The Fire

I slept longer than usual, apparently, because the sun is already up there by the clothes’ hangline by the time I open my eyes.

However, my body has started learning that there’s no school today. There’s no need to look around and recheck. There’s no need to look back.

There were no dreams last night, like how it’s been most days I’ve been here.

“Kotengu….”

My croaking draws the crow’s attention, but his emotion feels odd—like he’s hesitating a little.

I groan. “Help me up….”

“Kawk!” You’ve got to be kidding me.

Anyway, my muscles feel gooey, but I move them little by little, and finally managed to convince myself to get myself up. The hanging bars, right. I need to set up my hook. I need to get ready to fight.

I need to leave this place….

But do I, really?

The single most important thing about having no dreams is the fact that I’ve always been dreaming of nightmares. When I was younger, right before I started school, most of my dreams were about falling. I’ve long looked at the Cloud Blanket, and I would remember of the times I slipped in the house or when visiting the pluck, or the times Amane nee-san failed to catch me when I fell.

I would dream of slipping and falling—endlessly into the Cloud Blanket infinitely far below.

And then school started.

I was finally aware of just how many winged chicks there were of my age. That in itself was not a bad thing, but the Gekka knockback happened, too.

Ever since then, I stopped dreaming of falling off the Tree. I started dreaming of faces.

I started dreaming of Gekka. I started dreaming of Oboro. I started dreaming of Akashi. I started dreaming of Benimaru.

I started dreaming of Aketa-sensei.

I started dreaming of Mother.

I started dreaming of Father.

I started dreaming of running all over Takamatsu Village, only to see the same faces right behind my back, and nothing but withering Tree branches wherever I step.

They would fly, and I would fall.

My dreamless nights would only happen when I find myself too exhausted during the day, and those nights only started happening after I found the Karura tablets tucked away in the articularium. I began moving my body more than usual, since I wasn’t just reading, I was practicing movements to fight.

Otherwise, it’s the same kind of dreams. Over, and over, and over again.

The Totara Pendent was the only place where I could finally experience many nights in a row with no dreams at all.

In here, there’s no hatred. Nobody would hurt me for being wingless—everyone here is wingless. Well, except for Kura, maybe, but she’s different. Down here, everyone is the same. They all have their roles. They all get to stay. They all eat every day, do what they must and do what they want, and just by being kind, they all get to live. I mean, yeah, Kura would kill them the moment they stop being kind, but I have yet to find anyone here who seemed to feel forced about that. Misaki onee-san warned me of it multiple times, but apart from keeping my own guard up just to be safe, I’ve yet to really find anyone mean down here.

Not even wild animals approach this place.

The Pendent is safe.

Do I really need to go?

… regardless of the answer to that, I still need that hook if I’m going to fight here. Just in case. If a wild animal strikes, I can strike them back.

If another Fallen tries anything here, I can try something back.

Regardless of whether I leave the Pendent or not, I need the tools to fight and survive. That still doesn’t change.

So, as planned, I go to look for Kura.

I find Kura helping the Fallen gather the ingredients for lunch. “Kura!” I call to the slight tilting of her head. She recognizes me, brings her ingredients to the cooking table, and flies over.

“Healthy?”

“Better,” I say. “I want to ask you about the handlebars on your ceiling.”

She nods and stares at me with a serious expression.

“Did you ever need to change them?”

She shakes her head.

“So they’re the same handlebars as when you first made your pendance?”

She nods.

“Can a single one support your entire weight?”

She thinks for a moment. Then, suddenly, she grabs my shoulders and yanks me on a flight back into her pendance.

She drops me on the floor, then grabs one of the handlebars with her left wing.

“Like this?”

As she asks that, she folds both her legs, taking them both—and her entire self—off the ground.

And she hangs there just fine.

I just stare at her slack-jawed. “That’s amazing.”

“Thank you.”

“Can I make—” I look around for a little before bringing up my Hook One. “Can I make one of these with the same wood?”

She nods very quickly before flying out.

Kura returned soon after with a branch of totara that looks to be equally mature as the handlebars (I’m not sure where she got that from), so I spend the day working in the sewing pendance again. This time, however, I noticed where the hooks broke on all the three hooks I’ve tried making, and I think I need to make this part thicker. If they kept breaking in the same place, then something must be really wrong about that spot. It should at least be thicker so that it doesn’t break as easily, right?

