Songs for the Unsung

You know, an old man like me? It ain’t easy startin’ over like this. New beginnings ain’t our thing. The Kid tells me I’ve got a lot of life left in me, and he’s soundin’ a bit wiser every day now, so I think I’ll believe him.

Now there’s a story how we all ended up here, about the city of Caelondia and the rebuilding of the Bastion and the Calamity that threw us all out here, into the unknown. The Kid likes to tell it all himself, says it’s a good reminder of why he made his choice the way he did, all those years ago.

Zia thinks I shouldn’t sit in on those stories anymore, says I can’t keep myself quiet and let the Kid tell it true. Maybe she’s right, and I’m still thinking of the Kid as just a kid. He didn’t talk much in the old days. Didn’t have much to say. He was much better at lettin’ his weapons speak for him, the bullets from his pistols or the arrows from his bow. That’s a language that everyone understands.

Now, Zia and Zulf, they ain’t quite like me and the Kid. They’re Ura, and the Caelondians didn’t much like the Ura in the days before the Calamity. We’ve done a bit to patch things up between the four of us, but it still ain’t easy. Some scars don’t fade.

Zia’s been real good with the engines. Got it from her daddy, or so I’ve been told. Zulf’s been reading through my old books, and we’ve been chattin’ by the ol’ bonfire, just the two of us. Ancient history’s ancient history, but no one wants to make the same mistakes over again, least of all us. We’re an unlikely bunch, and the past runs deep. It lingers on when you least expect it.

This story I’m about to tell you ain’t much like the Kid’s stories of the Calamity. No windbags, no peckers, no anklegators. No fightin’ at all, when you get right down to it. But it still got meaning all the same.

It starts with a trip into the city. Now in the olden days before the Calamity, our cities weren’t much like yours. Caelondia liked to sprawl across the sky, from the Rippling Walls to the Sundown Path. Cities on the Tamed Lands were smaller than we’d been used to. We’d spend days tryin’ to understand the cramped streets, wide stretches of nothing in between, and not even a skybridge in place to cross the distances.

The Tamed Lands were tamed, all right. Tamed ’til there ain’t much left. Almost makes you miss the Wilds and the taste of the unknown. Least there, you know what’s out to get you and what ain’t. The four of us, we ain’t used to being tied to the ground, trapped by the laws of gravity. We understood the wars, though. We understood that all too well.

We had our reasons for visiting the city. The Bastion’s a beaut all right, but she ain’t getting any younger. The Mancers never imagined we’d take her out here, beyond the Wilds, and the engines weren’t holdin’ up as good as we’d like. Zia and I agreed that we’d need to head into the nearest town to find some of the material to patch things up. The Kid volunteered to go in along with, like he always does. Ain’t much the Kid won’t do if it needs doin'.

The city we were visitin’ wasn’t big, just four walls and a pile of sticks. Twenty of them could have fit inside the Cinderbrick Fort. But the people loved it there. The streets were their marketplace, and they filled it with colors from every corner of the Tamed Lands. The people there called their city Velar, the name of their God of all things worldly and beautiful, and they lived it like it was. They dressed up their wooden houses in flowers and gillweeds and the half-forgotten scent of better days. From the rooftops, the crowds were a living thing, a single mass of movement and energy. Musicians played on every street corner, their notes soaring above the rumble of everyday conversations.

Now Zia was the one who saw him first. Cities on the Tamed Lands don’t need to worry ‘bout the Wilds, but all that means is that they got to watch out for each other. Caelondia had the volunteers on the Rippling Walls. Velar had its own version. “Don’t look,” she said to the Kid, and then she gripped his arm, tight as a Bootlicker’s roots.

The Kid’s pretty good at taking direction most days, just how he’s built, I guess. So he didn’t look. He didn’t need to. “We should get him something later,” Zia said. We didn’t have much in those days, but it don’t take a whole lot to brighten a kid’s day, and all Velar could spare for its walls were its kids.

The Kid didn’t say anything back. A little experience goes a long way.

Even amongst that crowd, it wasn’t much to find the parts they’d need. Velar’s marketplace was as good as they come. In the olden days, before the Wars, people’d come from all over, and sometimes they still did. The way Zia tells it, the stalls still smelled like the finest perfumes, and the the vendors were still selling the best parts money can buy. Not much quite like the old Crystals of Caelondia, but they still pack quite a punch.

True to her word, Zia stopped them by the walls before they left. The kid was still there, of course. Wasn’t like he had much elsewhere to be. The kid was younger than the Kid had been when he first worked the Rippling Walls. Paler and skinnier, too. Not much to look at, to tell the truth. Times were tough. We had the Bastion in our corner. This kid didn’t have nothing in comparison.

It must’ve been a strange sight, watching the two strangers approaching a kid on the walls. The two of them stuck out like a pair o’ colored Vineapples amongst all those people. Zia had got her hair tied back, and the kid’d been wearin’ his bandana ‘round his neck, and they don’t look much like anyone else. Their skin’s too dark for them to look much like anyone else. Might’ve been why no one stopped them.

“Some bread,” the Kid said. He handed it over. Of course the kid took it. Food’s still food when you don’t got much else.

“How long have you been here?” Zia asked. She’s always been the one who likes doin’ the askin’. The rest of us, we don’t like rocking the boat all too much. Zulf’s a tough nut to crack when you get right down to it, and the Kid don’t like talking much, and me? I’m an old fool with too much time and too much history.

“Long enough,” the kid said. Looked like it, too. Not often that you see eyes like that on a kid so young.

Maybe if the Kid and Zia’s stuck around, the kid could’ve told them all sorts of things. An explanation for the old scar crawling its way down the side of his neck, a story ‘bout the brown stains on his tunic, a history of the city, the kind they ain’t gonna put in any book.

But the Kid and Zia know when they ain’t welcome. People like us, we understand the weight of knowing too much. Sometimes it’s best to to leave the past where it is. The Kid figured that well enough when he decided we needed to leave everything behind us and search out something new.

“Can’t tell you it’ll get better,” the Kid said, “but things have a funny way of working out sometimes.”

The kid don’t say anything to that, but he nodded like maybe he’d heard what the Kid was tryin’ to say.

Zia’s the one who told me the whole story later, when we were sittin’ down for a nice, home-cooked dinner on the Bastion. Zulf’s quite the cook when he has a mind for it. Fills us all right up and leaves us sleepy. After dinner’s a good time to for us to shoot the breeze, to talk politics or religion or whatever else might be on our minds.

“You don’t say much about what it was like for you,” Zia said to the Kid, “before the Calamity.”

Maybe the Kid would’ve said something to that, but Zulf cut in and said. “It doesn’t matter who we were then. It’s not who we are now.”

And ain’t that the truth? Who would’ve thought it would be us -- an old man, a singer, a traveller from a distant land, a Kid from the Rippling Walls -- livin’ past the end of the world? It ain’t much, but it’s ours.

We never did see that kid again. Been back to Velar a few times, and it’s always someone new up on that wall. Zia’s got stories she likes to tell about him. Likes to say that maybe he’s become a merchant, specializing in silks from Arwhal or wood from Talai. Or maybe he’s become of the King’s Guard of Iria, his armor gleaming under the light of the sun. Or maybe the city’s reclaimed him, disappeared into back alley streets never to be seen again.

What do I think? I think life will toss you where you least expect it. Don’t matter how much you plan. It ain’t ever that easy. Never will be.

We’re living proof of that, after all.