I think of Tristan’s words as I fly back up to my home skymount and sneak back into my bed. There, I dream that I’m chosen to be Sent. It’s a nightmare familiar to every young Alula—even, I think, those lucky few whose blood relation to the Council exempts them from being Sent. But familiar or not, it still makes me sit bolt upright, then lie back with a relieved sigh, when I hear my aunt come in to wake me.
“Goodness!” Aunt Sern says, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” For a moment I think I see sympathy in her eyes, but then I blink away the haze, and her face sharpens into its usual picture of detachment. Although Aunt Sern has taken care of me ever since my mother was Sent when I was eight years old, my aunt has never allowed herself to get close to me.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Time for you to be flitting your little self out of here. Hurry up or you’ll be late for the learnings!”
I stretch a nice self-indulgent stretch, raising my wings high above my head and yawning up at the low brown ceiling of my little room. Aunt Sern carefully uses one of her wings to turn up the lamp beside my bed. I let my eyes linger for a moment on the underside of her wing where some skin of her arm still shows through the feathers. Most Alulas are not bothered by the way their arms gradually grow into their wings. It’s a natural part of aging. But I dread it because, without separate arms to hold onto Tristan while my wings flap, bounce-flying will be impossible.
“I don’t know why it is,” continues Aunt Sern, “but you’re getting harder and harder to wake up every morning. You certainly get to bed early enough, though.”
I smile to myself as I step down onto the feather-woven rug and slip out of my nightdress into my flying cloak. Who wants to sleep when they can bounce-fly? I picture Tristan sleeping in his cave and think how lucky he is to have no one to wake him up and make him go to any learnings. But then I remember tonight’s Sending and feel panicked at the thought of the secret meeting I normally look forward to all day. Oh, why does Tristan always want to do such dangerous things?
I flip my learning-sack over my shoulder and head for the door.
“How about something to eat?” Aunt Sern calls after me.
“I’ll grab an apple at the surface.”
I close the door before she can start her protest, then hurry along the dim tunnelway, keeping my wings folded at my sides so they won’t bump the lamps sticking out from the curved tunnel walls. The air smells of roots and soil—not the moist, spongy soil of the ground, but the dry, airy soil of the skies.
What am I going to tell Tristan? I think as I greet an Alula rushing the other way. The Alula’s face is familiar, but we nod at each other without smiling, as is customary.
No. I must tell him no, I assure myself, walking up the stairway to the surface of the skymount. With each quick step, the air smells a little fresher and the tree roots grow a little bolder in their push through the cracks of the walls. I leap up the last steps two at a time, knock forward the door to the surface, and climb out into the morning sunlight.
By the time I wash my face in a spring and pick my breakfast off a nearby tree, the learning flit has already gathered and started reciting the Poem of the Planes. For a second I think about skipping the learnings altogether, but the teacher catches sight of me, so I hasten to join the circle, quietly mumbling along:
“Different planes, one fate ties them all.
The teacher turns and walks past several trees to a little creek. As always, we follow in silence, watch her scoop up a bucket full of swiftly darting water with her wing and set it down before us.
“Observe the waters of the creek,” she says. Her words are a familiar repetition. “From one angle it is like this.” She gestures at the sparkling water in the bucket, where a few little fish swim around in smooth circles. “Home to the most conscious of the water creatures: those with the most developed brains.” She holds a round magnifying scope over the water and says, “From another angle it looks like this.” The clear surface transforms into a swarm of smaller creatures that wriggle around rather aimlessly. “Home to creatures who are less conscious, who have less developed brains.”
She turns the dial on the magnifying scope until the surface changes again to show even tinier creatures: single-celled ones with whip-like tails and fine little hairs all around their oval bodies. Their jerky movements seem to be completely random, without purpose. “And from another angle it is like this. Home to the least conscious creatures: those with the most primitive brains.”
After we have seen it, she dumps the water back into the creek and scans us with eyes like my aunt’s, only colder, prouder. “The same water is different from different angles. Looking at the creek now, we cannot see the different levels we saw with the magnifying scope. But they are still there—there and not there. There because we know they are; not there because we cannot see they are. They are at different levels of existence. Different places at the same place.” She pauses, looks us over. When I feel her eyes settle on me, I try to act alert, like I’m hearing this for the first time instead of the thousandth. She continues, “It is mental awareness that separates the creatures of the creek. But what is it that separates the creatures of the planes?”
“Awareness of the Great Alula,” we chime.
“Yes,” she says. “To understand the parallel planes, think of the levels of the creek.”
I feel keenly the sleep I’ve missed by the time we start the recitation of the Holy Tablets. Today my teacher chooses the chapter called “Birth of the Planes.” As she points to the Alula next to me and my classmate begins the recitation, I battle my drowsiness and nervously go over the words in my mind.
My classmate’s voice comes through an anxious mist. “The Great Alula reached out to our planet and spun it with the tip of Her gentle wing. And She said, ‘This planet I divide into different planes of existence.’ ”
The teacher points to another Alula, then another, and so on:
“ ‘And I fill these planes with creatures parallel, but separated from one another by their different distances from Me.’ ”
“ ‘On the first plane I place the farthest away: those who neither know Me nor ever speak My name.’ ”
“ ‘On the second plane I place those who know of Me but cannot feel Me.’ ”
“ ‘On the third plane I place two races: one of the sky who can feel Me and one of the ground who cannot.’ ”
“ ‘On the fourth plane I place those who can feel Me at any moment, but only if they so choose.’ ”
The teacher points to me next, and I wake up fast. As confidently as I can, I say, “ ‘The fifth plane I leave barren. No life of this planet do I place there, but all those who pass through it may never again deny their link to Me.’ ”
She points to someone else again, and I breathe a sigh of relief as that classmate recites the part about the planes closest to the Great Alula. Eventually the teacher nods in approval and tells us to form a circle for the practice Sending.
