We whispered the old legends among the ancient ruins. Our tiny sounds fell away in the misty distance.

Leaning jauntily against the wide balcony’s silvery smooth railing, Graun told of Murk, the serpent in the dark and turgid waters below, feasting on whatever descends to her depths. Graun moved his thin arms mesmerizingly in the failing light as he spoke, mimicking Murk’s motion.

Imposing shapes, impossibly large, stood around us, forbiddingly rectangular and anciently mysterious. Sickeningly distant depths fell away beyond the balcony, a chasm separating this block of towers from the next. It was twilight; day’s dim gray descended into somber rose and orange hues before the impending black. But the towers jutted so high that even in midday we could see neither their tops nor their bases.

Graun’s younger brother Peq embellished on the legend that the towers were natural formations, pushed up by the planet in the days before People. It was lucky, he said, that People came along. Otherwise the planet’s labors would have had no purpose. More muscular than Graun, he didn’t move much when he spoke.

In my distant memories, I pictured their mother once repeating these same legends — the entire family followed Naturalism, one of the most tenacious beliefs of our time. The chief tenet is that the current state of things is a natural consequence of the past.

Contrarily, I was fond of the suspicion that our forebears intentionally made it all. The towers, the chasms, the haze, the sickly vines that stubbornly clung to window openings and balcony railings, hiding tiny slithering beasts. I couldn’t fathom why they had done it, or how, of course. I also didn’t say anything. This being my first Excursion, I thought it best to observe and obey.

Ilesian observed the brothers with sober face, lit an orello, and exhaled weak white smoke. The brief glow from the rolled paper matched the twilight in color and momentarily illuminated the dusty bronze of her face, reflecting twin dots in her coal black eyes. “Darkness falls”, she intoned quietly. “Let us eat and choose lodging.”

Disentangling knotted straps and opening dusty flaps, I rummaged, extracting food morsels wrapped in keeping cloths. I distributed just enough to each of them — a bit more for Peq. We chewed and swallowed in exhausted silence and drained our canteens. Each waited her turn as I refilled. The charge light on the waterator glowed dim amber: only days remained. I tucked it carefully back into my pack.

Graun leaned over the balcony’s edge, the railing unworn as if grown (or built) yesterday. Peq gyrated stupidly behind his brother, looking to Ilesian and me for laughs. Ilesian glared and smoked. I nodded tiredly and briefly, then turned away. I wondered where Graun would arrive if he slipped and tumbled over. Would Murk await in torrents of stained, horrible water rushing between the feet of these towers? Other legends proposed an ever-thickening fog until one’s fall slowed into nothingness.

Or maybe the towers simply drew closer down there until they merged; if the World is a ball like the Elders say, then it stands to reason that the towers are farther apart up here and closer together down there.

Nonanos.

No one knows. A phrase so old and tired we’d crushed it into one word. So much we didn’t know. Never would know. I wanted to know.

Ilesian set a guard though we’d seen no one for days. “Graun, balcony”, she ordered, squeezing the orello dark with her lithe fingers and then pointing to the nearest doorway. “Peq, in the wide corridor beyond.”

Both made as if to retort, believing unfairness was afoot, but remained silent at her glare. She failed to address me and retreated away from the darkening evening into the tower. I followed. Unless told otherwise, the packer stays with the leader. Inside, I pressed the switch on a glower. Ilesian ignored me, wandering through rooms, light-footed to avoid creating dust clouds. When she stopped at an opening, I hurried to her side with the light. She observed a windowless chamber as wide and long as a woman is tall. She nodded.

“Clean it”, she said, and held out a hand for the glower.

I slipped it to her, momentarily fumbling as her fingers touched mine, lit another for myself, and clipped it to a strap on my vest. Pulling the foodator from my packs, I folded out its legs and set it in the center of the chosen chamber, activating it with a press. I felt the air begin to move. I swirled quickly around it, slapping at the dust with a spare tunic, pulling up my dust mask so I wouldn’t choke. The dust thus disturbed, the air movement became visible, whooshing toward and into the foodator. This I repeated several times until most of the room was cleared. Another press on the unit’s edge and the airflow ceased. Nuggets of food dropped onto the tray and I wrapped them and stowed them with the other food. Folding up the foodator, I restowed it.

