The Sky Shard
Story: one shot
Rating: G
Word Count: 2741
Summary: The story of a group of children who find the missing shard of sky whilst out playing in the dark.
Notes: I always feel like this story won't leave me alone - it's constantly being edited, and I never know quite what to with it. No doubt it'll be edited and changed a lot more times after this before it finds a proper place to live. The characters are a bit too confusing (having so many, and leaving many of them unnamed), and the ending is pretty weak. But I'm still drawn to this, I feel like there's something here that I'll get the hang off one day.
No one could remember exactly when, or how, the sky was broken. No one could remember why the crack appeared along its surface, and then caved with a shattering sound - leaving a jagged hole.
It was said that, if you looked very hard indeed, you could find the shard of broken sky lying somewhere on the ground. And it was said that the man who found it and took it to the King, who very much desired strange things like chunks of sky, would be made rich beyond his imaginings.
But through the splintered hole, the sun was too hot and scorching. Everything that lay beneath was dust. Brave men and women spent scores of years searching and searching for the missing piece, and not a soul could find it. The old king died, and the new king wasn't so interested, and the quest to find a fallen shard of sky passed out of memory.
Beneath the gap in the sky, it was dust by day; but at night-time the children crept out. They came from all around, and they sat beneath the hole. They laughed and jumped and played, and never felt so safe. There it was warm and thick and dark. The blackness pressed in on the children's cheeks and eyes - and where adults were scared of feeling night on their face, the little ones were not. They knew it for what it was.
The stars would wheel and spin above them, and the children would whoop and cheer to see them go past, fly in and out of the shattered zig-zag sky.
And one day a child happened upon something, on the other side of the little hill, where the children usually did not go. He stepped down, and instead of squishy sand, he felt a hard surface, which creaked. He took his foot off straight away, and bent down to feel what he had found.
“Hey,” he called to another child, his friend who had followed him over the hill. They could still hear the others playing and laughing. “Help me lift this.”
He ran his hands across the smooth, glassy surface until he felt a sharpness against his fingers, enough to draw blood from the tips. “Can you find the other edge?” he whispered into the inky black.
There was much fumbling from his friend, and for a moment he feared that the other boy would slip, or tread and the whole thing would go crushcrunchcrush underfoot. “Found it,” came the hissed reply.
They strained and strained, but it was much too heavy, and bigger than they thought - bigger than the two sharp edges they had caught hold of.
“We're going to need more-” the boy started, but his friend's crunchy footsteps blurred out the rest of the sentence, and he felt the edge of the glassy thing slip down again. Without a sun, or moon, and only rare, weak stars, the children lived a life of sense by feel. With only the endless black in front of his eyes, the other boy skirted the glassy, spiky edge, found the hill, and scrabbled effortlessly up and over to the other side.
The first boy stayed where he was, listening to his friend go, and looked upwards to where the sky should be. He wished for a single star, to light the wondrous thing that he had found, but the heavens would not answer.
In time he heard the sounds of a larger group of children sliding down the tiny hill - their footsteps making a dull thumpthump through the sand and dust. The other boy hissed at them all to slow down, try to find all the edges, and most importantly to tread lightly.
“It's sharp,” the first boy warned. “I cut my fingers open.”
The children surrounded the jagged, heavy thing, pressing down with care on the smooth glass. And they too wished for a single star, to light the wondrous thing that they had found.
“I think I know what it is,” a younger boy piped up.
“How do you-?”
“It's the sky, en't it? It should be right above us now.”
“Don't be stupid. Everyone knows the sky en't made of glass. Otherwise it'd be shattering and cracking all round,” one of the older girls said.
“This bit shattered, didn't it? Besides, what is the sky made of, then, if it's not glass.”
“Well...sky. Isn't it?” she faltered, and trailed off.
“I don't think this is glass,” the boy who had first found it said. He had a quiet, soft voice, but something about it made the children all hush and listen. “It feels like it, but I don't think it is.”
“So, what, you think it's sky too?”
“I don't know what I think,” he said. “I just don't think it's glass.”
They started again, in hushed voices even though no one was around to hear. Every child had come to join them now, from over the hill. They had to know what this was. It would be day soon enough, and they could not stay until then. And what if it were gone tomorrow? It might be a secret forever.
