The Floating Worlds

By Amara Mesnik
Book 1 of the Floating Worlds Quartet
To Query 2022

First Silence

The sky was dark when the end began, for there was no moon in the sky. 

It was a quiet, placid night, just as it was every night in the mountains of Palar. The wind caressed the verdant woods, stirring whispers from the evergreens and fragrant salutations from the great stone Library’s newly-blossomed orchard. Spring had come mere weeks ago, and already the mountains and vales had filled with color. All was well, for in Eupana, all was always well. The people lived in Paradise, and they should want for nothing more. 

The young Scholar was certainly content. He lived a nice life at the Library, spending his days reading and cataloging ancient texts alongside the other intellectuals dressed in creamy linen robes. In the warm seasons, he ventured around Eupana, traveling between villages as an honored guest. Overall, his job was fairly simple– maintain the Enlightenment, keep the people faithful, and bring any Old World artifacts he found to the Library for cataloging. And, occasionally, to enact pool-swaps, the Library’s program of redistributing infants between isolated towns to ensure genetic diversity. 

The Hall of Antiquity was all but silent at this hour, occupied only by one man and a thousand ancient objects. This wing of marmoreal chambers and sculpted archways was the largest repository of pre-apocalypse tange left in existence. The history of humanity before the Nine Calamities was a puzzle of unknown dimensions, and the pieces they found— books, tools, drawings, decor—seldom hinted at some sort of boundary, particularly one between fact and fiction. If there was one thing the young Scholar both admired and begrudged about the people of the Old World, it was that they were just so creative. Nevertheless, and perhaps out of some sort of masochism, Sokota Velor was hooked. 

Echoing footsteps marked the arrival of the Head of Antiquity, Dartha Monoc, who approached with a stack of books under his arm and a gray-whiskered smile. “You’re up late, Sokota. Is that a new arrival?”

Sokota leaned back in his chair. “This one has me stumped. The historical figures it references make it at least a partial truth. But I’m leaning towards fiction, considering the rather dramatic course of events.”

“Truth can be dramatic. And fiction can be dull. Why, I’ve got a set of examples right here, such as” —Monoc pulled a volume from under his arm, squinting at the title in the dim lamplight—“Saturdays with Cameron by our own Scholar Caterina Allao. Stones help whoever finds this pedestrian dross entertaining. I might just assign her to sweeping duty until she can work through whatever emotional blockage sputtered into this mess.”

“I thought the Head Scholars were meant to be impartial to all written works.” 

“I am entirely objective.” Monoc tossed the novel onto Sokota’s table with an echoing thunk. “If you think you’d enjoy it, I expect a blurb by week’s end.”

Sokota rolled his eyes. “If that is your instruction, teacher. So, then, what is your dramatic truth?”

The humor in the old Scholar’s eyes dampened into something more like fondness as he withdrew the next book. It was a cloth-bound octavo with gold leafing along the dusky purpura cover and spine. Sokota knew what it was before he’d even read the title: The Aruvas Cycle.

The young Scholar hesitated. “This is a trick, isn’t it? There are hardly any truths in those pages.”

“The people of the countryside would disagree with you.”

“Because we lie to them. Aruvas may have lived, but the people’s Hero is a lie our predecessors built themselves.”

“After the Burning Times, do you really think the other Worlds’ version of the story is the truth?” Monoc tucked the book back under his arm. “We merely omit that which they do not need to know, and allow them to believe whatever is most convenient for them. It is for their happiness. And their happiness is our duty above all else.”

“If they knew the truth was being hidden from them, they would not be happy.”

“The truth itself is not happy. They do not need to be burdened by it.”

Sokota scoffed. “I don’t feel burdened by it. After five lives in darkness, I am enlightened by it.”

Scholar Monoc said nothing, and for a long moment, Sokota thought the conversation was over. But the Head of Antiquity kept looking at him, and it was only when the young Scholar’s eyes widened in realization that Monoc took on an arch smile.

The dense stone floor seemed to waver beneath Sokota’s feet. “Why?”

“I’m sorry, my boy. I should not have mentioned it. This is your first life as a Scholar; you’re meant to enjoy it.” Monoc placed a comforting hand on the young Scholar’s shoulder. “You are happy here, are you not? You do good work, and I would not want to distract you with irrelevant topics. Rest assured, you will be told the full truth when you are more senior. And you will understand why I do not want to rush it.” 

