Chapter One
The Boy From The Sky
The sun gleamed orange and hot over the western edge of the prairie. On the island over the mountainthe altitude-induced winds kept the air brisk and constantly moving; the few trees attempted by residents were gnarled and twisted by constant buffeting. The island itself boggled new residents to the capital, who could not understand why a chunk of land would float so, three hundred feet above the grand manor atop the summit—wiser citizens understood it no more, and cared much less, for it had
never shown any sign of budging from its appointed sphere of the heavens. Still, it had only been three hundred years or so that the Sky Isle was settled, which was recent in the Kingdom’s history.
The single street ran down the middle of the island, and fine houses lined both sides. At the west end of the street, a grand sandstone bungalow sat with a balcony that overlooked the City of Nod on the mountain below,
decorated with a shield emblazoned with an attacking dodo bird.
Artkela put the finishing touches on the guest bed. She still didn’t know or understand why she was
doing it, but she hoped that Jered would explain in a timely manner. Jamie knocked once and entered
with the vase of flowers.
“Idn’t this a bit much?” he asked, but she silenced him with a look and attempted to crack a window. The wind grabbed the shutter away from her and slammed it shut.
She turned and slapped him lightly on the shoulder for the radish-red look of suppressed laughter.
“Well, what are you doing to help get the stuffy smell out of here?”
Inspiration struck him. “Hey, I brought the friggin flowers!”
Which she promptly ignored and filed out of the room with him at her heels. She unrolled her carpet and cleaned it while he made their lunch. They ate soup with dark bread. They ate it quickly and without speaking, though when her bowl was empty, she complimented him on the
soup before she rolled up her carpet. He retreated to the stone and glass room that housed his griffin, Opinicus: Opy for short. Artkela liked to call him Dopey Opy for his tendency to crash into the wall when returning to his room from hunting, usually when she was just getting to sleep. He was an adolescent, his feathers whitish grey yet streaked with pale gold, with a tawny stripe running down his spine to the base of his tale, topped with a dollop of luxuriant red hair. He was playful and energetic, yet somewhat
erratic in that he occasionally couldn’t decide between affection and declaration of mock war. Artkela had once threatened him with castration after he ruined her favorite dress, but the way he bowed his head and snuggled his face into her lap, cooing, ended up making her apologize to him for wanting to hurt him.
Artkela grabbed her blue traveling robe and stowed her carpet under her arm in a small roll. Collecting a few bottles from her apothecary and storing them in the pockets on the inside of her robe, she joined Jamie in Opy’s room. He was tightening the saddle around the griffin’s chest, just behind the wing joints.
The great glass windows had long since been shattered and picked out of Opy’s front legs; forestalling
another incident, Jamie found a builder in the city who removed the remaining glass and built a den for
Opy in the corner. The space was sheltered from the wind, but barely. After alerting Jamie of her
intentions, who sent Opy into his den and left to retrieve his own robe, Artkela unrolled her carpet on the floor. It was richly decorated, red and green and gold cartouches and flora on a royal blue background; it was three feet by five, until she traced one of the sigils in a corner and it grew to fill the room. She took a seat in the central cartouche, cross-legged. Opinicus crawled over to her bashfully, knowing better than to step onto the carpet, and cooed into her lap, snuggling his face into her thighs. Irritation evaporated, and she scratched him on his belly. When Jamie returned, he chuckled but did not comment, other than to call the griffin to his side and lead him out into the wind. As they took off, Artkela placed her palms on either side of her to steady herself and uttered, “Ascensum.”
The carpet rose into the air and outside just in time to catch Jamie and Opy flying to the north side of
the island. She directed the carpet with subtle movements of her left fingers to the south, trying not to
let the sun blind her. The magic of the carpet kept her protected in a bubble of calm air that warmed in
the light of sunset to the point that she began to long for the cool gales of the higher altitudes. To the
east, some of the very brightest stars were beginning to shine in the lavender sky. She peered around at the expanse of the heavens above her frowning. Jered’s note, other than asking her to be ready to receive a guest, had said “watch for anything unusual,” but had been maddeningly free of further explanation. Unless it was unusual that the blue one directly above her twinkled like a little star, she didn’t understand what she was supposed to be seeing.
She turned to glance behind her and saw the speck of Jamie and Opy winging around in a great
semicircle with the city below them, a cluttered and insistent spread of buildings built out of wood and the ore rock of the mountain itself topped with an ornate gilded palace. A glittering lake surrounded the city, held back from the lower parts of the mountain by walls of polished limestone and gold brick, with
the golden expanse of grass beyond. If not for the brash smugness of the place, Artkela supposed that she would quite enjoy life in the capital; the concept of life in a city of gold appealed to her very much,
but the sight of Witenagemot Court capping the city like a silly hat reminded her it was a pit of vipers.