“Oh, if only we had some light!”
The boy who had found the glassy thing spoke up again. He was their unspoken leader, without knowing it himself. “How's tiny Davey doing?” he asked into the blackness.
“He's all right,” a girl replied, maybe to his left. She and the little boy were a small distance away from where the children were crowded. “I'm looking after him. I don't think he can walk very well, but the bleeding stopped.”
“OK. That's something at least. I did tell you it was sharp.”
“I'm sorry,” little Davey's voice rang out. “I didn't mean to.” Whilst scrabbling for a way to hold onto the edge, he had sliced a thin, neat line right along the leathery sole of his foot, from toe to heel.
“I know. We need to make sure someone is with Davey to help him walk home before daylight.”
Everyone mumbled in agreement to their leader, their strange quiet boy, whose name no one could quite remember. Names weren't so important to them in their night-time play-world as they were to the parents, the adults. There weren't faces to fit them to, only voices, the feel of their hands, the knocking of their knees if they fell against each other whilst playing.
“We can't lift it,” a different child complained. “Not even with all of us. We've been trying and trying, and we can't even tilt it, or nudge it. Whatever this is, it's too heavy for us.” The child paused. “We need to get some grown-ups.”
There was an outcry at this. “They can't, we can't let them in here!”
The boy in charge agreed. “Exactly, there's no way we can bring the adults into this. They don't understand this place like we do. They'll bring their torches, and their wheels, and their loud noises. They'll trample through with big, thick boots and they'll crush it under their feet before they know they've found it. They'll argue over whose it should be, and shatter and splinter it.”
Tiny Davey spoke again. “They're ever so good at breaking things,” he said. “And all our secret places - our bases and playgrounds, our caves and huts - they'll all be gone. They'll drive over them. They bring lights to ruin the whole place.”
Other children joined in, until there was general clamour once more. “They'll take it away from us, and try to put it back into the sky.”
“I keep telling you, it's not sky.”
“They'll put it in a museum, or something. Lock it up.”
All the children were chattering away, keeping tight hold onto their corners of sharp, glassy wonder, as though it might disappear the second they let go. Then, through the mixed voices, a sound cut over them, silencing each one. The children held their breath as it echoed and died away. No one said anything, or dared to move. They looked around at each other, even though they could not see.
The boy in charge spoke first, his voice even softer than before. “Do that again.”
He could hear the movement, a girl three places away from him, clockwise. She leant forwards, brushing her hair behind her ear, and gently but firmly, flicked the end of her finger against the smooth surface of the Thing.
Each child would have described it differently, but it was a wide noise, deep and low, echoing. It went through their feet as much as through their ears, and they all heard it deep inside their spine.
It died away again, and there was another shocked silence. “That's the prettiest thing I ever heard,” little Davey gasped, still sat away from them, nursing the sole of his torn foot.
“Yes,” was all their leader could say.
“It sure isn't made of glass, that's one thing.”
“Now the adults definitely can't know about it.”
“They'd give it to the king, for money, like in the story!”
“He'd keep it from everyone! He'd keep it and the lovely sound all for himself.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We can't leave it here, we can't.”
“But how would we move it, just us?”
“Someone hit it again. Could you hit it again, please?”
“Don't break it, don't break it! Let the girl do it again, she knows how to do it properly. So long as nobody breaks it.”
And the long-haired girl tapped the glassy surface again and again. The children sat down in the sand beside the spiky edge, crossing their legs, chatting - letting the sound wash over them long into the night.
It only took three days for someone to tell. No child ever admitted that they were the one to do it. No child admitted to being the one who had chattered excitedly to their parents about a smooth glassy shard they'd found whilst playing in the dark desert at night when they should have been in bed.
They always sat around the glass, keeping contact with sharp edges, leaning their palms, fingers, kneecaps against them. Drinking it in. Some other children had learnt from the quiet long-haired girl how to hit it and make the right noise. Most of the others had tried and failed, and were too scared of breaking it.
The stars weren't out tonight, in the gap above them. The first sign, the first intrusion, was the rumbling noise. For a moment they thought it was thunder, and then they remember there was no such thing as clouds anymore. The rumbling grew louder, and the children stopped talking.
