Eagles and Swans

Preface 01: The Story of Lilin, Goddess of the Horizon, author unknown. 

Ihir has a hundred sons and daughters. They were born of His love for the land and the sea, but this love is not of the form to which humanity is familiar. They are to Him as servants, and love, as in the eyes of all gods, synonymous to obligation.

Of all His sons and daughters, Lilin was the first to learn the rules. Whenever the palace was quiet and the sky still, she peered through the gaps of heaven’s floorboards, and saw the humans on their fields below. She watched them race through the stalks and join hands on the barren land, lighting flames and laughing in circles. 

Laughing. Lilin wondered at this odd sound. Why did she never laugh? She thought, perhaps, that heaven did not know what laughter was, not Father Ihir and not the gods of old.

So she made a promise to see this world for herself, and when Kala and Hela of the Gates were looking the other way, she slipped down the marble stairway, and soared away upon her wings to the land below.

It didn’t take long for her absence to be discovered. In His horror, Ihir sent His guards out to search for her—and when they reported that they had seen her flying in the world of mortals, He was furious.

After her He flew himself—catching her in midair in His merciless beak. She screamed to be released, but He did not relent.

“I gave you a home, and a world—and yet you would deceive me to flee it!” bellowed He. “Since you love this world so much, you shall never leave it again! Creature of the ocean, I chain you to the sea forever—and may these chains never release you for the rest of eternity!”

He did not consider a more merciful sentence, not even for His daughter, and she did not think of pleading for one.

And so chained she was, to a rock in the sea. And Lilin cried but a single tear, for she did not understand the word “forever”. She only knew the humans, who were temporary, who rose and fell like spring and winter. She believed that there would be an end to it, because there was always an end.

---

The sun rays began to slant, and the clock-tower clanged out everyone’s favourite melody: tea break.

Ruthenia jerked awake from her Literature nap just in time to see the last of Mr. Caldero’s grey coattails vanish through the door. She blinked the haze of sleep from her eyes as a rumble of wooden chairs began, a thunderstorm of voices thickening around her, a buzz of late lunch plans and literary debate.

It was five minutes before the classroom emptied out. Only then did she sweep her crumpled notes onto Alacero’s desk and unearth Tanio’s fish sandwich from beneath them, now squashed beyond recognition.

She glanced about the classroom: not much of interest was taking place in the absence of half the class. Nothing except on the right side, where the Arcanes sat. That side was awash with polite laughter, while a single blond classmate among them shielded himself from the attention with a book.

Here was the thing about the Central Circle School. Even the noblest of blood, even, yes, the in-the-flesh Arcane Prince of Astra, was equal to every other in a Central Circle classroom.

Ruthenia joined in with a pointed laugh. “Your Highness!" she called out. "I heard Mister Jayle turned you down. Had you considered propositioning him somewhere other than the bathroom?”

She grinned as her joke landed and a surge of laughter answered, picking her way through the desks amid the uproar with a single target in her sights. Hollia's desk was the closest by the doorway, and she sat perfectly straight as she always did, her silken blonde hair draped over one shoulder.

Ruthenia found the girl poring over a wad of notes on Geography, so engrossed that she did not notice the newcomer’s presence until she smacked the tabletop with her palm, startling her out of her reading.

“Ruth!” she gasped, smiling. “There you are, what was all that earlier today? I thought Miss Arina would write you a slip for sure!”

“You know that won’t happen. She can’t send her best student to detention.” Ruthenia fired her a grin, but lost it when she realised that Hollia was not smiling back. “What, do you think she will?”

“Don’t you feel a little...bad?” said Hollia, weaving her fingers together with a glance to the side. “She can’t possibly enjoy it. Dealing with you." After a pause, she added, "If you don't mind me saying.” 

Ruthenia frowned. “Hollia...I sound so bad when you put it like that. She’s just a teacher, right? Who cares how they feel?” Hollia did not answer. Ruthenia drew back, frowning. “How...how’s the aviary?”

The blonde girl’s gaze grew distant. “It’s spring migration soon.”

“I...hope this one goes better than last year’s.” Ruthenia attempted an earnest smile. Hollia only pursed her lips and nod, and a painful lump grew in her throat. “Uh—I’ll be off now.”

Before she could make things any worse, Ruthenia fled the classroom, heaving a sigh. As she strolled down the length of the corridor, she wove between other students, staring absently over their heads at the curling relief patterns in the ceiling. The sun glowed through the arching windows, setting flecks in the granite aflame, and it became hard to see in the glare, as if she were drowning in its light.

