The Fall

If you squint a little harder, you would see that, just a little to the side of the gargantuan wooden spire, is the figure of a young girl falling with no ground to catch her—which isn’t good for that girl, because that tree is all that makes up the entire known world. Everything, and anything, begins with the Tree.

I’m not sure who began calling it the Tree. My Cluster, the Kunoi, calls it the Fusou, literally meaning ‘the aiding tree’, because that’s the only thing we can see it to be. We have small trees, tall trees, bushy trees, lanky trees; and then we have the literal ground we stand on, the branches we build our houses upon, the gigantic potfruits from which we drink our water … we have trees, but at the root of it all, we have the Tree.

It may be hard to picture why the Tree is such a big deal, so let me retry from the beginning: all living creatures live on the Tree. We live in its empty hollows and make our nests on its twigs. Its branches are large enough for us to hold village meetings, and its meaty leaves are where our trees grow, our fields cultivated, and our children play. We know the Tree is not all there is—we have the great dark sky above and the Cloud Blanket far below—but everything our wings or claws could touch, everywhere we could land and rest our sore muscles, is always a place on the Tree. Well, I’ll have to be exempt from the ‘wings or claws’ part for one very specific reason, but we’ll get there.

The Tree is so big, in fact, that we don’t know how far it goes. When we look up at the sky, even with the sun to illuminate it, we still can’t gauge how tall the Tree is. It was as if the Tree just slowly faded into the blue. Or maybe our eyes are simply not sharp enough. Who knows? All we know is that looking high up shows us that the megalithic spire that is the Tree goes up infinitely, and if not for the Cloud Blanket far down below, I would’ve sworn that the Tree goes equally infinitely down there.

Oh, me? I’m that girl you see falling down by the Tree, by the way.

Also, that part I mentioned, the part where I’m exempt from wings or claws? It’s because I’m literally the only moving thing in this entire world without them.

All the winged people have wings—it’s literally in their name, come on. All the animals have claws. The two cyocaluses guarding the entrance to our village have wings and claws. I mean, when the Tree is your entire world, you kind of need one or both of those to navigate and survive, you know?

I was somehow an exception to that.

In other words, there’s no way I’d ever survive this.

The Falling is serious business. Takamatsu Village is located on the bottommost stratum of Kunoi Cluster—literally the very border between the wilderness down below and the winged people civilization up there. That’s only if we ignore the more primitive civilizations under our stratum, of course, but that’s exactly what the cyocaluses are supposed to guard us from. The gates stay guarded, and untouched from the wildlife outside, because our two reliable cyocaluses are fierce enough to keep things outside from ever setting foot in Takamatsu Village.

Takamatsu Village marks the difference between those who must hunt to live and those who have learned to farm, and it was exactly because of this great importance that we have one feature no other village in the Cluster does: the Precipice.

When you get thrown off the Precipice, it’s a heavy punishment we call the Falling.

Generally, you are not meant to survive the Falling. It’s not that it’s not survivable, but the entire point of the Falling is that even if you live, even if you survive the Fall itself, you would never make it back up to the Cluster. Ever.

They cut your wings before Falling you to make sure of that.

I blink. I’ve never really flown before—with my lack of wings since birth and all—but I am familiar with how the wind brushes on my face when I move quickly, so I thought the wind would only hurt if I let myself fall face-first. It was exactly why I tried turning my body around as soon as I noticed what was happening to me, but nope. I was definitely mistaken. My face is turned up facing the sky, and apart from the loud whooshing of the wind on my ears, I can still feel the wind slapping me. Or maybe that’s just my own long black hair on my face. There’s really no telling.

What can I do, what can I do…?

“Kawk!”

That was a familiar noise—a large, jet-black raven is suddenly diving through the air right next to me, and I can clearly feel what he feels at the time: “I’ll push you back into the Tree.”

No, the bird didn’t speak to me. Not even in my mind. I just simply meet his gaze, and I can feel the exact things he’s feeling. It feels both very vague and very vivid. It’s an odd sensation.

I frown at him. “I won’t survive at this speed.”

“Kawk!” Let’s use the leaves to slow your fall.

I try taking a deep breath to no real avail. I can feel the air growing thicker, and my chest feels weird. I think we’ve gone entirely past the stratum I’m familiar with, because this is definitely not the air I’m used to breathing. That can’t be good.

I guess I have nothing left to lose at this point. It may have been an accident, but I’ve been Fallen. Nobody in their right mind would care about the Fallen.

Nobody in their right mind would care about me.

