Skyscraping

Every time I reached my foot to touch solid ground, the earth shied its way out of reach yet again. Stepping on the empty air felt a bit like unexpectedly sliding on a patch of clay, and a bit like my spirit was flagging raggedly outside my body, jarring against my skin and bones.

Above me, the sky had always seemed such a free, joyous place. Quite different when it was slipping beneath your feet. Haunting, merciless.

I had been holding on, a dutiful dung beetle, trying like all the rest to shape a round world from what came my way. But shet--it happens. And worse, sometimes it doesn't.

And then, you find yourself walking on air.

Mourners already surrounded me, and I could see their own earth weakening, beginning to melt away. A kind old woman came forth and wept for me. Her concern edged on despair--touching yet heartbreaking. She was sinking.

I found myself assuring her that I would be fine. The words bent in my mouth like a lie, rang golden as a promise I was bound to keep. They wrapped her in hope, floated like a raft beneath her feet.

Above and below me, the sky continued to brood. People said my kind were like a cancer to the earth--it would not hold us, it shrank from beneath our feet. It was true. But gravity had not lost interest. It harried at me like millions of needles and thousands of claws. It was obvious that I could fall into infinity--there was not a sensation in my being that did not find new ways to inform me of that. There was no option but denial.

The old woman's hope had lifted me, but it could not hold me. I could not walk upon it, or use it to cloak myself against the sky that hunted me. It was a like a golden perfume, not a weapon to face a glowering storm.

But I will be fine. I drew the thought about me like iron, like armor, like a bridge across the sky.

I will be fine. I took another step--spiting the rush of emptiness beneath me, demanding that it hold me.

I will be fine. The words unfurled like a prayer, a carpet of magic--not fanciful, not romantic. Like a beast--of iron, churning steam. It crawled forth on its elbows. It was something that held on and did not die.

I will be fine.

More mourners joined our march, these ones matriarchs, seasoned in suffering, veiled in steel. They had walked upon the shifting skies for so long, their feet found filaments of earth in the empty air.

We will be fine.

The sky rolled and churned in mockery of our defiance.

Will you?

We had been thrust from the earth, now were being shaken from the sky.

We will be fine. My carpet held on stubbornly. The ladies' feet danced across the depths undaunted, rousing their mysterious, invisible webs. They had earned their deftness through countless heartbreaks and exiles. We will be fine.

My carpet hammered the sky with its clunking steps. We all walked on, pulling gravity aloft--a bargain negotiated moment by moment. We discovered a point where push and pull, gravity and the grave all become the same. The forces saw we were their kind, began to let us be. The abyss, for its part, did not cease to speak to us, but we knew never to listen.

There was a sudden scream ahead--the sound of someone falling, someone who could not hold on. Here, where the earth had worn so thin, it didn't take much to fall through. By the time we heard his screams, it was too late. We could not save him, could not even afford the dust to patch the hole.

Our hearts were heavier, but we marched on.

Around us floated whispers--reports of our approach. I had an appointment. We were all hostage to it. To break it would turn the whispers into wails, put our people's thin veil of earth in jeopardy.

We arrived at a place where the world moved on as normal--beyond our group. Buildings stood, streets and sidewalks spanned the gaps. Families sunned themselves in the park, tending to their young. The earth seemed rich, and deep. It did not slide from beneath these people's feet.

The gray, landless world we fought seemed our own nightmare. Even in this idyll of sunlight and peace, where we stepped, the earth disappeared. But the wounds in this place were well-tended; the ground healed in our wake.

The holes, their caprices--healing here, lurking there--were a secret, belonging to those who controlled the earth, and us landless, reluctant guardians. In this place, blissful people could not see the sky gnawing at our feet, could not see the fault lines growing beneath their own. But it was like snow melt pooling beneath a glacier--sooner or later, their berg was doomed to fall.

But I prayed it wouldn't. Prayed that these people would not see the scaffolding propped against the abyss, would not sense the emptiness that hunted--even here.

Ahead of us, was the Hall of Justice, a theater of granite and steel. Its floor was a flimsy veneer, with caverns of infinite darkness barely concealed. So many broken destinies could never be fully hidden. But few cared to see.

A little girl in a flouncy dress traipsed across the floor. Her mother panicked as we entered. Our presence was the thing to tilt the balance, brush away the sheen. Safety, stability, permanence--feeble words when you stood on broken ground. Best to make us disappear.

The gavel sounded. Like a spell, it echoed in the chamber, with the sky beneath fully revealed. It gloated like a monster who knew all the world to be a future meal. It was patient, dispassionate. But its power was enough to defeat even warriors with a glance. Its pull swelled into the chamber, drawing me in, declaring me its prey from across the room.

Mobs of blissful witnesses cheered from either side of this gaping hole, emboldened with the knowledge that it was not there for them. "Skyscraper!" they shouted, in raspy feral voices. They had stolen the earth from beneath our feet, left us to scrape out a living from thin air. And this they called a plague. One to blot out with our deaths.

The mobs' feet stamped the floor, the scaffolding beneath shook and cracked. Some beams healed, others fell below.

One part of me looked at their raging, fearful hearts, and wanted to soothe their fever, uncover the gold that surely hid somewhere within. Another part wanted to pull down the world's rickety, doomed foundations, send the bloodthirsty blissful spilling to the truth.

But the sky could not hold so many.

It was barely holding me.

I looked at the mourners, many would be doomed if I did not comply. For they and theirs I would do this, and find a way to be the last.

I walked into the sinking sky before me, with its growing darkness and its chains. They'd marked me for forgetting, as food for their growing void.

In my heart, I held a promise, for both the mourners and the mob:

Fear thee not of falling, of scraping 'gainst the sky. For even air is solid, for those who learn to fly.

We would learn.