Syl rocketed forward, the clouds swirling around her. From her place in the middle of the flowing mist, it could have just been a thick fog. But she knew, she knew, she was in the centre of the billowing, white clouds miles above the hidden ground.

  She also knew it was just a dream. A dream she didn’t want to wake up from. The kiss of the cool mist on her skin was energizing, and the absolute sense of freedom was beyond explanation. With a shouted whoop she rolled, flipped, and then shot straight up. The warm sun bathed her as she burst free of the foggy blanket, and fluffy white stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction.

  It was plain, and magical. Simple, and breathtaking. The blue of the sky was more vivid than she’d ever seen, so beautiful her heart hammered in her chest. The clouds, no more solid than the air she breathed, had a million different shapes and contours. Her eyes picked out a myriad of hidden shapes: a giant fish leaping skyward here, a lizard with wings that stretched from horizon to horizon there, and even a person casually reclining in a cloudy hammock reading a book. Her mind dismissed each as a trick of the light as gravity took hold of her body, and she let herself fall back down through the clouds.

  There was no fear as she ‘fell,’ just the exhilaration of the building speed. Her eyes stung and teared as she fought to keep them open against the whipping wind, and her effort was rewarded with a view as stunning as the one she’d just left.

  Syl exited the clouds so far above the ground it hardly seemed to be getting closer even as she plummeted at breakneck speeds. A sea of sapphire blue extended beyond view to her right, small whitecaps the only things marring its surface. It crashed against titanic cliffs that gradually eased into a sublime green gently swaying in the wind.

  Animals dotted the landscape, some in herds for safety, others silently prowling between the tall grass or sparse trees. The world below her was pristine. Pure.

  She took it all in while she continued her descent, the animals growing in size and clarity as she closed the distance. Some of them lazily looked in her direction and a few even picked her out against the cloudy backdrop. But none of them seemed concerned about the person falling from the heavens.

  So close she could see the whites of the animals’ eyes, Syl finally spread her arms. But they weren’t arms. They were wings, wide as the sky, made fully of white-grey clouds that reached for the warm currents rising from the ground.

  Her body flexed and her ‘fall’ became a swoop. An instant before crashing into the solid earth, she snapped back up to glide effortlessly just a few meters above the ground speeding beneath her.

  The momentum of the dive carried her back across the green scenery, over the daunting cliffs, and above the crashing waves. Distant beyond distant, just barely visible to her eyes, was her destination. A place of safety. Her home, where her family waited for her.

  Oh, how she missed them, and the longing broke free from her lips in a peal of thunder that scattered the waves. She needed to get back to them.

  But no… she couldn’t. This was a dream. She wasn’t really flying home to see her loved ones. Instead, she was…

  Syl bolted upright and blinked against the flickering blue of the sconces lining the cave walls.

  “Bad dream?” Firon asked quietly from his nearby spot against the wall.

  Nobody else in the cave was awake, and Syl crawled over to sit beside her father while she cleared her head. “No, not at all,” Syl said, struggling to hold onto the sense of freedom from the dream. “Kind of the opposite really.”

  “I never told you about the day you were born,” her father said, suddenly changing the subject. “There was such a storm that day. The rain pounding our home was so heavy we thought the sky itself was trying to hammer us straight into the ground.”

  “But,” Syl said, stopping her father as confusion swirled her thoughts. “I wasn’t born in the rainy season.”

  “No, you weren’t,” Firon said with a wink. “I never told anybody this, but the storm started the same time your mother went into labour. The sky darkened, just like that,” he quietly snapped his fingers, “and then the rain started. To this day, I’ve never seen anything like it.

  “It was just your mother and me in the house and luckily I was trained enough to help her deliver you. Nobody else was coming to help. Not in that weather.

  “It wasn’t an easy childbirth. You were early and your mother’s body wasn’t quite ready to let you go. But you wanted out,” Firon smiled at the memory. “Nobody, not even nature, could tell you what to do.

  “Nothing’s really changed,” he said with a wider smile.

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  Syl gently elbowed her father for the comment but didn’t interrupt his story.

  “When I finally pulled you free, thunder like the world breaking scared me so much I almost dropped you. You should have seen your mother’s face. But you didn’t even startle. Your eyes were wide open, the vibrant blue of the sky in summer, and your little hand stretched up like you were reaching for something.

  “When your fist closed, the storm ended. Just as quickly as it came, it was gone.”

  “What are you saying, Dad?” Syl asked after a moment. What was he trying to tell her?

  “I’d always thought it was just a coincidence,” he said wistfully. “But a coincidence I didn’t dare share. What would the others think? What would the Anavilla think of it? Was it a bad omen? Or a good one?”

  “What do you think?” Syl asked, a tremor of fear entering her voice.

  Firon looked at her with the soft eyes of unabated, fatherly love. “You could never be anything but a gift to the world,” he said. “You are a wonderful young woman who understands the importance of other people’s lives and who works to better them. You have your mother’s intelligence and beauty, of course, but women are too often praised for only their looks. Like your mother, you’re so very much more than that.

