Ruins of Bluefall ~ Cora Martin

A bird wheeled above in the clear blue sky, a cold breeze bearing it aloft. Fish hardly gave it a second glance as she led her sister, Branch, through the cornflower-colored foothills and past ultramarine streams, which trickled their way towards the navy ocean. Just a mile or so north of the crystal caves, where the two girls lived with their tribe, a crumbling site of ancient ruins took up almost the entire floor of the valley.

As they passed under the arch that marked the outer boundary of the ruins, Branch dug her feet into the packed dirt of the path. “I don’t wanna go in,” she whined.

Fish took a deep breath, reminding herself to be patient with the little girl. She had never been this far from home, after all. “I know, Stick,” she said, using the nickname much more suited to Branch’s small stature. “But you have to. Chief told us to get stiff-rope and we can only get it here.”

Branch’s eyes remained wide with fear, but she allowed herself to be led along into the craggy teeth of the destroyed city. Fish could hardly blame her sister for her fear. The remains of buildings jutted out of the ground like spectral fingers: their edges unnaturally straight except near the top where they had shattered and worn more like the crystals Fish was used to. Their sometimes-stone and sometimes-crystalline sides had broken in to reveal winding catacombs with broken furniture and looted walls.

Her grandfather had told her that his grandfather had told him that people once lived in these ruins, before the world went blue, but she could hardly imagine it. There were so few people these days, and anyway; how could Leuprans have ever built houses so high? The shelters in the caverns where she lived were single rooms carved into the walls. The shelters of the plains people were mobile and collapsible. The people on the coast lived in huts on the shore. None of them built towers to live in.

Were it not for the precisely person-sized rooms and furniture, Fish would have thought it was just another fairy tale, made to explain why things were the way they were. Like the myth of Glasshands who made the crystal caves, or the myth of bluefall that explained why babies were born brown before their skin changed to the normal cobalt color.

Fish shook her head, clearing it of thoughts, as she consulted her map. Much of the ruins had already been looted of the precious stiff-rope, so Chief had given her a map of everywhere they had already looked. At the center of the map was a blank square, and Fish and Branch were headed straight for it.

They walked in silence for an hour, picking their way across cracked, debris-cluttered stone paths until at last, they reached the blank part of the map. About a quarter-mile away (as the crow flies; it would be much farther on foot) Fish spotted a taller building and directed her feet towards it. The taller the ruin, the more likely it was to have stiff-rope.

A quarter of an hour later, after wending their way through scrubby trees growing out of the stone paths (did these ancient people really lay stone over earth? Why?) and scrambling over fallen archways, Branch stopped abruptly, yanking her sister to a halt. Fish turned, about to snap and yank her onward again, when she caught sight of what Branch had seen.

“What is that?” Branch breathed.

“It’s a skeleton. You’ve seen one before.” Although, perhaps not in this context. Usually, Fish only saw skeletons on funeral pyres, after Breha had taken their souls into the stars, leaving only the stone supports of the dead person behind.

“But— but why is it here?” Branch looked up at her with big, heartsick jade eyes and Fish was harshly reminded that this was her first trip into the ruins. She wasn’t used to the debris, the devastation, and remnants of death that still haunted the paths here.

Fish sighed deeply and crouched down to her level. “He probably died alone,” she explained. “As did a lot of the ancient people who used to live here. If the falling stone didn’t get him, The Sickness probably did.”

“The Sickness?” Branch blinked up at her, the tears in her eyes making way for confusion.

Fish took a moment to think, pulling Branch onwards towards the towering ruin, trying to figure out the best way to explain the myth. “You know how, when a baby is born, it comes out this weird… brown color, before it turns cobalt?”

Branch nodded and Fish went on. “Well, a long, long time ago, people stayed brown after they were born; and there were hundreds and hundreds of other colors too, not just blue and brown. Back then, people did something to make Bannou the Destroyer angry. I don’t remember what it was, I’m not sure anyone even knows actually, but he pledged his allegiance to Kiikouda in exchange for vengeance.”

Branch gasped, and Fish couldn’t help a smile. She could see now why storytellers enjoyed this tale so much. “Yes, Kiikouda: spirit of chaos! Kiikouda introduced him to the Tais, spirits of pestilence and poison, and together they plotted to fill the air and water with blue poisons and kill all of the other colors.”

As much as the storytellers insisted their world was drab and monochromatic, Fish had never seen it that way. There was cobalt, navy, teal, cerulean, sapphire, cornflower, and a hundred others. Not drab at all.

“Well,” she went on, “Bailio and Antil heard them plotting on the wind and loved us Leuprans too much to abandon us, but they were too weak to fight Kiikouda and Bannou head on. Instead, they saved as many people as they could.”

“Bailio took all of those who prayed to him and gave them wings made of crystal and light and taught them how to fly. He gave them a map to the galaxy and showed them how to reach the stars and even live among them!” For a brief moment, as she glanced over, Fish saw the light of wonder spark in her sister’s eyes.

She also saw the exact moment it went out. “But Bailio didn’t take us to the stars,” Branch realized aloud.

“No, Stick.” She placed a firm hand on her sister’s back to comfort her. “There were too many people for Bailio to save everyone. Antil is the one who saved our ancestors.”

“How did he save us?” Branch asked curiously.