The light was so alien that they screamed.
One long beam of white fire, only for a second. Then it hit the glassy thing, the spiky shard sat in the middle of their wonky circle, and reflected all around - like the sky.
The sudden light burnt to the back of the children's eyes, and they fell away from the circle, throwing their arms up over their faces and crying out. Only Davey, who had screwed his eyes shut in fear at the thunderous rumbling sound, managed to stay upright. Even so, he could still feel the harsh, hot light against his closed lids.
Under the floodlights, the adults crowded in the truck could see that it was as the rumours said - the missing shard of sky. Not all of it, not big enough to fill the hole. But it would be worth a lot. It would be worth an audience with the king, at the very least.
As they lifted the glassy, creaking chunk onto the back of the truck with leather straps and a slow crane, they saw the children wriggling around the edges on the sand - clutching their faces. And, because they did not know what to do, the adults decided to leave them. They were probably playing.
It took almost an hour to hoist the sky into the back, to be sure it was safe and secure, and then cover it up properly. Some of the children had stirred by then, disorientated, whispering to each other. The adults started the rumbling engine again, and the driver clicked the gear stick into reverse. As he turned his head around, out of habit, to check behind the truck, he jumped and nearly slammed his foot into the pedals accidentally.
A small boy, smaller still than those lying blind on the sandy ground, was sat cross-legged in the centre of the sky-shard, on top of the sheet. He waved, and leant forwards and tapped on the glass of the back window.
“I think you need to listen to me.”
It took half a year to get everything finally fixed. The sky shard was taken all over the country, to the king, to a few museums, a few cities, back to the king again, before he finally ordered that the chunk of sky be put above the tallest hill, beside the dark desert it had come from.
At the request of a stubborn, but charming child, the king also ordered a search of the desert - through the ruined and trampled huts, tents and camps where children had once played in the dark. All the tiny shards which had fallen with the main chunk were collected up, and sent out according to a very specific list.
And after all of this, the small boy with a hole in his foot (which never healed), scrabbled and climbed up the tallest hill, pleased with his good work.
The children from that night all had their sight returned to them, some quicker than others; save one.
“Hi, Michael,” Davey said, breathlessly, once he had reached the summit of the hill. The sky-shard gleamed above them, reflecting the blue-white light onto their faces.
The tall boy turned his face a little at the sound of the child's voice. He was as calm and quiet as when he had been their thoughtful leader - in a life that felt a world away. In one hand, he twirled a small shard of glass. “That's not my name,” he said.
“I know,” Davey admitted, sitting down on the rocky ground at the other boy's feet. “But now I've seen you, you look like a Michael. So that's what I've decided to call you. Everyone needs a name.”
“Maybe.” He kept twirling the shard, then held it up to his ear, and flicked it with the index finger of his other hand. A deep echoey sound made him smile. “I hear this is your doing.”
Davey giggled. “The king said I was the stubbornest thing he ever had misfortune to meet. But I got a little chunk to every one we possibly could.”
Michael blinked his white eyes. “It's nice. It's a good idea.” Then he paused and listened to the sound again. “Not like the real thing though,” he said.
“I know. That's why I had to give mine away.”
“You did?”
Davey nodded, and then remembered that Michael couldn't see. “The king liked it, so I gave it to him. I have the scar along my foot anyway. That reminds me well enough.”
Michael nodded and then didn't say anything for a long time. Davey sat at his feet for almost half an hour in companionable silence. Just as he pushed himself up from the ground, and turned to leave, the boy's quiet voice started again.
“What does the sky look like? This sky, I mean. Our sky.”
Davey looked up for a moment. “It's really pretty. You can see the stars and the blue, and the clouds. All at the same time. It's...pretty.”
Michael smiled again. “That's nice.”
The tiny boy opened his mouth to ask what it was like to be blind, and then remembered that he already knew. Remembered running around in the warm darkness, falling over and cutting his foot. Always cutting his feet.
Davey rubbed his eyes. “I think I need to go.”
“Maybe I'll meet you later.” Michael's voice was very quiet. Davey almost ran down the hill, oddly desperate to leave him there - leave him standing sightless under their sky.
