The running man came out of a tent, one long object in each hand.
Seldom asked, “Can we watch you butcher the monster?”
Father didn’t seem to hear the boy. He looked at the ground again, one hand wiping at his mouth, one of the fingers absently following the raised ridge of the long handsome scar. “No,” he said at last. “No, you may not.”
Then turning back to Diamond, saying, “Son. I have something to tell you.”
Father walked away from the corona and the tents, following the valley’s slope while Diamond walked beside him, as close as possible. Then his father stopped and called back to the others. “This isn’t a private conversation. Believe me, everybody deserves to know.”
Five of them walked the valley together. The ground was gravel and pulverized coral boulders and short deep crevices jammed full of vegetation and raspy-voiced insects. This was the eroded, depleted top of the reef, and the valley ended with a sharp line and empty air, and Diamond was thinking how easy it would be for a person to walk to that edge and with one more step plunge into whatever amazement lay below.
“What’s under us?” he asked.
“The true world is,” Father said.
“What does that mean?” Seldom asked.
“Quiet,” said Elata.
“Quiet,” said the Master.
“Oh, I’m just making noise,” said Father, starting to laugh. “Don’t listen to me.”
They walked for a recitation. Nobody spoke.
“It’s just the way slayers think,” he explained. “Our world, with its forests and rain and birds, is a cold and very simple place. Each day lets the trees grow a little bit, making the air fresher. Then come nights that last a little while or a long time. But every dawn finds the same forest hanging at the top of the world. A few tree-walkers have died, others have been born, and it’s the same for the reef and the papio too.”
Father quit talking.
Seldom began to talk, but Nissim put a hand over his mouth.
Father asked, “Have you learned much about the coronas, son?”
“No.”
The Master cleared his throat. “I might have unleashed a lecture on the boy. But I’m not the expert on the subject.”
Nodding, Father looked at his son. “I assumed your mother might have mentioned the coronas.”
“Almost never, sir.”
“No? But she did teach you to read, didn’t she?” He didn’t wait for answers. Dropping a hand on Diamond’s shoulder, he said, “I’ve been gone too much. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know a thing or three.”
Diamond said nothing.
Father extended the other arm, holding the hand flat. “Up here, in our realm, the air is pleasant and cool. Perfect for humans, and that’s how it has always been.” And he lowered the hand. “But below us is something else. The something else requires an entirely different kind of air. And between the realms is a barrier. Think of a floor, flat and perfectly smooth, resting below the lowest branches and underneath the reef. We call it the ‘demon floor’ for some reason or another, and everybody knows that barrier is there, yet like any respectable demon, it can be very hard to see.
“In a sense, the Creation is one house enclosing two enormous rooms. Ride a fletch to the bottom of this world and you can throw out a handful of coral dust, and the dust scatters across the demon floor. That’s a good trick to discover exactly where the barrier begins. The heaviest grit sinks out of sight first, followed by the dust. Thankfully the ingredients in our air are too light or too small to make the passage. But if you drop anything heavier than grit—a coral boulder or a man, or the fletch and its crew—those objects easily fall into the room below us. And at night, when the air is especially calm, your fletch can hover just above the demons and their floor, nothing to see but a faint endless glimmer stretching to the ends of the world. On that kind of night, a young slayer can reach out the ship’s window with a torch and pitcher, sacrificing his beer by pouring it onto floor, watching it flow sideways before sifting through, and if his eyes are sharp and his torch is strong, he can see his good drink drop a very slight distance before instantly turning to steam.”
Diamond nodded uncertainly.
“Now I suppose this would seem strange,” said Father. “If I knew as much as our scientists know, that is. I’ve been told that the magic baffles them and probably always will. Some deep thinkers actually claim that real demons inhabit the barrier, too many to count, and each demon spends its existence sending the heat down and the cold up while keeping the two atmospheres apart. But I’m a person who doesn’t need imaginary creatures. My mind is happy to accept the barrier as being just another beautiful mystery in a world full of nothing else.”
He paused, taking a deep breath.
“If you haven’t guessed, the coronas live in the lower half of the world. In their realm, the air is denser than water and fiercely hot. Take a ball—a hollow ball of our finest steel—and tie it to a steel cable. Then hover low and drop the ball through. Do you know what happens next?”
“It gets squashed,” Seldom said.
“And to retrieve the squashed ball, we have to drop ballast and use the fletch’s engines at full throttle,” Father said. “Which is another intriguing mystery: why is the barrier a lot more stubborn moving in one direction over another?”
The valley was finished, except it didn’t end where Diamond expected. The ground simply dropped into a lower valley that hung over the open air. They were still standing in shadow, the sun hiding behind the reef’s edge. But the day was far enough along that Diamond could stare down at what looked like yellow mist, smooth and bright. He didn’t blink, and his eyes didn’t ache. Glancing up at his father, he discovered that the man was gazing up, not down.
“Dawn is the brightest time,” Father said. “That’s because when day begins, very little grows between us and the sun. But that transparency doesn’t last. Minutes after the rain rises, new plants begin growing. The coronas’ realm is full of spores and seeds, and little creatures that swim in that dense air, and before your first meal sits happy in your stomach, a new forest is thriving below us. By midday, the forest is thick enough that the sun is noticeably weaker. By dusk, that air is choked with bladder plants and new generations of odd birds, and the coronas are feasting. The sun vanishes for us, but it never weakens, and for that matter, it never grows brighter. Night comes to us because all of the sunlight is trapped by that hot young forest. Likewise, just before dawn is the blackest moment, and sometimes it feels as if the world will never feel day again.”
The running man finally caught up to them, breathing hard and quick to apologize for being late. “Baby-Tam gave me a message. We can’t call Ivory Station now.”
Father nodded. “The line is broken.”
The man was carrying dark tubes tipped with glass disks. Handing them to Father, he said, “Yeah, and how did you know?”
“I’m a pessimist. And thanks for bringing these.”
Father handed one tube to Diamond, and then he walked a few steps back with the other man, giving fresh commands.
Diamond turned the tube between his hands.
“Do you know what that is?” asked Seldom.
“You do,” he guessed.
“Oh, it’s just a telescope,” Elata said. And she pulled at one end, the tube becoming four linked tubes. “Look through the little end.”
Diamond put an eye to the glass and stared at the valley below.
Father returned and opened the second telescope, but he looked up and out with his bare eyes. “I don’t quite trust these toys,” he said. “They narrow your vision down to one tiny, spellbinding spot.”
Diamond lowered his telescope.
“Can I?” asked Seldom.
He handed it over.
“Night,” said Father again. “It happens here, and in a different fashion, it happens below us. The corona forest keeps growing where it can, but only close to the sun. The farther places, like underneath the reef, fall into their own darkness. And remember. One night can seem long to us, but for those hot fast-living plants, darkness is death. They spread seeds and spores as they die, and the animals lay eggs, and the forest closest to the sun thrives to the end, but the end finds some way to happen. Ends always do. Vapor that was part of the morning air is now tied into the new wood and meat. The dense hot air makes fire inevitable. Sparks happen. You’re never sure where the blaze starts, but it spreads quickly, and the day-old forest explodes. Except this is nothing like our little fires. There are no ashes. No smoke. This is an explosion, an explosion so vast that even the stubborn demons stop doing their work. Steam and thunder rise through the floor, and by the time the steam reaches our old slow trees, it has cooled to where it doesn’t cook us, and slow cold life can grow a little more.”