The totara branch was by no means harder to shape than my previous hooks, but it did take me more time to get the shape I wanted. By the time I was finally finished, the sun was already setting.

One last test tomorrow.

Do I really need to go?

Kura agrees to oversee my test again, and we take off to the tree as soon as I finished tying up my ropes to the new hook. It feels heavier than all three hooks I’ve done before, but not by much … to me, at least. Will this be too much for Kotengu?

Let me try, he signals.

As soon as we get to the tree, the raven does not give me a moment’s pause, immediately taking off with the new hook. The flutter of his wings sounds louder than usual. Maybe it is heavier to carry? I can’t use this too often, then.

If this works, that is.

Kotengu drops the hook on the usual branch. Kura perches on hers, this time without extending her fingers to me. I tug on the rope—it tightens into position, but doesn’t move after.

… here goes nothing.

I pull myself up, kicking on the tree to help propel myself. As I walk further and further up, without the assistance of Kura’s pull, I find myself taking much longer than usual to get to my marked fall height. That said, the hook hasn’t budged at all, which is already much better compared to two of the previous hooks.

I kick the tree and jump, opening my korowai before I even realize that I’ve turned my body around, and float down to the ground safely. Oh, yeah, having a fully-formed muscle memory feels good.

Hook Two took seven tries until it broke. Let’s see how many times this hook can take my climb.

Oh, I also have to check how many times Kotengu can fly carrying this hook. Kotengu may not need to eat or pick flowers, and he may not need to sleep, but I’m never really sure whether he can feel tired. If he still flies like a typical raven does, then there’s a limit to how much weight he could carry, right?

So I climb. And I jump. And I land.

I climb, I jump, and I land.

I climb, jump, land.

Climb, jump, land.

Again, and again, and again—I climb, and I jump, and I land.

I keep going at it, until Kura suddenly croaks and warns me that it’s lunchtime. We stopped—lunch is lunch, that’s the rule. We ate our lunch, took a break, and I just drifted away under the sun.

I need to test my hook again after this, it’s actually getting fun….

Bzzz….

Huh. A chill goes down my spine. My soft hairs are standing….

My soft hairs are standing.

I jolt awake, and immediately see the Fallen all scrambling around.

“What—”

“Electral warning!” one of the Fallen screams as she passes by me.

My heart sinks.

Electral warning.

The last time that happened was almost a year ago. It shouldn’t happen again this soon.

“Kotengu!” I call. The bird appears out of nowhere and perches on my shoulder. “We must hide—”

I look around. As the Fallen warned, the big buds in the bushes start shining, bright enough that I can make it out from even the bright daylight. That, and they’re shaking. Very quickly. More quickly than they would have if they were simply blown by the wind.

Those buds are from a plant we call electral. They grew all over the Tree, and no matter how far up or down the timberflyers have gone, they had always found electrals everywhere: one of the most intriguing of plants I’ve read about in the articularium. Most other animals or plants have differences, however subtle, when they’re found on different strata. But not electrals. Some tablet writers supposed that the electrals are just that important to all life on the Tree, so much so that the Tree would have them grow everywhere.

“Miyako-chan!”

Misaki onee-san runs close by, and quickly grabs my hand.

“Electral warning!” she says with half a breath. “We need to get to cover!”

Electral warning.

What Misaki onee-san calls ‘cover’ is actually just a dense group of very, very short trees, like a small forest within the forest we live in. There’s just enough gap between the trees to make a path for us to go in, but once we head inside, it becomes very difficult to look outside at all.

I can’t see Kura at all. Is she not taking cover?

BZZZ….

The buzzing grows louder. The electral buds shake to the point it’s hard to discern their shapes. We all duck together under the protection of the thick cover of trees, and huddle in as we brace for the worst.

Electral fruits are inedible, but we still use them to help light up our firehouses. When crashed together with certain other things, they explode, and they leave behind the strong burn of fire. But that’s not why we need electrals.

ZZZZZZ—

It’s here.

ZZZZZAP!

BOOM!!

We all scream as the sky blinks on us. A clear path of lightning strikes a tree just outside of our covers, setting its leaves and twigs ablaze.

ZZZZZZ—

Oh, no.

