by Anne E. Johnson
Anne E. Johnson lives in Brooklyn and writes whatever her imagination conjures up. She studied music for a long time, so many of her stories and books include music in their plots. Strong female heroines, especially young girls, often drive her stories. As for why she loves making up stories for young readers? Well, maybe she never grew up. Learn more about Anne on her website, AnneEJohnson.com.
Through the top of the dome, the clouds always looked like they blended together. Ossri closed her single eye and tried to imagine each cloud individually. Somebody could see clouds that way. She was sure of it. Somebody outside the dome.
She didn’t dare say that thought out loud. One time she had mentioned the Outworld—land, air, life beyond their sustaining shelter. Her father became so stressed, the webbing under his arms turned gray and cracked.
“Never, never,” Mother had said, “never even think of what’s out there.”
“Up there,” Ossri had answered, waving her webbed fingers at the dome’s highest panes of tempered glass. “I want to know what is above us.”
Her mother, her father, her teacher, her priest—all had gathered around her, chanting, “Thoughts low and inside. Flourish in the maternal dome. All we need, all we want is inside the dome.”
It was a prayer Ossri’s people, the Sirol, said every day, morning and night. The Sirol species had been chanting these words since Ossri’s grandparents were babies, ever since the poison darkness rolled over the eastern hemisphere of the planet Nurissa.
Those few who did not die built a huge dome to sustain and protect the Sirol for the coming generations. “And we live facing forward,” the preacher loved to say when she noticed Ossri’s eye gazing curiously at the dome’s panels. Or when she was exploring her own webbing, wondering what it might be for. “We do not think of the Before Days.”
And then there was the bony hook at the end of each finger and toe. Those seemed important, strong enough and shaped right to tear open the side of a building. But dome laws made it illegal to use the hooks for anything at all. Custom said they should be sanded down, or everyone said you looked sloppy.
Most mysterious of all were the urges Ossri felt when she looked up. Her muscles twitched in her arms and legs, as if they longed to squirm free from her body. And the ends of her fingers, the base of her claws ached and tingled. When she felt this discomfort, Ossri hurried to be by herself, not an easy thing in the overcrowded dome. And when she was sure nobody could see her, she did the unthinkable: Ossri climbed.
This was one of those rare opportunities. When her mother’s back was turned, she had slipped from her cube-shaped house of dark red glass. Ossri had to hurry. There wasn’t much time before her mother would send a group of neighbors to find her. Or maybe someone in the Seventh Zone would see her try to climb the dome wall. Red glass houses afforded only a little privacy, whether looking in or looking out. Still, it was worth the risk—she had been caught only twice, although she had climbed a dozen times.
Confident and excited, Ossri hooked the middle claws of each hand onto the ridge at the top of the lowest dome panel. Only those two finger hooks and two toe claws did she dare to keep a bit longer than folks thought was polite. While she climbed, the longer, thicker hooks kept her from falling. She could only imagine how quickly and surely she could move with all twenty-four hooks in their natural state.
As she pulled herself from one panel to the next, Ossri pressed her flat face against the slightly curved glass. The dome wall was clear, but the panels so thick they made everything outside look like dark blobs and swirls. Ossri’s eye swept slowly left and right, never blinking. For just a moment, something blackish appeared and moved; a few blurry dots broke through the usual fog of nothingness. And then the dots were gone.
Ossri rested her forehead against the panel while she tried to get a better grip on its frame. She was three body lengths above the dome floor, the same distance she’d always climbed in the past. This time, her disappointment turned to frustration. With a determined growl of “higher!” she lifted her head and reached for the frame of the panel above. Her longest right claw slid in and out of the groove between panes.
Since she hadn’t climbed to that level before, Ossri could only assume that frame was built the same as the lower ones. She just couldn’t get a grip. The claw found a shallow notch. Not well enough to hold Ossri’s weight and pull her up. But she couldn’t figure out how to climb down, either.
One arm up, one down, feet splayed far apart on a lower frame, Ossri pondered: was it better to fall while going up or going down? Downward might hurt less, as it was closer to the floor. On the other hand, going up would be better for her spirit, she reasoned, since at least she would have tried to keep going. So, with a snort of effort, she released her left hand and right foot, trusting in her blind instincts to find grooves to hang onto. With a satisfying click, her claw found a perch. She'd made it!
That same moment, she heard her father’s voice below her. “We already looked on Second Ring Street. She can’t have vanished into thin air.” Ossri’s muscles tensed. Both hands popped loose from the frame. She scrabbled madly at the glass, but there was no way to hang on. Screaming, arms flailing, she fell backward.
