CHAPTER 1: SAPPHIRE DREAMS

  Growing up on the flat, barren plains of Sapphire’s Reach, Elias Fisher had never seen mountains that were not illustrated in a storybook or painted into the backdrop of a play. In the life he had left behind, mountains were gray triangles with pointed white caps. But how quickly a little experience could redraw the world around a young man.

  In the new life now sprawling before him, mountains were primordial monuments. Staring out from the deck of a merchant airship—another first-time experience for the teenager—Elias could not help but feel that surely some ancient civilization had constructed these stone pyramids, that if only some determined explorer dug deep enough, he might find their mummified creators still entombed inside, clutching old battle wounds and trinkets of tragic love, buried alongside so many other secrets waiting to be discovered.

  It should be said that Elias had never lacked for imagination, as anyone who knew him could attest. His mother once likened his wild thoughts to a deer bounding ahead of its hunter, hiding and revealing itself in flashes, always drawing him forward. It had only ever been a matter of time before his elusive fantasies finally beckoned him far from home.

  One might even remark that our protagonist was a walking contradiction of sorts, a product of inevitability and spontaneity, of fatalism and free will. But whatever the concoction, however likely or unlikely its ingredients, today its effect had landed him upon an unfamiliar airship with only strangers for company, flying through actual, unimaginable mountains.

  “Pretty breathtaking, aren’t they?”

  Elias looked to the friendly voice beside him and asked, “Aren’t you used to them by now? How many times have you seen these mountains?”

  “Dozens,” Bertrand Fairweather said. “Hundreds, maybe. Father says I’m not very good at counting. Still breathtaking.”

  “The town I left behind is flatter than hotcakes,” Elias replied. “I couldn’t wait to leave.”

  His recent acquaintance shrugged. “Maybe one day you’ll look back and miss that big open sky.”

  “Another bastard, perhaps. I’m always looking ahead, Bertrand.”

  “Aye. People wear certain qualities like the clothes on their back. You wear that one pretty loudly.”

  “That obvious, am I?” Elias retrieved a tarnished copper from his vest pocket and flicked it into a whirling blur. The coin crested his shoulder and landed soundlessly in the hand behind his back.

  “I think you’re quite mysterious, as a matter of fact,” Bertrand assured him, tracking and losing sight of the coin. “Certainly more mysterious than these ordinary oafs.” He conspicuously referenced the unkempt crew of The Sleeping Sparrow, his father’s employees. “You think you wear your qualities? You should see their tattoos. I’ll tell you right now, it’s mostly rum bottles and ship anchors, which is odd when you think about it. This is an airship, not a sea ship, but I guess it’s a sailor’s life all the same.”

  Elias wished he truly were mysterious and not just some flatland runaway with doomed ideas. He let the break in their conversation and the beat of gusting wind speak more cleverly than he had the wits to. Real mystery was earned, he knew. One day, one day he would be mysterious, and these silent moments of his past would be rewritten accordingly.

  Alas, at seventeen, Elias did not look particularly mysterious. He looked like the surname bestowed on him by an unremarkable father he never really knew: a Fisher, through and through. He was of average height and slim build, his vest and breeches the color of clay. It seemed Sapphire’s Reach still reached him all the way out here. But beneath the tousled strands of chestnut hair that danced over his sun-kissed features were eyes as piercing as a wolf’s, as green as emeralds. Greener than eyes should be, it had often been remarked.

  Bertrand, on the other hand, provided a study in contrasts, at least when it came to appearances. The large, blond teenager was more sun-burned than sun-kissed, with a keg-shaped torso and a good five inches on Elias. He wore his size in the way one wears clothes picked out for them by their mother.

  His father, the ship’s captain, had him running errands, as it was explained to the novice sailor that he did not yet possess the experience to stand by his father’s side as quartermaster nor the technical expertise to take on navigator or bosun duties. It was quartermaster that Bertrand longed for in any event. He fancied himself a people person first and foremost, to which Elias had responded, “That makes one of us.”

  But when Bertrand turned to wander off again, he did not make it very far. He stopped in his tracks the moment Elias asked, “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” Bertrand inquired.

  “I don’t know.” Elias shook his head.

  “Right. Couldn’t tell you.”

  “It was like some sort of… mirror in the sky. Perhaps I’m seeing things. Barely slept a wink since we set sail.”

  The airship was held afloat by a massive hydrogen-filled balloon and propelled by a steam engine, but like the inked image of an anchor, sailing references were hard to shake.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “A mirror in the sky?” Bertrand balanced the words on the tip of his tongue, not dismissing them as quickly as Elias had expected. “Where?”

  Elias pointed promptly, squinting into the distance, but his finger drifted downward as he admitted, “I don’t see it anymore. Somewhere up ahead, I thought. It’s nothing, Bertrand. The high altitude must be making me delirious.” He could have sworn he had felt something, too, though perhaps the inexplicable sensation was more evidence of his weary mind.

  “Must be,” Bertrand agreed half-heartedly, still weighing every word. “Let me know if you see something again.”

  But Elias did not have to, for the next voice the two heard was that of the larger teenager’s father. “Sky rift, up ahead!” Captain Fairweather hollered over a rising, rumbling commotion. “Turn, turn, turn!”

  The hull of the airship, which did somewhat resemble a sea ship strapped to a hot air balloon, began turning as the captain barked orders, as crew members scrambled or otherwise held on tight. Unfortunately for everyone on board, the vessel’s sail-like rudder could only redirect it so quickly. The merchant ship was built for trade, for long, straightforward journeys, not last-minute maneuvers.

