Burning Kingdoms. Lauren DeStefano

my observing, I’ve wandered away from the others, but Nimble has followed me. “I’m impressed that it flew,” he says.

      “Me too,” I say. “I might not have boarded it if I’d had much of a choice.”

      I shut my mouth immediately. I’ve said too much. What will Jack Piper and his family do if they realize we’re all fugitives? All of us but the princess, anyway, and Thomas, who was dragged along as her hostage.

      Then again, what would it matter to anyone down here how the people carry about on that tiny floating rock so very high above them?

      “Sounds as though there was some trouble in paradise,” Nimble says.

      “Paradise?”

      “Your perfect little island,” he says, nodding upward. I follow his gaze, hoping for a glimpse of Internment. But there’s only a sky heavy with clouds. These clouds are not like the ones I know—light airy things that soared around and over me every day. These clouds are burdened and gray, and I sense that they are grieving.

      “There are no perfect places,” I say. The clouds move away from the sun just enough for the light to blind me, and I shield my eyes.

      “You know that and I know that,” he says. “Try telling our king, and you’ll be run out of the kingdom. He thinks that if we plan an aerial attack over the right places, once the ashes clear, we’ll be in our own utopia.”

      I don’t know the capabilities of a bomb, but surely it wouldn’t take much to destroy a small city like Internment.

      “Firecrackers, bombs,” I say. “You people sure do like things that burn.”

      “I imagine there aren’t many fires on Internment?” he says.

      “Even a small one is cause to panic,” I say. I suppose something like the fire at the flower shop would be nothing to the people down here, but it was enough to throw all of Internment into upheaval.

      I can feel his gaze on me as I look for a trace of Internment in the sky. I know what he’s thinking. That we were foolish to come here. We left our safe little island and descended straight into a kingdom at war. But while they fight with explosives down here, different battles are being waged in the sky. Silent revolutions. Equally silent murders.

      “You don’t know anything,” I whisper. I’m not sure if the words are for him, or for me.

      The door of the metal bird creaks open and Amy descends the ladder alone. She’s talking to Jack and his men, and by their disappointed expressions it becomes clear that her attempt to lure the professor out wasn’t a successful one.

      “All right, all right. It looks like there will be another storm coming. Let’s reconvene once I’ve spoken to His Majesty. Nim, please see our guests home.”

      “Can do, Father.”

      Once we’re back in the car, Amy says, “My grandfather will come out in time. He’s just got an awful lot of love for that metal bird. He’s afraid they’ll destroy it if he leaves.”

      “What makes you so sure he’ll come out, then?” Nimble asks.

      “He’ll run out of food soon. He asked me to bring him some more just now, and I told him that if he wants to eat, he’ll have to come out.” She dusts the snow from the shoulders of her plaid coat.

      “But if he’s so stubborn, what makes you sure he won’t starve to death rather than come out?” Nimble says.

      “He won’t. He’s far too curious about this place. He’ll be taking a magnifying glass to the insects and collecting soil samples soon enough. You’ll see.”

      The car starts to move. Overhead, the sky has begun to darken. The sun is behind the clouds like light trying to hatch from an egg. I feel as though I’m being smothered.

      Amy seems better now, though. Her eyes are their usual blue and her mouth hangs open as she watches the city in the distance.

      “What did you call that place where you bury your dead?” she asks.

      “A graveyard,” Nimble says.

      “Can anyone visit?”

      “You want to visit the graveyard?” he says.

      “If I can.”

      “I guess it can’t hurt,” Nimble says. “It’s not much to see, though. People go to visit their loved ones, and kids go at night to spook each other, and that’s all the action these places get.”

      “Do you always bury your dead?” I say, trying to hide how appalling I think the whole thing is.

      “Not always,” Nimble says, his tone cheery to the point of sarcasm. “Sometimes we cremate. I’m guessing that’s what your kind does up there, with so little land.”

      “It makes the most sense,” I say.

      “It isn’t that we don’t like to burn stuff down here,” Nimble says. “Most homes have a fire altar. There’s one at the hotel, in fact. Even guests use it.”

      “You burn bodies out on your lawn?” I say, my stomach beginning to turn.

      “Not bodies. Offerings,” Nimble says. “If there’s something you really want to ask of our god, you burn something that’s of equal importance to you.”

      At last a ritual I don’t find wasteful. It seems poetic, even. “We have something like that on Internment,” I say. “Once a year we burn our highest request and set it up on the wind to be heard.”

      “Once a year.” Nim whistles. “You could burn things all day down here if you wanted. People have no shortage of things to ask for.”

      “So you burn things often, then,” I say.

      “I don’t, personally. Don’t take much stock in it.”

      As soon as the car has stopped at the graveyard, Amy is gone, leaving the open car door behind her to fill the car with cold.

      “We won’t be long,” I say apologetically. I don’t expect him to understand a girl like Amy. He can’t appreciate what the edge has done to her.

      I expect some sort of judgment or another remark about how odd she is, but “I’ll keep the car warm for you,” is all he says.

      The graveyard is framed by hedges, and the entrance is through a pair of elaborate iron doors ingrained with flying children holding some sort of stringed instrument.

      Amy is knelt in the snow when I find her. She clears away the brambles until the words on the headstone before her are revealed. “Lila Pike. It says she died the year she was born,” Amy says.

      “That’s miserable,” I say.

      “I wonder what happened.”

      I don’t.

      I look up from the stone. It is only one among hundreds of untold stories. Names, dates, flowers in vases left to wilt under all this white.

      There’s so much land on the ground that they can make a garden of all their dead. It’s no matter whether anyone ever comes to visit.

      Amy looks over her shoulder at me. Her brow is raised. “What do you think happens when they bury you here, and years pass, and everyone who knew you is dead? Who comes to visit? Or do they mow this down and start over?”

      “I don’t know,” I say. “It seems like such a waste—all of it.”

      “Maybe not,” Amy says. “If there were a place I could go and visit my sister, talk to her—I think I’d like that.”

      “I don’t think I could visit my parents in a place like this,” I say. “There are no spirits here. Only stones.”

      “There are spirits,” Amy says with certainty. “But these spirits aren’t our