“Close your eyes,” she says, “and imagine you are being Sent. Take your fears and let them go. Relax. Put all your trust in the Great Alula. Know that She loves you despite your fears, and give your whole self to Her care. Let go, and feel Her power.”
As usual, I have trouble letting go of my fears. But I remind myself of the teacher’s words: “Know that She loves you despite your fears.” And I can let go just enough to feel a lightness rise up within me, then tingle through me like a soft breeze blowing from the inside.
My teacher’s voice jars me out of my peaceful state. “Good. You are dismissed for lunch and free-flying.”
We eat lunch and start our free-flying all in one large flit. But as soon as we know the teacher has stopped watching us, we start separating. Some break away in groups of two or three, but most of us fly off on our own. Most of us know better than to get close to those who, sooner or later, could only be Sent away from us. I fly by myself over the skymounts, worrying about tonight’s Sending and gazing down at the grown-ups as they carry out their daily tasks. Many are out of view because they are inside the skymounts at their places of work. But I see some tending to their gardens, gathering fruit and nuts from the woods, and caring for the Alulas still too young to go to the learnings.
The most interesting sight, though, is a group of Alulas kneeling down at the edge of a clearing, communicating by sound and gesture with a group of animals. For a couple of years now the grown-ups have been negotiating with the animals for permission to move our homes to the surfaces of the skymounts instead of their insides. So far, the animals have not been very cooperative, and who can blame them? If we Alulas moved to the surfaces, the animals would lose quite a big chunk of living space.
I alight at the opposite edge of the clearing, hoping for a better view of the negotiations. As I move to hide behind the thick trunk of a tree, I hear someone whisper, “Hesper!” And looking around, I jump at the sight of two faces peering out at me from behind another tree trunk.
“What are you two doing?” I ask Jana and Layn, members of my learning flit, as they exchange a meaningful glance and giggle.
“Same thing you’re doing,” says Jana. She opens her mocking eyes wide. “Spying.”
“Oh.” I spread my wings to take off. “Well, have fun.”
“What’s the matter, Hesper?” asks Layn, the mockery spreading from Jana’s face to hers. “Afraid you could get caught? Afraid you could get in trouble . . . for once in your life?”
“Afraid,” Jana chimes in, “we’ll shatter your safe image—get you Sent—by telling everyone we saw you do something daring?”
I feel my face turning red. They don’t know how I sneak out at night, I tell myself. How I bounce-fly with a forbidden friend, press my toes into forbidden ground. . . .
But I cannot fool myself. I know very well that any other Alula would do the same if she met Tristan. Any Alula who met him would want to sneak out to meet him, whether she was daring or not. I let my wings fall. My heart starts swelling with shame. What brings me out every night is not my own bravery, but Tristan’s charm.
“Come on, Jana,” says Layn. “We must get closer to the action. Only a chicken wing would hide this far back.”
I do not look at them as they leave. I’m too busy looking in at myself—as they see me, as Tristan sees me, as I see me. Most of all, as I see me.
My mother’s voice plays in my memory, quoting the words of the Holy Tablets the way she often would:
“Fear not. For what you fear is what you will attract.”
The swelling in my heart overflows into my eyes, and I choke back a bitter sob. For a moment all I want to do is see my mother again—to undo her Sending and have her standing right here with me. But when I think of those sympathetic eyes I can never again see and those comforting curls I can never again bury my face in, the shame curdles into anger. Steady anger that stays with me for the rest of the day—through the last hours of the learnings, dinner with my aunt, bedtime—until the dark night finally comes and hides me as I fly down to Tristan’s cave.
“Oh, all right!” I say over Tristan’s shoulder before we’ve even bounced our second bounce. “Let’s get it over with!”
Tristan shoots me a look halfway between shock and glee. “What? You mean the Sending?”
I nod, smiling nervously at the funny expression of amazement on his face.
“But I haven’t even started bugging you about it yet!”
“Well, too late now. I’ve already decided.”
He laughs as he faces forward again. “That’s what I like about you, Hess. You’re just like the animals of the skymounts.”
“How do you mean?” I ask.
“Well, that night you took me to see the animals, they ran away at first. Remember? But we waited quietly, and after a while they came out.” He turns to me, thoughtful, no longer smiling. “And to me that was more exciting than if they’d run up to us first thing.”
I look away. I can feel myself beaming and my cheeks growing warm despite the cool breeze. “Well, we really should hurry. . . .”
“Okay, let’s go!” he shouts happily as we head down for another bounce.
“Give it a good bounce, now!” I say, holding on tight. “The Sendings are held way up on the High Skymount!”
“Don’t worry; I will!”
The dread comes back as a physical ache, but the night air feels good whipping against my face and wings. Below us, the voices cry out: vague at first, then a little louder, singing their lament.
I close my eyes, let Tristan guide for a while. Try to relax. Feel the voices fade in and out: rise, then fall; rise, then fall.
I wish we could glide down forever and never have to bounce back up.
Should one plane slip, then each shall fall.
Should one break loose and drop away,
Then none shall last another day.
For where one stops, the others end,
And if one curves, the others bend:
Different dimensions of one space,
Different places at the same place.”