The Endless Song by Joshua Phillip Johnson

Author:Joshua Phillip Johnson [Johnson, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000 Fiction / General
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
Published: 2023-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When it became clear that the sky would continue to fall for some time, Kindred fell asleep in a chair beside Madrigal, and she didn’t wake until much later, when Sarah’s hand on her shoulder pulled her up from a dream in which she and Jest had been racing to see who could climb one of the stalks of the Sea first. Kindred’s own stalk had spoken to her in a deep, booming voice, mocking and deriding her attempts to climb it, and soon Jest, crowned in a circle of scintillating silver-green light, was lost to the glowing vaults above, while Kindred scrabbled about in darkness.

“It’s over,” Sarah said, her voice soft, her smile sweet. She bent down for a kiss, and Kindred turned her face up into it, closing her eyes and feeling, for just a moment, that the world had contracted into the rough brush of Sarah’s lips meeting her own. Everything stilled around her and in her, the memories and anxieties suddenly remembered upon waking held for a breath as she lived for a moment on Sarah’s lips, on the smell of her, on her closeness. If she could wake every day in that way, nothing could stand before her.

Fourth-Folly was already gone, become a pair of footsteps leaping from the deck above, and Madrigal was soon to follow. The young girl had woken at the same time as Kindred but rose with impossible vigor, unfurling from the constricting angles of her sleep and springing from her chair straight to the stairs and up, a breathless giggle accompanying her.

Awn was close behind, running a hand across the wayward growth of his beard, sleepy but no less excited than Madrigal. He even let out a little giggle of his own to match hers.

Jest emerged from her berth, already talking to Wylf about what treasures or wonders they might find outside, how they might be clues to the Lost Monarch’s whereabouts, and while she spoke in the same grand manner as before, the words sounding as though they had been lifted from some archaic text, she was changed. Grown deeper, wider—a thin stream sounded and discovered to be hiding deep rivers below, waters icy and unrelenting and rushing ever downward where few cared to look or know.

“Perhaps a message from the Monarch?” Jest said to Wylf, tipping her head to the side as if, yes, it might be unlikely, but perhaps it wasn’t impossible. “Or a message for the Monarch? There is simply no reason to believe our Monarch did not have a foothold in the sunlight seas above. No reason at all.”

She waved to Kindred and Sarah with a braid of hair as she passed by, and there was something in the gesture—so casual and easy—that told Kindred she belonged.

Jest seeks herself.

Fourth-Folly’s revelation whispered through Kindred’s mind as she and Sarah followed the others up onto the deck. Jest had turned the Monarch into a figure of legend, equal in every way to the legends Kindred had

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