I returned home in self-imposed disgrace.
Francesca thought I was being overdramatic. “Courtships come, courtships go,” she said bracingly. “She was very pretty, but obviously not worth the trouble.”
“Should I write an apology note?” I asked miserably.
“No! Good God! Please do not embarrass yourself further. Just let it go.”
I sighed.
“And don’t pout, Leo. It’s unbecoming in a gentleman.”
I asked her pointedly if she had managed to make any headway in her quest for a husband.
“We’re not talking about me right now, Leo,” she said primly. “Don’t try to change the subject.”
She had not.
Barti had even less to say: “I told you she already knew.”
So that summer, I retreated to my tower.
It was peaceful. I spent my days sleeping late into the morning and tinkering with my tools in the afternoon. And at night, I joined my father in the Observation Tower.
We spoke even less than we had before, if that was possible. There was a tension between us now that I wasn’t sure I understood, and had no interest in breaching. But there was no animus; we were as cordial as always.
It was with some surprise, then, when my father came down one night and gave to me, with neither preamble nor explanation, a stack of very old books.
I took them gingerly. “What’s this?”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Books of the Hashaa,” he replied, and did not elaborate. I opened one, fingers gentle. It was entirely softbound; merely paper and twine, no leather or wooden board for the cover. I could not read the script. At risk of sounding trite, it really did resemble chicken scratches.
I looked up to tell my father that I couldn’t read it, but he was already disappearing up the stairs to the floor above. So I set the books carefully on a workbench and began to go through them, one by one.
Most of them were in the same unreadable chicken-scratch script, but a few were in Latin. I recognized a number of the very same passages I myself had been taught upon—Amo, Amas, Amat—and some that were a bit less typical—Volo, Volas, Volat. Only one was in Romanci. I opened that one and read:
<blockquote>
In the beginning, there was only the primordial void; an endless expanse of air without form or boundary. All was night, silent and still and dark. And in that dark expanse, there was an egg.
It was the first egg.
It lay in a nest of raw, shapeless firmament. For a while, all was peaceful. The egg brooded itself.
And then one day, it hatched.
The yolk became the sun; the white, the moon. And from the broken shell, the world began to take form. The upper half of the egg became the dome of the sky, and the lower half became the fertile earth. The spots upon the egg scattered across the heavens, becoming the stars that spangle the night.
</blockquote>
I stared. It was the creation myth of the Winged Ones.
I read on, about how the First Winged One was given guardianship of the skies, and how she looked down upon the earth below and saw it was still raw and untamed, and descended to the earth. Where her feathers brushed the land, trees grew and flowers bloomed; where her feet touched the soil, rivers began to flow.
And there, on the very next page, complete with an illustration in faded blue ink; a destruction myth.
<blockquote>
In the days when the skies stretched endless, and the land below was cradled by mountain peaks, the valleys untamed, unwalled by humans, there lived Nenesh, beloved by the stars, for his heart was pure and his wings carried him where others dared not go. He lived with his family in a great aerie atop the tallest mountain, a sanctuary of stone and wind. He and his flock lived well, and kept themselves pure, but the flocks around him became wicked and corrupt. They glutted themselves on their own eggs, and fornicated with humans and mer-folk and satyrs.
One day, the stars whispered to him, bringing dire news: a Great Storm, unlike any the world had ever known, was coming. It would sweep across the land and skies; uprooting trees, dismantling homes, scattering all who dwelled within its path. It was a cleansing, the stars whispered to Nenesh, and he listened; a renewal for a world that had grown chaotic and corrupt.
The stars chose Nenesh for a sacred task. “Build a nest,” they commanded, “a great nest that will stand against the tempest. Gather the winged and the grounded, the scaled and the feathered, the strong and the small. For in you, the future will find its hope.”
Nenesh bowed deeply, his wings folding gracefully behind him. “I will do as you ask,” he vowed, “and I will not falter.”
With his family’s help, Nenesh began crafting the nest. It was a marvel of engineering and artistry, vast enough to house creatures of every kind.
As the nest took shape, Nenesh flew far and wide to spread the warning of the stars. He soared over forests and valleys, rivers and deserts, calling out to all who would listen. The creatures of the world responded—some with trust, others with hesitation. But all came. Eagles and sparrows nested in upper reaches; wolves and sheep alike made the treacherous climb and huddled at the bottom, bowing the woven surface.
