His friends kept laughing, and he was sad.
“After school,” Seldom said.
Diamond blinked. “What?”
“I could come to your home. I’ll bring my two-wheeler and teach you how to ride.”
“Maybe.” Diamond looked at his parents. “I don’t know.”
“Riding is easy, if you try.”
Balancing on two spinning wheels didn’t sound easy. But Diamond wanted to sound positive, saying, “Okay,” while pulling up a smile.
The overhead wilderness was changing. Corona blackwoods pushed out from the paler green limbs, and a single blimp moved sluggishly from one destination to another. Diamond watched the blimp and the dense canopy adorned with cultivated epiphytes and fancy flowers, and suddenly they passed close to a suspended platform where long green blades hung off the bottom—like hair, except that it was some kind of plant.
A word came to him, and he spoke it.
Nobody understood him.
The word brought a brief image, real as any dream, of green vegetation standing tall and the sun overhead and an impossibly beautiful woman watching over him.
Diamond shut his eyes, clinging to the image.
Master Nissim came over and sat among the three of them, and after a while the man said his name.
Diamond looked at him.
“I’ve been talking to your parents. About quite a lot, and all of it wrapped around you, of course.”
The boy nodded, waiting.
“Do you know what a tutor is?”
“No.”
Seldom knew. His cheeks blew up big, and guessing the rest, he said, “You’re going to tutor Diamond.”
“That’s the plan of the moment, yes.”
Seldom leaned close. “This is great. You’re so lucky.”
Diamond said nothing.
The Master watched him until their eyes met, and then he laughed quietly and a little sadly. “I don’t believe in luck. I never have. ‘Good fortune is the sweat of good acts,’ says the proverb. But if ever there was a creature smiled upon by Fate, it has to be you, my boy.”
“I don’t feel lucky,” Diamond admitted.
His tutor leaned close, nodding. “Which is perhaps the best part of the blessing.”
The canopy gave them a suitable gap, and dropping water, the Happenstance rose toward a place that Diamond already knew. Marduk welcomed him and welcomed everyone with its enduring trunk, with the landings and shops and the now-empty school that looked small against that great wall of bark. A vessel designed for speed had to coast and crawl its way around to the far side. Some features were familiar. Elata pointed to the public walkway where Diamond had crashed and healed again. He looked the other way. Where was the falling water? But the runoff always dried by afternoon, Seldom explained. There was no mist, the air dry and clear, and the green sunlight was on the brink of being extinguished. Hearing big engines, people came out from their homes to watch the first fletch ship they had ever seen in this space. They waved with exaggerated motions. Elata and Seldom waved back. Father left to help guide the pilot, and the engine that hadn’t been broken before started leaking smoke, making the air stink. Then the Happenstance got into position, its nose pointed at Marduk, and the engines were throttled back and more water was dropped, and Diamond felt the world falling around them.
Nearly forty people were sharing one large landing. Seldom pointed and hollered. “My mother. Your mother too. Do you see her, Elata?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Karlan was alone at the railing, standing almost exactly where he had been when he tossed Diamond over the edge. He was still wearing the school uniform. He looked as if he hadn’t moved all day, waiting for this moment, and now it had arrived and he wasn’t happy or sad or anything. He just stared at the spectacle and at Diamond, and then Diamond waved to him and Karlan’s face flushed and he pretended to be fascinated by the smoking engine.
Every landing was crowded with people, save one. The pilot nudged them ahead, and the little gangway was dropped and secured to the weather-stripped wood. Citizens were hanging on the various ropes above, and they jammed the walkways. But only three people occupied the landing. Two of the strangers remained near the ladder. A woman was standing alone in front of the curtain, two women’s faces watching the world, and as his parents walked Diamond down the gangway, each said, “This is our Archon.”
Their voices were the same, quiet and respectful.
Prima was smaller than Diamond imagined, and younger. She stared at him as if one hard look would answer every mystery. But nothing was answered, so she turned to the face that she knew best. “Merit,” said the Archon. “We haven’t seen each other since when? The Festival of Lasts, wasn’t it?”
“Something in that order. Yes, madam.”
“And it’s been too long, Haddi. How are you holding up?”
“Well enough,” Mother said.
The short woman bent lower. An adult who had no children, she was both too formal and too eager to be a friend. Her smile was brilliant. She spoke with a voice accustomed to being listened to. “So. So you are the famous Diamond.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A buzz of voices fell from above.
Diamond looked up at the staring faces, and his Archon dropped to a knee, saying, “It’s been a storm of rumors, I’m afraid. Your father’s crew talked, and my staff said too much, and now every call line in the District is busy. And do you know what people are saying? The kinder voices, I mean. They are saying that you are some great gift from the Creators, and today you bested the big Archon, and you have magical powers, and by the way, you turned the flagship into torn cloth and scrap metal.”
Diamond didn’t know how to react.
“A quiet boy,” she judged. Then she stood, waving for her assistants to approach.
The Master and other children joined the group.
“There are some weighty legal questions,” Prima told everyone. “But the best course, from what I can see, is that my office and my good word grant you asylum from other claims. So long as you stay inside the Corona District, you are my guest. You are protected and free, and let’s let the lawyers fight the rest of the battles for us. Does that sound like a reasonable strategy?”
Diamond didn’t know whether to nod or not. He decided to turn to his mother, asking, “May I go inside? I’m tired.”
His parents laughed, their exhaustion easy to see.
The Archon made the decision. Backing away, she told everyone, “Diamond wants to finish his journey home. Let’s allow him, please.”
Diamond walked.
His parents and Nissim stayed behind, discussing abstract matters of state and law and simple decency.
Seldom and Elata fell in beside the boy, each asking if he or she could see him tomorrow.
“Maybe,” he started to say.
A rough voice interrupted. From his perch on the railing, the orange-headed monkey shouted, “Good.”
One of the assistants took it as his duty to shoo the animal away. But Diamond said, “No, please, leave him alone.”
“He’s yours?” the man asked doubtfully.
“I’m his,” Diamond answered. He gave Good the finger that was bit off once, and the monkey looked at it and at him and then cackled wildly. Then both walked to the curtain, and Diamond turned, telling Seldom and Elata, “Come by after school.”
They nodded and giggled.
Good and then Diamond entered the otherwise empty house, walking the hall by the long way around, passing rooms that the boy had never entered and slipping through a kitchen that desperately needed to be cleaned. The side hallway to his open door seemed far too short, and his room was too small for either of them. Diamond left the door open. The monkey casually shoved the papio books off their high shelf and started to build a nest with shredded pieces of an old blanket, looking nothing but happy.
Diamond left him to his work. Shoving Mister Mister under his arm, he crawled to the tiny chamber with its locked drawers and rounded walls. He didn’t expect to find a secret door waiting. But he was ready to find that door wherever he looked, and in the end that might be what his day meant.