the cursed
Chapter One
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I step to the terrace edge and fear rises like a kicked beast. Our village sleeps in the predawn light below, a patchwork of waterwheels and thatch roofs spilling down the mountain to Lloma city, with its hundred bridges over the river gorge. Crickets chirp and sparrows sing in the cool air, and the waist-high millet behind me smells earthy with dew.
I breathe deep. This is not fear of getting hurt, though the drop is steep enough to break legs. It’s not fear of dying either, though that’s totally reasonable given what I’m about to do.
It’s fear of getting stuck.
In half an hour I need to be back down the mountain, tending our mill, starting the coals and grinding the maize and doing everything my Dad used to. The same things I’ve done every day since my brother left. The things I’ll do till I die, unless I find a way out.
Which brings me here. I heft the wingsail in my right hand—a cobbled-together halfmoon of balsa and leather and pulley ropes—and glance down. The drop below me is forty feet, the next terrace thirty feet below that. Plenty of height for a lightfoot to jump off and fly.
Only I’m not a lightfoot. I’m too big for it. Lightfoots are thin, wiry little people, and I’m built like an ox on stilts. I haven’t had the training either—most apprentices take years to fly. Not to mention lightfoots need to be free to go anywhere, anytime.
Still, for this little piece of morning, I’m anyone I want to be. And I have the one thing most apprentices have to train years for: the sensory ability to trade hearing for weightlessness. And that’s all you really need to fly.
I focus on my hearing, zeroing in on the papery rustle of the millet grass, the soft slur of the creek running to my right, the penetrating chirp of crickets rubbing their wings in the field behind me. Zero in on the sensation and grasp it inside, braiding it into perceptual energy. The chirps fade. The rustle dies, and the rush of water grows faint. I keep braiding, keep pulling the power of my hearing tighter inside, until the world goes dead silent. I can’t hear the sound of my own voice like this, but all the joints in my body go loose, like I’m floating in a pool of air.
That’s the price of sense braiding. You gain an ability, but trade a sense to do it—hearing for reduced weight, in my case. Use it too much, and you lose the sense permanently, like the quarry workers who go blind from braiding their sight into strength all day. Lightfoots go deaf too, eventually, but I’m a long ways from that. And according to how my last attempt at flight went, I’m going to die well before I need to worry about hearing loss.
I don’t care. This is what I want. The solution to getting stuck.
I roll my shoulders and almost float off the ground, I’m so light. Okay, step one accomplished. I’ve always known I’m good at braiding sound. But step two? Step two is me not panicking when I actually jump off this ledge, when my wingsail grabs the morning breeze and I shoot up a hundred feet. Because panic means losing the braid. And losing the braid means a long fall to a hard landing. Lucky for me it was planting season last time I tried this, and instead of breaking my legs I just sank into mud up to my thighs, twisting both ankles and wrecking my salvage wingsail.
It took me a moon to rebuild it. The paddies are all dried up now, rice stalks starting to put on seed. Fear getting the best of me this time will mean a lot worse than twisted ankles, but I can’t not try. It’s either this or I give up hope of ever being anything other than a smalltown millworker.
I would rather die than do that.
So I jump.
For a second I think it’s not going to work. That I didn’t braid myself light enough or the breeze died or something, and I’m going to drop like a stone. Then the wind catches me and I soar straight up, a whoop ripping out of my lungs. I shoot up a hundred feet, two hundred, terraces vanishing below me, gardens and trees and houses going from regular size to miniatures to a child’s model of them, built out of clay in a farmyard, only real. It’s amazing. A bird circles below me, and the sun pops out from behind the border peaks to the east, a sunrise just for me. Then the wingsail starts to skew above me and I tug on the finwings, trying to level out.
It mostly works. Below me the valley spreads out like a painting in impossible detail—Senne river sparking in a wide loop through a patchwork of fields and pastures to the royal deeps, Chatli’s Eye rising like a solitary tooth in the wide plain. My little brother is up there somewhere, I know, training to be a perceptick warrior at the National Institute. They chose him over me, when they came to test us.
He probably does this all the time. Would probably laugh at how hard I’m trying.
The wingsail shakes me out of my thoughts. I’m pulling backwards in air, losing ground. I lean forward, trying to steady myself out.
