I walked through the cries echoing through the forest and down a lonely path cut in the wind-stirred prairie in Sleeping Locus. I arrived at the nest I shared with Mom and Dad to find lamplight shining from one of the windows, but the door was locked. I knocked, but nobody ever came. I could not get in.

  A thump woke me to the dim morning light glowing through my tear-shaped window. I sat up and stretched my wings across my room. Standing at five cubits, I was fully grown, though I was still shorter than I remember Mom being. My voice had deepened, and the fur on my chin grew into a dirty little beard. I grabbed my jacket off the floor and slid my arms and wings through. I took Mom’s feather out from under my pillow and put it in my inner jacket pocket. The compass my family gave me was affixed to my collar. Whenever I snapped it on, I thought of them.

  Dad was not at his desk when I went down stairs. He was in his room, sitting on his bed by the light of a candle.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m not well,” he said. His ears hung lowly.

  “Again?” I said, sitting on the edge of his bed and looking into his left eye. “I told you not to be up all night working. You’ve got to take better care of yourself.”

  We’d been in Weeping Wallows long enough for him to grow accustomed to the realm’s vibration. Though he would not admit to me what was really wrong, I knew hard work was not the cause of his illness. He was sick with loneliness. I wrapped my wing around him and pat his graying fur. I needed to get Mom back. If Mom only saw how much damage her absence had caused … If I could show her how important she was to us … That was the only way we were ever going to be happy again. I had to get her back. I just had to get her back. This was my mission – my right of passage and my ticket out of the realm.

  “I have to go,” I said a moment later. “Take the day off and try and get some rest.”

  I hated leaving him alone like that, but I had an important day ahead of me. There was only so much I could do to help him. I walked down the stairs through the living room, furnished with cushions, bookshelves, and a mechanism standing in the corner. The door creaked as I pushed it open and stepped outside. We’d been renting the hollow at the base of a giant weeping willow. The blue grass was wet and cold under my feet. The switches dripped with dew, and the sky rained teardrops through a dense fog. I walked around to the other side, where a blue ass with a mud-caked coat lay on a pile of brambles.

  “Bawmee,” I said, grabbing his attention. He smelled like weeping children.

  “I asked you not to nest here. Your scent is driving my Dad crazy.”

  “What would be the point of moving?” he complained.

  I sighed heavily as the overwhelming urge to cry came over me.

  “Weeping Wallows is my home,” he said. “I can nest wherever I wish. That’s the law of the realm.”

  “I know what the law is. I was asking as a personal favor.”

  “I would move again, but I’m too tired.”

  “Too tired to move? You don’t have any belongings! Just get up and go nest somewhere else.”

  He turned and flopped back onto his bramble pile.

  “Well, could you at least stop kicking the side of the nest? You woke me up again this morning, and you’re damaging the tree. There are laws against property destruction, you know.”

  He ignored me.

  “What must I do to get you to leave us alone?” I said.

  He ignored me again. I became angry. Very angry. Murderous. I smelled red. I lifted my foot to find a tiny black speck stuck to my pad. A demon seed. They were all over the place. I flicked the seed off my foot and my anger was gone.

  “How about if I bring you some chocolate?” I said.

  The ass’s ears perked.

  “Chocolate would help,” he brayed. “It always helps.”

  “Okay, I’ll pick some up later.”

  Our tree grew on the edge of a floating island. I jumped off the side, opened my wings, and glided through the wet air. The fog would clear just enough to reveal the wallows–a realm of five floating islands, one floating atop the other from largest to smallest.

  I taught myself to fly, sort of. Dad disapproved. Flying the skies of Weeping Wallows was challenging, even for the most experienced fliers. Many ships ignored the skyway laws and I could have been windshield guts at any time. The thought of nothing holding me up but my wings stoked uneasiness in my stomach. Large raindrops spattered my face and shoulders, making it harder to see through the fog. The warmth would run from my face and hands when gusts of wind would throw me toward the rock-strewn ground. I had no business flying alone, but it was the best way to avoid stepping on demon seeds.

  I flew north until I found the updraft and rode the wind up to the next island. Poizus Castle was a city sprawling from one edge of the island to the other. Its stone and marble towers bore rounded edges like a graveyard of close-knit tombstones. The most prominent structure was a mausoleum in the center of the city.