Nobody ever did, anyway.

“Do it,” I choke.

The crow obeys.

He turns his tail, opens it wide, and steers his flight away from my body—far into the sinking sun on the horizon, disappearing from my sight. And he returns.

He returns fast.

I only had enough time to hug myself and ball up into fetal position before the crow crashes onto me with a force that should have been impossible for its size. The crash was calculated. He is not stupid—as I roll around in the air and lose the difference between up and down, I manage to tell just enough from my blurry surroundings that things suddenly turn dark, and true enough, I hit something that feels soft. A leaf of the Tree.

I’m back in the Tree’s hollows.

I’m back in the Tree.

Not that my Fall has stopped, but I’m back in the Tree.

My fall continues. I open up my posture and desperately try to cling onto something—anything—come on, there must be something for me to—

My hand manages to grasp a twig, which promptly snaps. I let out a scream that expends whatever air was left in my lungs, gasping for breath—

I fall, and I fall.

It’s not that everything is dark. The thing about the Tree is that it has holes, lots of them, from which sunlight can enter. It’s this very same sunlight that allows plants to grow, animals to bask, and smaller plants like moss to spread and cover the surface of every damn thing I tried to grab onto in my futile attempt to hang on for dear life.

No, no, no—

I smack onto another gigantic leaf, splashing the cold drops of water on its surface everywhere, and feel myself slowing down a little more.

I still fall. Just more slowly.

Huh. “Kotengu—”

As if cued, the crow answers my call and reappears by my side, flapping his wings frantically, ready to serve. As always, it feels as if he just transmits his present emotion to me—this time, he feels almost condescending, as if he was proud that he knows exactly what I’m thinking. Another leaf, girl?

“Please!”

Again, he obeys my request and makes a detour to slam my falling path onto another Tree leaf that breaks my fall. In just three more rolls, I find myself slumped on the ground—surprisingly, still in one piece.

I groan. I can feel bruises all over my body, and I think I lost my hair tie somewhere along the way when I Fell, but I don’t think I broke any bones. I remember my parents commenting that I was so much heavier than my hatch-sister, Gekka, even though we were of the same age and had similar postures. Maybe I have denser bones than my winged sister? I never had the time to think about it before. Probably still don’t.

What I do know is that I am still shaking, and it feels as if my legs have forgotten how to stand for a few moments. I don’t seem to have spoiled my pants, which is good. I’m already twelve years old, after all. That would be embarrassing.

My long hair definitely gets in the way of me doing anything, I’ll need to find a way to tie my hair up again. The air feels even heavier than when I noticed that I’ve left the stratum where I lived.

I try to catch my breath. It’s not easy.

I’ve seriously left Takamatsu Village.

Not only that, I’ve left all of civilization entirely. Nobody goes anywhere beyond the Village gates—all Kunoi winged people know that. I mentioned that the cyocaluses are supposed to ‘guard’ our gates, but even though they were tamed, deep underneath all the training they’ve gone through, they are still wild animals. They don’t discriminate between friends and foes. We use them to guard gates exactly because nobody ever has the need to leave the Village gates, so anything that tries to enter the Village must be a threat that does not belong. Cyocaluses are very territorial, so if it’s just about keeping things off of their borders, they would do an excellent job.

Nobody goes anywhere beyond the Village gates—all Kunoi winged people know that. Leaving the village means never coming back. It’s that simple.

I look back. Nothing noteworthy behind me.

I try to catch my breath. It’s not easy. Kotengu flies in circles above me, guarding me as he always had these past twelve years, as the sunlight slowly dies down.

The deep blue sky turns slowly to black as the Cloud Blanket vanishes into the darkness. I can vaguely make out that the air weighs on my shoulders, hugging me in a tight embrace. My ears don’t work right. My head feels like it would explode if I hold my breath just a little, but as my legs finally find their stand, my situation really, finally, starts to dawn on me: this isn’t the usual day.

I’m not reading juhi tablets in the articularium. I’m not avoiding the winged children in my class who found that their favorite pastime was to make sure I came home bleeding in places my parents couldn’t see. I’m not fighting my own shadows on the wall, and I’m not memorizing little details about animals and plants that I’ve never seen.

I’m not coming home after sundown to the same tired cold meal my mother left me out of pity.

This isn’t the usual day.

There is nothing here but plants that are probably older than the gates to my village.

