9

I FELL.

It happens like that sometimes, when one travels through life without a plan. In this case I was traveling through space, motion, conceptualization — same difference, except that mortals cannot survive it. Half mortal that I was, I shouldn’t have. But I did, possibly because I did not care.

So it was that I drifted through Sky’s white layers, passing through some of the Tree’s wooden flesh in the process, down, down, down. Past the lowest layer of clouds, damp aneca ana far betd cold. Because I was incorporeal, I saw the city with both mortal and godly eyes: humped silhouettes of buildings and streets aglow with flickers of mortal light, interspersed now and again by the brighter, colored plumes of my brothers and sisters. They could not see me because I had not lost all sense of self-preservation and because even when I am not sulking, my soul’s colors are shadowy. That is my father’s legacy and a bit of my mother’s as well. I am good at sneaking about because of it. Or hiding, when I do not wish to be found.

Down. Past a ring of mansions attached to the World Tree’s trunk, devastatingly expensive tree houses, these, without even ladders or GIRLZ KEEP OWT signs to make them interesting. Below this was another layer of city, this one new: houses and workshops and businesses built atop the Tree’s very roots, perched precariously on wildly sloping streets and braced platforms. Ah, of course; the esteemed personages of the mansions above could not be left without servants and chefs and nannies and tailors, could they? I witnessed bizarre contraptions, gouting steam and smoke and metallic groans, connecting this halfway city to the elegant platforms above. People rode up and down in them, trusting these dangerous-looking things to convey them safely. For a moment, admiration for mortal ingenuity nearly distracted me from my misery. But I kept going, because this place did not suit me. I had heard Shahar refer to it, and understood its name now: the Gray. Halfway between the bright of Sky and the darkness below.

Down. And now I blended with the shadows, because there were so many here between the Tree’s roots and beneath its vast green canopy. Yes, this suited me better: Shadow, the city that had once been called Sky, before the Tree grew and made a joke of that name. It was here at last that I felt some sense of belonging — though only a little. I did not belong anywhere in the mortal realm, really.

I should have remembered that, I thought in bitterness as I came to rest and turned to flesh again. I should never have tried to live in Sky.

Well. Adolescence is all about making mistakes.

I landed in a stinking, debris-strewn alley, in what I would later learn was South Root, considered to be the most violent and depraved part of the city. Because it was so violent and depraved, no one bothered me for the better part of three days while I sat amid the trash. This was good, because I wouldn’t have had the strength to defend myself. My paroxysm of rage in Sky and subsequent magical transit had left me too weak to do much but lie there. As I’d been hungry before leaving Sky, I ate: there were some moldy fruit rinds in the bin nearest me, and a rat came near to offer me its flesh. It was an old creature, blind and dying, and its meat was rank, but I have never been so churlish as to disrespect a sacred act.

It rained, and I drank, tilting my head back for hours to get a few mouthfuls. And then, adding the ultimate insult to injury, my bowels moved for the first time in a century. I had enough strength to get my pants down, but not enough to move away from the resulting mess, so I sat there beside it and wept awhile, and just generally hated everything.

Then on the third day, because three is a number of power, things finally changed.

“Get up,” said the girl who’d entered the alley. She kicked me to get my attention. “You’re in the way.”

I blinked up at her to see a small figure, clad in bulky, ugly clothing and a truly stupid hat, glaring down at me. The hat was a thing of beauty. It looked like a drunken cone on top of her head and had long flaps to cover her ears. The flaps could be buttoned under her chin, though she hadn’t done so, perhaps because it was late spring and as hot as the Dayfather’s temper, even in this city of noontime shadows.

With a sigh, I pulled myself laboriously to my feet, then stepped aside. The girl nodded too curtly for thanks, then brushed past me and began rummaging through the pile of garbage I’d sat beside. I started to warn her about my small addition to the refuse, but she avoided it without looking. Deftly plucking two halves of a broken plate out of the trash, she made a sound of pleasure and stuck them into the satchel hanging off her shoulder, then moved on. As she shuffled away, I saw one of her feet scrape the ground even though she’d lifted it; it was larger than the other and misshapen, and she’d made it larger still by bundling rags about the ankle.