She did not plunge straight down. Air caught the webbing under her arms and between her fingers. Ossri floated. As her father and some Peacekeepers rounded the corner, she skated to a bumpy stop on the synthetic street pavement.
“Ossri! There she is! Darling, are you all right?” Her father scurried to her side, gathering her up in his arms. “Are you hurt?”
With her eye still glued to the top of the dome, she said, “I’m fine,” and let the Peacekeepers help her to her feet.
“Please tell me what happened,” said her father.
She stretched out her fingers, now understanding the purpose of the skin stretched between them. “I fell,” she said. But she did not add the more important part of her answer: “I almost flew.”
It wasn’t actually a prison cell, but it might as well have been. From the room where she’d been grounded, Ossri could not see the sky. Her own bedroom was at the top of the family’s house, and on her name dedication day when she was little, her aunt had replaced one of the red panels with clear glass. “Wanna see up,” little Ossri always used to say, or so her parents claimed.
No wonder, then, that they used distance from the sky to punish her. It was her big brother’s room. Layer upon layer of red building glass above her left Ossri in the dark.
Her mother swept her hand across the sensor panel, raising the artificial light. “There, that’s better,” Mother said from the doorway. “Your father and I want you to stay down here and think about how dangerous climbing is. Can you tell me why climbing is a bad idea?”
Ossri studied the webbing under her right arm as she mumbled an answer. “I could fall. Hurt myself. Hurt someone else. Break the dome wall. Break somebody’s house.” She was absolutely sure she couldn’t possibly do those last two things, but her mother expected them to be on the list.
“Yes, and what else, Ossri?”
It was painful to force the words out. “It makes me look like an irresponsible citizen.”
“It certainly does.”
When Ossri curled up on her brother’s bed, back to the door, her mother’s voice softened. “I know you don’t believe me right now, sweetheart, but the way we behave in the dome really matters. It’s how the Sirol species will keep going. Sometimes fitting in is the only way to survive.”
Ossri dug a claw into the mattress of silicon beads. “Yeah. Okay. Whatever.” Glancing up, she compared her mother’s blunted, smoothed finger hooks to her own rough, overgrown ones. She thought words she did not say: “We are not surviving. We’re pretending to be some other species. What’s the point?”
Her parents had grounded her for seven days. When that was over, they followed her everywhere—her parents, neighbors, not to mention the Peacekeepers. She had to behave perfectly all the time and never even glance at the dome ceiling.
One day, when her father watched her from down the block, she struck up a conversation with a neighbor. This was not just any neighbor, but an Old One, one of the handful still alive who had breathed air outside the dome. Selless sat in front of his building every day, staring forward. He had always been kind to Ossri, although these days he didn’t say much to anyone.
“Why don’t they want me to climb?” she whispered to Selless, first making sure her father was still beyond hearing. “We have hooks and webbing to help us climb. The Sirols are supposed to be climbers, right? You must remember from the Before Days.” A shudder of shame chilled Ossri’s skin when she broached the forbidden topic.
But her gamble paid off. Selless moved his eye steadily to her face. “I remember the Before Days.” He spoke so softly, she could barely hear him. “I call them Real Life Days.” He waved his hand around, fingers splayed so their webbing stretched out. “This. This is not my life. My real life is in the past.”
Ossri’s curiosity burned. She didn’t care who heard her now. “The webbing, it—”
“Keeps us from falling when we climb.”
“Climb! I knew it! Where did we used to climb?”
“Everywhere.” The Old One opened his gnarled arms. The curtain of underarm webbing was ragged and torn, as if it had been used for its true purpose for many years. “We had tall buildings with hand-holds on the outside.”
“Wow! How high could you climb?”
“Me? Well, it was a matter of pride, wasn’t it? Seven stories. See?” Selless angled his wide, flat face so he could squint straight up. “I was one of the best. That’s why they asked me to work on the ceiling.”
“You made the dome ceiling?!” Ossri could hardly breathe. “How can I get up there?”
The most mysterious gleam shown from Selless’ eye. “Climb and climb and climb some more. And when you get up there, look around carefully. I’ve left you a hidden gift.”
“For me?”
“Well, for your generation. It’s a gift for the future to find when you and the world are ready. Whoops, they’re coming.” Suddenly his eye lost focus and his jaw went to slack.
Before Ossri could ask if he was all right, her father spoke behind her. “Are you two done chatting? We have shopping to do, Ossri.”
