CHAPTER 2
IN WHICH THE STORM HITS, AND NADYA IS RESCUED IN A MOST UNFORTUNATE FASHION.
Inside the cloud balloon, it’s like another world.
It’s bright, first off: always lit in golden rays from the sun-in-a-jar that hangs in the center of it. And it’s damp too. A machine in the catwalks collects water from the clouds all day long. It stores it in a tank along the top of the balloon, then drips it through irrigation lines under the plants inside. Walking into the cloud balloon feels like walking into summer, no matter what time of year it is outside.
The balloon itself is made of aluminum. It’s super lightweight and more durable than it looks, with heavier canvas and an aluminum skeleton inside to give it shape. The top of it inflates and deflates to make the ship rise and fall.
And, oh, the plants. There are big ferny ones. There are short, squat ones. There are tall, delicate trees and flowers and fruits and nuts. Bees and flies and beetles in black and gold and lime green buzz between them. The frogs are always chirping and ribbiting from their little mud hideaways, and the birds sing songs that remind me of home, that far-off place I can only remember clearly when I’ve got my eyes closed and the doorknob in my hand.
The cloud balloon’s the only place on the Orion where I can breathe through my gills, and it feels so good to do it. Sometimes I think that’s how I’m meant to breathe, and that my mouth and my nose and my lungs are just to help me fit in with other people. Mrs. Trachia says that’s not true. But she also says that at the Roof of the World, where the skylungs came from, all the air was like this, and skylungs breathed with their gills all the time.
The cloud balloon jerks and shudders, and I wipe some rain off the back of my neck. Mrs. T’s squatting by the pond underneath the sun-in-a-jar, talking to the frogs on their lily pads with her mind. I can hear the conversation clear as day. Right now I can only talk with plants and animals inside the cloud garden, but Mrs. T says that as I get older, I’ll be able to talk to any plant or animal with my mind.
And how are you, my darlings? she asks.
She always calls things darlings. I think it’s a bit over the top. I never use pet names with the frogs like that, and they seem to like me just fine anyway.
Happy.
Hungry.
Sleeping, leave me alone . . .
Mrs. T reaches down and strokes the frog I call Goldielocks.
. . . It’s not a pet name, okay? It’s a true name. We sat and tried on names for hours until I found one she said fit her. Everything has a true name. In Vash Abandi, they say that if you call someone by theirs, they have to listen to you. It’s like a fundamental law of the universe, even for cloud frogs.
I understand, my lovelies, and I’ll take care of it. But if you could, would you mind sleeping a little long today? We need to be just a little bit lower in the sky, you see.
The frogs grunt back their responses.
Okay.
Sure.
I was sleeping, Zelda . . .
“Mrs. T?” I ask. “Nic sent me to help.” My voice sounds like it comes from my nose when I’m breathing with my gills. It always takes me a second to get used to it.
Mrs. T straightens up. She looks sort of like a willow tree with mottled bark the color of a golden, sunlit riverbank, and the billowing yellow dress she’s wearing makes her look more willowy than usual. Her hair droops over her shoulders in long reddish-brown braids, almost all the way to her waist. A wine-red birthmark flows along her jaw, and her eyes are green as emeralds.
“Ah, Nadya,” she says softly. “I’m glad you’ve come. Nic wants the ship a little lower, you see. I’ve been bleeding off a bit of the air in here, but I need to persuade our little friends to sleep through the storm, or their excitement will just puff us right back up again.” She runs a finger along one of the big leaves next to her and sways as the cloud balloon shakes. “I could use your help with the birds, in particular.”
The cloud balloon works by the principle of displacement, or something like that. When the plants and animals are awake and active, they breathe in mist from the Cloud Sea and breathe out a different kind of gas that puffs out the top of the cloud balloon. So when we need to go up, we try to get them excited. And when we need to go down, we let air out of the balloon and get them to sleep.
I look up. The birds come in black, yellow, orange, red, violet, blue, and about a zillion other colors. Most of them are smaller than my hand. They nest in the girders that make up the cloud balloon’s skeleton. I only see a few of them flapping around.
“It looks like they’re pretty hunkered down already, Mrs. T.”
Mrs. T strolls around the edge of the pond, whispering to the ferns and the minnows and the palm trees.
“Hunkered, perhaps. But hunkered does not mean ‘asleep.’”
I make a face at her, but I don’t talk back. It’s nice of her to let me talk to the birds, since it means I get to go into the rafters. I like doing that.
The metal girder I have to climb up to get there’s warm and slick, but the frame was built with climbing in mind. Little rods stick out from it every foot or two, like wings for me to grab on to, and there are empty spaces in the girder just big enough for me to wedge my feet inside.
