Ocean Sky

By Just B. Jordan

Run.

The pull made Noyer strain against her ankle cuff. The purple bruising beneath it twinged comfortingly.

She was safe. The ocean couldn’t drown her yet, so she listened to its thrum through the story of an old stormer.

“It was a glorious city, and they broke it,” he was saying. “They were cast into the sky to face judgment.” Ten other stormers looked to the clouds. Noyer pressed toward the sea. “Only a few survived.”

Waves drummed on metal like the blood in her ears and made their outpost creak like old bones.

“Run,” Noyer whispered.

Eleven pairs of eyes turned to watch her.

“You hear the Surge?” Aja said.

“I always hear it,” Noyer said.

The twelve of them sat in a semicircle facing the sea, manacled to the pillar that kept the outpost from drifting. Noyer glanced back, toward the shadow of the island they lived to protect.

A low whir rose in her bones, a magnetism drawing her to the ocean. The pull lifted from below the waves, moving toward the sky. Her hand jutted up in unison with the other stormers’.

The Surge was rising today.

The outpost came to life. People ran to the stormers, holding passkeys. Others fired up twelve jets—one for each of them—then two dozen more to rescue them from drowning after they quelled the Surge. Despite the danger of the pull, of being free, Noyer’s hands trembled in anticipation.

The wind lifted. Salty. Dark. Every month, they fought the Surge. Every month, more stormers died.

A man waved his passkey at her ankle. Noyer felt its field drop, replaced by the ever-growing pull the Surge had on her ferromagnetic body. She was running before her cuff hit the platform. People jumped out of her way.

The stormers were free.

Bare feet slapped on metal. Her breath came in gasps.

Jump.

Noyer launched off the platform with the others, arms and legs pinwheeling. She landed on the waiting jet, hooking her feet into the stirrups even as she slammed her hand down on the thrust.

They tore over the waves, the roar of machinery unable to drown the hum of the Surge in her bones. She leaned forward. Laughs lifted from around her. Sheer joy at being free, however temporary. A grin pulled at her lips. White wakes ripped out behind them.

Faster.

The Surge rose against the horizon, swelling into an angry wave of blue and black.

Under.

Noyer startled. When the Surge rose the pull always led stormers up into its center—where it was strongest—not down, where it whispered of death and drowning between its attacks.

“On me!” Aja shouted.

The others fanned out, forming a V with him at the breaking point. Noyer was supposed to join them. She didn’t. Aja glanced toward her in confusion.

The Surge grew taller than their island.

Down.

Noyer let go of her jet and unhooked her feet, falling backward as the others raced up the Surge’s face.

“No!” Aja screamed. “You’ll drown!”

Dive.

Eleven stormers plunged into the Surge, bearing for its core. Hints of sun shifted through the massive wave, illuminating their silhouettes. It was beautiful. Unearthly.

Her back hit foam.

Dive.

She turned and kicked. Underwater. The place stormers feared and loved the most.

The sea pushed down on her. She tumbled. Pressure grew. She swam harder.

Her outstretched hands cracked into something firm. Smooth. It felt like… glass.

Air escaped her mouth.

She looked down on… clouds.

Empty space, then land. Rivers and fields and mountains.

Directly beneath her, a city. A city, bathed in blue refractions. A spire rose from its center like a needle. It crackled. The whir in Noyer’s bones grew.

Down.

The sea lit up around her. Noyer looked back. The other stormers’ ferro-fields pierced through the sea, reaching to connect her to them.  Beneath her, the crackling of the spire arched toward the glass. Tendrils jumped through it, curving around her to rise to the Surge’s core. Her bones felt like they would break. She almost screamed. But the pull lessened as the tendrils moved away, toward the surface.

That spire generated the Surge’s field. It commanded the storms. She had found the core—its true core.

Noyer looked left. Another spire. Smaller. Right underneath the heavy shadow of her people’s island. A beacon—to draw the Surge to its target.

Her people were survivors.

But they weren’t supposed to be. The world below wanted them dead.

Fall.

Noyer waited until she felt the other stormers’ ferro-fields join with her own, making her stronger. More tendrils from the spire touched the glass.

Noyer threw her palms forward and shoved… back… catching the tendrils and forcing them to turn, pushing them in a direction they were not meant to go.

Cracks spidered around her. The glass shattered. She fell with the pieces in a roar of water. The spire fizzled and darkened at her proximity. The strength of her stormer field tore it off of its base with a feral, shrieking force.

Curls of water followed her fall, streaming from the rim of the hole she’d created and down her back like liquid wings.

Fly.

Down, down she fell, leading a waterfall of her creation.

The earth grew closer.

She felt the base of the spire push back at her, slowing her fall as if it wanted to keep her from landing. Her feet touched the ground. Almost. She hovered by centimeters.

And a thousand people watched.

Her feet slipped. Water streamed off her skin.

“No, no,” a man said. “We sent you magnetic accidents away. You were supposed to die up there!”

Noyer swallowed, the old stormers’ stories suddenly making sense.

“No…” She said it slowly, almost apologetically. This world thrived on magnetics her body would disrupt—she felt it in the million thrumming pricks whispering at her bones. Her hand tightened over the hum beneath her skin. “We just want to live.”

Stay.

She knew she never could.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Just B. Jordan was born to live a thousand lives, but she’s only mortal, so she took to telling herself stories. One day she decided to give those worlds flesh and bone through paper and ink.

Jordan is the author of the Echofall Rising series, including “To Ashes We Run” and “Never To Live”.

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