“I’ve found a bird from the Shell — a bird from space!” Allel ran into the village bursting with her news, her baggy bark shirt flapping.
But nobody was impressed. She couldn’t understand it. Younger children turned back to their games in the dust.
Her mother, Boyd, absently cuffed Allel’s fourteen-year-old head. “Don’t bother me,” she growled, and went about her business.
Boyd’s face was a scarred, complex mask as she moved amongst the groups of men and women, massive and formidable in her coat of quilted cow-tree bark, planning and talking urgently. It was already late afternoon; that evening Boyd would be leading this ragged army south in another assault on the defense of the Bridge.
Allel knew how important this was to her mother; eventually they had to secure a crossing over the river Atad and gain access to the south — otherwise the northern glaciers would surely crush their tiny village before many more winters. Boyd’s fists were clenched white as she argued. Allel knew she was brooding over the prospect of another bloody failure, and decided to keep out of her way.
She found her grandfather, Lantil, ferrying bowls of excrement and other waste from the bark teepees to the clusters of cow-trees at the heart of the village. Lantil dumped out the bowls into the trees’ root systems and tiredly tolerated his granddaughter’s chatter.
She told him how she’d gone out of the village alone and scrambled over the rocky shoulders of Hafen’s Hill, a mile or so away. At the summit she’d thrown herself flat, panting, and stared up in wonder: in the afternoon light the Shell was a glowing quilt, and she’d soon forgotten the wind from the northern ice fields that probed at the crude seams of her shirt…
Allel’s was a world without a sky. Instead the Shell swept from horizon to horizon, covering the land like a glowing lid of blue, green and startling orange. She’d traced the familiar lines of the ocean boundaries and watched clouds wind themselves into an upside-down storm directly above her. She reached up a finger as if to stir the storm on that great plate hanging over her—
— and the bird had tumbled out of the air. She’d scuttled to her knees and cupped the bird in her hands; its heart rattled as ice droplets melted from its wings.
The bird was an ice blue, a spectacular color she’d never seen before. And in its beak was a vivid orange flower.
The precise color of those strange orange splashes on the Shell.
The bird recovered and clattered away, but that didn’t matter. Allel knew it must have lost its way and crossed the Gap between the worlds.
She’d run off down the heathered slopes to her home.
She dogged Lantil’s footsteps as he trudged wearily among the teepees. “But if the world and the Shell are globes, what holds them apart?” Perhaps there were great pillars beyond the horizon…
Lantil pushed a lank of dirty hair back from his brow. “What does it matter?”
“I want to know,” she stamped.
Her grandfather sighed. “All right.” He knelt beside Allel and made a gnarled fist. “There’s the world, Home, round like a ball.” He cupped his other hand around the fist. “And there’s the Shell, a hollow sphere around Home.” Now he broke the fist and twirled a fingertip in a helix inside the cupped hand. “The Sun moves through the Gap, giving us day and night, summer and winter.”
Allel nodded impatiently. “I know all that. But who built it all?”
“People, of course.” He straightened up, massaging his back. “To keep out monsters called the Xeelee.”
Allel, wide-eyed, imagined giants stalking beyond the Shell, beating their fists against ocean bottoms and tree roots.
“Now I’ve got to get on,” Lantil snapped. “Get on with you, child. Get on…” Grumbling, he went back to his chores.
Allel ran off, savoring her newest fragment of knowledge. She imagined flying up to a saucer-shaped land where a world hung in the sky, a ball plastered with rocks and trees.
The next morning she rose at dawn. She pushed her way out of the teepee’s bark flap, letting the gray cold scour out her night fug. She shivered her way to a cow-tree and sucked icy milk from one of its nipples.
The village was hushed in the continued absence of the warriors. A group of old folk and children were at work already, making the most of the precious summer day; they were peeling a fresh sheet of clothlike bark, barely formed, from one of the cow trees. Allel peered furtively up at the Shell. The morning terminator was a gray bar that straddled the horizons, scouring eastward. The night lands beyond were broken by flickering sparks: fires that showed that people lived on the Shell, like flies on that great ceiling.
She’d brought a small bark satchel from the teepee; now she arranged it over her shoulder and scurried over the rough track to Hafen’s Hill. From the summit she could see the Atad river, a glistening track to the south; the Bridge looked like an indestructible toy, one of the few of the old structures not yet swallowed by the ice. Smoke blurred the scene. She wondered if that was a good sign.
She soon forgot the distant battle as she got to work. She opened her satchel and drew out a small lamp, a gourd filled with alcohol fermented from cow-tree fruit. She cut a length of wick with the big stone knife her grandfather had made for her. She held a flint to the wick; it curled and popped as black smoke seeped into the crisp air. Now she opened out a small bag, a rough globe. She held its narrow neck over the flame, and soon her fingers were coated with lamp-black—
— and the simple balloon filled up and lurched a few feet into the air. Then it turned belly-up and flopped to the ground. Allel bared her teeth at the Shell as if she owned it already; her heart beat as had that lost bird’s. Now then, a little more weight around the mouth…
A sandal stamped down, crushing the balloon. The bark of the sandal was crusted with blood and dust.
“Get up.” Boyd spat the words; blood leaked from a new wound over her eyes.
Allel stood, furious. Her anger collided with her mother’s contempt. Save for the scars of battle, the years had been easy on Boyd. Mother and daughter faced each other like twins, images in a dark mirror.
“Our attack on the Bridge failed,” Boyd ground out. “Those bastards holding it want to keep the whole bloody south to themselves. Good people died. And you — you won’t even help the old folk with their chores. What do you think you’re doing?”
Allel picked up the sputtering lamp. “I doubt if you’d understand,” she said haughtily.
Boyd slapped the lamp from her hands. It smashed against a rock; alcohol pooled and puffed into flame. “You waste your time on rubbish. Don’t dare to speak to me like that.”
Allel bit back her rage. “I fill the bag with smoke. It flies. Build one big enough and I could fly with it—”
“More rubbish.” Boyd hawked and spat out a ball of bloodstained phlegm; it sizzled in the alcohol fire. “If it’s ever left up to you, we’ll all die of rubbish.” She grabbed a handful of Allel’s tunic; her breath was sour. “Or I’ll kill you first. And that’s not rubbish.” She strode off down the Hill’s broken flank. “Come on. You’ll be grown soon. It’s time I put a stop to your questions.”
Allel didn’t move. “Where are we going?”
“North. To the place where our people once lived, before the cold drove them out. North to the City.”
“Why should I come?”
Without looking back, Boyd said simply: “Because if you don’t I’ll break your rubbish neck.”
Allel looked back ruefully at her home, where the fires of the recent night were still burning. Then she clutched her crumpled shirt closed against the wind and followed her mother.
The breeze lifted the abandoned balloon; its final flight ended in the ruins of the lamp, where it began to burn fitfully.