(Story Index)
Rating: G
Word Count: 2741
Summary: The story of a group of children who find the missing shard of sky whilst out playing in the dark.
Notes: I always feel like this story won't leave me alone - it's constantly being edited, and I never know quite what to with it. No doubt it'll be edited and changed a lot more times after this before it finds a proper place to live. The characters are a bit too confusing (having so many, and leaving many of them unnamed), and the ending is pretty weak. But I'm still drawn to this, I feel like there's something here that I'll get the hang off one day.
No one could remember exactly when, or how, the sky was broken. No one could remember why the crack appeared along its surface, and then caved with a shattering sound - leaving a jagged hole.
It was said that, if you looked very hard indeed, you could find the shard of broken sky lying somewhere on the ground. And it was said that the man who found it and took it to the King, who very much desired strange things like chunks of sky, would be made rich beyond his imaginings.
But through the splintered hole, the sun was too hot and scorching. Everything that lay beneath was dust. Brave men and women spent scores of years searching and searching for the missing piece, and not a soul could find it. The old king died, and the new king wasn't so interested, and the quest to find a fallen shard of sky passed out of memory.
Beneath the gap in the sky, it was dust by day; but at night-time the children crept out. They came from all around, and they sat beneath the hole. They laughed and jumped and played, and never felt so safe. There it was warm and thick and dark. The blackness pressed in on the children's cheeks and eyes - and where adults were scared of feeling night on their face, the little ones were not. They knew it for what it was.
The stars would wheel and spin above them, and the children would whoop and cheer to see them go past, fly in and out of the shattered zig-zag sky.
And one day a child happened upon something, on the other side of the little hill, where the children usually did not go. He stepped down, and instead of squishy sand, he felt a hard surface, which creaked. He took his foot off straight away, and bent down to feel what he had found.
“Hey,” he called to another child, his friend who had followed him over the hill. They could still hear the others playing and laughing. “Help me lift this.”
He ran his hands across the smooth, glassy surface until he felt a sharpness against his fingers, enough to draw blood from the tips. “Can you find the other edge?” he whispered into the inky black.
There was much fumbling from his friend, and for a moment he feared that the other boy would slip, or tread and the whole thing would go crushcrunchcrush underfoot. “Found it,” came the hissed reply.
They strained and strained, but it was much too heavy, and bigger than they thought - bigger than the two sharp edges they had caught hold of.
“We're going to need more-” the boy started, but his friend's crunchy footsteps blurred out the rest of the sentence, and he felt the edge of the glassy thing slip down again. Without a sun, or moon, and only rare, weak stars, the children lived a life of sense by feel. With only the endless black in front of his eyes, the other boy skirted the glassy, spiky edge, found the hill, and scrabbled effortlessly up and over to the other side.
The first boy stayed where he was, listening to his friend go, and looked upwards to where the sky should be. He wished for a single star, to light the wondrous thing that he had found, but the heavens would not answer.
In time he heard the sounds of a larger group of children sliding down the tiny hill - their footsteps making a dull thumpthump through the sand and dust. The other boy hissed at them all to slow down, try to find all the edges, and most importantly to tread lightly.
“It's sharp,” the first boy warned. “I cut my fingers open.”
The children surrounded the jagged, heavy thing, pressing down with care on the smooth glass. And they too wished for a single star, to light the wondrous thing that they had found.
“I think I know what it is,” a younger boy piped up.
“How do you-?”
“It's the sky, en't it? It should be right above us now.”
“Don't be stupid. Everyone knows the sky en't made of glass. Otherwise it'd be shattering and cracking all round,” one of the older girls said.
“This bit shattered, didn't it? Besides, what is the sky made of, then, if it's not glass.”
“Well...sky. Isn't it?” she faltered, and trailed off.
“I don't think this is glass,” the boy who had first found it said. He had a quiet, soft voice, but something about it made the children all hush and listen. “It feels like it, but I don't think it is.”
“So, what, you think it's sky too?”
“I don't know what I think,” he said. “I just don't think it's glass.”
They started again, in hushed voices even though no one was around to hear. Every child had come to join them now, from over the hill. They had to know what this was. It would be day soon enough, and they could not stay until then. And what if it were gone tomorrow? It might be a secret forever.
