Zomi stared at Luan in disbelief. She couldn’t understand why her teacher was choosing this moment to engage in another philosophy discussion. And why is he just standing there?
“No matter what else you think of the Moralists, their core belief is right: Sometimes you must do the right thing even if it hurts you. Actions reify ideals. We must never stop striving to do good, to protect the weak and the powerless. This is the charge to all men of learning.”
Zomi nodded, but she continued to stare at the stiff figure of Luan. Having dealt with a weak leg all her life, she was sensitive to the way people distributed their weight on their legs.
“You’re a brilliant young woman, Mimi-tika. You have the curiosity to seek out the terra incognita beyond the bounds of dogma, and you have the quickness of mind to cut through a thicket of confusing questions. But you’re like a raw ball of wax, undisciplined, unshaped, unpurposed. You must apply yourself to the tedium of study, which is like the carving knife, to shape your mind into an intricate logogram for processing ideas. Do you understand?”
Zomi nodded, not really listening. Teacher really is standing like a crane, with all of his weight on one leg.
“Go, go, go!” shouted the earl.
The villagers had finished tying Elder Comi’s harness to the gondola. They backed away from the wobbling balloon, which was being buffeted by strong winds. The smoke had grown thicker and the fires closer. One of the earl’s men cut the tethering rope.
“Get your passengers to safety, and when the fire is burnt out, you can come and retrieve me on the other side of the mountain. Watch the wind currents carefully, and fly as high as you can!”
Zomi put her hands up to the dial and turned the stove output to maximum. As the fire roared overhead, the balloon struggled to lift off.
“Go, go!” Luan gestured at the villagers. When the villagers refused to move, he grabbed a carrying pole from one of them and began to write on the ground.
He’s not even bending down, thought Zomi.
The balloon’s ascent jerked to a stop. Elder Comi’s harness dragged along the ground, failing to lift off.
“There’s too much weight!” shouted the panicking earl. “Cut off the harness.”
“No!” Zomi said. “We have to save the elder. Why don’t you ask one of your men to jump off? They’re much heavier and they can climb the cliffs.”
“How dare”—but realizing that Zomi was necessary for them to get out of the maelstrom of scalding winds buffeting the balloon, the earl swallowed his curse—“you can’t possibly think a wild peasant’s life is worth more than one of my servants.”
“Then toss your boar’s heads out! The six of these must weigh more than the elder.”
“Absolutely not! They are the whole reason we came here.” The earl gave the men around him a meaningful look, and one of them swung his hunting knife quickly and severed the lines tying the harness to the gondola while the rest held on to Zomi to prevent her from doing anything.
“Damn you! I will ki—” One of the men slapped her hard to choke off any more outraged words. Zomi was momentarily stunned.
The gondola tumbled crazily as the balloon finally lifted off.
Zomi recovered and looked below through the tangle of arms and boar’s heads and the earl’s hateful face. Elder Comi struggled out of the remnants of the harness while some of the villagers ran over to help him. And Luan, still standing in the same place, continued to write on the ground with his pole as the rest of the villagers watched. The carrying pole’s awkward length meant that he had to carve the logogram in broad strokes, and even from the height of twenty feet, Zomi could see what he was writing.
It was a single logogram composed of three components:
A river flowing. A volcano. A stylized outline of a flame.
The Flow. The red volcano, the symbol of Lady Kana, goddess of fire, ash, cremation, and death. But skin-of-fire? What’s that?
“I have to pilot the balloon,” Zomi said to the earl, and then coughed uncontrollably. She sounded frightened. The smoke had grown so thick by now that it was hard to see the sky. The roiling columns twisted about in complicated patterns, marking the chaotic air currents that made the gondola swing about wildly so that all of the earl’s men had to hold on for dear life.
Thinking that the girl had finally come to her senses, the earl nodded for his men to let her go. Zomi adjusted the dial so that the flame was lower, slowing the ascent of the balloon.
“What are you doing?” the earl asked, alarmed.
“Wrestling a pig, of course.” Zomi grabbed one of the heads and slammed it into the earl’s face, aiming one of the tusks at his eyes. As the earl screamed and the men in the gondola scrambled to protect him, Zomi turned the dial all the way up, causing the gondola to jerk suddenly, tossing the men in the gondola into a jumbled heap. She scrambled over them and climbed over the side of the gondola and let go.
“Mimi!” Luan cried out.
Though she tried to roll as she made contact with the ground, she heard the bones in her left leg snap and felt the sharp stab of pain a moment later. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe.
Luan dropped his pole and tried to get to Zomi, but his leg collapsed, and he fell to the ground. Séji and Képulu rushed over, ripped the now useless harness from around her leg, and worked quickly to set the broken bones and stabilize the break with splints.
Zomi finally managed to recover enough from the fall to suck in a lungful of air. She screamed with the pain.
Overhead, the balloon continued to ascend as the men hanging on the outside of the gondola screamed, digging their fingers into the wicker with every ounce of strength. The earl’s curses came to them in a hailstorm that grew fainter as the balloon continued to rise, twisting about in the hot winds.
Luan crawled over to Zomi on his hands and one knee, dragging the useless leg behind him.
“How could you do such a stupid thing as to jump from the balloon? Why don’t you ever listen to me?”
“Because you lied!” Zomi screamed back. “You couldn’t even walk, but you told me to get in that balloon to fly that pig to safety. And he dropped Elder Comi anyway!” As Luan sat up and tried to cradle her, she slammed her fists against his chest, on his shoulders, at his arms.
“It is the duty of the learned—”
“You lied! You were going to send me away and die here! My father abandoned me for duty, but I will never abandon someone I love for duty, no matter what the Moralists say. I won’t.”
Luan made no effort to defend himself as her barrage continued. After a while, she wrapped her arms around his neck and wept.
“Mimi-tika, my stubborn child.” Luan stroked her back and sighed. “Remember what I taught you about the Fluxists. The Flow is the inexorable current of the universe. To live life gracefully is to accept it, and find joy within each passing moment. Every journey must have a final stop, and every life must come to an end. We’re like dyrans in the vast sea, silver streaks passing each other in the watery depths, and we should cherish the time we have been given.”
“I refuse to live life with such passivity!”
“Accepting the Flow is not passive. It’s to understand that there is a balance in the universe, an ultimate accounting.” Zomi looked up and saw that Luan’s face was somber. “There’s a time for Kana’s fiery call to arms, and a time for Rapa’s gentle call to slumber. I am meant to die here today, but you’re not.”
“Why? Why do you think you are meant to die?”