Kotengu caws. He’s right—for now, I need to find a place to settle down. I’ll probably go hungry in the next few hours, but I’m used to holding it in whenever I didn’t want to see Gekka’s face on the dinner table. My muscles will probably realize how sore they’ve been pretty soon, but I’m used to hurting them practicing the right moves just in case I need to fight back. This is definitely the time to fight back.

And it just rises from deep in my belly: a whole slew of emotions, bubbling and bursting like boiled water.

I can still clearly picture the first time Gekka accidentally kicked me back with a gust of wind as she took her small body on a flight to catch up to her friends.

I still remember her friends seeing me losing balance to that blast, realization dawning in their eyes, as my life changed in the drop of a hat afterwards.

I remember my teacher pulling the hair out of her own head in frustration as she failed, again and again, to prove that her own students had done wrong by me—a child under the care of the very leader of Takamatsu Village.

I was born wingless. It was never my fault.

Nobody understands that.

Nobody in their right minds would care about the Fallen.

Nobody in their right minds would care about me.

Nobody ever did, anyway.

Oh, goodness. I’ve seriously left Takamatsu Village.

I can feel my tears welling up, but Kotengu caws once more from up above. The coldness of the air has grown palpable—I don’t remember the village ever being this cold this fast after the sun sets. I slap both of my cheeks, not letting my tear fall down. Not a single drop. This isn’t the time to cry or get angry. I need to find a place to sleep, and I need to find something I can eat. The Tree provides, yeah, but it provides equally to all that is alive.

That includes predators.

I shut my eyes for a second. I can’t be sure of how far I’ve fallen down, but given the thickness of the air here, I’m almost certain that I’m at least still somewhere the timberflyers could have reached. If I’m lucky, that means they should have records of the animals and plants they’ve encountered in this stratum.

If I’m lucky, that should mean I’ve read about them before in the articularium.

Timberflyers are explorers, winged people tasked with using their strong flights for the sake of expanding the reach of winged people everywhere. They write down everything they encounter on bark tablets. In Kunoi, we have a specific type of bark tablets called the juhi tablets, and we store our juhi tablets in the benzaidou, the articularium. Each village has one. The Takamatsu articularium was in fact my favorite place, because the Hallkeeper there was very strict about making sure that no ruckus happens. The tablets are fragile, after all, and reading takes concentration. Going to the articularium made sure my friends from school could not hurt me because they wouldn’t dare go against the Hallkeeper, and reading juhi tablets made me feel smarter, like I learned something new.

These juhi tablets may be the only lifeline I have right now.

“Kotengu,” I call. “Can you find me somewhere to rest? I can’t see well in the dark.”

That was not a lie. Compared to the average winged person, I definitely don’t see well in the dark. That said, we’re really not all that different, and it’s not like the Tree is entirely devoid of light at night. The sky is decorated with stars, but more importantly, there are many moons between them, some of which shine really brightly. Today is the day the blue moon and the yellow moon shine at nearly their brightest, so at least I can see anything that reflects their light, even here inside the Tree. I should still be able to find some edible fruits if I need to.

I should be okay. I should be just fine.

I have numerous things to think about after this, but for now, I need to settle down.

Kotengu flies away, and I decide to just sit down where I stood, awaiting the good news.

*

I ended up eating absolutely nothing that night. Kotengu found me a decent place in the hollow of a larger tree where I can lay down, and after brushing the place a little with nothing but my bare hands, I find myself a place to sleep. It was hard and cold—definitely nothing like Kunoi roosts, which have a network of fireways that keep its houses warm in the more frigid days—but nothing I couldn’t manage. My body hurts a little, but it’s not something I can’t shake off with just a little stretching. I see the same faces I’ve always seen on Takamatsu Village in my dreams. In a way, that’s something familiar to my life in the village. There’s an odd comfort to that consistency, I guess.

Kotengu patiently waits by my side the whole morning. Among the many oddities I found with this raven—apart from the fact that he doesn’t seem to have aged a day since I first remembered anything at all—is that he also never sleeps. At the very least, I’ve never seen him sleep, and I don’t know if the other villagers were just trying to mess with me, but they’ve also told me that Kotengu never sleeps. He doesn’t even eat or drink. The villagers have never seen him leave droppings anywhere, either. He exists, and he’s definitely real, but I couldn’t find anything on him in the articularium. I only know he looks like a raven—at least the articularium has a tablet on that bird—and nothing else. As far as ravens are concerned, they usually don’t share their emotions with others the way Kotengu shares his with me, and I definitely can’t share my emotions to other ravens other than Kotengu.

Oh, yeah, and other ravens also still eat and drink and leave droppings when they must.