The original purpose of the room was unknowable. Unexplained niches and holes in the dull gray walls, a grilled drain hole in the floor, and various hooks and protuberances in the ceiling. None of it seemed useful for anything.

I stepped out of the room, dimmed my lantern, and waited in the hall.

Presently, Ilesian returned with the other light, inspected my work, and nodded. When she gestured me inside, surprise made me stumble. Her smile seemed wise and empathetic beyond her years. “I was once the packer”, she confided, sliding her back down a wall to sit in a corner. “Packers make the best leaders, you know.”

I didn’t know. Packers were grunts, the bottom rung of the command chain. Above no one. I carry the heaviest loads, have the most responsibilities, do the most work. Maybe that’s what she meant. Maybe she meant these burdens, and the process of mastering them, sculpt a person for leadership. I followed the thought further: would a hunter like Peq or a scout like Graun have her own advantages?

As if sensing my question, Ilesian grinned. “I hunted and scouted also”, she told me. The largest bit of biography I’d ever heard straight from her lips. It was more believable than the stories I’d heard, the already legendary myths of the warrior Ilesian who had slain a hundred raiders, leapt from one tower to another to save a dying scout, fished dragons from the rivers below, and charged -ators with her bare hands.

I stole a glance at her lovely fingers as she patted the floor next to her. I sat, not close enough to jostle her bare arm, but close enough to hear her breathing, feel her heat. She turned to me. This close, I saw her face wasn’t assured. Now it was questioning. She touched my cheek with a gentle touch. The energy that flowed through me suddenly felt powerful enough to charge the -ators myself.

***

I ignored glowers from Graun and Peq the next morning. Peq said he had hunted before daybreak. “Nothing in this tower”, he said, awaiting the waterator’s process of refilling his canteen. “I hunted twenty levels.”

Graun said he had been to the top and back, but no one believed him. It was too high and no one should venture so far alone.

Ilesian kept her council. I filled all four canteens, mine last. I stowed the waterator.

“Who made the waterator?” Graun asked, watching me tuck it carefully into place and tie down a dusty flap. The question seemed strange on his tongue, given his conviction of the naturality of all things.

I supposed curiosity made him a better scout.

“There’s writing on it”, Ilesian pointed out. “Read it?”

I pulled it back out, held it up, and then remembered Graun couldn’t read. The stamp of “Waterator” on the side of the machine told us little. The smaller engravings on the bottom, “Made in Overland II by Gyrr Corp” represented sounds to me, but no meaning. I thought the I next to another I might mean we. I couldn’t guess what an “overland” was, nor a “gyrr”. It seemed that “corp” might mean body, because corpse was the closest word I could think of. How that related to the machine’s origin, I didn’t know.

After I read these words aloud, Ilesian intoned the mantra of our People. “Nonanos.” No one knows. “We’ve always had them. Had them when I was small and when my mother was small.” She fluttered a hand listlessly, her eyes drifting with disinterest. “Invisible water is trapped in the air; by some method unknown to us, the waterator plucks it out. Only the Old Ones knew, and they won’t tell.”

Because they’re dead, I thought. Peq smiled at the small joke. Graun nodded grimly, brushing a hand absentmindedly at the encroaching vines that clutched at the railing.

How long since the Old Ones? Nonanos. Maybe thousands of years. Some say the Elders of our vill will someday fade away and drift to some High Tower where the Old Ones lounge in comfort and serenity forever. Each dying Elder then becomes yet another Old One. I don’t believe it. I think the Elders only die, like their elders before them. All the way back. The Old Ones, whichever generation made the -ators, have long been gone. Why they left no explanation? Nonanos.

Emphatic pink of morning gave way to brooding gray of day as we ate lumps of food.

“We move”, Ilesian told us.

The towers rose in inexplicable rectangular groupings from the dark fog below. Though the towers changed in size and layout, the “blocks” seemed mostly regular in size and shape. An occasional very thick tower might be a block unto itself. More typically, six to twelve. Within a block, the towers were close, sometimes so close that a daring scout like Graun might leap across. Between blocks, though, those gaps were ten or more women-lengths across.