ZZZZZAP!

BOOM!!

Another lightning strike. My skin tingles.

ZZZZZZ—

This isn’t going to stop for a while. A sparkwave lasts anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours; the last one I experienced lasted a little over two hours. As long as the wave lasts, the lightning strikes will not stop—it’s as if there’s a whole blanket filled only with lightning, and we never know how big the blanket is. These blankets are what we call sparkwaves. They power our firehouses and heat up our Tree. They give us fire and warmth, but each time they pass, to any creature who failed to hide behind covers on time, they—

ZZZZZZAP!

BOOM!!

The fire spreads from one tree to another, and the lightning strike just now takes down the burning tree—it falls onto the tree right next to it, which catches fire immediately.

ZZZZZZ—

We all brace.

ZZZZZZZAP!!

BOOM!!!

Sparkwaves happen once anywhere between one to two years. When we’re lucky, sometimes three years. They rarely ever occur, but whenever they do—

ZZZZZZZZ—

Oh, this will be a big one.

ZZZZZAP!

BOOM—

ZZZZZZAP!!

I barely manage to cover my ears when—

BOOM!!!

Misaki onee-san hugs me very tightly, as if to cover me from danger, but I can feel herself shaking. Two lightning strikes in a row. We’re just getting started.

Kotengu’s claws grab my shoulders so hard it starts to feel painful. I hope this pendent has enough potfruits to help quell the fire later.

*

The reason electrals are so important to Kunoi life—and all winged people life, really, if the juhi is to be trusted—is because of their fruits and their buds.

The tree itself doesn’t really stand tall: if anything, they’re so short, much like shrubs rather than trees. But they bear fruits, and they have buds that never open up into flowers. Their fruits react weirdly when impacted with a lot of power, and when we use certain other materials like dried twigs, a bunch of dead leaves, or a few other select fruits that usually grow a little farther from them, they explode. They make the loudest noise, something like a thunderclap, and whatever remains is always on fire.

We use them to start our fires. They aren’t safe, so we usually have a grove behind our plucks, just a little further away and hidden from the winds, where we keep fire alive. We call this our firehouse. We would cause this explosion to happen on top of a lot of dry materials, and taking turns with a schedule, we would keep bringing more dried material to keep the fire burning. When we need to cook something, heat something up, or light up the fireways, we would take some flame out of the firehouse.

Of course, this isn’t perfect. Sometimes, the materials are harder to come by; other times, they don’t dry up in time. When this happens, the firehouse dies. In that case, as soon as we have enough materials to keep it burning again—or as soon as we need the flame—we would redo the explosion and the fire-keeping cycle restarts.

There are parts of the Tree where the branch is warmer or drier than the rest, and they sometimes feel hot to the touch. We also call these firehouses, because they’re usually hidden away under something else—like a puddle of water from faraway potfruits, for example—but they’re very different from our artificial firehouses. We use them to heat things up just the same, though. If anything, we used to use these natural firehouses before we learned of what we could do with electral fruits. I also learned from Misaki onee-san that these natural firehouses are revered by the people of the Claws, or at least that’s what she managed to glean from Kura.

All that said, the main reason electrals are important lies with the second part: their buds.

Their buds never bloom into flowers, and they seem to only pop fruits once a year. Their fruits don’t rot easily or quickly, so we usually feel pretty safe about leaving them be. These buds, however, blue in color and about the size of my pinky, react to sparkwaves before sparkwaves happen.

Sparkwaves strike everything. It doesn’t discriminate. As I said, a sparkwave is like a blanket full of lightning, and this blanket happens to pass through the Tree every once in a while. Each time it does, all the lightning in it strikes everything they could. Wherever they strike, they burn; they destroy, and they don’t stop until the blanket entirely leaves the Tree. In Kunoi, we leave an offering of very wet, very fibrous fruits stored in the grove of a very wide tree for the Raijin, the Lightning God, because if we don’t, the sparkwave that comes next will be bigger than ever, burning everything in its path.

However, they only strike what’s in their path. In other words, as long as we have enough of a protective layer between ourselves and the oncoming wave, there’s a chance we could be safe. This is the reason we grow the cover shrubs, the dense short trees covered by other trees in the forest: they provide layers upon layers upon layers of protection from the lightning strikes.