Sokota stared at his mentor. Suddenly, this man he’d known for over twenty years, who had practically raised him, was a stranger. Sokota felt confused, angry, sorrowful, betrayed– 

Ah. 

The young Scholar bowed his head. “I understand now.”

Monoc smiled, and there was nothing malicious in it. Still, it turned something in Sokota’s gut. The Library was meant to be the place where mysteries were unraveled, not a source of mystery itself. 

Sokota glanced down at the ancient book on the table, gently closing the cover. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Teacher Monoc. I’ll sleep on it and come back to this tomorrow.”

“Actually, Sokota, tomorrow is what I’ve come to speak to you about. We’ve received a request for a pool-swap, but it’s a rather urgent one. And it’s, well, different.”

“Different how?” 

But before the Head Scholar could respond, there came a sudden, hideous sound. An ear-shearing creak, like the tearing of rusted metal, tore through the quiet library, redoubling off the tall stone walls and echoing in each airy chamber. 

Sokota’s hands flew to his ears as he leapt to his feet. Then he was running after Scholar Monoc, making swiftly for the grand atrium of the central tower, where the source of the sound no doubt lay. 

The staircases and hallways were suddenly alive with a sea of off-white as dozens of Scholars emerged from studies or dormitories, racing for the atrium. Sokota and Monoc were swept up into the tide, which finally spilled into the spiraling mezzanine. There, they joined the cries of shock and horror that rose from every mouth beneath the vast, high dome.

The massive hourglass, which had hung suspended on its side in the airspace of the atrium ever since the Library had been built, was turning. 

 

*

 

Far across the globe, another man was jolted from his slumber. He sat up in bed, trying to put his finger on what exactly had woken him. But all he felt was a strange sense of foreboding, deep in his gut. 

“Rohann, what happened?” came the sleepy voice of his wife. She’d always been a light sleeper, but lately, with two young children, neither of them were sleeping through the night.

“I’m not sure,” said Rohann, brushing the dark hair from his eyes. “I felt a shift.”

“In the room?”

“In the Deep Augur.”

Rohann knew Vasha’s expression would grow stern at the mention of it. In the dim lamplight issuing through the window from outside their Oxineitika apartment, he saw her eyes narrow.

“You told me you were done with it.”

“I am. But it seems it isn’t done with me.”

Vasha sighed and leaned back against her pillow. “What shifted?”

“I don’t know. It was deep, so far below I barely felt it. It was like… a noise I hadn’t realized I’d always been hearing fell silent, just for a moment. I fear it was a warning.”

“From who?”

“And about what?” Rohann’s suspicion rose. “Erdis would know.”

“Erdis is gone. There’s nothing you can do.”

A bittersweet pain lanced through Rohann’s chest. There was always something he and Mikel—no, she went by Nyssa, now—could do. But there was no guarantee they wouldn’t end up sharing their leader’s cell. 

“He’s still alive,” Rohann murmured. “I can feel it. And if he’s alive, there’s still hope.”

Vasha didn’t answer. She might have already fallen back asleep. Rohann lay down next to her, closing his eyes. He prayed to the Creator that Erdis wasn’t suffering. But he knew quite well what the House did to captured Radiants. 

As soon as he relaxed into the darkness, the sensation came again. The shift. The resounding silence. The radiating signal of impending doom, followed by a dream of rushing sand that fell like stars.

He had that dream every night until he died.

 

*

 

With one final rumble, the hourglass stopped, now upright. The chamber that had been full of sand was now raised above the one that had been empty. For a moment, no sand fell. The atrium quieted into a stunned silence. Then the stopper mechanism in the center of the hourglass condensed in on itself, and the sand began to trickle downwards. 

“What is happening?!” a Scholar cried out as the others began to murmur and fret. 

“What does it mean?!” called another. 

Only Sokota was silent, studying the falling of the sand, hearing its dry rush as it descended ten feet onto the bottom of the lower chamber. With a sinking feeling, he figured he knew exactly what it meant.

Everyone at the Library knew the side-turned hourglass was the symbol of the Enlightenment; the angular infinity was worn upon each of their chests, engraved on a wooden brooch. They had also thought the hourglass in the atrium was just that– artwork. It had never turned before, and hadn’t even appeared to have the mechanism to do so. The hourglass was as old as the Library, and the Library was as old as Eupana, and Eupana was as old as… the apocalypse.

The sound of the creaking had ceased, but faint echoes still rang throughout the Library as the Head of Physics, a silver-haired woman wearing beads gifted by some countrysider, pushed to the front of the crowd and cleared her throat. 