The vibration I felt gets stronger and I look up to see one of the wingleathers has pulled free, and is flapping wildly in the wind. If I hadn’t braided hearing so tight I would have heard it. No way to fix it now—just need to get down in one piece. I glance down to judge where I am, and the ground is closer than it was. I’m losing height.
Falling, in other words.
Panic claws up and I push it back down, focusing on my braid. Everything will be fine as long as I keep the braid tight, keep myself weightless. Even with the weight of the wingsail it’ll be a slow fall, an easy landing. But let go of it and--
I glance down again. The ground is coming up fast. Too fast? I get a sick memory of last time, of tumbling out of control then smacking into the paddy hard enough to lose consciousness, pure luck keeping me from landing on a stone wall or building instead. I won’t let that happen again. I can’t. This wouldn’t shake Oni. My younger brother, and he was always the cooler headed one.
I grit my teeth. I can be like that. I lean back, trying to slow the sail, filling the leathers with as much air as they’ll hold. Panic pulls at me as the ground swirls up. I force my thoughts to advice lightfoots have given me on flying, talking in the city square. I spread my weight out further on the frame, pull the edgesails as far as out as they’ll go, and the spin slows, turns almost into a glide, even if the frame feels like it’ll shake apart at any moment. Panic is still here, pulling at me like a mad dog, but I can be stronger than it. I will be stronger.
I rattle down in Widow Meima’s maize garden, two terraces up from our mill, and gratefully let my braid unravel. The world is still silent, except for a faint ringing sound—the dullness, lightfoots call it, like a sensory hangover. It’s the first sign of deafness, but it’ll pass. I sit down and let the panic unwind, now that it’s safe.
After my heart slows I remember the rush, the glory of being up so high, the ultimate freedom, and I grin. It was amazing. This is the first time I’ve really gotten up, really flown, and it’s everything I thought it would be. And if that leather hadn’t come loose—but no, that’s not the whole reason I fell. I lost my concentration too, not on the braid, but on what I was doing. Started thinking about Oni, about him getting chosen over me, the same old thoughts that run through my head every day. Jealousy that he got out and I’m still here. And loneliness—despite everything, he was my best friend. With him gone, and Dad drinking so much, I feel like I’ve lost my whole family. And still I can’t leave, because if I did, who would take care of Dad? And how would Oni find me when he graduates?
I get up, and pick up my broken wingsail. Flying was amazing today. But the truth is I’m as stuck here as I ever was.
I breathe deep. This is not fear of getting hurt, though the drop is steep enough to break legs. It’s not fear of dying either, though that’s totally reasonable given what I’m about to do.
It’s fear of getting stuck.
In half an hour I need to be back down the mountain, tending our mill, starting the coals and grinding the maize and doing everything my Dad used to. The same things I’ve done every day since my brother left. The things I’ll do till I die, unless I find a way out.
Which brings me here. I heft the wingsail in my right hand—a cobbled-together halfmoon of balsa and leather and pulley ropes—and glance down. The drop below me is forty feet, the next terrace thirty feet below that. Plenty of height for a lightfoot to jump off and fly.
Only I’m not a lightfoot. I’m too big for it. Lightfoots are thin, wiry little people, and I’m built like an ox on stilts. I haven’t had the training either—most apprentices take years to fly. Not to mention lightfoots need to be free to go anywhere, anytime.
Still, for this little piece of morning, I’m anyone I want to be. And I have the one thing most apprentices have to train years for: the sensory ability to trade hearing for weightlessness. And that’s all you really need to fly.
I focus on my hearing, zeroing in on the papery rustle of the millet grass, the soft slur of the creek running to my right, the penetrating chirp of crickets rubbing their wings in the field behind me. Zero in on the sensation and grasp it inside, braiding it into perceptual energy. The chirps fade. The rustle dies, and the rush of water grows faint. I keep braiding, keep pulling the power of my hearing tighter inside, until the world goes dead silent. I can’t hear the sound of my own voice like this, but all the joints in my body go loose, like I’m floating in a pool of air.
That’s the price of sense braiding. You gain an ability, but trade a sense to do it—hearing for reduced weight, in my case. Use it too much, and you lose the sense permanently, like the quarry workers who go blind from braiding their sight into strength all day. Lightfoots go deaf too, eventually, but I’m a long ways from that. And according to how my last attempt at flight went, I’m going to die well before I need to worry about hearing loss.
I don’t care. This is what I want. The solution to getting stuck.