I’m about halfway to the first bluebird nest when the cloud balloon gives its biggest shake yet. My foot slips trying to get into the next hold, and then the balloon shakes again. My hand slips too.
The birds go nuts. They pour out of their nests like a flapping neon blizzard and fill the air with warnings.
Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! It’s wrong! It’s wrong! Beware! It’s wrong! The sky is falling! It’s wrong, it’s wrong!
“Nadya, darling,” Mrs. Trachia calls from below, “I think perhaps on second thought you’d better come down.”
The cloud balloon’s canvas underskin pushes in toward the girders, then sucks back out again. It takes a big gust of wind to do that—enough to knock somebody down or throw them across the deck if they’re outside.
“I guess so,” I mutter, and I start back down the girder.
The balloon keeps shaking. The thunder’s gotten loud enough I can hear it through the frame.
We must really be in it, I think as I hit the ground.
Mrs. T clucks at me and clears her throat.
I blush, just a little. I know better than to think stuff like that when I’m supposed to be calming everyone down. The plants and animals can hear me, after all.
Sorry, Mrs. T, I think.
She looks up, pointedly, at the birds.
Hey, everybody! I call out, but they’re so worked up they don’t seem to notice. They’re flying from nest to nest, chirping in each other’s faces about how everything’s wrong and the sky’s falling and the world’s going to end.
Harriet! Bluebelly! Purplethroat! Wormgobbler! Butterbeak!
That gets their attention. True names, see? Universal law.
The birds I named stop flitting around and look down at me. Their neighbors notice and do the same.
We need everybody to stay calm and try to sleep right now, I tell them. The altitude gauge near the front of the balloon is reading steady, but the pressure gauge next to it is creeping higher. The higher the pressure inside the cloud balloon, the more it expands—and the higher the Orion rises.
Sleep!
But, Nadya, the sky . . .
We can’t sleep!
The world is ending, Nadya!
Don’t you know that everything’s wrong?
I put my hands on my hips and give them my first-mate face, which I copied from Thom. The world’s not ending. It’s just a little rainstorm. Like you get in here when the water tank gets too full. Think about that. Think about gentle mist and the feeling of being tucked tight in your nests.
Butterbeak, perched on the edge of her nest with her two chicks peeping around her puffy yellow chest, blinks at me.
When the water tank rains, the world doesn’t shake, Nadya.
This is true! This is true! This is true!
The other birds all start chirping again.
It’s not the world, Butterbeak, it’s just a balloon. The world is a big, round—
It is for us, Bluebelly says. She’s got two eggs in her nest, still a week or more away from hatching.
I sigh. Before Nic and Mrs. T found me, I thought the world was a balloon for a while too. I remember them coming through the door that I’d forgotten was a door. Mrs. T seemed huge and alien. The smells that came in with her were so terrifyingly strange that I just screamed and screamed.
I’m sorry, I tell them, and the chirping calms down a little. I promise the world isn’t ending. Nothing bad’s going to happen to you. Mrs. T and I won’t let it.
We can hear the outerplants, Wormgobbler says. He’s perched on the bright glass rim of the sun-in-a-jar. They’re afraid.
When I listen, I can hear them too.
They’re used to the outside world. They’re used to storms, even. But they sound terrified. They’re shrieking like little seedlings staring a snake in the face for the first time.
If I make them calm down, I ask the birds, will you sleep?
Yes.
Yes!
Make them calm so the little ones don’t fear!
Make them calm, Nadya! Make them calm!
Right, I say.
I close my eyes and reach for them with my mind.
It’s a funny thing, trying to talk to a plant or animal you can’t see. Usually, when you can look at who you’re talking to, it’s like a door opens in your mind and there’s their voice. You watch them and you can hear them just as well as you can somebody talking out loud. But when you can’t see them, you have to listen for them first. Then you figure out where their voice is coming from. Then you imagine them perfectly in your mind. And once you’ve got all that done, you have to get their attention somehow.
The outerplants are so scared I just can’t do it. The wind’s whipping them around and shaking the cloud balloon too hard. I can barely even figure out which ones are screaming and where they are.
So I open my eyes again, and I walk toward the waiting house.
“Nadya, I don’t—” Mrs. T says behind me.
Before she can finish, I’m through the door.
The outside air hits my throat like a broomball going a hundred miles an hour. I’m still inside the waiting house, but my gills squeeze shut, and my lungs start breathing regular air again. The chime sounds. I crank the wheel on the outside door to unlock it. The balloon gives a violent shake, then another. The floor bucks up and plunges downward.
My stomach starts its this-was-a-bad-idea dance.
With the lock released, the door swings open. I stare into thick sheets of rain and lightning. A gust of wind swirls into the waiting house and knocks me forward.
My foot catches on the threshold, and then I’m falling.
Out the door.
Into the sky.