Graun pointed across the chasm to a tan or gray tower. In this light, who could tell? It seemed much as this one, or the ones we explored on previous days. How did Graun know which was which? Mildly differing window shapes? Imperceptible color imbalances? Markings I hadn’t noticed? I briefly entertained the suspicion that it was all luck and guesswork with him. He was the fastest, thus the scout, and maybe he did find a bridge from here to there during early morning explorations. But he wasn’t the smartest among us, I knew.

If we soon saw our own footprints in the dust, we would know we had doubled back.

Graun led us to the shaft while Peq kept a rearguard and I walked a step or two after Ilesian. I think I glowed a little, but my hood obscured my eyes and my dust mask hid my smile.

“Nearest bridge is ten levels down”, Graun said, pointing lazily into the shaft.

Why did the Old Ones use shafts? Nonanos. They must have been wise — they made the -ators after all — yet they built no ramps? Our People have built ramps in our vills where the Elders and children stay. One old legend says the Old Ones flew, thus the shafts running up and down through the centers of each tower. Wide towers had multiple shafts.

Graun twisted over the ledge and clambered down quickly, his feet and hands using the depressions in the walls that must have been put there by the Old Ones. Maybe not all of them could fly, or some were weak or old or young, and thus must climb as we do.

Ilesian gestured and I followed Graun. Then she came, her dusty cracked boots missing my fingers by mere centimeters. Finally Peq, who stayed at least one level beyond us, his hunter gun slung across his torso. The pack straps bore into my shoulders but I said nothing. If not me, then whom? Packs were necessary, and packers carry packs.

In my head, I counted levels; I knew the others did the same because we all learned it as children in our vills. Start with zero: the middle level of your home vill. Subtract for going down, add when climbing up. As a child I was told stories about people or groups who lost count while out on excursions; they returned to their own towers, but passed by too high or low and never recognized their own towers.

Graun hopped out of the shaft into a corridor, and I followed, straining. I slipped just a brief instant and he caught my arm. “Careful, little one”, he said quietly. More like a real Person and less like the buffoon he usually portrayed. Maybe his normal act was only... an act. Both of us reached out for Ilesian though — she didn’t need assistance; she was simply too valuable. Each of us confirmed the level count with one another: plus-eleven. (We had slept at plus-21.)

We followed Graun toward the bridge, which was where he said it would be — I could see his bootprints in the dust from hours earlier. I could hear Peq behind us.

The bridge was built of the Old One metal, the perfectly shiny and smooth railing and textured floor material of the towers. If the Old Ones flew, why bridge the chasms between towers? As always: nonanos. Maybe the bridges supported the towers somehow. Or maybe the bridges were for the same Old Ones who needed the handholds in the shafts. The Old One bridges were few and far between. More common were the makeshift ones we built by braiding vines into ropes and securing them across smaller gaps within blocks. From time to time, People of a vill managed to string such a bridge across the wider spaces between blocks. Occasionally we found where the vines themselves had bridged the gaps.

This bridge was crumpled partway across. A ripple in the uncuttable, unbendable material of the flooring and walls and ceiling. No explanation. I saw Ilesian look at Graun warningly, licking her lips and eyeing the ripple. We watched him walk to the ripple, over it, and back. He smiled. “Nonanos, boss”, he said. “It’s solid.”

What could flex this unknowable material? Maybe the world itself had moved. I had felt tremors before; we all had. Some said the world groaned beneath us, became uncomfortable at times, and writhed. If so, maybe the movement of the World was enough to buckle the bridges. In a mild epiphany, I realized such a thing being true meant an eventual end of the towers, which we believed to be permanent.

I looked out the windows of the bridge. Crumbs of shattered clear hardness around the edges. Elders said the windows were once sheltered with a transparent material, a see-through metal of some kind. If so, it had long ago broken away, made from something less stable than the walls and floors. Out over the chasms below, I looked. All the empty perfectly rectangular holes in the tower walls. Had they once all been shielded and sealed? If so, how would the vines grow from one window to another?

I saw blackened flying animals far below and imagined I could hear them squawking. Some were mammalian, gliding from one tower to another. Some, perhaps, were birds like those that usually live above.

We hurried across into the next tower.

Graun was right; it was a new one. At least there were no footprints except his fresh ones from this morning. I could see where he had stopped in his exploration. Beyond that, no one had been here for many months.

