A small girl sat in the corner of an alleyway, facing the street of the Lamb, where peddlers were beginning to roll out their carts, heavy with wares made the night before as the day dawned on Wing Zhi. A pair of dung-sweepers, coming almost in unison with the departure of the night watch, began to shoo away the stray cats and chickens that were the night creatures of the streets, driving them into the refuge of the narrow alleyways.
The girl was still and silent, as if asleep, but her eyes were wide open, watching the city awaken. She paid no notice to the tabby that held her corner by day as he slinked in and away from the dung sweepers and other harsh phantoms of the sun.
She had been a cute baby; with large dark eyes, and a thick head of straight black hair, but this was hard to see now, although it had only been a few years since she had been that baby. In her long ago memory of that time, when she was a baby, she had people who loved her, cared for her. She had had a name, then; but it had vanished into the mists of time like her family and her baby looks. Her once bright face was streaked with dirt and tears, her once shiny hair matted with dust. Her eyes, once sparkling with cheerful innocent, now looked merely sad, as if she remembered the times before she had been given to the streets, become a lost child.
She slept when she was tired, finding some corner in some alley, she ate when there was food, which had become increasingly rare with the slight depression going around the city. The peasants had been hit the hardest, and now scarcely found the means to toss a bit of bread to one of Wing Zhi’s many lost children. The nobles didn’t even bother to glance her way, but then, they never did.
This child had not eaten for days, and though her eyes seemed at first alert and watchful, her gaze swam before her, catching on nothing particular. She gazed first at the clouds of dust that flew ever above the street, then at a pair of wary cat eyes staring at her from the alley across the way, and then at another peddler and his cart, which bore a cargo of red fruit…
The vision of an apple danced before her eyes, its sharp crimson outline fading into a blur. She envisioned her nails breaking through that crisp skin into the fleshy fruit, saw the foamy juice run down her fingers and drip into the sandy dirt.
She hardly noticed that she was drawing slowly closer to the cart, which was filled with the rather low quality, third rate apples that had been refused by the nobles market and then by the merchants until they fell down to the worthless lot that lived in the dust of the inner city. Feeling a liquid form on her lip, she licked it away, the salty taste reminding her that it was only blood from her chapped lips.
Unable to hold herself back, her thin hand reached for the fruit. The sun peeked out from a hole in the clouds, and a scattering of rays reached down from the sky, penetrating the towers of uneven building that stretched up from the street, penetrating rows of hardly laundered clothes hung from window to window, evading windowsills and hanging plants, the wooden boards that connected each roof and wobbled in the wind. Filtered down to a faint glow, heavy with shadows, this lonely ray settled upon the faded, bruised skin of the peddler’s apple, and for a brief moment gives it the illusion of a bright halo. The girl’s fingers reach the apple, and begin to trace its shape.
Up on her tiptoes and with her mouth hanging slightly open as she wishes for the fruit, the girl let out a sudden cry when she was slapped hard on the hand. Tears formed in the corner of her eyes as the peddler begins angrily yelling at her, although she knew from experience that he will do little more, for the peddlers are as poor as the rest of the peasants, and though they could barely afford to feed their own family, much less someone’s ‘lost child’, they felt sorry for the children that so often made daring but futile attempts on their merchandise.
She refused to meet his eye as he continued to screech, not knowing that if she looked carefully into it, she would see more pity than anger. Instead, she turned her gaze back to the apples, just in time to see, through her swimming vision, a twinkle of silver, the flick of a wrist. An apple vanished with a swirl, and looking up in amazement she could see the faded figure of a girl, not more than fifteen, pocket it with an almost imagined grin.
Without a glance back she ran up, a shimmer in the air that could scale the building faces with impressive agility. The board above the alley shook, as it did often, but this time there was no wind. The strange thief was gone, and the lost child couldn’t tell if she had been real, or just a figment of heat and hunger.
Kaida sped up the buildings with glee, fingers using even the slightest indentions and decorations in the walls to propel her towards the roof. The tips of her fingers were rough and almost unfeeling after years of climbing the rough stone, but she still enjoyed the texture of it under her speeding digits. She climbed like a squirrel and she knew it, but it wasn’t the pride that caused her to often go out when she needed nothing, it was the thrill. The raw excitement and moving all but unseen through a crowd, and flying towards the sky on the corner of an apartment.
She reached the roof, and felt free, with nothing but the wide blue sky above her. There were people, she knew, that lived their entire lives in the streets below, never seeing the sun without its veil of dust. The skies were truly amazing; blue in the day and scarlet in the west at sunset.
She took off at a run, first crossing the rickety boards over each busy street, and then, as she gathered speed, taking the alleys in leaps. She spread her arms out wide as she leapt over the street of the moon… the largest one she could safely take in one jump. She closed her eyes as nothing but air folded all around her. Her short black hair lifted, allowing the wind to cool her shoulders and neck, and the silk sleeves of her shirt...
Cailir opened her antique copy of A Handbook for Meditation, written by the scholar Tailin, who had taught elementary levels at the school since before her own time. It was well-bound, tough book, with a bare leather cover and metal binding, but the years had not been good to it; during her first year at the school it had been one of her most heavily used books; meditation had not come easily to her, for she always wanted to think…
She was far beyond that level now, but she had kept the book, for the mere act of reading it put her into a meditative trance better than any method she knew. She smiled as her fingers traced the familiar pages. Poor Tailin had clean strokes, but his penmanship had been terrible. Even though the school used magic to copy books much faster than they would be able to by hand, they had not come up with a way to mass-produce typeset books, so the students still had to deal with the ‘peculiar’ hand of certain infamous writers… Many a student had complained in this very room that they had been unable to do their homework because they could not read a poorly written textbook – the teachers never took this as a valid excuse, and the students soon learned to adapt.
As far as it went, in fact, The Handbook was one of the more legible texts… at least it didn’t give her a headache to read. The fact that it was in her native language was an even bigger plus; although Cailir had been at the head of her class in languages, it was much easier to slip into mindless non-thought when not forced to translate as you read.
Cailir stood silently by one of the gleaming reflection pools, her thoughts flowing to and fro like ripples in the water. It was late spring, and the delicate pink blossoms were beginning to fall; they filled the air all around with pink petals and dropped them gently into the silvery water at every passing breeze.
Each breeze brought voices as well; the music that the students of Ihana Sieva sung from high in the crystal white tower. Only in the silent moments, when no birds sang and no fish leapt from the shining pools did the sound reach Cailir where she stood in the garden.
She knew the song well; it was the one about the little forest with the singing birds that the floodwaters covered to make the ocean; the one that said that if you listened hard enough you could still hear the voices of the birds beneath the water.
She had heard the song countless times; had learned it herself as a student in the academy. Now she was a teacher there, taught the art she was born with; the estranged branch of magic that bordered at times on foresight, the kind that few ever mastered but most had a trace of. It was like the shivery feeling you get when someone you are close too is in trouble, or like the cold sense of dread that comes over you when something bad is on the horizon.
This branch of her magic was acting up now, to a worrying degree. She had even called her class of for the day; she felt she needed some quiet. She had come down to the reflection pools, hoping the calm nothingness would bring her sense back down to normal. But it was worse than ever; jumping at every little thing.
A flower leaned towards the water, heavy with last night’s dew. It bent ever so slightly as a drop of liquid freed itself and fell into the water with a dripping noise. Her shoulders tightened as she watched the tiny ripples float across the surface; the sight filled her with inexplicable dread.
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