On Calm Winds
Henry Patton had been awake for about twenty minutes when he realized something was wrong with his schedule. Specifically, there wasn't one where there should have been one. At the moment he was finishing up his breakfast, and she was standing by his side waiting because he always took too long.
“Maevin,” he said, staring at the tablet in his hand. Every hour of the day was empty except for one block that stretched from morning until well past noon. “What is Remembrance Day?”
“A matter regarding the education of the estate's Lord,” Mistress Maevin Maer said as she took the tablet out of his hands. It disappeared into the sleeve of her white summer robes before he could protest. “You will not need that, my master.”
“That makes me nervous.”
Maevin only smiled that cunning smile that always made him a bit nervous. As she motioned for the maids to take away his plates, Henry had a feeling that something was up, and she was not going to let him in on it. As if to confirm it, Henry was pretty sure there was a smirk somewhere hidden on her face.
“Maevin.”
“Yes, my master?”
“Where are we going?”
“Promise,” she said, not looking at him, “it's not an ambush.”
Henry's eyes narrowed. “I remember saying that to you recently.”
“Oh? I hadn't noticed.” Maevin responded, looking over her shoulder with a twinkle in her eyes.
Alright. Now here was nervous.
Tula was waiting at the end of the gravel path past the east gardens. It was not often that Henry saw the woman with two large, luscious violet pigtails that she also liked to weave golden threads into, which glistened in the sun.
“Tula,” he said slowly.
“Have you had a good breakfast, my master?” She asked with her characteristic husky voice.
It appeared that this Estate Maid of the 4th Order was not going to be on his side today either.
They walked together past the lake road with Tula trailing behind. The cultivated woods thickened and the sound of the creek came and went through the trees. At the edge of a long meadow Henry spotted another familiar maid waiting for them, standing with her arms crossed and her eyes also happy. Henry Patton smiled and waved to Xion, who gracefully bowed back.
Before Henry could say anything, his eyes wandered across the meadow, a great flattened woven disc, thick cord-bands running from crown to rim in long curves like the lines on a globe. It shaded from deep blue at the top to the pale of a morning sky at the skirt. Across its face, dark against the lighter weave, was the sigil that Henry recognized as House Avernell which was a solid circle flanked by two arcs, with a single dot above and below. Two broad crescents of the same woven cloth hung out on either side like folded wings. As he watched, the whole envelope began to lift, drawn up by a warmth that made the fabric glow a soft amber from the inside.
Under it hung a ring of woven tan fiber with a low canopy, a central column, and four diamond-shaped lanterns at its edges. Ribbons fluttered from the tether lines, ending in small triangular weights.
“What...” Henry started. “...is that?”
“A balloon, my master,” Maevin said as they walked up towards it. “I believe you have such things among your people. It is how mine crossed the mountains and surveyed the valleys of Xaltea long before anyone dreamed of the stars.”
“Why?”
“Because we hadn't completely figured out other modes of transportation yet.”
“Not that,” Henry said knowing she was yanking his proverbial chain. For the months they had been together, he had begun to learn Maevin's subtle ways she messed with him and the others.
Maevin's smile got brighter knowing the game was up. “You once mentioned you wanted to know more about our people, so I thought to show you as it is time for Remembrance Day.”
Henry felt his stomach drop. “And you conveniently remembered my issue with heights.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Maevin responded innocently. “If it is too much for you to handle, you can just say so, and we'll forgo the trip today.”
Oh, she's good at this, Henry groused to himself. This was definitely revenge for the bicycle incident a few days before.
“Fine,” he said, pulling up his pants a bit and tightening his belt. “Bring it on.”
Tula did not need to giggle at that moment.
The first hurdle was the clothes.
“Umm,” Henry said.
“It is the traditional flight dress, Master. Though not a requirement but it would look good for your reputation if you wore it.”
The garment was a quilted wrap in layers of blue and cream that tied at the side with a wide ribbon sash. Tula, whose duty it was help him dress, had arranged the sleeves and tied the knot that was holding it together. The collar stood up almost to his ears. Xion, who was standing guard fifteen feet away and had not spoken once, made a very small sound that might have been a cough.
“You like traditional.”
That was what she'd said the first time she dressed him, when he'd been barely out of a coma and still unsure he belonged in this place. He knew it, and she knew he knew it. Henry decided that was unfair.
“It is very uncomfortable,” Henry said trying not to sound insulting, but he could feel it pressing on his clothes that it was put on over.
“You are technically supposed to not be wearing any underlayers, but I assumed you preferred to keep them on. I can have Tula and Xion help undress you if you'd like to be more comfortable.”
“You are enjoying this way too much,” Henry said.
“I cannot imagine what you mean, my master.”
She walked to the gondola and returned carrying something small and round. She held it out to him without any expression at all.
It was a cushion.
“For the seat,” Maevin said. “The slats are woven and hard. Someone once explained to me the importance of a cushion. I learned from an expert, my master.”
Yup. That was proof. She hadn't let the grudge go and was going to make him pay.