It might take months, maybe years, for the dust to settle so naturally even across the floors. Maybe hundreds of years. I’d once heard Graun say he could tell the date of an old footprint, approximately. At least within a few years. Where the dust collected thickly enough, air-moisture settled into it and the vines would grow, reproduce, die, rot, and leave still more soil for future vines. Over time, some passages were more thickly covered than others, and stepping on vines left no footprints.

Graun had explained to me weeks earlier why we avoided the vine-covered halls — the raiders used them to hide their tracks.

“I scout?” he asked.

Ilesian nodded. “Ten up and ten down.” Graun trotted away.

Waiting for Peq to catch up, Ilesian pulled down my dust mask, looked at my mouth.

“You were smiling”, she said. I blushed, and she kissed me quickly. She smiled too. “You’ll stay with me again tonight, packer.”

Then Peq caught up.

***

We lost Graun the next morning. He never returned from his pre-dawn scout. We waited, eating, Peq looking uneasy, as the rosy dawn faded to gray once more. Had Graun fallen in a shaft? Unlikely; he was the best climber. Slipped over a balcony? It’s true he always leaned over. Maybe one was dustier than usual.

“I’ll track him”, Peq told us after breakfast, after I refilled his canteen.

Ilesian only nodded, not meeting Peq’s eyes.

“I’ll find him”, Peq promised. “I’m as a good a tracker as him.”

It shouldn’t be difficult, I thought. Footprints everywhere. Just us in this tower. Or maybe someone lived in this one, far above or far below. Maybe they heard us enter or maybe Graun had dropped something in a shaft, thus alerting them. Maybe they sent someone to investigate the intrusion.

If so, Peq should find footprints of a scuffle. Or blood... Something.

“We rest for now”, Ilesian told me. Did I detect one eyebrow slightly raised? “Peq has to know where to find us when he returns.”

“Boss”, I said. “The waterator will need a charge in a day or two. We need to go Up.”

She didn’t like that news, but accepted it. Placed it in her leader’s mind with a dozen other things that must be remembered and worked around.

***

Peq returned as the gray skies above our balcony took on a dull orange hue. Evening. His face was different somehow. Grimmer. Had he cried? There, a dried salty spot on his tunic.

He glanced between us, then said to Ilesian: “You don’t seem very upset.” I felt the heat of his accusation. Also jealousy; he had been Ilesian’s consort when the journey began. She didn’t visibly react to his accusation. A sign of a good leader, I thought. I recorded the moment should I ever ascend to such a position. She waited for him to either retreat or draw near. He hesitated, then collapsed on the balcony, the three of us making a triangle now instead of a square.

“You found signs then?” she finally asked him.

Peq nodded. He took the food I offered. The tasteless lumps digested easily, provided us with energy for the day; never too much, never too little — as long as the -ator was charged. Leftover magic from the Old Ones.

“Footprints to a window. No return prints. A bit of blood on the edge, like he tried to grab on as he fell. He hated birds, always tried to get one.” I remembered, early in the trip, Graun screaming at a curious bird above us, tossing a bit of broken vine at it. The bird had caught the bit, plucking it expertly at the apex of the toss, and flew away. “Maybe he leaned too far this time...” Peq gulped. “It’s the only conclusion.”

The younger brother turned away from us. Got up, walked to the balcony. For a moment, in the blackening evening, I thought he intended to launch himself after his older sibling. Join him in the legendary rivers below. Or float together on the thickening haze, beyond which no Person could fall? No one knows what’s down there. Nonanos.

But he didn’t. He finished eating. Washed it down with canteen swigs. Pulled out an orello and lit it with a firestick. He only drew on it twice, then extinguished it and sat again, his back to the balcony railing, his feet toward us. He stared at Ilesian for a moment, then looked down.

Had he considered challenging her? I’d never seen a leader challenged; only heard the stories when I was a child. A leader could be challenged any time; no rule could prevent it. But few challenges were successful. No one became a leader by accident; their skills must be universally attested to. Ilesian’s skills were well noted, both in legend and in my observations.

Peq was larger, stronger, younger. And certainly angrier. I caught that thought and turned it. No, he was only visibly angrier. There was no telling the depths of anger Ilesian might carry while never letting it show. There was also the matter of experience. Even if the myths swirling about her were only myths, she had to have fought raiders and survived. And if she had been a packer, then she knew pain and humiliation.