“Oh, if only we had some light!”
The boy who had found the glassy thing spoke up again. He was their unspoken leader, without knowing it himself. “How's tiny Davey doing?” he asked into the blackness.
“He's all right,” a girl replied, maybe to his left. She and the little boy were a small distance away from where the children were crowded. “I'm looking after him. I don't think he can walk very well, but the bleeding stopped.”
“OK. That's something at least. I did tell you it was sharp.”
“I'm sorry,” little Davey's voice rang out. “I didn't mean to.” Whilst scrabbling for a way to hold onto the edge, he had sliced a thin, neat line right along the leathery sole of his foot, from toe to heel.
“I know. We need to make sure someone is with Davey to help him walk home before daylight.”
Everyone mumbled in agreement to their leader, their strange quiet boy, whose name no one could quite remember. Names weren't so important to them in their night-time play-world as they were to the parents, the adults. There weren't faces to fit them to, only voices, the feel of their hands, the knocking of their knees if they fell against each other whilst playing.
“We can't lift it,” a different child complained. “Not even with all of us. We've been trying and trying, and we can't even tilt it, or nudge it. Whatever this is, it's too heavy for us.” The child paused. “We need to get some grown-ups.”
There was an outcry at this. “They can't, we can't let them in here!”
The boy in charge agreed. “Exactly, there's no way we can bring the adults into this. They don't understand this place like we do. They'll bring their torches, and their wheels, and their loud noises. They'll trample through with big, thick boots and they'll crush it under their feet before they know they've found it. They'll argue over whose it should be, and shatter and splinter it.”
Tiny Davey spoke again. “They're ever so good at breaking things,” he said. “And all our secret places - our bases and playgrounds, our caves and huts - they'll all be gone. They'll drive over them. They bring lights to ruin the whole place.”
Other children joined in, until there was general clamour once more. “They'll take it away from us, and try to put it back into the sky.”
“I keep telling you, it's not sky.”
“They'll put it in a museum, or something. Lock it up.”
All the children were chattering away, keeping tight hold onto their corners of sharp, glassy wonder, as though it might disappear the second they let go. Then, through the mixed voices, a sound cut over them, silencing each one. The children held their breath as it echoed and died away. No one said anything, or dared to move. They looked around at each other, even though they could not see.
The boy in charge spoke first, his voice even softer than before. “Do that again.”
He could hear the movement, a girl three places away from him, clockwise. She leant forwards, brushing her hair behind her ear, and gently but firmly, flicked the end of her finger against the smooth surface of the Thing.
Each child would have described it differently, but it was a wide noise, deep and low, echoing. It went through their feet as much as through their ears, and they all heard it deep inside their spine.
It died away again, and there was another shocked silence. “That's the prettiest thing I ever heard,” little Davey gasped, still sat away from them, nursing the sole of his torn foot.
“Yes,” was all their leader could say.
“It sure isn't made of glass, that's one thing.”
“Now the adults definitely can't know about it.”
“They'd give it to the king, for money, like in the story!”
“He'd keep it from everyone! He'd keep it and the lovely sound all for himself.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We can't leave it here, we can't.”
“But how would we move it, just us?”
“Someone hit it again. Could you hit it again, please?”
“Don't break it, don't break it! Let the girl do it again, she knows how to do it properly. So long as nobody breaks it.”
And the long-haired girl tapped the glassy surface again and again. The children sat down in the sand beside the spiky edge, crossing their legs, chatting - letting the sound wash over them long into the night.
It only took three days for someone to tell. No child ever admitted that they were the one to do it. No child admitted to being the one who had chattered excitedly to their parents about a smooth glassy shard they'd found whilst playing in the dark desert at night when they should have been in bed.
They always sat around the glass, keeping contact with sharp edges, leaning their palms, fingers, kneecaps against them. Drinking it in. Some other children had learnt from the quiet long-haired girl how to hit it and make the right noise. Most of the others had tried and failed, and were too scared of breaking it.
The stars weren't out tonight, in the gap above them. The first sign, the first intrusion, was the rumbling noise. For a moment they thought it was thunder, and then they remember there was no such thing as clouds anymore. The rumbling grew louder, and the children stopped talking.