  I dipped between the towers and descended toward the street. The noisy ambiance of vendors selling retired and second-hand oddities from the back of carts and wagons echoed all around. I landed on the blue grass street, panting heavily. A bargain hunter in a happy mask shoved me aside. Then, I spotted a beautiful creature nearby. She was a little shorter than me, with smaller wings, a baby blue beak, and virginal white feathers like mine.

  “Sharubym,” I said, grabbing her attention.

  “Hey,” she said.

  I kissed her beak. She smiled and reached into a sack, pulling out a doughnut and offering it to me.

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  “Thanks,” I said, stuffing it into my snout.

  “So this is our last day at the temple,” she said nervously. “What are you going to do?”

  Sharubym had been my girlfriend for over a year, but she was more than a partner. She was my only friend. My departure was a sore subject, but I could no longer stand Weeping Wallows. I had to get out of there.

  “I’m going to take hitch jobs and find my Mom,” I said.

  “You know how hard it is to get a hitch job these days? Skippers in Port Poizus won’t hire hitch voyagers when they can lease mechanisms for cheaper.”

  “I won’t be hitching out of Port Poizus.”

  “How then are you getting out of here? You can’t afford a passenger ticket.”

  “I’ll take another job on the Hearth next time they ship to Poughkeepsy Relics.”

  “The Hearth?” she laughed. “Dick is never going to let you back on his ship after what you did.”

  “Dick will hire me again,” I said.

  More laughter. I was getting annoyed.

  “Forget it, Burgeon. Dick will never hire you again. I wouldn’t hire you if I was him, nor would any skipper. The word on you is out. You couldn’t get a job if you were a master-certified voyager.”

  “I’ll have to do a little convincing, but …”

  Sharubym’s mood turned serious.

  “Even if you do convince Dick to let you board again, which he won’t, how are you going to secure passage once you get to Poughkeepsy Relics?” she said. “You don’t have any letters of reference.”

  “I still have the letter my Grandpa gave me.”

  “But that’s like four years old. You should have gotten Dick to write you a new one before you started pulling stunts with his ship. You’ll never make it out of here without a letter. Face it, you’re staying right here with me.”

  “Sharubym.”

  “What!”

  “You know you’re going to have to leave Weeping Wallows eventually. You cannot stay here forever.”

  “My whole family is here. Where else would I go?”

  “You could come with me. It’ll be fun. Mom will love you.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ll never crew under Dick again.”

  I smiled, though I was confused.

  “Why don’t you stay here with me?” she said.

  It was obvious she wanted me to stay in Weeping Wallows. I could never figure out why she was so unwilling to go with me to another realm. I could smell a great deal of pain in her words. She was just as confused as I was. I knew many people who had died in Weeping Wallows, and I felt like this could be my fate if we didn’t leave. And I would not leave Dad in Weeping Wallows to die either, which he would certainly do if I couldn’t figure out a way to bring Mom back.

  Sharubym and I walked down the blue grass street hand in wing among groups of other creatures, mostly asses our age, to the temple. We stepped through the temple entrance and donned robes and hoods, then walked down the candlelit aisles to our seats in the pews. The thought of never stepping paw in another temple again caused relief to wash over me in the most pleasant way. I hated people telling me what to do. I was finally free of their ways, free to make my own and embark on a life of adventure.

  * * *

  I never remembered the specifics of ceremonies such as they were. They always seemed like bleak, pointless affairs. The time passing through the ceremony filled my mind with boredom that drowned my imaginings. Sharubym elbowed me awake whenever I started snoozing. There was music, and there were ancient practices. The magicians finally concluded the ceremony by pronouncing us all adults, free to make our way within the temple’s ideals. All the former students removed their hoods and started meandering out. Some of them wept. Some of them embraced their loved ones. Sharubym’s parents embraced her fondly. We dumped our robes into hampers in the atrium outside, anxious to get out of there.

  “Why isn’t your Dad here?” Sharubym said.

  “He had to work,” I lied.

  “Hello, Burgeon,” came a friendly voice behind me.

  I turned around and saw a magician in maroon robes and a weathered brass mask.

  “Oh, hello, Master Konsolent,” I said.