Moving only my eyes, I looked at her. She stared at Peq, waiting for his anger to collapse. She breathed easily, sitting comfortably, more relaxed than I had ever known. Except her eyes. And every relaxed part of her, I saw, was carefully placed. Her hand casually rested only inches from the hilt of a knife. The other lackadaisically perfectly ready to launch her up should she need to rise.

Her gaze broke him.

“I wanted it to be signs of a struggle”, he finally muttered. “If someone... We could have followed them.” I understood: he wanted closure, something to do in response to the death. Instead, we had to merely accept it. There was no closure with a fall.

“We have to go Up”, Ilesian finally told him. “-Ators need charging. We climb at first light.”

That night, the three of us shared the chamber Ilesian chose. Peq said he didn’t want to, but he didn’t belabor the point.

***

Up is a long way. We almost never go. It’s painfully bright up there, and often very windy too. With birds everywhere. And the farther one gets from the zero level, the greater the danger of losing count. It’s easy to remember “plus-twelve”, but not “plus-seven hundred forty-nine”.

Back in the vills, -ators charge on balconies for days or weeks if that’s how long it takes to collect a little light. On Excursions though, we need quick charges, and roofs or high windows are the only way.

With every climb for charging, we had to hope for three things. A flat roof. Access to the roof. And a short tower. A few towers sloped to a pinnacle, which meant we’d have to charge the devices by holding them near windows. Some top floors had no way to get to the roof, or the access might be blocked by the thicker, greener plants that grew up there. Other towers were so tall we’d exhaust ourselves climbing.

Fortune favored us that day, perhaps in repayment for taking Graun. Sometimes luck balances itself. The tower we climbed had an accessible flat roof only a hundred fifty levels up. And multiple protuberances decorated the surface. Silvery tubing jutted up into the brightened bluish sky, farther than I could see. I knotted our safety straps onto this tubing after Peq tested its stability, then lashed one end of each to our belts. We could wander a bit without being blown off.

I worked quickly amongst the startling bright green vegetation: hacking out a clear space, unfolding the black charging panel and then placing each machine lightly on the corners thereof. Somehow (yes, nonanos), the light of the sky put energy into the panel, and another somehow made the panel charge the -ators that touched it. Ilesian and Peq each put their firesticks and glowers along the edge of the panel; they’d be charged within minutes. I lined up the other glowers beside them.

A stubby rectangular structure sheltered the shaft from which we’d come. We leaned against that to avoid the worst of the wind. We rested, aching from the climb. After some time, I retrieved the firesticks, then the glowers. The foodator took two hours to charge fully, and the waterator was last.

I willed it to go faster. I hated evenings on Top. The unwatchable yellow-white circle changed colors menacingly as it neared the edge of the sky, sliding between taller towers. The Star. The Elders said it was necessary for life; without it we would all freeze like a distant memory. But here it burned, scalded the eyes, dried the skin. The distant floating white splotches turned gray, then purple and orange and yellow. Like a fire out of control. A silent distant explosion in slow motion.

It was safer down in the haze. Quieter too. Here birds ruled. Thousands of them. None of them got close enough for Peq to catch or kill, but we could see them sitting in rows along the roofs and window openings of other towers. Watching us. Maybe waiting for us to fall. Or die here, so they could eat us. Who knows what flying creatures think?

“Die!” Peq shouted at them. They only watched back. He seethed. They waited.

The deepening blue was disconcerting as I packed up the charging panel. Peq positioned himself at the shaft while I loosened his strap from the tubing. Then he held Ilesian as I untied her strap. Mine was last and I scampered toward the shaft, my pack weighing me down enough for the wind to be ineffectual in its attempts to sweep me to the edge.

One level down, still too bright from the light in all the windows, I untied the other ends of the straps from our belts, rolled them, and stowed them. We clipped on our glowers and descended to safety.

***

An Excursion is less safe without a scout. Ilesian worried over it as we descended, and then decided we should turn back.

“You’re promoted to scout”, she told Peq. “Until we get home. I’ll be the hunter if we need it.” She turned to me. “You pack like you’ve never packed before, packer. We move quickly. Rest only when we must.”