  “I’ve never seen a harder worker, a stronger character, or a more caring friend,” Firon said, his pride in Syl impossible to miss. “And my life has been infinitely better for having you in it.”

  Syl, for her part, could only sniffle and lean over to rest her head on her father’s shoulder. She wrapped her arms around his, and when she was sure she’d found her voice, she whispered, “Thank you.”

  Firon gently stroked Syl’s hair while they sat there in silence. Her father’s words had filled her chest near to bursting. She knew she looked up to her father an unreasonable amount, and not just because she was his daughter. He’d accomplished so much, and he treated her mother so well. He’d earned the respect of everybody in the valley through his devotion to each and every one of them. How could she not admire him?

  To hear those words come from him, it was a better feeling than winning the Ka-Sho-Dan ever was.

  Am I such a daddy’s-girl?

  “It’s the same color as your eyes,” Firon said quietly, rousing her from her thoughts.

  “What?” she asked, blinking.

  “The Stone,” he said, and nodded in the direction of the pillar.

  Syl lifted her head from her father’s shoulder and turned her attention to the Stone. As soon as she did, it pulled gently on her.

  “It calls to you, doesn’t it?” Firon asked quietly.

  “I…” she trailed off, startled. How could he know that?

  “I’ve seen the way you look at it, like you’re listening to somebody speaking to you.”

  The invitation was still there, no more or less insistent than when she’d entered the cave. It was a friendly offer, not an order.

  “Yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t say I can hear it, exactly. It’s like the Anihazi, more a feeling than anything else. But none of the hate. It’s like a smiling stranger on a quiet road. I don’t know how else to explain it.

  “What should I do?”

  “Why do you think I told you about the storm?” Firon asked. “I’ve known you were special since the day you were born. Literally.”

  “But the curse?” she asked, and looked at Edar, still fast asleep.

  “I’ve never heard you echo somebody else’s opinion without it being your own,” her father said, a slight reproach in his tone. “What do you believe?”

  “The Cloud Stone isn’t cursed,” she said, her eyes locked on the vibrant blue.

  “Follow your instinct,” Firon said.

  “My instinct got Leeze killed,” Syl said, doubt creeping into her mind, and turned her eyes from the Stone.

  “Did it? From the way I hear it, Leeze may have died, but your instinct saved the others. What did your mother and I teach you about amputations?” he asked, seemingly abruptly changing the subject.

  Syl sighed as she understood. Why did he always have to be right? “Don’t dwell on what you can’t save, focus on what you can.” It was the same thing Rogar had told her.

  “Will the Stone help save us?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she responded.

  “We never do,” Firon said, and shrugged. “Even as doctors, we never know. Oh, we act like we do, but really it’s more of an educated suspicion. We can’t see the future, just try to predict it. So, I ask again, will the Stone help save us?”

  “Yes,” Syl said, quieting her doubting mind and letting instinct speak for her. She looked again to the Stone, the clouds swirling around it, and her mind couldn’t help but jump back to her earlier dream.

  “Then why are you still sitting here?” he asked, but his voice was distant.

  Syl’s body was acting on its own, though not uncomfortably so. She could stop herself if she wanted to, but she was already walking.

  The clouds swirling around the Stone sped up in anticipation and then extended in her direction. Her right hand, likewise, reached out as she closed the distance.

  “Syl, what are you doing?” Edar asked fearfully, and sat up. “You can’t!”

  But Syl wasn’t listening. The time for doubt and hesitation had passed.

  Focus on what you can save.

  The foggy wisps met her extended fingers, tentatively probing like a curious animal. Syl rolled her hand over, palm up, in invitation. The tendril of cloud coiled up and around Syl’s arm to her shoulder, small sparks of power caressing her as it went. Like a lover’s first touch, the small shocks of pleasure moved up her arm and then down across her chest.

  Within an arms-length of the Stone, the fine gold chains connected to it flowed up along the cloudy tendril. The four chains moved slowly, without threat, gently wrapping themselves around Syl’s arm until the tension pulled the Stone with them.

  “Syl!” Edar said again, more urgently.

  A request for permission came unspoken to Syl’s mind as the Stone pulled itself to rest in her open palm. And, unspoken, Syl responded, a nod of her head the only motion she need make.

  The trailing gold chains entwined themselves around Syl’s fingers. The vibrant blue Stone sank painlessly into Syl’s hand as the chains pulled taut.

  Power unlike anything Syl had ever felt flowed through her body.

  No, that’s not true, Syl realized. It’s just like the drums.

  The Ka-Sho pounded within the Stone, louder than any Ka-Sho-Dan ever could. It echoed off the walls, rattled the weapons on their shelves, and seemed to shake the mountain itself.

  Except nobody else heard it.

  And then it stopped, and silence descended on Syl like a tangible thing. Silent except for Edar’s distraught voice.

  “You’ve doomed us all.”

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