Read Online Cloudland by Lisa Gorton - Free Book Online

smashed onto frozen cloud in a mess of pain.

CHAPTER TWELVE
Refuge
    Lucy staggered up. Her legs were broken stilts. Daniel and Jovius lay in a tangle at her feet.
    â€˜Run!’ Wist shoved Lucy in the back. Everything looked weirdly bright. Dragging Daniel, she followed Wist and Jovius up the steep side of the valley. Wist pounded the valley wall and a door swung open. Lucy pushed Daniel in front of her and fell in after him. Wist slammed the door behind them.
    â€˜Safe,’ he said. ‘It can’t get in.’
    Crouched on the floor, Lucy pressed her face into her knees. Alone in the sound of her breathing, she sat without moving and watched red wheels and sparks inside her eyelids until her breathing steadied.
    â€˜Daniel?’
    â€˜I’m alright.’ He was sitting on the floor with his sleeve pulled back and his bare arm held out in front of him. Lucy saw a blue welt – smooth like plastic – in the soft skin under his wrist, and another near his elbow.
    â€˜It’s numb,’ he said, watching his fingers clench and straighten. ‘I can’t feel anything there …’ He traced a finger down his forearm. ‘Is anyone else cold?’
    â€˜Whole cloud’s frozen,’ said Wist. ‘Another stop on the Kazia’s touring schedule.’
    â€˜They say she leaves Alkazia at night,’ Jovius whispered. ‘No-one knows how. But wherever she goes, the cloud freezes. No Cloudian survives it …’
    â€˜That thing out there,’ said Lucy, ‘that’s the Kazia’s?’
    Wist grunted. ‘Looks like it. Don’t usually see Varactors this far down. They need cold to live. Usually hunt in the high skies, the stratosphere.’
    â€˜So it will tell the Kazia where we are?’
    â€˜It’ll wait out there a while, I’d say. You saw it with the Nimbus. It delights in slaughter. It won’t be happy we got away.’
    â€˜Those poor Nimbus.’ Jovius settled back into a more comfortable position, with his back against the wall. Lucy saw the Nimbus again, spinning downinto emptiness, and cold sliced down her spine. She imagined the Varactor hovering over the cloud outside: that nauseous light everywhere.
    â€˜It’s cold, alright,’ said Daniel.
    For the first time, Lucy looked around her at their refuge. They were sitting in a room carved out of cloud. Its wall curved, forming a circle; its ceiling arched from a central pillar. The floor was hard ice where tiny crystals gleamed. It was so cold the air cut into Lucy’s hands. She had a feeling ice would creep over her skin if she stayed still too long.
    â€˜Did you bring food?’ demanded Daniel. He had dropped his arm into his lap, and as he spoke he kept tracing his fingers over the welts.
    â€˜Just Comclo.’ Wist pulled a box from his pocket, close-packed with white squares. Lucy saw again the Stratus in the kitchen, beating swathes of cloud into ribbons. She had forgotten Fracta. Now she imagined her, in the Citadel, watching the Arcarals carry Lucy into blue distance …
    The Comclo was hard and sweet. It reminded Lucy of the barley sugar her father kept in the glove box to hand out on long car trips. Sucking on Comclo, she remembered all those summer drives when the car seat stuck to the back of her thighs and the day extended, hour after hour, endless as the paddocksthey drove past, her mother dozing in the front seat while her father fixed his eyes on that place, far off, where the road rose into the sky.
    All at once, that memory of carsickness and boredom made Lucy ache with nostalgia. To distract herself, she started roaming around the room, running her hands over the strange maps carved into the central pillar: the flight paths of migrating birds. She recognised snow geese and albatross, drawn from above with their wings outstretched. Two carved seats faced the pillar.
    â€˜Why would anyone sit here?’ she wondered aloud.