She studied his face and manner—he had not overheard her unthinkable conversation. “I’m ready, Father.” She turned to Selless and tried to make her innocent words hold a message: “I enjoyed talking to you, sir.”
That scheming glint flashed across his face again for just a moment.
If Ossri had been fascinated by the sky before, now she was completely obsessed. Every thought was about how she could reach the dome’s top to find the mysterious gift Selless had hidden there. She invented a hundred plans to climb the outer wall, or climb buildings and then jump to the wall. She even thought of convincing the Mayor to raise a new building that reached all the way to the top. But even ambitious Ossri had to admit her plans were only dreams.
She was one little Sirol girl who had only climbed to a height of three panels. No way she’d ever make it up twenty panels—she’d counted many times—to the top. At least, not without help. And she knew just who to ask.
“Mother?” Ossri shuffled through the red-lit rooms of her family’s living unit. “Mother?”
“I’m here, Ossri.” Mother sat in her office, surrounded by hologram plans of the dome’s sewage system. “I’m in the middle of a project for work, sweetheart. What’s up?”
“May I go visit Selless, please? He was so nice to me when we talked a few days ago. Maybe I could keep him company.” She thought fast. “I could clean his living unit. Heat up his meal portion this afternoon. Would that be all right? You look upset, Mother. Aren’t you glad I want to spend time with an Old One?”
Her mother pulled away from the hologram projector and stretched out her arms. Light from the 3-D images glowed through her webbing. “Selless died yesterday, Ossri.”
“What?” Ossri’s skin tingled.
“He lived longer than most. Did you know that he helped to build our dome?”
Ossri did know that. But she wished she’d also known Selless was so near the end. How many questions she would have asked! Without looking at her mother, she ran from the building.
“Don’t get in trouble, Ossri!” her mother called.
In minutes, she was at Selless’ door, arguing with a Peacekeeper. “He told me I could look through his stuff,” she said. “He said he left something for me, but he never got a chance to give it to me.” She was hoping to rummage around, maybe find clues about the secret in the ceiling.
The Peacekeeper angled her eye suspiciously. “What did he leave you?”
“I… I don’t know. Can I just look for it? I’ll know it when I see it.”
Barring the door with her body, the officer replied, “I’ve never seen so much stuff as this Old One had. His piles of Before Days belongings have no place in the dome’s future. You know that. It all must be destroyed. Now, go home.”
Furious and frustrated, Ossri stormed off. She headed straight for her favorite climbing spot in the Seventh Zone. And if someone saw her and she got in trouble? It didn’t matter today. Climbing was all she could think of. “I’ll go up and up, and they won’t be able to reach me.” The thought prodded her to pick up her pace.
Soon, she was charging through the alleyway that led to the wall. But it wasn’t deserted as usual. Dozens of citizens and Peacekeepers crowded the area. By pushing to the front of the group, Ossri found many of them had their faces pressed to the wall’s lowest panels.
“The glass is too thick to see anything,” a Peacekeeper said.
“I can kind of see shadows moving,” said a citizen, his fingers pressing against the pane. “Someone is definitely out there.”
“Or something,” a young guy said. “There’s a reason we’re not supposed to communicate with the Outworld. It’s dangerous.”
“They told us in school that everyone out there was dead,” somebody said. “That nothing could live.”
“Then what kind of monsters are these, lurking around our safe dome?”
Ossri could not keep silent. “There’s someone out there? What if they’re not monsters? Maybe they’re just people who need help!” The group turned to stare at her. “We have to at least find out if they’re okay.”
“You.” One of the Peacekeepers who had found her when she fell now grabbed her shoulder.
“I didn’t do anything, officer, I was just saying—”
“You know about the dome wall.”
“Well, sort of.”
“How do we open it?”
“You can’t,” someone shouted. “Why ask some little girl? I’m an engineer, and I’m telling you that nothing can get in or out of the dome. Not without destroying it.”
Many folks gasped. Someone shouted, “Leave them outside, whoever they are. Let us stay safe.”
Blobs of darkness moved outside the glass. One seemed to grow before landing with a dull thud against the outside of the panel.
“We have to help them.” Ossri tried to say it as her mother would, clear and strong. “And I think I know how.” She craned her neck to look at the top of the dome, and pointed. “There’s an answer up there.”
Once she had convinced the Peacekeepers to try to reach the ceiling, the project had to be organized. “We’ll need cable. And a net.” Essorg, the dome’s Mayor, shot Ossri a desperate look. “What else will we need for… for climbing?” His face wrinkled when he said that word.