“Ruthenia!”

She blinked the light out of her eyes and turned, only to find four classmates tailing her. At the front of the group was a boy with fiery red hair even brighter than her own. “Orrem,” she said, offering a simple wave.

He beamed as he approached, the way racers did at the stands before the start of the flight. “Good job today,” he said, his voice like the sun. “How’d you get so good at math?”

“I traded my flight skills for it,” Ruthenia replied with a small smirk.

A laugh passed between them. “Care to join us for the break, genius?” called the brunet to Orrem's right, shooting her a syrupy smile.

“Not really, no.”

“Why not?” The boy seemed a little dazed, as if he’d expected anything but rejection.

"Because I, uh—"

The corridor lurched sickeningly. The floor swung, as if it were the seat of a giant swing suspended between the two towers at the ends, and everyone in the corridor stumbled and yelped, grabbing at pillars and window sills for balance. A couple were bowled right over and yelled as they fell to their knees. Ruthenia crouched low and watched Orrem do the same, waiting for the tremor to pass.

It did half a minute later, and as it subsided they began glancing wildly at each other. “Did you feel that?” the brunet muttered, hand to his chest. “That wasn't an earthquakes, was that?"

"I felt Threads snap," Orrem muttered, rubbing at his neck. "That didn't feel right, it wasn't a physical thing. It was in the Threads, a wave—"

Ruthenia had felt no such thing, but even hearing it put in words flooded her throat with unsettling dread. "Really? Earthquakes and winds aren't supposed to touch the Threads. That's what they said when they started stringing buildings up on them. Right?"

There were concerned looks all around. No one seemed to like the possible answers to that question.

The clique soon lost interest in her, as did everyone else in the hallway, resuming conversations in a slightly more conspiratorial hush than before. Orrem was last to leave; he took one last glance at her, before shrugging and joining the rest of his crew.

---

Soaring through orange sky that evening, Ruthenia swerved clumsily into a landing on the milkshake stand's platform, skidding a few feet and bumping into the counter. The stand-keeper smiled sweet as the spring, brown curls fluttering, as the girl stumbled to a stop.

“You’re getting better,” she laughed.

Ruthenia made an exaggerated pout. “Don’t tease me,” she said, frown giving way to a grin.

“Honey milkshake?” asked the lady, already arranging the ingredients on her table before she had nodded. “How were your classes?”

“Dull,” she answered, folding her arms on the countertop. “I was half an hour late. Arina was snarly as a naga about it. Then she asked me about my parents.”

The woman placed a full glass of milkshake on the countertop. “That’s rough.”

While Ruthenia gulped the honey milkshake down, the stand-keeper corked her bottle of syrup and slotted it back into its compartment in the storage chest. She cast a glance at the setting sun. “Slow day,” she said. “But I almost lost this bottle when the tremor hit.”

At this, Ruthenia’s head perked up, the rim of her glass encircling her nose and upper lip. “You felt it too?” she said, voice echoing inside the near-empty glass.

The woman nodded as she tossed the remaining water inside her jug out over the fence behind her, onto the field below. “The whole stand swung,” she replied. “Things rattled. Good thing I’ve made sure to tie it down tight.”

"That's lucky," she said absently, setting the empty glass down on the counter. "I'll see you soon."

Ruthenia approached the island’s edge, releasing the catch on her umbrella and overturning it for a makeshift boat. The meadows below shimmered in sun as she climbed in.

With a sigh she pushed off, an arm to the edge of the platform. She sailed across the brilliant sky, which glowed bright as a pool, the bellies of the clouds the bright orange of carps. Her eyelids drooped in the balmy air as she caught the gentle breeze, drifting over an ocean of grass.

She stopped by the news stand for a copy of the Helika Afternoon Herald, paying her three cupres and snatching one off the rack while moor birds squawked behind her. Once she had rejoined the lazy aboveground traffic, she flipped it open.

Meteorological Disturbance Detected: an impending catastrophe?

Ruthenia frowned. If the Afternoon Herald already knew about the situation, then the scientists must have detected the tremors at least a day ago.

[...] The Central Circle Library was among the worst-affected by the event. An assistant sustained head injury from a falling encyclopedia. Thousands of books fell from their shelves and several in the collection were damaged, including many of historical importance.

Theologists have confirmed that the source of the disturbance was a large gust propagated through ether, affecting only the Threads. They are are already conducting radio discussions with experts in Bel.