For all that’s important, right now, I think I’m the one who needs her droppings taken care of.

Allowing myself to sleep just once has apparently helped my body sort out how it feels about everything, so I’ve started feeling again the things I normally feel. Hunger is one. The need to go pick flowers is another.

Back in Takamatsu Village, similar to the fireways, we had pathways dug out connecting every house in the roost. This pathway was located further than civilization, armed with contraptions that made a nearby potfruit garden constantly flow water through them. Top to bottom, higher slope through the decline, the pathway twisted and wound around like a large woodserpent’s path to just one goal: the dirt pool. That’s what we call it. Nobody really wanted to be around that area due to the stench—which was why it was located very far outside the roost—but our plants needed them, so they’re much closer to the pluck. The Tree would usually share its blessings to help our farms and gardens grow, but sometimes, we need some extra help. Our droppings do just that.

There’s no dirtway out here in the wild. I’ve read juhi tablets on animal excrement, and I’ve seen our farm animals take their dump (in another dirtway, just much smaller because our farms are located in the pluck of our village), but I’ve never really seen how wild animals handle these urges….

I look around. I think Kotengu has left to scrounge for food. Mine, not his. Maybe I can call him for a second … but experience tells me that my stomach would feel its emptiness the most after I’ve taken a dump. I’ll need the food he finds as soon as I’m done, so he’ll need to keep searching in the meantime. Maybe I can look around. Or maybe do it here … no, not here, I might lose the only place I can sleep.

I’ve long imagined myself leaving Takamatsu Village, but I never thought the matter of dropping would be one of the first issues I’d face.

I bite my lip.

I look around again. There’s another tree hollow nearby, but I don’t think I want to smell my own dropping when I sleep … I should find somewhere further away. Maybe somewhere I can find potfruits around so that I can grab some water whenever I need to. My stomach churns.

Ugh.

I really need to move. I need to get going. I need to get away. I need to find a place to sit and drop and find water and find the good leaves I need to later wipe with and then call again on Kotengu to make sure that there’s something I can eat for breakfast before I set off to find all my other needs and—

The next thing I know, I was already crouched underneath a large Tree leaf—mushrooms surrounded me, and there were mosses behind me, going straight into a crevice of the Tree that was so dark that I couldn’t even look into it. I have no idea if my droppings and other fluids would help the plants and mushrooms here grow like they do in our village pluck, but I really don’t have enough time to worry about that when my stomach threatens me with a bad time. I only know this place isn’t particularly close to where I slept. I hope that’s good enough.

It took another minute or two for me to sort the rest out, but I was finally done. Just as I feared, my stomach grumbles. The villagers used to always look at me weirdly whenever that happened, because apparently their stomachs don’t grumble when they get hungry.

I look behind me. Maybe I’m just imagining things.

“Kotengu,” I silently call.

Punctual and loyal as always, the crow caws from the air right above me, as if asking me what I need. I think he already knows. Hungry? he signals.

“Yeah. Did you find food?”

The bird just signals something that feels like a contented agreement before flying in one direction, leading me ahead.

In the end, Kotengu apparently found me some nice sweet edible fruits with a lot of water content, one about the size of my fist. I’ve never seen the swirling red pattern on its skin. I don’t recall the articularium having a juhi tablet that describes this fruit, either. But Kotengu was adamant that it’s edible—he takes a bite before I do as if to show that he doesn’t die from eating the thing, so I follow suit and eat my fill. The sun has risen up a fair bit at this point; I definitely need to start thinking about what to do next.

I sit down and cross my legs. It’s probably because of their tails or their wings, but the winged people could never do this. They would usually sit down in a position they call the seiza: a position where both their legs are folded underneath and their body rested right above them. They use their tails to support the stance so that their legs don’t feel too burdened, and the position allows the huge wings on their backs to cover their bodies like normal. The first time I sat down cross-legged like this, my father almost threw a bowl to my face while screaming something about indecency.

“You are already naked enough as is!” he said, “there’s no need for you to even open up your legs like that!”

I tried to shout something back, something along the lines of apologizing for not having wings to cover my body with, or something about already having to learn to sew myself because I needed to make extra clothes to wear just to cover my body up, but all the words were stuck in my throat. I could only manage a small whimper as I broke into crying. My father stopped being angry at some point, and tried to hug me to apologize, but I ran into my room, wrapped myself up in my blanket, and pretended to not hear him calling me.

Now that I think of it, being wrapped by that blanket was always the closest I’ve ever felt to having wings around my body.