And when all was ready, the winds began to howl.
The skies darkened, and the first gusts of the Great Storm tore across the world. Nenesh and his family guided the last of the creatures aboard. Then Nenesh, his wings shining with the blessing of the stars, took his place at the entrance.
The storm struck with a fury unimaginable. Winds howled like wild beasts, tearing trees from their roots and flattening entire mountains. The nest creaked and shuddered, but it held strong. Inside, the creatures huddled together, too frightened to eat each other.
For twenty-eight days and twenty-eight nights, the nest bore the winds. Nenesh and his family worked tirelessly, tending to the creatures and repairing what the storm stripped off the nest. At last, on the twenty-ninth day, the winds began to subside. The skies cleared, revealing a world transformed. The valleys were reshaped, the mountains newly carved by the tempest’s might, and the air was fresh and clean, carrying the promise of renewal. And as the creatures emerged, they marveled at the changed world, their fear replaced by hope.
The stars whispered once more. “Nenesh,” they said, “you have done well. You have carried life through the storm and into the dawn of a new age.”This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
And so Nenesh and his family lived on, guardians of the skies and stewards of the new world, their story carried on every breeze that whispered through the transformed land.
</blockquote>
So enthralled was I with what I was reading—their heroes, and villains, and an amusingly dull list of lineages, not unlike what I myself had suffered through in church—I read until dawn without realizing it. I stumbled to bed and slept until noon the next day.
And then, without any further provocation, and for no reason in particular, I began to build another contraption.
I did not do it furtively this time. Whatever I felt I needed, I simply took: from the Repair Room, which I shamelessly lockpicked; from the Observation Tower; from the heap of old mining equipment left lying around the shaft entrances scattered across the cliffs. Those were often hard to carry, but I relished the exercise. I would come back down the forest path, sweating and gasping, lugging some axle over my shoulder or cog in my straining hands. It felt good.
This was all far too large to fit inside, of course. The scale to which I was driven, by mysterious internal forces which I had no interest in curbing, was monumental. I was building right out in the open, on one of the few flat portions of land behind the villa, where the forest path began. As the summer grew hotter, and the obscure winged figures far up in the sky snatched at the dragonflies, I began to work with my shirt off, and burned myself brown. I couldn’t see them, but the ou?es on my back must have stood out like fresh limewash.
It took me all summer, but by the time the grass had crisped golden, and the apples began to swell in the orchard, I had a complete orrery nearly twice my height. It winked in the sun.
And on the evening before I was to return to University, my father came to see it.
In truth, I think he had been coming to see it every night, when I was abed, sound asleep after my exertions. There was no sign that he was doing so at the orrery itself—I was no hunter, observing every creased blade of grass or turned stone—but I would often find that the exact tool I needed next had been left out in the Observation Tower, on top of a tool chest or on a workbench. But he was here now, standing beside me, the frames of his spectacles gleaming in the last of the setting sun.
We simply stood there in silence for a long while, until at last he asked, very quietly, “May I see it move?”
Without a word, I stepped forward, pulled the lock-pin, and began to turn the crank.
The mass was immense; I needed two hands, and I was straining and sweating again just to give the crank handle a quarter turn. But at last it began to pick up momentum, sending the gear-teeth clicking against each other. And slowly, ponderously, the orrery turned.
Planets orbited. Moons whirled. Rings spun. And right in the center, wrought of soldered wire and every shard of broken mirror and glass I could find, was a massive egg. As the spheres danced around it, it cracked open, deliberately and delicately. Once the mechanism had made a full circuit, it closed again.
I kept cranking the handle. My father stood and watched as the egg hatched, then un-hatched, then hatched again. At last I let go, muscles shaking and weak with strain, and let it grind itself to a slow halt. I set the lock-pin and returned to his side, and looked at him.
“You knew childbirth would kill her,” I said, with neither preamble nor rancor.
He nodded, eyes hidden behind the glint of his glasses. An evening breeze soughed in the pines.
“Then why did you do it?”
My father took his glasses off with a faintly trembling hand—and only now could I see that he had been weeping. He wiped his tears from his face.