She turned back to the southern skies, wondering vaguely how long she had to wait for whatever it was she was waiting for. She noticed a thunderstorm far to the southeast, too far to see outright but close enough that she could see lightning flaring out of the deepening purple of the lower horizon. The sun crept lower as more stars appeared in the east, until she realized the friendly little blue one was farther away from the others, and much closer to the sun—at which point the friendly little blue star exploded in a blaze of light that she had only a split-second to ponder before the carpet wrapped up around her and the wind roared in her ears and she felt a sickening feeling in her back and stomach that told her
she was falling.
She had only begun to scream when she slammed into the carpet as it flattened back out and hovered resolutely a hundred feet below her original position. She looked around wildly for Jamie and found him coming out of a dive over the palace. Her magic bubble was broken; the wind tore at her robes, and beneath its roar she discerned a cacophony of confusion from the city below. As she tried to steady herself, Jered’s words returned to her: watch for anything unusual. She scanned the southern skies again and her breath caught in her throat when she saw the speck descending from the blue star, which was swollen slightly but otherwise normal. She placed her hands on either side of her and it ascended with rising speed. Her first thought was a meteor, and she could only guess at how she would stop something like that, but as the distance closed between her and the alien object she could see limbs flailing in the wind and she realized it was a boy, and much closer to her than she’d estimated. Her fingers spun around in complicated patterns at her sides and when the boy was ten feet above her, the carpet dropped again, yet it was a controlled drop that Artkela guided with her hands, and the magic bubble returned and brought him gently down in front of her.
When she caught a glimpse of his face, her first instinct was a fierce and primal urge to kiss him; he was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen. Unconscious and dressed in strange clothes, the boy had thick black hair and caramel-colored skin. His high-cheekboned face suggested he was younger than she, but the definition of the muscles in his arms made her unsure. He wore a short green tunic bearing a picture of a strange fat lizard with a great red flower growing out of its back; seven yellow letters below the picture spelled: “Pokémon.” Blushing from her initial reaction to the kid, she took a moment to pray that Pokémon was not his name. Opy’s call pierced the bubble from behind her. Turning the carpet, she saw Jamie flying toward her. She directed the carpet to the bungalow instead, lowering herself down into Opy’s room minutes later and thanking the Allfather for letting her touch ground again after her
inexplicable fall. The carpet returned to its normal dimensions when it touched the floor and Jamie landed in front of her, Opy sweating slightly more than usual. Jamie eyed the boy with a gaping mouth and finally stammered, “Did he—did he fall out of the sky?”
“Better question: how did Jered know this might happen?” Artkela retorted. “Is Opy alright?”
Jamie turned to the griffin and hugged him. “I think so…his wings spasmed or something, we fell, and there was this weird light…”
“My carpet sort of spasmed too. I dropped like a stone when one of the stars exploded. But we can talk
about that later, can you help me get him into the spare room?”
He helped her hoist the boy up under his arms and get him into the house. She almost dropped him as they passed the door to Jamie’s room, but he managed to hold onto him while she regained her grip. When they laid him on the bed, she told Jamie, “Get his clothes off so I can have a look at him. I’ve got to go get some snakeroot.”
She dashed down the hall and searched her apothecary for the appropriate bottle. When she reentered the room, Jamie was standing by the bed with the boy’s tunic in his hand and a sick expression on his face. Her reprisal died on her lips when her eyes caught what he was staring at. Directly over the boy’s heart, on the otherwise smooth and flawless skin of his chest, were four deep and jagged scars. Artkela had seen those sort of wounds before on her grandfather’s operating table; she’d never seen anybody survive even one such injury, yet he’d been stabbed four times at once. She bent low to examine them,
determined they were at least a decade old, and shivered with an odd chill that settled over her until
she stepped away. Swallowing down the flood of questions her diagnosis raised, she motioned for Jamie to remove his pants and took the most cursory of glances looking only for blood on the boy’s
undergarment, trying her best not to let Jamie see her blush. Seeing nothing physically wrong with him, she nodded to Jamie and put the snakeroot in her robe, reaching instead for her smelling salts. Jamie pulled a pair of loose linen pants onto the boy as she unstopped the bottle. She took his head into her hand, lifted gently, and brought the bottle under his nose. His eyes snapped open—deeply, inhumanly dark blue—and flashed with white light. The windows blew open and a great ball of flame welled up from the candle on the dresser. The boy’s eyes closed again and he slept on.
