterior, both perfectly round. For clothing, he wore only a pair of canvas breeches, but in a rougher weave than she had ever seen. His hands and feet were gigantic, his fingers large and blunt.

He reached down beside him and picked up a brown ball. Those fingers bit into it, and he pulled, and with a wet gasp, it came open to reveal a bright yellow fruit inside.

“Here you go. Take the edge off while wait.”

He handed over half of the fruit. Hepthys took it, noting that it had split perfectly evenly, as though made for it. She put it up to her face and inhaled. The scent was light, but also sweet. It reminded her of flowers. She took a small bite, shaving off a few bits with her incisors. The taste exploded over her tongue like the concentrated nectar of a hundred flowers. Before she knew it, she had gnawed the fruit down to the brown husk.

“Here, take this half too,” Kono said, handing over the other. “I already ate enough.”

“Thank you.”

When Hepthys was finished, her cheeks were sticky with the juice. Kono pulled a strip of meat off the fire and placed it in the half-husk she was holding, then he did the same with the other.

“Let it sit for a breath or two,” he said. “Soaks up the rest of the juice.”

Hepthys nodded. The strips were whitish, in places turned brown from the fire, emitting the rich scent of smoke.

“So, while we waiting, hope you don’t mind. I been thinkin’, over an’ over…what happen? What kind of person falls from sky? What kind of person has sails on back?”

“Sails?”

Kono pointed over her head. She knew her wings loomed there, probably glittering in the firelight. “What you call those?”

“My wings?”

Kono shook his head. “Wings?”

“You know, for flying?”

Kono continued to frown.

“Do things fly here? Birds? Animals?”

“Oh, sure. We have fish. Bugs. The kalao, he fly. The ao’apua too. Don’t do it with sails, though.”

“Wings,” she said. Though he was an Ash Worlder, inevitably ignorant, she wouldn’t listen to him insulting the work of the finest alchemists on Atum-Ra, nor the marks of a true Atumite.

“Okay, okay. Wings. You fly?”

She nodded. “I can. Or I could. I don’t think so now.”

“The sails—wings, sorry. They broken.”

“I think so. How did you know?”

“When I pull you in, they wobble. Didn’t feel right. Don’t know how else to say it.”

She had an inkling of what he meant. The problem was probably in the joint, the weakest point in the wings themselves. If she had access to her ship, she could get them fixed without much trouble.

“Where is my ship?” she asked.

“Ship? I don’t see a ship.”

“I came from a ship.”

Kono shook his head. “You came from the sky. No ships in the sky.”

Hepthys sighed. “A sky-ship.”

Kono watched her. Intelligence glinted in his eyes, past the warm good humor and broken sentences. “Where you from anyway?”

“Far away,” she said.

“East?”

“Yes, to the east,” she said. She tried to remember her lessons from the Academy in talking to Ash Worlders. They could become frightened when they learned they were but one planet in a sky of millions. Stories about mobs of them, complete with burning torches and primitive weapons, killing a hapless visitor were far too common to be entirely fictional.

“All right then,” he said, and Hepthys found herself sighing in relief.

“Where are we?”

Kono’s mountainous brow creased like an avalanche ready to happen. He pointed to a direction that was almost north. “Two days that way, you got home. Kamo’loa.” He pointed approximately east, then, out beyond the dark waters. “Three days,” and here he waggled his hand as though to add sort of to the calculation, “that way, you got Mele.” He pointed south. “Four, five days, countin’’the wind be kind or cruel, you got Pua’ui.”

Hepthys nodded, as though any of this helped her in the slightest. “What do you call all of this?”

“All of what?”

“The world.”

Kono frowned again.

“The ocean, the ground, the sky...all of it,” she clarified.

“Oh, we call it Waiola. You got another name in the nations?”

“No. Waiola does nicely.” She tried to remember her cartography classes in Academy, but couldn’t for the life of her recall the name Waiola coming up once.