There were rules, which a stooped, silver-haired man that Maevin called a windwright had to tell them. He was in a plain gray flight wrap and worked diligently on the contraption. The man had glanced at the two of them as they arrived, nodded as though a Lord and his Mistress were no more interesting than a pair of wine crates, and gone back to checking the trim vanes.
“There were three rules. The windwright's word was the only word aboard. Titles stayed on the ground. And whatever was said aloft was said honestly,” Maevin explained as she took his hand and let him help her up the step as the balloon had begun to rise.
“It is said that the rules of the windwrights are older than the Empire itself,” she continued
“Even the Empress?”
“Yes.”
Next came the ribbons. The windwright held out two strips of cloth, one blue and one amber, and Maevin took the blue one and tied it to the tether line with a small, perfect bow.
“We leave them on the lines,” she explained, passing him the amber one. “The word for farewell, aeholavu, is built from two parts. Aeho is to depart. Lavu is witness. Depart witnessed. The ribbons are the witness. They stay on the ground and remember who left it.”
“This is part of the Rememberance?” Henry said.
“Yes.”
Henry tied his the way his father had taught him, a plain overhand he'd used on shoelaces and for the calf that needed kept near their mother.
“Do not forget the prayer,” The windwright said hoarsely as he moved to another end of the balloon to check it.
“Say it to the wind,” Maevin explained. “Before boarding. nata isa buk onava mi ovama. eta bavelu mi sonu.“
The air is large and I am small. Carry me kindly. That's what Henry was pretty sure that it meant.
Repeating the words, the air seemed to whip around him for a moment tugging at his clothes and cooling his face. The Terran lord could not help but grin.
The windwright spoke, without looking up. “The wind is listening.”
Henry had braced for noise. He remembered videos from Earth, big roaring burners and gouts of flame. There was none of that though. The heater at the center of the ring gave off nothing but a faint steady warmth against his face, like standing near a sunlit wall, and a low hum he felt more than heard.
The ground let go of them so slowly that he didn't realize it was happening until Tula and Xion were small figures with their arms at their sides, and the meadow had become a pale green square, and the trees had gone from walls to a rumpled carpet.
Henry's hands found the rail and stayed there. “Okay,” he told nobody. “This is fine.”
“Eyes on the horizon, my master,” Maevin said serenely. She looked entirely too comfortable. “It helps.”
“You're enjoying this.”
“I am concerned for your comfort, my master. The windwright can bring us down at any moment. It is no shame. Many lords prefer the ground.”
That was the exact thing to say to make him stay, and she knew it. He lifted his eyes to the horizon. The world opened out, wide and blue and silent.
“Wow,” Henry said quietly.
They stood side by side on the slats with their backs to the central column, both facing outward over the railing. The sky was bright blue and the sun brilliant to look at. Henry had also noticed other balloons in the distance as others began to take off. He could make out the different sigils and their courses were not same as his.
“Where are we headed?” Henry asked as the balloon banked slightly from the windwright's manipulation.
“Shaenvu, the southern city and second largest on the planet,” Maevin responded. “It is also under House Patton-Avernell.”
“Is there an estate there?”
“Opal Horizon Estate of House Medekin,” Maevin responded with a nod.
Silence reigned between them as they moved across the sky. Henry had to look down a few times just to confirm they were actually making any progress. The wind was pleasant with only a few gusts that buffeted them. His heart leapt into this throat a few times but Maevin didn't even flinch.
“Tell me more about this Remembrance?”
Maevin nodded as she turned to face him. “Remembrance is what marked the change of our people from the violence to the golden age of Xaltea. Before, we fought bloody wars between each other, killing indiscriminately. We were barbaric but it was Emperor Gaeldin of House Toshet that united all the warring houses into what is today. He founded the Gray Council, pulled the houses together in the Great and the Minor, created the registry, and forged a new world for us. The Emperor poured money into the economy and sciences bring us into a new age of technology.”
“Oh, I see! Like an industrial revolution on earth?” Henry asked.
The Mistress nodded. “Yes but instead of steam and gasoline you had on Terra, we harnessed the sun with the use of mirror fields. Great arrays of polished stone and metal that focused the sunlight onto heat cores. Blocks of salt-glass and ceramic soaked up that heat by day and gave it back through the night, so our machines did not stop when the sun set. Pumps, mills, looms, even the tracked carts ran on sun-engines. It is why our industry grew where the light was, on the plateaus and sun-facing slopes. Blue Blossom’s vineyards sit where they do for the same reason. That is until our species figured out fusion to the point we could pierce the layer and enter nullspace.”
The Terran Lord nodded realizing how different the Xaltean technology had actually evolved. “So this celebration is for that.”
“It is,” Maevin said with a nod. “The stop of endless bloodshed and the beginning of our new era.”
Silence reigned between the two as Henry sat with what he was told. Every time he thought he had learned something about the people who were hosting him, he discovered something new. It had never crossed his mind what the world must have been like before the discovery of the technology that powered the majority of the galaxy.
“Thanks for taking me on this and telling me about it,” He finally said as the windwright banked the airship again.
“You are quite welcome.”
“Does this make us even for the bicycle?” Henry asked tentatively.
“It does not.”
All the young man could do was laugh.