I never really sat with my legs crossed since that one time—I’d do seiza every time, even though it would hurt my legs so badly since I don’t have the tail to support my body with. I got used to it after a few months, but whenever I sit long enough, I’d always end up finding that I couldn’t feel my legs afterwards. The adults thought it’s funny. The others thought it’s weird. Neither ever really helped me get up or walk.

It’s moments like this that make me miss Amane nee-san and Tobi nii-san, but they’ve gone ahead to Kunoi Village years ago for coming-of-age and must now be working wherever they got assigned by Matriarch Kunoi.

It’s thanks to all that punishing reaction that I didn’t notice how relaxing sitting with my legs crossed could be. Oh, wow, this is revolutionary. I lean back onto the tree where Kotengu plucked my fruit from.

What next?

I can think of surviving for a good while here. There has to be more than enough resource. The Tree is huge, monstrous, humongous. Gargantuan. We live inside its trunk, make our homes in its hollows. It can take me a very long time just to get from one edge to another—it’s part of the reason the Precipice is a very special thing, since only the Kunoi Cluster has a place so close to the edges of the Tree. At least that’s what the juhi tablets said.

This means there’s a lot of places to settle down, to find food, to … um … take care of my every need, if I know what to do. Kotengu can help me stay on the lookout and search for things. The only risk to look out for would be the hungry beasts lurking the stratum, but different beasts occupy different strata and live on even more specific habitats in each stratum. At least that’s what the juhi tablets said.

If I can avoid those habitats, I can just live here. It’ll probably be difficult, and if I find something I don’t know—like the fruit Kotengu gave me—I’d be entirely dependent on Kotengu to find out if there’s anything wrong. But I don’t want that. I don’t like seeing Kotengu get hurt. He always tried to keep from making me feel how he feels like when he’s in pain, but I don’t need his magic to know how much pain he’s in, every single time.

He’s always very ready to get hurt for my sake, this dumb bird. Smart bird. Whatever.

“Hey, Kotengu,” I call. The bird comes and perches on the branch hanging low, just a little above my head. “What do you think I should do next?”

To my surprise, rage.

Wrath.

A whole lot of anger.

My muscles throb. I drop the fruit I was eating, and can barely realize how hard I groan—my body suddenly tenses, my heart races, and I feel like I need to run.

No. I need to hit something.

I need to kick something.

I need to break something.

I need to—

The blurry images in my mind grow clearer with each passing second, and with each laboring breath I make, my sights grow only ever redder.

My classmates.

My teacher.

… crimson.

My mother.

My father.

… deep scarlet.

Gekka.

Oboro.

Benimaru.

Akashi.

… black.

It takes a minute until I realize that it was Kotengu’s emotions flooding my mind. He was not happy.

I let out another growl, only now noticing that I’m sprawled all over the ground. My arms and my legs bend in the weirdest ways. Both my hands are clenched into fists. I was punching the ground, again, and again, with my right hand.

I was crying.

I haven’t shed a single tear in the past five years, and it’s starting to leak.

I managed to hold back after the Fall, but I can feel that my eyes are wet this time. My vision even properly blurred.

No. No. Not now. Not like this.

Crying had never helped. Crying never stopped Father’s anger. Crying never quelled Mother’s disappointment. Crying never made the kids stop. Crying had never helped.

Not now. Not like this.

I gather my strength. My muscles still fight me, tensing up against my own will, but I try to at least make myself push the ground rather than punching on it. Again. And again. My arms slowly help my body back up, and I slump over the tree. Ah, damn it, my fruit’s gone. I’ll have to pluck another one.

I take a deep breath. Right now, I’m … how deep down am I? What stratum am I stranded in? The air is definitely a fair bit different from the air I was used to in Takamatsu Village, but not so much so that I can’t breathe or anything. It takes a bit of getting used to, but not much. Timberflyers should still be able to operate here, so this place should still be recorded in the juhi tablets.

Meaning the timberflyers should still be able to make it back to Takamatsu.

Meaning they should still be able to go home.

… home.

I take a deep breath. My classmates. My teacher.

My mother. My father.

Gekka.

Oboro.

Benimaru.

Akashi.

The thicker air seems to give me further clarity, because I understand exactly what Kotengu wants me to do. Frankly, I don’t hate the idea. I like it, even.

What next?

Next, I climb back up. Next, I right the wrongs.

Next, I finally do something about the life I was thrust into.

They dared to Fall me, so they shouldn’t mind if I return the favor, right?

Maybe I can finally cry then.

*