“My fellow Scholars, we shall investigate this at once! Consult with the records and with your ancestors, if you have them. There must be an explanation for this.”

Several of the Scholars dashed off right away, while others remained to study the hourglass and theorize. Sokota turned to Scholar Monoc, whose bushy gray brows had furrowed as he stared at the falling sand. “Are your ancestors speaking?” 

“No, I’m counting. Or rather, estimating by volume how much time is left.”

“What is your estimate?”

“I will have to put together a formal model, but if the passage of sand remains consistent, my initial calculation is around five years.”

“Five years? Until what?”

The old man rapped his fingers on the railing, not breaking his gaze from the gritty runnel. “You’ve got a guess, haven’t you?”

“What do you know?” Sokota asked more firmly. “You’re surprised, but not frightened. Does this have to do with the unhappy truth?” 

Scholar Monoc held his gaze for a long moment. Then he beckoned for Sokota to follow him. Once the two were in a quiet gallery, Monoc said: “Do you remember the man who came to the Library a couple years ago in search of a pair of books?”

“The madman from Venecra?” 

“Yes. Dal Iqur was his name. While we’d like to forget his drug-fueled rambling, he may actually have been on to something. Before we threw him out for disorderly behavior, the man told me the two volumes he sought were the past and the future, the beginning and the end. Then he looked right up at the hourglass and told me he knew it was going to turn. And when.”

“Why should we believe the prophecy of a man hopped up on psychedelics?”

“Because he was exactly right. Give or take a few days. I have it marked on the calendar in my study. You’re welcome to check, if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you,” Sokota said, stunned into reverence. “So the madman was not a madman after all.” 

“Oh, he was certainly a madman. Defaced a few dozen volumes with scrawled nonsense that we’re still in the process of repairing. But I believe he did find a way into the wellspring, and thus he may be right about the books.”

Sokota hesitated. “The wellspring? Isn’t that just…”

Monoc’s expression hardened. “It’s real. I have seen it. Someday I would like to show you how to reach it, too. But I fear we are now running out of time. If those books are the beginning and the end, and the hourglass was created at the beginning of the Enlightenment, the book of the future may confirm that it is, as I presume you have guessed, the end of it. And perhaps it will tell us what happens after.”

A droplet of ice ran down Sokota’s spine. “I shall seek them at once.”

Monoc’s hand flew to catch the young Scholar’s arm before he could depart. “No, Velor. You must first perform the swap.”

“Is it truly so important right now?”

“Yes,” said Scholar Monoc with a strange look in his eyes. “It may prevent a war.”

Sokota understood. There was no War in Eupana. Not in the Enlightenment. But the other Worlds were not so fortunate. The Calamities had reached them, one by one. Only Eupana, isolated from the rest, had been spared. 

But Paradise couldn’t remain forever. 

It hadn’t been built to last. 

The Scholars didn’t know that yet.

 

*

Two years after the hourglass turned, there came another great groaning of metal as the mechanism rotated once again, its stopper lifting completely to pour the fallen sand back into its original chamber, leaving the other empty as before. Then it rose, taught by some ancient program deep within the Library’s foundation, until it hung sideways once again. 

The Scholars let out a collective sigh of relief and went back to their original work. Scholar Velor had never been able to locate the books, but it seemed it didn’t matter. The end of the Enlightenment was nowhere near. Monoc decided his introduction to the wellspring, and thus his end of bliss, could wait.

But three years after that, Eupana suffered its worst dry spell in decades. The rains did not fall for a period of several weeks, and the harvest was slimmer than expected. When the dry spell lifted at the equinox, the Scholars and the people of Eupana decided it was a fluke. But when the dry spell returned the following year, just past Summer’s Height, the Scholars were unsettled. The Enlightenment was stable; such a thing should not have been possible. The people asked the Library what to do, but the Scholars could only tell them to pray to the stones, to keep to the methods of the Manifest and they would be rewarded. Velor knew he was lying through his teeth.

It was in the seventh year of ever-slimming harvests that an elder Scholar spoke the word few dared to mention. The dry spell had begun just as the leaves on the trees unfurled, then prematurely browned and fell. The crops and the animals, too, were withering. The people began to feel hunger for the first time in thirty generations.

“It’s Drought!” Scholar Parlus, the Head of Textiles, had exclaimed during an emergency convention. “Drought has come to Eupana!” 