Three days later, halfway back home, we lost Peq to raiders. In our haste and fatigue, Ilesian and Peq had agreed to risk some vine-entombed corridors and bridges. Where we couldn’t see footprints. Exactly what Graun had warned me about. The raiders came out of a side passage quickly; Peq fought ferociously, by all signs, but was too far ahead for our aid to reach him. Still, Ilesian rushed. She leapt over his gurgling, seeping body and knifed two raiders in a flash, while I plodded ever closer, gasping from a recent climb. My shoulders and thighs ached. My fingers vibrated dully from the chore of grasping the handholds.

Ilesian was a fury, a storm, stacking her legend with new chapters. Slashing and kicking, screaming and stabbing. She bit and punched, ducked and parried. In my startled fatigue, from a distance, it looked like she punched straight through one man’s skull, drawing back her arm soaked in bloody lumps. During it all, she ignored the hunter gun slung on her back, until the end when she pulled it out to bludgeon one shuddering body on the floor.

It was over when I arrived. Peq had stilled, his blood pooling quietly, his eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

“At least ten”, said Ilesian, an angel of death. She seemed larger than before. More majestic somehow, as her chest heaved with mighty breaths. Even I felt more powerful for having stood beside her. “Some got away.” As her pulse slowed, she seemed to deflate. Then she collapsed weakly next to what used to be Peq.

I observed the bodies splayed gruesomely around the corridors. I wondered if the raiders who survived would lie to their elders. Would they say dozens had attacked them out of nowhere? Or would they admit to ambushing a lone man and then being defeated by a lone woman?

The Elders said raiders were the scum of People. They didn’t provide for themselves, only took from others. They were cannibals, we were told. I wondered if they had the same trouble as our vill, and other vills — the lack of non-related males to seed new children.

Either way, Peq died for nothing; the raiders had failed to take any of his possessions, and now our own vill was down another male. Two, counting Graun. Their family had been specifically brought in from another vill to help with the next generation.

After a time, Ilesian unclipped Peq’s canteen from his belt and added it to her own. We quietly went through his pockets, taking orellos, firestick, his glower. The vest and tool pouches, I crammed into my packs.

“I’ll carry one”, Ilesian told me.

For the first time, I rebutted her, voice firm. “No, boss. I’m the packer. You’re the leader — and hunter and scout too. The packer can’t fight, and you might have to. I need you unburdened, to get us home safely.”

She eyed me a moment. Nodded. She was older now; sometimes age doesn’t come gradually, but suddenly. “Then let’s send Peq to his brother”, she finally said. Unspoken was the fear that the raiders would return to desecrate him if we abandoned his body.

We dragged him to the nearest window and heaved him out. He tumbled into the depths.

Once he disappeared, Ilesian wiped her face. “We’ll tell stories about him, packer. Legends of Peq and Graun. We must remember them.”

I figured it would require strong imagination to fabricate tellable tales about those two. Competent, yes, but... Maybe she wasn’t thinking of Peq and Graun. Maybe she was thinking of their younger sister. Their old mother. The entire vill. Legends aren’t for their subjects, but for those who hear.

Or maybe for us. Maybe she and I, if we could tell tales of the great scout and hunter who traveled with us, would enlarge our own fortunes.

I didn’t say it, but I already was writing more of Ilesian’s legend in my head.

***

We had seen no raiders for three outbound weeks but now they were everywhere. They must have been watching. Now they were more confident, seeing only Ilesian and me.

With skill and ferocity beyond any myth I would someday generate, Ilesian fought her way through them, leaving dozens of bodies in our wake. We returned to the vill with only minor scrapes and bruises, but utterly fatigued.

Ilesian’s eyes were darker than usual as we climbed down the last shaft, this one clear of dust because it was so close to our vill. Nothing to show for our efforts, I knew she was thinking. Sent out to locate other vills, or at least new supplies for our own, we had returned empty-handed.

An outer guard across the bridge leaned out with a hunter gun to challenge us, but then recognized Ilesian. A shout went up, and more faces crowded around the opening as I lurched across the bridge with the packs. Some of the faces looked beyond me, already wondering why Ilesian had crossed first and why the brothers were conspicuously absent.

“Graun?” came a query as Ilesian clasped arms with the first guard, Jent.

She shook her head, tears on her exhausted, dusty face. I wondered whether the tears were contrived. She and I had already grieved, nights ago.

