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Everyone at Gynhaeaf followed the skywhales as they fell to the earth, chasing them while the fire bursting from within rapidly consumed them. They deformed as they burned, shriveling in the air.
Emrys leapt off the backside of the dais and ran ahead of the crowd. Running as fast as he could, like something could be done, like he could make some impact, change something about the sky aflame before him.
Rhian’s prophecy echoed within him but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was these burning whales that so clearly were not whales. The way they burned had nothing to do with flesh and bone. Long strips of metal curling back as they burned and melted reminded him of a forge.
Not legends. Not skywhales. But structures built by people. Like traincars in the sky, held aloft by these vast cylindrical balloons.
New wonders.
Not magic but something else. Intelligence. Technology. Ingenuity. These were constructed rather than born and they had failed spectacularly, lighting the sky on fire even as they fell. Their entire bodies becoming one enormous inferno, a bonfire of technology’s stumbling progress.
When they smashed into the earth, they didn’t erupt again like Emrys expected but collapsed and crashed, the fire spraying outward in all directions with the detritus of this machine. Of all three machines.
The others descended in a more controlled manner and were still high overhead by the time others passed Emrys. But he was among the first to stand idly by the fire.
“What is this?” The words screamed out by Ulric, of all people. He turned to Emrys, to the few others gathered already, to the hundreds or thousands racing to arrive, to stand uselessly by as it burned. “What’s happening?”
Emrys had no words but someone said, “There are people in there.”
“Were,” said a highlander.
It settled on them. They’d witnessed a tragedy that they didn’t understand fully. But people were inside those fires. Had been in those fires.
By the time the other artificial skywhales emptied of people, all clan Matauc and the highlanders and the Travelers stood gathered round the bonfire. A group of the strangers rushed towards the crash, as if they could help. As if their mourning meant anything to the conflagration.
Throwing themselves into the soft turf, they screamed and shouted a few words repeatedly.
Names.
Emrys understood that. The grief tearing through these strangers. Tears streaming down their faces while they raised their eyes to the cloud covered sky, extending their arms wide as if embracing whatever god or gods they belonged to.
They dressed strangely, in tight fitting clothes with thick overcoats that stretched from jaw to ankle. All of the men had long moustaches and sideburns reaching down to their necks. Even the bald ones had the sideburns, which made them look strange, like they had simply forgotten to remove the hair there. The women tied their hair back and wore clothes indistinguishable from the men.
Even from a distance, Emrys could tell they wore expensive clothes with delicate fabric. Owain and Saoirse and Berit, with Bleddyn and Folant following after, met the strangers as they approached the fires. Goronwyn and Ariana and many others, all of them important men and women of the clan, hurried after in order to stake their own claim.
That was Owain’s lesson for Emrys. Power moved like water through the clan. Vying for dominance, seeking power in potential new allies.
But perhaps they only wanted to understand. Or attempt to, anyway.
Emrys left the fires and pushed through the crowd to join the conference between peoples. By the time he got there, the strangers drifted away from the clan. He went to Ariana and asked what happened.
“They don’t speak our language and we don’t speak theirs.” She shrugged. “Simple as that.”
Emrys studied them. Far fewer than he would have expected. “Were they an expedition or something?”
Ariana shrugged again. “Ask them.”
One of the young women broke away from the other strangers and approached Ariana and Emrys. Short and wearing brownish trousers the color of her skin making her appear, for a moment, naked from the waist down. Her trousers clung to her, revealing the shape of her legs, almost as if she had been naked. The high collared white coat fastened tightly over her torso before flaring out from her waist and ending halfway down her calf. A small face half covered with wide glasses with black lenses, her hair pulled back into a bun resting messily atop her head, she reminded Emrys of no one.
A completely singular person stepping out from beyond the edges of his world. The world he wanted to break free of. And here, the world came to find him but only after the sky caught fire.
She spoke loudly to be heard over the distance, the wind, the din of her people, of his, and raised her hand in the air. Sounded like it strained her voice to speak so loud. A quiet person. Emrys raised his hand as well and she spoke more, language flowing and growling out of her mouth.
Didn’t understand. Couldn’t even track where one word ended and the next began. A river of language pouring forth and then stopping.
He knew that he wouldn’t understand, but a deeper part of him believed that there would be some connection between them. Something to latch onto. To show him and everyone else, and her, that he belonged with them.
They’d see him as a kindred spirit and carry him away in their mechanical skywhale and he’d be free of the family that rejected him.
She came closer until she stood right in front of Ariana, who eyed her with distrust.
Ariana said, “Back away.”
The tone should have been enough, even without language between them, but the woman didn’t back away or turn away. Rather, she stretched a hand towards Ariana’s metal arm and spoke some question. Quiet but insistent.
Ariana snorted and lifted her arm to be examined by the woman.
She took it gently, almost tenderly, as if it were Ariana’s true flesh, as if she might feel it.
And perhaps she did, after all these years. Not the way he felt with his skin, but she may feel the pressure upon her arm from the way her arm rubbed against her living flesh at the shoulder.
The woman gasped when Ariana moved her fingers. This close, Emrys saw through the darkness to her eyes. Wide and huge, she raised them to Ariana and spoke a question that none understood. Then she moved Ariana’s arm this way and that, closing her fingers, turning her wrist.
Goronwyn said, “She likes you.”
Ariana snorted. “Tinkerer. I’ve seen their kind.”
“Where’d you get the arm?”
Ariana scowled at Goronwyn. “Where’d you get yours?”
Goronwyn’s eyebrows shot up and he looked at his hand, wiggled his fingers. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
Emrys couldn’t help but laugh but the stranger didn’t seem to notice him or Goronwyn. So engrossed with Ariana’s metal arm, even the tragedy of her friends dying in an inferno seemed to slide away from her attention. She raised her face to Ariana again and said something but rather than wait for a response, she leaned very close to Ariana and stared into her metal eye.
Ariana remained patient for a moment before grabbing the woman by the shoulders and pushing her back and away. Not roughly, but with great meaning.
The woman’s eyebrows shot up, then lowered, and she bowed her head a bit while muttering what Emrys assumed was an apology.
She walked away and they watched her return to the strangers. A conversation began between them with the woman speaking with great animation. Unlike the gentleness she showed when with them, she waved her arms, throwing her whole body into the conversation. The men and women gathered around her seemed indifferent to her argument.
Goronwyn said, “Boisterous folk.”
“They lost friends and family today,” Ariana said.
“They want to know how you made your arm.”
Ariana snorted.
“He’s right, auntie. Those flying machines—this is their life. Machines. Technology.”
“Maybe they’re from your University.”
The three of them turned to Owain who had approached silently behind them, his eyes steady on Emrys. “This is the kind of business they do there. Delving in the earth, reaching for the stars. Their hubris killed them but it will not stop them.”
“Fools,” Ariana said.
Goronwyn frowned. “How could it not?”
Owain lifted his chin towards them. “They’re going to get in the remainder of their machines and fly to their destination. Some may turn back to tell the families of their dead friends, but some will continue onward.”
“The University’s in Eire.”
Owain snorted. “And they’re not speaking Eirish. More universities then. If that woman,” Owain pointed to the one who had approached, “stays here, I want you to be her guide.”
To stay. To go. First magic and now technology. Reasons to stay bloomed round Emrys and he only turned to watch the woman speak with so much force. Her hands gesturing rapidly against the indifference of the others.
None of them left by nightfall, when the fires burned themselves out, but neither did they ask anyone for help. They returned to their flying machines and in the morning all but one of the skywhales was gone.