  It was then that Elias saw once more what he had convinced himself was the mirage of a tired mind. The so-called sky rift. He had described it to Bertrand as a “mirror in the sky,” but “broken mirror in the sky” would have been more apt. Elias thought of his mother. She had taken a liking to puzzle-making in her final months, having grown too tired to paint, and the scene before him reminded him of her—of a puzzle partially incomplete, of a picture coming apart at the seams.

  Sideways, they floated into it.

  The impact made no sound. It rattled no boards. The rift simply swallowed their ship as the ocean swallows a fish. A dark shadow fell over them like the closing of a curtain.

  “What in heaven or hell?”

  The voice was Bertrand’s, but when Elias swung around to exchange a worried glance, he saw no one and, indeed, nothing at all. The shadow that had fallen over them seconds earlier had dimmed to a perfect darkness.

  All around them, darkness.

  Elias briefly wondered whether he had lost his sight, but Bertrand quickly and loudly confirmed that he also could not see a damn thing.

  They couldn’t hear much either, save for the panicked bustle of their fellow crew members. Captain Fairweather was instructing his men and women to light the oil lamps that dangled around the ship’s deck.

  “Third Mate Lowman, fetch your tinderbox,” he commanded.

  Elias, and presumably everyone else on board, heard Third Mate Lowman curse under her breath as she blindly rummaged through her many pockets and provisions. Trinkets bounced onto the deck. Something rolled. “Got it!” she finally exclaimed. Swiftly, she began her daily ritual of striking flint against steel, though the hour was far earlier than usual, the sky immensely darker. The initial sparks that flew from between her palms formed fleeting fireflies.

  Elias could hear gasps of anticipation with each strike. It seemed hardened sailors were only hardened when faced with familiar threats. They were all fish-out-of-water teenagers staring down the unknown.

  At last, the hemp in Third Mate Lowman’s tinderbox produced a small fire. She carried the flickering flame on a sulfur spill to the nearest oil lamp, illuminating the eager face of each onlooker she passed, as if she might have been a doctor carrying a newborn to the child’s mother.

  There were four oil lamps in total hanging from posts around the ship, and their setting remained a darkly lit one with literally no other light around, but they could see each other now, and that was all the difference in the world.

  But what a dark world it was. Their lanterns illuminated only the familiar: their gawking expressions. Beyond the wooden edges of the ship, a black sky extended endlessly in every direction. It was a sky with no clouds, no stars, no white-tipped mountains. There was no horizon, no way to know if they were even moving. They felt no wind. The strands of Elias’s hair fell still for the first time in hours.

  The teenager was expecting more orders from Captain Fairweather, but The Sleeping Sparrow’s unbreakable leader seemed about as broken as the rest of them. An abyss provided even the most capable man no answers. Their questions were so obvious that no one needed to ask them.

  The exception to that rule was Elias. The young man was unaccustomed to the tall tales of sailors, and so he turned to Bertrand, who provided a rather unsatisfactory explanation.

  “We flew into a sky rift.” He swallowed.

  “A sky rift?” Elias pushed for more information.

  Bertrand’s stricken appearance suggested he would rather leave it at that, but grudgingly he explained that, on very rare occasions, an airship might unwittingly fly into a sort of invisible portal in the sky—a so-called sky rift. Or perhaps they were sky traps, he mused.

  “How do we get out?” Elias asked.

  “That’s the thing. You don’t, really.”

  “Ever?” Elias twisted the silver ring on his finger, a gift from his departed mother. She had once explained to her son that the ring previously belonged to his father, that wearing it connected the three of them through the tragedy of time. The ring had a signet, but a large dent obscured its meaning. He often twisted it in moments like these, in moments of stress and peril. Though perhaps there had never been a moment quite like this one.

  “Surely, someone must have escaped,” Elias insisted, hearing the naivety in his own voice. “How else would people know about them,” he reasoned, “if someone hadn’t come back to tell the tale?”

  “Some people survive airship crashes too,” Bertrand retorted. “Doesn’t mean the odds are favorable. Can you see an exit? They call it the Void Sea for a reason.”

  Elias assumed the question was rhetorical, but hope hinged on a literal interpretation, and so he peered out anyway. And once again, the teenage passenger was apparently, and perhaps ironically, first to spot something strange in the distance. His heart leapt to his throat and stifled his initial reaction. He blinked twice to prove that his eyes were not deceiving him. It was—well, he did not know what it was. From far away, it had the appearance of a star.

  A golden star.

  “Look there!” Elias blurted out, pointing and waving with the same frantic hand. “It’s some sort of… thing.”

  Bertrand did as he was asked, his doubtful expression widening to one of disbelief. “Father!” he yelled without peeling his gaze. “I mean Captain Father. Captain, sir. There’s something up ahead.”

  Captain Fairweather, a stout and thickly bearded fellow who shared his son’s size if little else, followed the invisible trail of two pointing teenagers to the seemingly golden treasure at its end.

  “Change course,” the captain said, hardly raising his voice over the hush of their silent prayers.

  It was difficult to decipher the precise distance of that shining star, though one could hope it was not as far from them as an actual star. Elias kept staring at it, wondering if he would once again be first to notice some small but significant detail.

  Ultimately, the competitive teenager could not compete with Captain Fairweather’s telescope. The captain held the brass instrument snugly to his eye for a long, contemplative minute before turning abruptly to his crew.

  “It’s another airship.” He matched eyes with his navigator, with Third Mate Lowman, and finally with his son and their green-eyed passenger. “She’s coming toward us.”