“Peq?” The second question was more high-pitched, more loaded. One loss was understandable, sometimes expected. Every Excursion carried the risk. But two? Two brothers? The fun and funny, always amiable Graun and Peq?

“My packer needs rest and a bath”, Ilesian commanded, her voice like metal, interrupting the questions that felt like accusations, punches. She seemed to stand straighter. “We must call a Council!”

Someone rushed away to inform an Elder, and someone else helped me slide out of the pack straps. I shivered with weakness as I was helped by a kindly older man toward the communal baths in the center of the tower. Just the thought of the luxury brought fresh stings of salt to my eyes. I thought of Graun and his mysterious disappearance, his probable end, and Peq’s convulsions before his end. No more baths for them, right? Why should I deserve one? All I did was carry the packs.

“Those boys are in the High Tower now”, the old man assured me, correctly guessing why I wept. “You’ll see one day. You’ll see. The Old Ones have them now.”

At the doorway, I already felt the steam from inside. He patted my hand and smiled grimly before turning away.

I grasped the frame, pushed open the door and stepped inside.

***

The Council of Elders was more hushed than I had expected — I’d never attended one before. The women with gray and white hair listened to Ilesian’s terse and concise report, of which I only caught the end. I felt conspicuous in my clean clothes and undusted skin, while Ilesian stood like a bloodied and bruised, yet triumphant, goddess in the center of the room. She was still dressed in her woven leggings, pocketed utility vest, and tool belt. Dried blood from a dozen strangers crusted her braids.

“Two other Excursions are still at large”, said one Elder. There had been four, dispatched simultaneously in opposing directions to find other vills. Her statement told me that we were the second to return. She continued: “We must wait until the others return before we decide anything.”

Others nodded, including many in the audience.

But an even older woman, whom I had assumed to be asleep, shook her head slowly. “Nothing prevents us from deciding now”, she intoned, her voice scratching like vines in the dust. “If others bring contrary news, we can amend or rescind our decision.”

The room grew quieter. We all knew what hinged on this decision. Already we few thousand were alone in this series of blocks, except for raiders who wouldn’t parley or compromise. Already, it was impossible for the Elders to match-make among us young without finding blood relations in each pair. Though only the Old Ones understood exactly how tiny bits of two people combine to begin a new person, everyone in the vill knew we needed new fertilizers for our eggs.

Either we stayed and withered, eventually devolving into dull-thinking raiders ourselves, or we must move as a whole.

“Another Excursion might have already found another vill!” cried one Elder, a younger one. “Even now, their fleet-footed scout could be on the run with the news! Let’s do nothing rash.”

“I’ve never done anything rash”, said the oldest one with a gravity that forced me to believe her. Or at least I believed that none of us were yet born in the days when rashness might have once fleetingly overcome her. “It isn’t rash to recognize the truth”, she continued, “even if it is a provisional truth. Even if it is terrible.”

She smiled with a contagious tiredness. “Weeks will be required to pack up our vill, to decide what we must leave behind and what we must carry — and to make enough packs, portable ramps and ladders, and extra climbing harnesses for the weak. During that time, one or both of the other Excursions might return and we will hear them.”

I wondered at these old women. Long I had hoped to survive and someday sit at this table of power, despite those who said I looked too much like a boy. Could these women still make the climbs? Even with ladders and harnesses? How far could they walk in a day? I caught Ilesian staring at me. It was a look of confidence, not necessarily for the future of the vill, but for us. I felt my face grow hot. The past three nights we had shared close chambers. I vowed inwardly to serve her to the end.

“Let us hear from the packer”, a younger Elder called out, pointing to me. “What of your own observations?”

She was a great-aunt, or several-times-removed cousin; I had lost track.

“The towers are empty”, I said, after clearing my throat. My voice sounded weak and soft next to the others. “I lost count of them. A hundred, maybe. Graun went up and down in each. We saw no signs, other than raiders. We looked out windows and over balconies, hearing no sounds but our own, smelling no odors but our own, seeing no scat but our own. If any vills exist near enough to trade, they are well hidden or much higher or lower than we.”