I grab for the railing along the catwalk, but I miss it. The Orion floats below me at a funny angle. I’m not in line to hit it. I’m not in line to hit anything. I’m going to fall all the way through the storm and into the ocean.
The sea looks up at me with gray, hungry eyes and opens its heaving mouth. The wind whips rain into my face. I fall faster and faster.
I close my eyes and scream.
All of a sudden something knocks the breath out of me. Someone grabs me around both arms and squeezes tight. There’s a short stretch and a sharp tug. I’m not falling or screaming anymore. I can barely move.
I open my eyes and stare into the grungy, rain-covered face of Tam Ban.
There’s a rope leading from his safety belt toward the deck of the Orion, and we’re swinging back and forth on it in the wind. The whole world spins. I can’t tell up from down.
“Hold on!” Tall Thom shouts.
The rope jerks. We move over the hull toward Thom’s voice inch by inch. He must be hauling in Tam’s safety rope.
Tam’s crushing my ribs. I can barely breathe. I’m probably going to have a bruise tomorrow. He glares at me. “Didn’t I tell you to be careful?” he shouts.
Thom keeps pulling us up, but the wind catches us and sends us skittering along the side of the Orion.
My head’s still spinning and my chest hurts and I’m scared out of my mind so much I don’t even know what to say back. “I—you—” I sputter. “Just because—”
The wind picks us up and slams us against the Orion’s battered hull. My doorknob wiggles up partway out of my pocket.
I can’t reach it. My hands are pinned to my sides. I can feel the doorknob getting closer and closer to the top of my pocket, where it’ll get loose and fall into the ocean and be gone forever.
“Tam, my doorknob!” I shout.
“What?” Tam says.
“My doorknob, in my pocket! It’s coming loose!” The wind picks us up and slams us down again and my heart jumps into my throat. The doorknob wiggles up a little farther.
“So?” Tam says. “Nadya, it’s just an old piece of junk! Let it go!”
“If you let it fall, I’ll never forgive you, Tam!”
“What do you want me to do, let you go and save your doorknob instead?” he shouts.
The wind keeps tossing us around. We’re swinging now, side to side, and each time we get to the end of a swing, the doorknob slips a little farther out.
“Just—loosen your arms for a second!”
“No.”
“Tam!”
“No!”
Swing. The doorknob’s spilling out. I can feel it. Swing. It’s going to be gone forever. I’m crying and flailing, trying to get to it, but I can’t because Tam’s got too tight a hold on me.
“Tam!”
Thom hauls us onto the Orion.
Tam lets me go just as the doorknob falls out of my pocket onto the deck, and I dive on it and curl around it in a ball. Thom clips our lobster claws to the safety lines. A second later, the ship rolls again and pins all three of us against the portside rail.
When the Orion levels out, Thom takes off toward her wheel like a shot. I clutch the doorknob to my chest, shaking, smelling home, remembering a warm voice and a face I can’t see clearly, someone pressing the doorknob into my hands and telling me to hold on to it, that they love me, that they’ll be right back.
I open my eyes and grab Tam by the collar. Still trembling, I stuff the doorknob back in my pocket and push him against the rail. “You don’t understand anything!” I shout. “I hate you!”
Tam’s face goes gray. He gets up slowly, and then the gray turns darker and he takes a deep breath. “No, you don’t understand!” he barks. He waves at the cloud balloon. “Life’s not some stupid game, Nadya! Just because nothing bad’s ever happened to you, just because you’re dumb and lucky and Nic and Mrs. T’s favorite and people always take care of you, it doesn’t mean it’ll always be that way!”
“Shut up!” I stand up too, thinking of my parents and losing them and how plenty of bad stuff has happened to me and how I’m not anybody’s favorite and I haven’t always had people to take care of me at all. “You shut up!”
“No!” he yells back. “Everybody always does what you want, but I don’t have to, and I—”
“Stow it!” Thom cracks like a thunderclap from the wheel. An icy wash runs down my spine, like a glacier’s just broken in half and poured a lake over the top of my head. “Back to your cabins, both of you!”
“But he—”
“But she—”
“Now!” Thom snaps. “I don’t have time for this! Tam, send Tian Li and Salyeh out to help me when you go.”
Tam’s mouth drops open. Helping keep the ship safe during a storm is his most important job. It always has been. He glares at me like I’ve ruined his whole life, and then he staggers across the deck to the stairs by the wheel.
I turn around and stumble toward my cabin. The rain pours over my face and into my eyes. My stomach spins in circles. My chest heaves. I try not to think about the sky and the sea trying to swallow me. I try not to think about what Tam said. I try not to think about Thom scolding me and falling off the balloon and whether I’ve ruined my shot at being first mate. I try not to think about losing the most precious thing that ties me to home.
I try not to be afraid.
It doesn’t really work.