This is the last in a series of ethereal events, including several reports of inexplicable sounds in the Deeps, from which these ethereal gusts originated. The sounds are said to resemble the bowing of a large, untuned chordophone.

Over the past week, at least three ships have been reported to have vanished in the same area as well.

Such activity has not been charted for in years. Authorities warn that a disaster might be forthcoming, and that all should prepare to enter precautionary flight until the situation improves.

Ruthenia could barely ignore her sudden trembling. Astra was supposed to be safe. The safest country in the world. The massive, invisible network of Threads that held up the city wasn't touched by natural phenomena—but here they were, vibrating in some deep sound in the ether, breaking.

If the Threads started breaking, then nothing would be holding up half of Astra's buildings.

Hunching her back, she flipped through a few more pages, before flinging the papers into the canopy of her umbrella and steering homewards.

---

“Ruth! You’re late!”

Tanio greeted Ruthenia by waving a hissing gas lamp at her face. “Stop that!” she yelled, swinging her arms at the blinding light.

“Why so late?” her boss repeated, extinguishing the lamp so the only light in the vicinity was the faint glow of the first level windows. “I don’t fancy my only assistant crashing into an unmarked island and losing use of her arms. Especially considering she’s such a terrible flier—”

Leaping out of her umbrella, Ruthenia shoved him aside with a hand. She unlocked her work shed and found the lever switch on the inner wall with her fingers, slamming it down with a fist. A stream of light blazed across her patio planks.

The shed’s wood walls glowed red in the light of the single bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. Her desk stood beneath the right-hand window, and her messenger lay on it, glowing dim blue to indicate an absence of new messages. On the left was a cluttering of storage shelves and stacked boxes, the other window obscured behind them.

She tossed her bag onto the rack and kicked her shoes off, before shuffling to her wardrobe to excavate a good set of clothes. Then out onto the patio she ventured in the dark.

The only shower on the premises was on the second floor of Tanio’s home. Said home was everything one might expect an inventor’s house to be: it was top-heavy, the second floor overhanging the first in a physical feat made possible by Thread, and the shingled slopes of the roof culminated in a gigantic turbine that creaked back and forth on the windiest days.

The bathroom was a place of many trials, full of rattling pipes and hissing joints, with a drain that gurgled like a sea monster every time it was fed. The centrepiece was the shower tank: a converted engine boiler hammered into the wall by means of metal strips, beneath it a furnace and a bag of coal behind a pair of hatches.

Temperature calibration with that machine was a nightmare, and on occasion, showering became a barbaric torture routine involving nakedness and near-boiling water. Tonight was one of those nights.

Ruthenia stumbled, panting, out in a cloud of steam feeling like a steamed fish. She descended the rickety stairs with her towel about her neck, hair cooling in the air. The dining table, set down at the base of the stairs, was empty, and the lone lightbulb glowed down on a single beef-and-lettuce roll on a plate.

She soon found Tanio out on the porch—roll in hand, legs dangling over the edge of the platform where it plunged into the darkness, one arm curled around a porch baluster. He was hunched, face hidden from view. The back of his cotton shirt was lit by the glow from his lone living room window.

Ruthenia joined him at the porch’s edge, the warm roll in hand. They gazed out at the world beyond, lost in the night breeze, inky black save for the thin layer of golden light that came from Helika City, sitting stagnant on the horizon. The roar of the river below the house was the only audible sound.

She took a bite out of her roll, staring on at the dim reflection of Tanio’s porch light on the river’s surface. “Get a cookbook,” she muttered, before spitting a chunk of charred tendon out over the rails. “Charcoal isn’t exactly delicious.”

Her boss laughed. “Only idiots need cookbooks,” he replied. “I’ll perfect the recipe soon.”

Ruthenia groaned. “Could you perfect it faster? You’re gonna kill me someday.”

“You’re not dead.”

“Give it a month, and we’ll see.”

Tanio’s laugh was claimed by the gales. They resigned themselves to the silence, briefly.

“Heard the news?” he said then.

“About the Deeps? It all sounds so strange. What’s happening out there?” Ruthenia glanced towards the east, but the coast of the Argenta Sea was too far to be seen from Beacon Way. 

For another fifteen minutes or so, they sat there eating, exchanging casual conversation on the topic of work, then of her poor conduct in school. Tanio left soon after; he claimed to have a design to finish—most certainly the meat grinder he’d been rambling on about at the dinner table all week.

The girl was left watching Helika’s blinking lights alone. She prayed he knew what he was doing. She would be the first to find out.