Page 16 of Wingless Crow: Part 1

“Brebie,” I interrupted the chatting woman. “What is this place where we are?”

She glanced around us. “What do you mean? The room? Or the building? It’s Elaros, the king’s palace, located in the middle of the main city of Sky Kingdom. The city is also called Elaros.”

“And where is Sky Kingdom located?”

She shrugged. “High above the clouds, of course.”

“But there are plenty of clouds above us, too.” In fact, it felt like the thick, gray clouds were everywhere in this gloomy place.

“Right. For those from the World Below, Sky Kingdom is above the clouds. They can’t see our land from down there because we have our own plane, with our own sun, stars, and clouds.” She jerked her nose up, obviously proud of that fact.

“And what’s the World Below?”

“The rest of Nerifir. Several kingdoms lay on the surface of the Below, places like Lorsan, Sarnala, the Olathana Ocean, and the Dakath Mountains. And under that plane is the dark World of Under.” She shuddered. “A ghastly place, really, filled with joyless shadow-creatures. It’s a good thing they can’t fly and keep mostly to their wretched kingdom.”

She spoke casually, as if all of that was common knowledge when it sounded completely insane to me.

“So, where exactly did I come from?” I asked. “Where is the world of humans? Earth?”

Earth.

I remembered that world, the weather, the buildings, the countries… The people, in general, like Americans, Germans, Japanese, Brazilians… But I had no memories of friends or family. I had no idea what nationality I was or what country I used to live in. I knew I spoke English before, but that was it. I couldn’t remember anything else.

“Humans?” Brebie wrinkled her nose, as if trying to recall anything about my kind and coming up short. “A very long time ago, all worlds of the River of Mists used to be one. You may find many similarities between Sky Kingdom and where you came from because of that. Now, your kind live in the human realm, connected to us by the River of Mists.”

“Is that the only way to get there?”

She shrugged a slim shoulder. “As far as I know, yes. We don’t get humans here very often. You’re the first one to come in like…” Her dainty little nose scrunched up again. “Ever?”

I was a rare creature, indeed.

“Tell me more about the River of Mists, please.”

She sighed, clearly growing bored with the topic she knew little about. “What do you want to know?”

“How does one use the cloud river to travel between places?”

“Oh, you really don’t need to worry about that, sweetie.” She waved me off. “You’ll never have to step your foot into the dangerous mists of that river ever again. This is your home now.”

ChapterFive

SPARROW

Colorful lights danced behind my eyelids, waking me up. I rolled in bed. It was a comfortable bed, not very wide, but warm and cozy. The bedding felt light and silky against my skin. I stretched. My leg muscles ached, as if after a visit to a gym.

But a gym wasn’t what had made my legs ache. This bedroom was inside the crystal palace that belonged to someone they called King Tiane.

And the gym… The gym was far away, in another place.

The place where I belonged.

Keeping my eyes closed, I focused hard on that one word from my past. Gym. It came with the memories of smells of sweat, rubber, and metal. The sounds of weights clanking and treadmills running. Images of people exercising. None of their faces were recognizable, though. And none of them were me. I knew what a gym was. But I had no memories of ever using or even visiting one.

This was just a useless piece of knowledge, without any personal connection to trigger my memory into remembering my past.

I opened my eyes and sat up in the bed with a sigh.

The room was dimly lit by the walls that glowed softly, aided by pale sunlight that played in the crystal window. Its facets broke the light up into pretty, colorful sparkles scattered all over the room. The sparkles were what had woken me.

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