“Quiet, old fool! Speak it and it shall!” a Scholar of Dentistry hissed back, even though she had seen the cracked fields across Eupana on her rounds.

“Where Drought touches, Famine follows,” said a Scholar of Ritual. “And where Famine reaches, Sickness is imminent. In their wake, Sorrow strikes.” 

The hoary-eyed Head of Modernity rose unsteadily to his feet. “Enough! We must not panic. Have faith in the Manifest. The hourglass still lies at rest. We are safe in eternal Paradise!”

Sokota exchanged a look of worry with Monoc, whose skin now hung loose and low after many an illness had sapped him of his strength.

The meeting had adjourned with no one happy and without a plan for handling the possibility that a Calamity or two had infiltrated Eupana. But Sokota was not permitted to complain. The other Scholars did not know the limit of their own knowledge. Few had even heard of the wellspring. The others still lived in peace, and he could not disturb them. 

After the meeting, Monoc beckoned for Sokota to escort him back to his quarters. Once in the quiet, he whispered: “Scholar Parlus is right. We must resume our search for the books. Tomorrow, I shall show you the way into the wellspring, and I shall tell you everything I know.”

Sokota could hardly wait.

But the sickly old Scholar passed away overnight, and was not reborn for many years. 

 

*

 

Nearly eighteen years after the hourglass had flipped for the first time, there came a cacophony in the atrium as it turned once again. The sand began to fall. But this time, it was flowing faster. This time, according to the model left behind by Scholar Monoc, it was counting down one year.

Scholar Velor stood below it, completely at a loss. He had already exhausted the Library’s resources to no avail. There was no pattern, no reasoning, no conclusion to be drawn. Was the Enlightenment ending or not? Was something else afoot?

Finally, with a great deal of reluctance, Velor accepted a summoning from the new Head of Antiquity, a disagreeable old bag who had been at odds with Monoc even before his death. He was surprised to find her not in her study, but in her bed, tended to by Scholars of Medicine who shook their heads at Velor when he entered.

“I was wrong, Sokota,” said Scholar Tenzie, her voice hardly more than a dry whisper between coughs. “It is what the ancestors feared: Calamity has come to Eupana. We may well follow in the Dead Worlds’ footsteps.”

Velor remained stoic. “Now you choose to listen?”

Tenzie bowed her head. “In my sickness, somehow I have developed a closer connection to the Augur than ever before. I have seen things I could not previously imagine. The stones have even shown me the wellspring. But it is vast and wild. There are no clear paths, and I cannot risk my mind to delve deeper. So what I have seen has been muddled.” 

Tenzie paused to cough, wheezing with every inhale. Velor grabbed a glass of water from her nightstand, but the Head Scholar waved him away.

“Listen, Sokota. I know what Monoc sought, what you still seek. It is clear to me now that the books of the past and the future are the key to our present. One is held by allies on another World. The other has been hidden within a Starport. I do not know which one. Nor do I know which book is the past and which is the future. You must find them both before our time runs out.”

Scholar Velor hardly knew what to make of Tenzie’s sudden change of heart. This was the information he had waited nearly a decade to hear; he could not act out of spite. But there was one complication that brought the burning ache of defeat to Velor’s chest.

“It is impossible,” he murmured. “There is no way to unseal the Starports. There are only two people in all the Worlds who can open the doors, and they would never help us.” 

“No, Sokota, there is a third. One you already know. But you must be careful not to stir what has only just settled, or the Calamities of the other Worlds will become ours as well.”

The Head Scholar told him who it was, and that night, Velor left the Library. The following morning, Scholar Tenzie passed away, taken by the choking Sickness that was spreading rapidly throughout Eupana. The Library was filled with Sorrow. And Drought and Famine continued to rage on and on throughout the World, unnoticed and unchecked by the Panterral authority meant to maintain it. It was a messy, bitter end to the illusion of Enlightenment the Scholars had fought to perpetuate, even as they, too, fell victim to Calamity. 

But they had not yet failed in their duty.

The people of the countryside still believed they were in Paradise. They still believed the way of the Manifest was the only way, that the stones would cease their fury once they had been appeased. It was a trial of faith, and all they could do was pray for the only World they knew still lived.

The people were happy. 

Except for one. 

 

But for the first time in her life, she was close.

 

*******

Amara Mesnik is a Brooklyn-based writer and filmmaker with a passion for all things science, fiction, and science fiction. She is currently seeking literary representation.