I roll my shoulders and almost float off the ground, I’m so light. Okay, step one accomplished. I’ve always known I’m good at braiding sound. But step two? Step two is me not panicking when I actually jump off this ledge, when my wingsail grabs the morning breeze and I shoot up a hundred feet. Because panic means losing the braid. And losing the braid means a long fall to a hard landing. Lucky for me it was planting season last time I tried this, and instead of breaking my legs I just sank into mud up to my thighs, twisting both ankles and wrecking my salvage wingsail.
It took me a moon to rebuild it. The paddies are all dried up now, rice stalks starting to put on seed. Fear getting the best of me this time will mean a lot worse than twisted ankles, but I can’t not try. It’s either this or I give up hope of ever being anything other than a smalltown millworker.
I would rather die than do that.
So I jump.
For a second I think it’s not going to work. That I didn’t braid myself light enough or the breeze died or something, and I’m going to drop like a stone. Then the wind catches me and I soar straight up, a whoop ripping out of my lungs. I shoot up a hundred feet, two hundred, terraces vanishing below me, gardens and trees and houses going from regular size to miniatures to a child’s model of them, built out of clay in a farmyard, only real. It’s amazing. A bird circles below me, and the sun pops out from behind the border peaks to the east, a sunrise just for me. Then the wingsail starts to skew above me and I tug on the finwings, trying to level out.
It mostly works. Below me the valley spreads out like a painting in impossible detail—Senne river sparking in a wide loop through a patchwork of fields and pastures to the royal deeps, Chatli’s Eye rising like a solitary tooth in the wide plain. My little brother is up there somewhere, I know, training to be a perceptick warrior at the National Institute. They chose him over me, when they came to test us.
He probably does this all the time. Would probably laugh at how hard I’m trying.
The wingsail shakes me out of my thoughts. I’m pulling backwards in air, losing ground. I lean forward, trying to steady myself out.
The vibration I felt gets stronger and I look up to see one of the wingleathers has pulled free, and is flapping wildly in the wind. If I hadn’t braided hearing so tight I would have heard it. No way to fix it now—just need to get down in one piece. I glance down to judge where I am, and the ground is closer than it was. I’m losing height.
Falling, in other words.
Panic claws up and I push it back down, focusing on my braid. Everything will be fine as long as I keep the braid tight, keep myself weightless. Even with the weight of the wingsail it’ll be a slow fall, an easy landing. But let go of it and--
I glance down again. The ground is coming up fast. Too fast? I get a sick memory of last time, of tumbling out of control then smacking into the paddy hard enough to lose consciousness, pure luck keeping me from landing on a stone wall or building instead. I won’t let that happen again. I can’t. This wouldn’t shake Oni. My younger brother, and he was always the cooler headed one.
I grit my teeth. I can be like that. I lean back, trying to slow the sail, filling the leathers with as much air as they’ll hold. Panic pulls at me as the ground swirls up. I force my thoughts to advice lightfoots have given me on flying, talking in the city square. I spread my weight out further on the frame, pull the edgesails as far as out as they’ll go, and the spin slows, turns almost into a glide, even if the frame feels like it’ll shake apart at any moment. Panic is still here, pulling at me like a mad dog, but I can be stronger than it. I will be stronger.
I rattle down in Widow Meima’s maize garden, two terraces up from our mill, and gratefully let my braid unravel. The world is still silent, except for a faint ringing sound—the dullness, lightfoots call it, like a sensory hangover. It’s the first sign of deafness, but it’ll pass. I sit down and let the panic unwind, now that it’s safe.
After my heart slows I remember the rush, the glory of being up so high, the ultimate freedom, and I grin. It was amazing. This is the first time I’ve really gotten up, really flown, and it’s everything I thought it would be. And if that leather hadn’t come loose—but no, that’s not the whole reason I fell. I lost my concentration too, not on the braid, but on what I was doing. Started thinking about Oni, about him getting chosen over me, the same old thoughts that run through my head every day. Jealousy that he got out and I’m still here. And loneliness—despite everything, he was my best friend. With him gone, and Dad drinking so much, I feel like I’ve lost my whole family. And still I can’t leave, because if I did, who would take care of Dad? And how would Oni find me when he graduates?
I get up, and pick up my broken wingsail. Flying was amazing today. But the truth is I’m as stuck here as I ever was.