“Nothing. We just climb.” Ossri then corrected herself. “Hooks. Your own hooks. Whoever has the longest finger and toe claws will probably climb best.”
Someone called out, “It’s a crazy plan.” Several others murmured agreement.
Another thump against the dome wall prompted the mayor to say, “There may be living beings outside. We climb.” Once again, he addressed Ossri with a worried tone. “Exactly what did the Old One tell you?”
“Selless said there was a gift, a surprise for the future. And I would find it if I climbed all the way up.”
Her father, who would not let go of her hand, asked, “How did the Old Ones build the dome anyway? How did they get up so high?”
“Like this. Watch.” With a reassuring smile, Ossri pulled from his grip and ran to her favorite climbing spot. She took a deep breath, focused her mind, spread her webbing, and slid her finger hooks into the top of the first panel. She pulled her legs up. Her arms reached for the second panel. Her legs followed. Third panel. This time she caught the groove securely. The fourth panel was a bigger challenge—her muscles complained a little.
She paused before trying the fifth panel. “Don’t look down,” she told herself. Of course, her eye immediately sought the ground. The view from above did not make her frightened or dizzy. It felt natural. She grabbed the top of the sixth panel. Her legs shook, but she found a place to hook her claws. Almost a third of the way up now! That thought helped her climb the seventh panel.
Now her limbs were heavy as glass. She didn’t have the strength to climb any higher.
“Come on, Ossri, you’re doing great.”
“You can do it, Ossri!”
The voices flooding from below stirred her heart but weren’t enough to charge up her muscles.
“Leslo!” Her father shouted her mother’s name. “Leslo, what are you doing?” When Ossri dared to glance down, her surprise nearly made her let go. Her mother’s fear-widened eye stared up at her from the second panel.
“No, mother! Go back down. I can do it.”
Mother kicked up her leg, trying to hook her foot into the same groove where her hands had a weak grip.
“You’ll flip upside down, Mother. I’ve got this. Just wait there.” With no more thought for how tired she was, Ossri climbed. In her mind blazed a clear image of sky and clouds. Some source of energy deep inside her drove her upward. She felt like she weighed nothing, like the air was lifting her.
And she realized it was true. A stretching sensation tickled her underarm webbing. Somehow the air currents in the upper half of the dome were holding her, pushing her toward her goal. “Woo hoo!” she hollered, thrilled right down to her center. “Look at me. I am a Sirol, and I’m climbing.”
Glancing down, Ossri got quite a shock. Everyone looked tiny. Her view of the red glass buildings showed their roof panels. The streets might have been painted by a child’s finger. Without knowing it, Ossri had reached the dome’s apex.
And she wasn’t scared. It felt like the right place to be. Her first instinct was to press her face against the highest pane, to find out if she could see the sky. Really see it. Fear bubbled up, but Ossri ignored it and reached one arm out at an angle. The air supported her webbing, and she easily touched the frame of the topmost panel. On its edge was a latch. A latch. Latches opened things.
Gasping, Ossri pulled back. Her whole life, she’d been taught that the dome must stay sealed forever. All she had to do now was release the latch and push that window up. Her fingers trembled as they wrapped around the handle. “This is some gift, Selless,” she said out loud, hoping the Old One’s spirit could hear. “I’ll either kill everyone inside, or I’ll set us all free. How am I supposed to decide if I should open it?”
Ossri closed her eye and listened—for what, she wasn’t sure. The rush of air was all she heard at first. Then her memory played back Selless’ words: “It’s a gift for the future to find when you and the world are ready.”
Her eye popped open. “I found it. That means we are ready.” Taking a huge breath for courage, Ossri pull down the metal tongue holding the latch closed. Robotic hinges on the other side of the panel caused the glass to rise automatically. Screams ringing upward from the ground told Ossri that everyone was paying attention. She did not look down. Instead she climbed up. Up and out.
She easily fit through the large opening. The air was cold. She had never felt cold air. The air smelled sweet, and bitter, and metallic, and like plants. So many scents all at once! In every direction, the land was red and gray. Small, scrubby bushes like the ones planted along streets in the dome grew in unorganized clumps. There was wreckage of buildings, a roadway of water running through a field of mud, and a place where the land was piled high like a solid dome. There were just too many things for her greedy eye to take in.
But best of all was the sight on the ground near the dome. A group of ten or so Sirols waved and shouted. Alive in the Outworld. “Come and join us,” called one of them. “It’s perfectly safe.”
And that, Ossri knew, was the Old One’s real gift.