“He took one of the crystals he wore around his neck and gathered up all of his devotees,” she told Branch, gesturing to her own crystal necklace as she nimbly ran across a fallen piece of debris that bridged a gaping chasm in the ground. “One by one, as the Tais belched poison into the air, he fed them all water from his crystal. However, when the last person drank, there wasn’t enough water left for Antil, and he had to follow Bailio into the stars, which is why it’s so hard to talk to him now.”

At just that moment, Branch was wobbling her way over the arch far less nimbly than Fish had done. When she just half a step away from the other side, she slipped. Branch would have fallen, never to be seen again if not for Fish’s quick reflexes. She heard the scrape of thick hide shoes on porous rock, whipped around, and caught Branch by the back of her coat.

They stared at each other in silence for a long minute, Branch frozen by her near death, Fish frozen by the near loss of her sister and dearest friend.

Soon enough, however, their breath returned and Fish pulled them onward, ignoring the shake in her knees.

“Anyway,” she went on with the story. Nothing better than a distraction after a near-death experience! “When the poison was finally in all the air, our ancestors had no choice but to breathe it. They fell sick like everyone else in that time, with a fever and a terrible cough, but they didn’t die. Instead, they turned from brown to blue and became well again.”

“That being said, the spirits couldn’t save everyone,” Fish nodded her head back, referring to the skeleton. “Those who couldn’t fly and who didn’t pray to Antil were left to the protection of Breha. She took their souls safely to the afterlife, but they had to leave their bodies behind.”

Branch nodded slowly, slotting the myth into her understanding of the world. Fish couldn’t help but wonder what the ancients’ lives had been like: living in rock-and-crystal towers that scraped the sky, seeing the world in hundreds and hundreds of colors, being able to talk to the gods directly…

“I wonder what the star-people are doing now.” Branch’s innocent question pulled Fish from her imagination. Fish had never thought about that before. The star-people had always been just the “not us” in the story; there were no tales about what they did now.

“I don’t know,” Fish finally settled on. “They never came back, though, so I don’t think it really matters what they’re doing.”

Branch looked down, her brow furrowed, unsatisfied with the answer she was given. No matter. They were already at the base of the ruin. It was huge, larger than any Fish had ever looted, with a gaping hole in the crystal walls just at ground-level. The place was begging to be looted.

She looked down at her sister. “Now, remember. Look inside walls and any kind of furniture you don’t understand, especially if it’s bolted down to the floor. Most importantly, stay close to me.”

Branch nodded her head eagerly, an excited gleam rising in her eye. It was a little worrying to Fish, given the danger, and she hoped that Branch would heed her advice and stay close by.

As they stepped inside the ruin, Branch stayed close by her side, wondering at the place. It was a muted blue inside, the sun streaming through the holes and crystal walls illuminating the dust floating in the air and the stubborn weeds that managed to thrive even here. Fish examined the room, looking for likely hiding places for the stiff-rope. There was little furniture in any of the rooms they wandered into, and when she ran her hands over the walls, there were no removable panels.

“There’s nothing here!” Branch complained, frustratedly stamping her foot.

Fish just laughed. “Not to worry, Stick. The ancients liked to make their houses in stacks. Usually, there’s a room with just stairs that go up and up and up until you reach the very top, and there are doors that let you out on each level.”

That earned her a skeptical look from Branch which remained until she was able to find and open the door to this magic room. As soon as Branch stepped inside, however, the look on her face melted into awe as she looked up to see the switchback steps ascend into the invisible heavens. Fish pulled her up the first flight with a chuckle.

Sure enough, the second level had many more likely hiding places for stiff-rope. Paneled walls, textured surfaces at stomach level, and a weird, octagonal, table-like structure in the center of the room. “Branch,” Fish instructed. “Go see if there’s any stiff-rope in that table; I’ll see to the walls.”

Branch nodded dutifully and approached the table. She studied it intensely and, reassured that Branch was taking her work seriously, Fish turned to the walls. There was a reason she had not assigned them to her little sister. The panels were bolted down and their corners would have been much too high for Branch to reach on her own. More than that, they were heavy. They would have made for good bridges or shelters if they were not so difficult to get out of the city ruins.

The prize inside was more than worth it, though. As she pried the panel from the wall and hoisted it aside, she saw a whole bundle of stiff-rope. Tougher than dried, wound vines or animal sinew, the tribe used the stiff-rope for bridges, building fastenings, and a thousand other things. Not to mention, the metal inside could be bent, beaten, and molded; all without the aid of fire!

She tugged on the stiff-rope, trying to see which direction it grew from, cut as close to the invisible roots as she could reach, and started hauling it up from its place in the wall.

When Fish had gathered nearly all of it, she heard a flash and a yelp behind her. She whirled around to see Branch sprawled on the ground, a panel half pried from the table, and a puff of smoke rising into the air. That… was not so bad. Occasionally, lightning would take refuge in the stiff-rope and bite anyone who touched it, but looters usually just marked the offending object and moved their search elsewhere.

Just as she opened her mouth to ask if Branch was hurt, the table lit up. It glowed a soft… teal? The color was close to teal, but not quite like anything Fish had ever seen. Fish and Branch watched, entranced, as the light formed a loose column before coalescing into— A person! Branch had summoned a spirit!

Fish hoisted Branch to her feet, never taking her eyes off the ghost, and backed away very slowly, only briefly bending down to snatch up the stiff-rope she had already harvested. The ghost stared at a point just above their heads, wavering in mid-air, and then it began to speak!

The language was almost unintelligible, but it was near enough to their own that Fish was able to recognize a few words. Attack, poison, calling

Help

Fish and Branch beat a hasty retreat.