  “Burgeon, you’ve graduated. You don’t have to call me master anymore, Sharubym? Keeping up with your studies?”

  “Oh, yes, Mast – uh, Konsolent.”

  Sharubym’s parents looked at one another awkwardly and walked away. The magician’s eyes were fixed on Sharubym. We’d worked with him long enough to know how good he was at sniffing out lies. I was a little more than surprised and a bit embarrassed that she would even try. She should have known better.

  “Okay, I’ll see you later,” Sharubym said, slinking away.

  “I’ll see you at the spot later on,” I said.

  The master’s eyes followed her as she hurried out the temple doors.

  “I have some good news for you, Burgeon. I got you into that apprenticeship program at the temple in the Loyal Trench.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. You’re finally going home.”

  Studying under that wizard I met all those years ago would have been a dream come true if that was what I wanted, but I had bigger plans.

  “What’s wrong?” the master said.

  “Thank you for getting me the apprenticeship,” I said. “I know it could not have been easy with my marks.”

  “Burgeon, you’re a great teacher. Your skills are coming along, and you’ve got tremendous potential. If you apply yourself, you will be a wizard one day, but you must isolate yourself from time-wasting activities and relationships that aren’t serving you.”

  The master’s mask turned in the direction Sharubym had fluttered off in. I knew he was right, though I wouldn’t admit it at the time.

  “I can’t go to the temple,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no way I’m going back to live in the trench with all the pirates festering there. And I’ve no interest in teaching, so there’s no point in returning anyway. I’ve decided to be a voyager for a while and find my Mom.”

  “What?” he said. “Does this have something to do with your Dad?”

  “No. I need to get away for a while. I’ve been sitting in temples my whole life. I don’t want to go to another one. Not right now, anyway.”

  “Hitching is a perilous business.”

  “I’ve been a voyager all my life. I know what I’m doing.”

  “You’ve worked very hard,” he said. “Don’t throw away your skills. At least tell me you’re taking your books with you.”

  “There’s no time for magic tricks on board a ship,” I said.

  The instant regret of what I just said turned to shame.

  “Burgeon,” he said.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I’ll talk to you when I get back.”

  “You take good care of yourself, son.”

  I dashed out the temple doors and down the street, then leaped into the air and flapped my wings as hard as I could. Sharubym was right about one thing. I was never going to get out of that realm if I couldn’t secure passage aboard Dick’s ship. I needed to persuade him to hire me as a deckhand, and I knew how to start working him over.

  I flew over the stone caps of the city skyline to the other side of town. Port Poizus was an elongated stone with an open canopy. Ships, some the size of whole countries, hung like languid balloons. I landed by the ticket booths and walked down wooden planks toward dock 107, passing mechanisms and hulking voyagers in masks that loaded crates and barrels through the open mouths of ships. Then, there was the Hearth, a three-hundred-twenty-cubit cargo container with an eggshell hull. I walked up the ramp and boarded.

  “Hey, Crickle,” I said when I saw a familiar stocky creature taking inventory in the cargo hold.

  “No, Burgeon,” he said.

  “Crickle!”

  “No.”

  “Crickle, I just …”

  “It’s not going to happen, Burgeon.”

  Even the irritation in Crickle’s voice sounded kind to me. He had blue fur and kind little smiles at the edge of his big brown eyes.

  “Come on. I need your help.”

  “I’m sure you need help. But even if I wanted to help you, there’s no way I’d ever be able to sell it to Dick. Not after that stunt you pulled at the helm.”

  “You’re the first mate. You know if you insist, Dick will go along with it.”

  “Maybe. But no. Not this time.”

  “Come on, what’s the big deal? It’s just a ship.”

  Crickle sighed exhaustedly.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s an old ship.”

  “That’s what your problem is. You don’t see that it’s more than just a ship. It’s a livelihood, a way of life, and security and safety for me, for Dick, and for all the crew on board. You jeopardized that. You have no respect for the sanctity of a ship, and that’s what makes you a bad voyager. Get off the ship, Burgeon. Before Dick sees you and has you flogged.”

  “Dick can’t flog me. I’m not part of the crew.”

  “I wouldn’t put him to the test. Off you go, now. There’s no work for you here.”

  ******

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