filling half the sky with a buzzing electrical discharge, wearing it thin so
that parts of it were as pale as stars. In a perfect circle around the
great, thin, crooked mountain, though, the celestial fire just burnt out,
becoming thin whisps of glowing vapor and then, in a smaller circle, nothing
at all. The ring of stone the traders call Sigil, floating above the top of
forever, seemed to swell like a contented hunting cat after a good meal.
Mother said that's just a trick of the eye. Everything's something's trick,
I told her.
The ground that night was smooth and hard, like marble, covered with a fine
purple moss. I was standing it, staring at the storm wrapped in a cloak sewn
up with charms that Mother thought would keep the sky from snatching me up.
Because I fell from the sky as a baby, Mother thinks the sky is always
plotting to take me back. It never took the frogs back, or the clinging
vines, though, so I'm sure she's deluded. Everyone in the village has a
different theory about where we sky kids rained from. The olders call us
suns-blood. The normal kids call us sun-poop or pee-people. Nuncle Carl
thinks we fell from Sigil, but whenever he starts to say that Mother always
purifies the air with a gesture. Don't start theorizing and talking about
Sigil, she warns, or we'll attract factions. You can never get those out.
Down near the Spireward Sea there's a village where nobody has kids anymore
because they've decided nothing's real unless it's created directly from
their minds. The cradles there are all filled with shadowy half-children you
can only see from the corner of your eye, but they insist it's only a matter
of time before they get it right. Sigil's Pain itself, Mother says.
It all gets really tedious, so I come out and watch the heavens. Normally no
one joins me, not even the other sky kids, but sometimes I can find Seed.
Even in the dark, I can usually see his eyes glowing in the distance. Seed's
dead, I guess. He says he used to live in a house like me, but he got sick
and had to go away. Now he lives out in the endless harvest with the other
dead people and cuts plants all day and night, except when he hangs around
here. I asked him if he wanted to stay with us, but Seed says he can't yet.
He says he has to find another focus or he'll fade away. I don't want to
ever be dead.
Mother says even suns die, and points out the hill where the villagers
buried one. I wonder what it's doing now.
Someday I'm going to run away with the bariaur, and I'm bringing Seed with
me. The bariaur don't ever stay in one place; Nuncle Carl says they escaped
the story that birthed them long ago. I'm sure the bariaur know how Seed
could do the same. Seed says he's not so sure.