The light was so alien that they screamed.
One long beam of white fire, only for a second. Then it hit the glassy thing, the spiky shard sat in the middle of their wonky circle, and reflected all around - like the sky.
The sudden light burnt to the back of the children's eyes, and they fell away from the circle, throwing their arms up over their faces and crying out. Only Davey, who had screwed his eyes shut in fear at the thunderous rumbling sound, managed to stay upright. Even so, he could still feel the harsh, hot light against his closed lids.
Under the floodlights, the adults crowded in the truck could see that it was as the rumours said - the missing shard of sky. Not all of it, not big enough to fill the hole. But it would be worth a lot. It would be worth an audience with the king, at the very least.
As they lifted the glassy, creaking chunk onto the back of the truck with leather straps and a slow crane, they saw the children wriggling around the edges on the sand - clutching their faces. And, because they did not know what to do, the adults decided to leave them. They were probably playing.
It took almost an hour to hoist the sky into the back, to be sure it was safe and secure, and then cover it up properly. Some of the children had stirred by then, disorientated, whispering to each other. The adults started the rumbling engine again, and the driver clicked the gear stick into reverse. As he turned his head around, out of habit, to check behind the truck, he jumped and nearly slammed his foot into the pedals accidentally.
A small boy, smaller still than those lying blind on the sandy ground, was sat cross-legged in the centre of the sky-shard, on top of the sheet. He waved, and leant forwards and tapped on the glass of the back window.
“I think you need to listen to me.”
It took half a year to get everything finally fixed. The sky shard was taken all over the country, to the king, to a few museums, a few cities, back to the king again, before he finally ordered that the chunk of sky be put above the tallest hill, beside the dark desert it had come from.
At the request of a stubborn, but charming child, the king also ordered a search of the desert - through the ruined and trampled huts, tents and camps where children had once played in the dark. All the tiny shards which had fallen with the main chunk were collected up, and sent out according to a very specific list.
And after all of this, the small boy with a hole in his foot (which never healed), scrabbled and climbed up the tallest hill, pleased with his good work.
The children from that night all had their sight returned to them, some quicker than others; save one.
“Hi, Michael,” Davey said, breathlessly, once he had reached the summit of the hill. The sky-shard gleamed above them, reflecting the blue-white light onto their faces.
The tall boy turned his face a little at the sound of the child's voice. He was as calm and quiet as when he had been their thoughtful leader - in a life that felt a world away. In one hand, he twirled a small shard of glass. “That's not my name,” he said.
“I know,” Davey admitted, sitting down on the rocky ground at the other boy's feet. “But now I've seen you, you look like a Michael. So that's what I've decided to call you. Everyone needs a name.”
“Maybe.” He kept twirling the shard, then held it up to his ear, and flicked it with the index finger of his other hand. A deep echoey sound made him smile. “I hear this is your doing.”
Davey giggled. “The king said I was the stubbornest thing he ever had misfortune to meet. But I got a little chunk to every one we possibly could.”
Michael blinked his white eyes. “It's nice. It's a good idea.” Then he paused and listened to the sound again. “Not like the real thing though,” he said.
“I know. That's why I had to give mine away.”
“You did?”
Davey nodded, and then remembered that Michael couldn't see. “The king liked it, so I gave it to him. I have the scar along my foot anyway. That reminds me well enough.”
Michael nodded and then didn't say anything for a long time. Davey sat at his feet for almost half an hour in companionable silence. Just as he pushed himself up from the ground, and turned to leave, the boy's quiet voice started again.
“What does the sky look like? This sky, I mean. Our sky.”
Davey looked up for a moment. “It's really pretty. You can see the stars and the blue, and the clouds. All at the same time. It's...pretty.”
Michael smiled again. “That's nice.”
The tiny boy opened his mouth to ask what it was like to be blind, and then remembered that he already knew. Remembered running around in the warm darkness, falling over and cutting his foot. Always cutting his feet.
Davey rubbed his eyes. “I think I need to go.”
“Maybe I'll meet you later.” Michael's voice was very quiet. Davey almost ran down the hill, oddly desperate to leave him there - leave him standing sightless under their sky.
(Story Index)