“Not a day goes by,” he replied, voice barely above a whisper, “that I don’t ask myself that very question. I asked myself that even then, every time we made love. I was terrified. I told her. I don’t know if she understood. We were both beyond reason, but I, I, should have known better.” He put his glasses back on and turned to look at me. “Not a day goes by that I don’t blame myself. I am the one to blame. But I see you, Leo—” He reached out, as he had not in years—had not ever, that I could recall, and touched me gently on the cheek, as though I were no more than a babe—“and I cannot regret it.” He dropped his hand and looked at the orrery. “I see what you make, and I cannot regret it. You are so like your mother, in the ways I loved most. I still have her in you.”
I swallowed. “I wish I could have met her.”
“So do I. She loved you so much.”
I had nothing left to say, and neither did he. After one last lingering look at the orrery, and then at me, he turned away and walked back to the tower.
I stood there and stared at the orrery, not seeing it, no thoughts in my mind. Only sadness, and peace.
The soft sound of wings brought me back to myself. I turned.
There beside me, hardly as tall as my shoulder, stood Sheshef.
I recognized her instantly. Her tawny hair was bound now, gathered in a single plait and looped with beaded cords, but the split ends drifted as lightly as I remembered, ruffled as freely as the dove-gray down at her shoulders and, now, the back of her neck. I longed to touch it.
She blinked her nictitating membranes and stepped forward, then reached out and traced her hands over the orrery: the gears, the levers, the rings and spheres and rods. She opened her wings, stormcloud and buff, and fluttered to the very topmost ring and landed there, crouched on her haunches, wings still open for balance as she peered at the mirrored egg below.
“This is the cosmos,” she said wonderingly. Her voice was older now, deeper and more sure, but with the same kestrel overtones.
“It is,” I replied. There was no mention of the years gone by between us. It was as though we had seen each other yesterday. “Would you like to see it spin?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to come down.”
She fluttered gracefully to the ground and settled her wings against her back. My weariness was gone; I pulled the pin and began to crank as though I had just awakened. As the egg first began its ponderous yawn, Sheshef half-flared her wings with delight and voiced her burbling coo. I grinned.
When at last I felt my muscles would truly give out, I let the orrery spin down and locked it once more. Sheshef turned to me, unsmiling as always, elation clear in the gleam of her whiteless eyes. “You are very good at making things. I like it.”
“Thank you. I like it too.”
“You worked on it all summer.”
I wiped sweat from my brow and regarded her carefully. “Did you watch?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you come see it sooner?” Why didn’t she come see me sooner?
“I did not wish to interrupt your work. Now you are done.”
I wiped away another trickle of sweat and asked what I had wanted to ask her so long ago: “Why did you go up to the top floor of the tower? Why didn’t you stay hidden?”
Sheshef looked away. I could not read her face, but her voice was laced with chagrin when she finally answered. “I wanted to see the telescopes being used, not covered. It was my last chance.”
I nodded. It was understandable. “One of the telescopes at University is so big,” I said inanely, “it cannot be covered. We have to use lens caps.”
Her eyes widened. “How big is it?”
“About as big as this orrery,” I said, gesturing.
Her eyes widened further. “What can you see with it?”
“The same thing you can see with the others, just larger and more clearly.”
“What does it look like?”
“You—have you never looked through a telescope before?” Surely, after all her time in the tower…
But she shook her head. “I am not a priest.”
“Are you allowed to look through a telescope?”
She resettled her wings thoughtfully. “It is not forbidden.” I had heard those exact words before.
I gestured at the Observation Tower. “Would you like to?”
She stared at it hungrily, but shook her head. “Not tonight. There is a conjunction; the priests will come. I will have to go soon, so they will not see me here. Can I come tomorrow?”
It was a blow to the gut. “No. I leave tomorrow.”
“For University?”
“Yes.”
Sheshef looked thoughtful. “Where is University?”
“Far away,” I said flatly. “Farther than you can fly.”
“When will you be back?”
Another blow. “Next summer.”
If she had a reply, I didn’t get to hear it; she looked up suddenly, at a point over my head. I turned. I saw nothing more than the same handful of dark figures that had been circling overhead all afternoon, dimmer now in the evening light. But whatever she saw, it changed her. She blinked her nictitating membranes twice, in quick succession. “I must go. Thank you for showing me the cosmos.”
And then, in a rush of sweeping wingbeats, she was gone, spiraling into the darkening sky.