They froze for several seconds. The candle smoked meekly, a blackened stub of molten mess, while cool air blew around them from the open window. They looked at each other, saw each other’s shock mirrored on the other’s face. Jamie crossed the room and closed the window with some difficulty.
Artkela drew in a steadying breath and took a pocket watch out of her robe. She held out a shaky hand
and took the boy’s wrist, looking at the watch. His pulse was steady and within the normal range, but
seemed a bit too quick for him to be asleep. Artkela looked into his face, but his eyes were closed, his
expression blank, and his chest rose slowly and regularly as one dead to the world. She felt his forehead, ready to leap back at any moment, and though he was warmer than normal, he was not clammy or shivering. She couldn’t be sure if he had a fever until she could observe his behavior or communicate with him, but she dared not try the salts again. She tugged the covers out from under him, Jamie coming to her aid, and tucked him in before they left the room. After the door closed behind them, Jamie whispered, “One of the stars exploded?!”
Artkela fried some eggs and ham for their dinner. They had sent a bird to Jered as soon as they left the spare room. Over the next four hours, Artkela checked on the boy every fifteen minutes, but there was no change in his condition. Jamie had grilled her about the little blue star, but as neither of them knew much about astronomy, they could only speculate as to what it meant. They lit lanterns and passed the
time in a fitful silence, Artkela trying to read between checking on the boy and Jamie going to Opinicus’ room every so often and checking the sky for more strange displays. It was past eleven before either of them felt hungry again, and as they settled down to eat, the house shuddered from its south side, where the spare bedroom was located. Her appetite gone, Artkela jumped up from her chair, ignoring Jamie’s words of caution, grabbed a lantern off the table and dashed down the hall. Trembling, she turned the knob and pushed the door open. She caught a glimpse of him sitting up in the bed before a warm sensation clamped down on her brain. She felt as if slick fingers were working their way through her, feeling her very essence; she perceived a sick feeling of fear that was not hers, and suddenly the sensation was gone. Artkela blinked in the flickering light of the lantern. He stared at her with wide, fearful blue eyes. Dismissing the invading sensation for the moment, she approached the bed slowly.
“Are you alright? My name is Artkela Cunningson. I’m here to help you.”
The boy tensed, then spoke. “Where am I?”
Artkela put the lantern down on the bedside table. “You’re in the City of Nod.”
He blanched a bit, then said, “What? There’s no such place! How can that be?”
“I really don’t understand what happened myself,” she said. “What is your name? Where do you come
from?”
The boy eyed her somewhat warily, then said, “I’m Matt Hall. I’m from New Boston, Texas.”
She felt an overwhelming sense of puzzlement that she disguised with a smile. “Well, I’m sure you must be hungry. Why don’t you come join us for dinner? We can try and answer your questions after.”
“Wait a sec—where’s my shirt?”
“I took your clothes to clean them. Here—” She handed him a cotton jerkin from the dresser. He
examined it in his hand before he slipped it on. She led him down the hall to the kitchen. Jamie rose
from his seat when he saw the boy with her, looking worried. She made short introductions and served him a plate of eggs at the table. Matt looked at the food as though he might be sick, but after a few hesitant bites, his appetite seemed to improve. At length, he paused, swallowed his mouthful, and asked, “I don’t mean to be rude, but do people in this country usually stare?”
A while later, after their plates were emptied, they retreated to the sitting room. Artkela sat down on one end of the big couch with Matt on the other while Jamie started a fire in the hearth.
“So where am I?” Matt asked.
“You’re in the City of Nod,” Artkela said.
“You already told me that. But where are we?” He looked from Artkela to Jamie at the fireplace, who seemed to feel Matt’s eyes on his back and turned to shrug with a bemused expression on his face.
Artkela stammered, “I—we’re in the capital of the Land of Nod. It’s about three hundred miles north of the Verdant Forest—”
“Wait, ‘the Land of Nod’?” Matt frowned at her. “You mean like Cain in the Bible?”
“Yes!” She nodded. “Exactly! You’re in the land Cain settled with his descendants.”
“But that’s…the land of Nod was a metaphor, this can’t…how far are we from Texas?”
Artkela’s smile faltered, and Jamie turned to give him another, albeit more sympathetic, shrug. “I’m
afraid I can’t answer that,” she said. “I’ve never heard of the place.”