That seemed to shut up the younger one. She almost said something impulsively, but then held her tongue. I thought she had been about to suggest going deeper — farther down into the darkness — but no one here would agree to that. Most of us assumed we couldn’t even breed with a lower-level People. A few might be persuaded to search Up, but both were distasteful. People grow acclimatized to their own levels.

An elder who hadn’t previously spoken made a motion, and the discussion went full-bore. Ilesian soon stood at my side, grasping my hand. “This will take a while”, I assured her. “You ought to bathe now.”

She shook her head. “They know. We have to move.”

She was right; the discussion was brief and the meeting broke up. Committees for each task would be appointed tomorrow.

Finally, I accompanied Ilesian to the baths. I washed her clothes while she soaked in the waters nearby. Would my muscles ever be so sound and reliable as hers? Would my face ever be so striking? Would I ever lead groups of People like she had? I decided my odds would improve the longer I lived in her shadow.

***

That evening as we dined, Ilesian began telling her tales of Graun the Swift and Peq the Mighty, morphing moral lessons into the circumstances of their demises. Less powerfully, less colorfully, I told tales too. At the lower tables away from the brighter lights in the center, I tested the earliest version of my Legend of Ilesian. She was invincible, I asserted, protected by the Magic of the Old Ones. She climbed like a scout, killed like a hunter, led women like an Elder. In fact, I hinted, she might very well be the reincarnation of an Old One come back to lead us.

Later, after she began to snore gently next to me — for she had formally invited me to abide in her chambers — I carefully lit a glower, using my body to shade the light from her eyes, and I began to write of her. Minutes here, an hour after dark there, sometimes finding moments before meals or between chores... I finished my story in a few days. This is it, what you read now, the first draft of the first chapter of Ilesian’s legend. Reading back, I see it is also a love story, my own. If she ever deigns to tell me of her full past, I will add that later. If she allows, I will stay with her long enough to observe and record future heroics. I only regret that neither of us can seed the other’s eggs.

As our vill travels en masse, her expertise and stability will be invaluable. Her ferocity in battle might decide whether any of us survive. We have been assigned to forward scouting positions during the Big Move, walking out days ahead of the pack and returning, repeatedly. Adventure awaits, more than I ever wanted.

***

One week later, another Excursion team trudged back into the vill having found no others. Cheers went up because all four of them had survived. They brought heavy coils of fresh thin vines for weaving — and a screen of that mysterious metal. Then, as we packed our last packs for the Big Move, the fourth Excursion’s scout limped into the vill. She said she barely escaped the raiders who killed her companions. She was young, maybe as young as me; I think we played together as toddlers. Ilesian said it was her cousin Thetta.

***

Outcries arose when the oldest Elders announced they would not come with us. “We cannot travel”, they protested, “and to ask to be carried does injury to the vill. The vill, the People, must survive. Fleet of foot and heavy of heart.”

Ilesian had tears in her eyes. One of the oldest Elders was her great-grandmother.

And then we left. The younger elderwomen, twelve of them, walked in the center of the pack, surrounded by others of their ages who did not sit at the Table. Each carried a small pack, not too heavy. Around them the men of the vill, those who held doors, cleaned the baths, adjusted ramps and lashed ladders, and guarded the Elders. Just behind them, a group of children and the adolescents who taught and supervised them. At the periphery of our group, the young men and women: scouts, hunters, Excursion leaders, scavengers, and more. Ilesian and I were among the few dozen in the front wave.

Clouds of birds watched us curiously from above, each impatiently shifting her weight from one leg to the other, perhaps anticipating the chance pick over our now-empty nest. It must have been a sight, if someone had been watching from afar. An entire vill, after many centuries in several levels of a single tower block, moving across the chasms to new blocks. We moved through Old One bridges and across the viny bridges. We carried with us a few portable bridges should we need them. By the time the rear guard crossed a chasm, the first wave was already several blocks ahead. Flankers checked towers to left and right, and levels below and above.

Will we find other vills? Or will we perish from the strains of always moving? Will we migrate upward as some suggest, for faster charging of our -ators? Or will we migrate downward because we suspect other vills did so for safety? Will we succeed in fending off the raiders who follow, or will we domesticate them by leaving chunks of food each morning as we move on? (That last was my suggestion, to form a secondary rear guard of grateful beasts.) Will we discover the true nature of our tower-covered world and the Old Ones who left it to us?

Nonanos.