“You nations. You have names for yourselves. What do you call your nation?”

“Atum-Ra.” She saw no reason to lie. It was the name of her homeland, though it was a planetwide nation.

Kono thought it over. “Nope,” he decided. “Never heard tell.”

“Do you hear much from the...nations?” She paused toward the end of the sentence, wondering if she had forgotten a crucial bit of information here. She detected the fear and loathing beneath Kono’s good cheer when he said the word.

“They stay on their side of the water, ‘til they don’t.” He paused and fixed her once again with that gaze that was far too keen for his cheerful façade. “Why you here?”

“Passing through,” she choked out. It was the truth. “On my way to another...to another island.”

“Which one?”

“Thorn,” she said, naming the planet she had been traveling to when she had been abruptly waylaid.

“I know every island in this sea for a month in every direction. Never heard tell of no Thorn.”

“It’s very, very far away.”

“You got no arms, so you not plundering.”

She stiffened. He was going to ask her why he was going. Kono saw her stiffen up, and he softened, nodding.

“Not plundering, don’t matter why you go I s’pose.” He picked up a stick and poked at the embers. One sparked, catching on a piece of log and flaring into a popping yellow flame. He looked like he’d been carved from living stone, his eyes glittering like flecks of obsidian. “I never seen no girl fall out of the sky. Never heard tell of sky-ships, of Thorn, of Atum-Ra, or nothin’ else. I’d call them words smoke,” and here he gestured with the stick at the fresh rise of gray his ministrations had caused, “but I breathe the truth in ‘em.”

Kono looked up into Hepthys’s face and broke into a grin, leaning back.

“Look to me like I fell into somethin’!” Kono burst out laughing, a guileless, joyful sound that couldn’t help brighten Hepthys a little bit.

“So you’ll help me?”

“Oh, you never had no worries ‘bout that. Sleep and food to fix you up new, then,” he shrugged, “you go home.”

Even this innocent thought of returning home without completing her quest turned Hepthys’s stomach. She would go to Thorn before she ever saw Atum-Ra again. She had sworn it, and to do anything less would be to mark her a failure in the eyes of her mother.

“I need my ship.”

“Landed that way,” he said, pointing east-northeast. “I think.”

“Great,” Hepthys said, pulling herself gingerly to her feet. “Let’s go.”

“Oh no. You need rest, sky-girl. You know how far you fall?”

She pressed her lips into a line. “Yes, I do.”

“Then you know how close you came to sleepin’ in the deep.”

“How did I survive?”

“You got lucky. I’m ma’hanu,” he said with obvious pride. “But lucky ain’t no better than sleep and food. Besides, you think we going to find some sky-ship in the middle of the night? Oh no.”

“We go at first light then.”

“No. You need sleep. Rest. Food. Time to knit up again.”

She resisted the annoyance. Her ship would provide all the medical attention she needed. “I don’t have time. I’m fine. Whatever you did, I have bumps and bruises and anything else I need is with my ship. You know where it crashed and you’re the only one who can help me.”

“Even if you find it, the ship hit the water.”

“So?”

“Ships that sink, sink,” Kono said. “That’s it for them.”

“Not this ship.”

Kono sighed. “I ain’t gonna win this, am I?”

Hepthys shook her head.

“All right, sky-girl. First light, we sail out.” He took another strip of meat off the rack. “At least have more to eat.”

Pleased with herself, she accepted another long strip piled in her broken rind, and allowed it to soak. The ship would likely be fine, and with some cursory repairs. Could even be ready to fly before long. Assuming those who had caused her to crash had moved on, she could finish her quest with a minimum of fuss. This would be a weird detour she could tell her daughters about when they were ready to spread their wings.

She looked across the fire at Kono. He was a strange, savage man, but he was pliable enough. His concerns had been over her well-being, and he was accepting her story of what happened. For a traveling companion for a day or so, he’d be tolerable. She was happy she wouldn’t have to know him for too long after that.