Matt leaned back against the couch. He stared out into the air at nothing, his expression distant, his
unnaturally-blue eyes giving nothing away. When he spoke again, his voice was smaller. “How did you find me?”
“You fell out of the sky,” Jamie said, sitting with his back to the fire on the ottoman. “Artkela caught you
on her magic carpet right after one of the stars exploded.”
“What was the last thing you remember?” Artkela asked. “You’ve been asleep since I found you.”
“I’m not s…light.” He looked from Jamie to Artkela. “I saw light. Then everything was dark. People were screaming. I think…I think I was running from something. Then more light, I couldn’t see anything else but the light, and then…I don’t know, it stops there.” He rubbed his temple.
“Are you alright?” Artkela asked.
“I’m just confused,” Matt said. “I still don’t understand.”
“We don’t either,” said Jamie. “Hopefully Jered can explain something.”
“Who?” Matt asked.
“Our friend Jered,” Artkela said. “He wrote to us asking to prepare for a guest and to watch for anything unusual in the sky. I think he may have been expecting you.”
“Well, where is he?”
“He lives in the Verdant Forest,” answered Artkela. “If we haven’t heard from him by tomorrow
morning, we’ll go ask him ourselves what’s going on.”
Matt nodded, but Artkela could tell this did not satisfy him. She felt much the same way herself. She
thought Jered would be lucky to escape this incident without a telling-off. They sat together in a
mystified silence when a sudden thump from one end of the house made them all jump.
“Dammit, Opy…” Jamie muttered, dashing off to tend the griffin.
Artkela chuckled, then noticed that Matt was looking at her. “Jamie has a pet griffin. His name is
Opinicus.”
Matt’s eyes widened. “G—griffin? You’re joking right?”
Artkela frowned. “What kind of place do you come from?” she asked before she could stop herself.
“A place without griffins, that’s for sure!”
Jamie reentered the room and took his seat back. “He’s fine. He snagged a deer somewhere and he was a little lopsided in his landing. I hope there’s not a butcher out tomorrow looking for stolen meat…”
Matt laid his face in his hands. “I feel like I’m losing my mind…”
“Do you feel sick at all?” Artkela asked. “Earlier I thought you might have a fever.”
“I run hotter than most people,” he said. He brought his hands down and met her gaze. “Thanks, but I
think I’m as good as I can be at the moment.”
Jamie sat up and leaned toward Matt with his elbows on his knees. “I know none of this makes any
sense to any of us, but we’re gonna do what we can to help you. I promise.”
Matt looked at him and attempted to smile. “I appreciate that. What time is it?”
Artkela pulled out her pocket watch. “It’s fifteen minutes past midnight. Are you tired?”
“I feel like I’ve been run over by a train, but I doubt I could sleep at all.”
“I think I can help with that,” Artkela said. Jamie threw her a wild and confused look and asked at the same time as Matt, “What do you mean?”
“Take this lamp and go lay down.” Artkela handed him her lantern and searched her apothecary once
more. On her way to follow Matt to the spare room, she paused to smack Jamie on the back of his head, adding, “I don’t like that look you gave me just now,” and leaving him dumbfounded. Artkela entered the spare room just as Matt was pulling the covers over himself. As she went to a cabinet in the corner, she asked him, “Why don’t you tell me about yourself? How old are you? What do you like to do?”
“I’m fourteen,” he said. “I like to play sports, I like to read, I like music.”
She unstopped a bottle of red wine and poured him a glass from the cabinet. So he was two years
younger than Jamie and she. “What kind of music do you like?” She uncapped the bottle she’d just
removed from her apothecary and sprinkled three drops precisely, which turned the wine a pleasing
lavender color.
“All kinds. Lately I’ve gotten more into the Beatles and Pink Floyd. My band director has been suggesting
them.”
Without bothering to pretend she understood what he was saying, she sat down on the side of the bed
and handed him the glass.
“What is this?” He took the glass and smelled it. “Is this wine?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’ll help you sleep.”
He looked at her and succeeded in making a small grin. “I may not be the heaviest kid, but it’ll take more
than a single glass of wine to put me out.”
“You haven’t tried my wine,” she chortled. “Just down it all at once.”
He did as she bade him. As he swallowed the last of the wine, his eyes widened. “Oh wow, that’s
delicious! Tastes like lavender! Can I have more?”
“I don’t think you need anymore,” Artkela answered.
