Chapter 13
“But you don’t know what it is?” Mom asks the Sky. “There’s no record of what it might have been?”
The Sky’s Noise forms itself into human words. The Land tend to struggle with our language–too flat, too linear–but the Sky was raised as a slave by humans and speaks it fluently. Seriously, our history is ugly.
This is the record, the Sky says.
“The Noise is their record,” Pop says, “is what he means.”
Mom shakes her head, like yeah, she knew that and is annoyed they’re focusing on her word choice and not the question. “But no accompanying memory or Noise story to explain what it is?”
“No,” Pop says. “It’s treated in their history like a folktale or a fable. It was many, many, many generayshuns ago, so long he’s not even sure how far back. And even finding it in the Noise was a labor.” He turns to the Sky. “Which we’re grateful for.”
“But it was important enough for you to come all this way to tell us,” Mom says to the Sky.
The Sky nods. He’s always been a little tetchy with Mom. He did kill Pop in front of her once, and she’s never forgiven him for it, so I suppose that’s fair.
“Why?” Mom asks.
Because it is a bad fable, the Sky says. About selfishness and punishment. About debts unpaid and the terrible things that follow. And how your arrogance will kill you if you do not reckon with it.
“That sounds really bad,” Max says, nervously.
It is not literal, the Sky says. Or so we always thought.
I don’t understand, I sign.
Pop says, “He means, the story is so old, no one took it as something that actually happened. Memory changes over time. It becomes history first, then story, then myth. None of them ever really believed a giant skinless Land rose out of a mountain and slaughtered a village.”
“Slaughtered?” Max yelps.
We look down at the little village, but the Sky has stopped his Noise, freezing the god where it stands.
“They never thought it was real,” Pop presses on, “so they added meanings to it and made it into a lesson.”
“But it did happen,” Mom says, turning to me and Max. “To you.”
We both nod.
But how? the Sky asks us, and he doesn’t sound all that happy to be asking. Have you ever been told this story?
“You said you didn’t even know it until you went looking for it,” Max says. “How could we have heard it?”
The Sky nods at this, as if confirming a suspicion.
“Was there ever any story,” Mom asks, “about a rock in the sky?”
The Sky’s Noise turns slightly annoyed, a pink all around us. She’s talking to him like a child. This is not something the Sky likes from humans.
“I’m sorry,” Mom apologizes. “Were there ever any stories about ancient ships landing or even just coming into orbit? Doesn’t have to be related to . . . whatever this is. A ship that may have looked like an asteroid or been mistaken for one?”
The Sky doesn’t answer immediately, then he just says, I will ask.
Then he rises, in a way to show he’s done talking to humans in a human house. His Noise disappears from the floor in a swoosh that collects around him.
“Wait,” Mom says, “you can’t just tell us all this and go.”
The Sky gives her a look that says he can do whatever he likes, thank you very much.
And it’s true. Kings do as they please, especially with a species that’s killed so many of his subjects, especially since they outnumber us–if our planet-wide estimates are right–by almost a million and a half to ten thousand.
“Viola,” Pop says. “Let him go.”
“He must have been scared.” She turns back to the Sky. “Scared enough to come all this way to tell us in person. Why? You wouldn’t do that just for a fable.”
Now the Sky’s Noise looks perturbed in a different way. Perturbed because Mom is right.
“Please,” she says. “What are we meant to do? What was it?”
“Is it coming back?” Max asks.
But the Sky’s Noise is open, and it’s showing us he doesn’t have the answers, only that the fable was hidden and it was an overwhelmingly bad one, so bad he left his home–the exact location of which no human knows–and he came to our farm to see if whatever it was is happening again.
But he doesn’t know what happens next, and that makes him angry.
And afraid.
He’s right to be.
Because that’s when we hear the scream.