The only thing we need then is a way to know when to run for cover, and that’s where the electral buds come in.

The moment the buzzing starts, the moment the buds shine and vibrate, it means we must drop whatever we were doing and run for our lives to the nearest cover.

The aftermath of a sparkwave is almost equally bad. Since nearly everything that isn’t wet enough would just burn, fire spreads very easily and very quickly around whichever area gets struck by the wave. The Tree helps in quelling this: we have no idea how or why, but potfruits near a burning area always seem to have more water content than usual, and the water content always seems to refill much faster—so fast that we could even see it with our naked eyes. However, if there aren’t enough potfruits around, no matter how quickly the water refills in the fruits, there was no way we could fight the fire on our own. The Tree quells all fires, we just never know how long it takes for it to.

In other words, if we want the fire to die quickly, we must take matters into our own hands.

The passing of a sparkwave isn’t spontaneous, but it’s something that can be felt on the skin. For one, my soft hairs stop standing. The weird chill down my spine disappears. The buzzing starts to subside. The sound of lightning strikes grows distant between each other. The electral buds no longer shine an ominous glow, and there’s just this gradually strengthening sense of, “Ah, the worst has gone by.”

As if trained or by nature, the moment the feeling washes over us all, we all scramble to the nearest potfruit farm.

Although we’ve found that water from the potfruit can still give us a good buzz right after a sparkwave, the area also never burns or catches fire. If we handle our parts carefully, we shouldn’t be buzzed by the water—

And everyone starts taking a jug of water after another.

We form a line, wordlessly so. Someone grabs a jug of water from the potfruit, passes it onto the next, who passes it onto the next, and so on and so forth until the people near the fires can put out the flames. We start with areas with the weakest fire to make sure that we can at least save something—and to prevent the bigger fires from spreading.

Then, when these areas are safe, we move on to the greater flames.

In the end of the day, the damage the Pendent suffered was surprisingly minimal. By sundown, we’ve managed to put everything out. The pendances are mostly safe, apart from one or two totara trees that still stand, just without the personal effects stored in them. They’ll have to build new pendances.

Kotengu is safe. Not even a feather was singed, although I probably wouldn’t know if that happened, either, since he always looks jet-black. Misaki onee-san also seems safe, and both her pendance and the sewing pendance seem to take no notable damage. My rope and hook are safe. So are my sling and korowai.

Kura flaps some scorched feathers away from her wings, but otherwise she doesn’t seem to have taken any damage at all. I sigh in relief.

If Kura had burned….

… no.

If Kura had burned, you wouldn’t—

I shouldn’t think that.

You have to.

I look around. As the sun dies down into the Cloud Blanket far in the horizon, as the Fallen start preparing dinner, I finally realize what has been bugging me this whole time I’ve been staying here.

This sense of security.

You can rest assured that they won’t do anything to children like you, but don’t assume that we are good.

Didn’t Misaki onee-san herself say it?

We are Fallen, you know.

Kura is the only thing keeping me safe here. She gave me her korowai. I’m her child.

Maybe Misaki onee-san, too, finds me in her care.

But what about the others?

We’ve only known each other for a few days. I didn’t get my wings cut, I never had wings.

If we all had history, then much like I do, so do they.

If the only reason they’re fine with me is that I’m a child, what will happen when I grow up?

If the only reason they keep me around is because of Kura, what will happen when she dies?

What if Misaki onee-san stops helping me?

What if somebody else gets exiled?

What if I get exiled?

I’ve lost a place once. I don’t know what I’d do without another one.

I don’t know what I’d do if they pushed me out of here.

That night, we were grateful that the sparkwave was not long and that we did not have to mourn anybody, and we ate our dinner in great joy. However, I tap the rope and hook I keep on my belt.

Kotengu seems to understand, and he pushes his head to my hand, very slowly, like trying to carefully peck some dirt off of my fingers.

We’ll be okay.

I take a deep breath. This Pendent is great. If I could, I’d probably stay here my whole life.

But my whole life is a long way ahead, and I have somewhere else I need to be.

I say nothing about it to Kura or Misaki onee-san, but that night, for the first time since I’ve arrived here, I finally dream of the same faces I’ve always seen back in Takamatsu Village. The difference is, this time, they don’t push me around.

I push them.

*