“What are you talking about? I feel—” He slumped back into the pillows and his eyes rolled back into his head. His mouth hung open in a gentle snore. Artkela pulled the covers up to his chin, turned out the lamp, and left. When she got back into her room, she examined the bottle in the light of her candle: Madame Aretha’s Sleeping Draught—Contains hemp oil and Essence of Contradiction (contains griffin
tail hair), lavender oil, sugar, water. Dilute before ingesting. One drop per 40 pounds. She grimaced to herself as she hung her robe and changed into her nightgown. She abhorred store-bought potions and preferred to make her own, yet she’d been out of nightshade extract and mint, which is what she preferred to use in place of “Madame Aretha’s” hemp and lavender oils. She laid down and pondered her day. Until Jered’s letter came shortly after noon, it had been a typical Thursday. She prayed to the Allfather that the new day would bring answers. Matt’s scars returned to her mind’s eye, and she shivered. If the scars were as old as she guessed, why would anyone try to kill a child of four years old? As she pondered the enigma that was the boy, the wind whistled around the corners of the house until, at long last, she fell asleep.
By 3 a.m., the wind had died down, yet the only person on the Sky Isle awake to appreciate it didn’t give
it any thought. The youth had appeared as if out of the air itself, silent as a fog, wearing a hooded black robe that wrapped around him. He held a bundle in his hands, and when he turned his face to look up and down the street, the moon came out from behind a cloud and reflected in the dark blue of his eyes. He raised his hand to move a lock of golden hair out of his face and started toward the bungalow at the end of the street. The front gate opened at his approach. Instead of heading for the front door, he turned toward one of the windows near the south end of the house. On the opposite end, the griffin sensed his presence in his slumber and cawed weakly before rolling over and returning to sleep. The
window opened and he floated up into the dark room. The cygnet was snoring softly in the big feather bed. The robed youth crossed the room to the dresser and unwrapped the bundle. He put the boots on the floor, and he put the tunic, belt and pants on top of the dresser.
He turned and sat on the bed beside the cygnet, who seemed unharmed by the journey between
worlds. He was to understand that some illness was a normal side effect of the passage; the youth
reached out and felt his forehead for a fever, yet the cygnet’s temperature was normal. His fingers lingered on the sleeping face for a moment before he felt a disturbance outside. In an instant, he hovered out the window, which closed behind him, and landed on the pavement outside. The
strawberry-haired youth who met him there was even more beautiful, yet with identical eyes and a similar appearance and dress, wearing a turquoise hood and a wide grin. “Good evening, Azrael!” he said brightly.
“What are you doing here, Adonis?” The black-robed youth frowned at his fellow. “I did not ask for assistance.”
“And yet you have it.” The new voice spoke from down the street. They turned and beheld a brown-
skinned youth, equal to them in beauty, dressed in a red robe and watching them with gemlike brown eyes.
“Did he put you up to this, Israfel?” The black-robed youth turned again to the one called Adonis. “Why? Do you think me incapable of even this modest task?”
“I believe the mortals call this an ‘intervention,’ Azrael,” piped in a new voice, belonging to an emerald-eyed youth in white with fiery cherry hair who stepped out of the shadows from the other side.
At the sight of him, Azrael’s eyes narrowed. “And why would you intervene in my affairs?”
“Because this isn’t just your affair.” A tall, imposing youth with brown hair and white robes embroidered
with gold stepped out of the shadows. “You know as well as we that the child was not scheduled to be moved for another year and a half. He forced our hand, and we had no choice but to play into whatever scheme he may have planned. We have to assume he will act now that the child is East of Eden.”
Azrael looked at the latest appearance with a wary eye. “And as I asked before, Michael, do you think me incapable?”
“We thought you weren’t willing to take any chances,” said the red-haired one. “Where we wrong?”
Azrael turned to glare at him, but Michael said, “Do not provoke him, Cupid. In fact, why don’t you check
on the King? He has been too long without supervision.”
Looking chastened, Cupid stepped back, not into the shadows but into the air itself, and was gone.
Michael and Azrael faced each other. “He likes to instigate, but he is correct in essentials. You aren’t
willing to take any chances with the child’s safety. Let us help you.”
Azrael’s jaw tightened. “He’s my brother—”
“He’s our brother,” Israfel said firmly. “And so are you. It’s time you remembered that.”
Azrael nodded in an irksome sort of way and said, “Fine. But this is not the place to talk. We must clear
out of here before one of the mortals sees us. I already woke a domesticated griffin.”
“Agreed,” Michael said. “Israfel and I will search for clues. You two can take it in turns to guard the
child.”
And the four of them stepped back into nothingness, and the street was empty once more.
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