Page 4 of Under Restless Skies

The sundial on the wall is past two o’clock already, and yet I don’t see them calling the new group. When the final candidates in that batch end their trials, the instructors pause and go inside, replaced by guards. I’ve always wondered what they do during these breaks. Do they just pee and relax? Debate something? Or do they check if they’re hitting their quota?

Quota. The word lands in my stomach like a stone. What if they do have a quota and send the rest of us home, telling us to try next year? But they need sentinels. Too many of them die.

It might be me, consumed in a blast of fire one day. Laristella warned me many times that it’s dangerous, but all I can think is that it would be a glorious death. Not that I want to die. I want to live, but live fully, or else I’m already dead.

The sundial marks half past two when the officers call the two-o’clock batch. There are about thirty of them, many too skinny, perhaps underfed, hoping for their chance to improve their lives and leave starvation behind.

Mayara, you’re not even suffering from hunger! Laristella yelled at me when she first heard I wanted to join the Sky Academy. As if there was only one type of hunger.

Sometimes the candidates are not poor; they just want the status of being a sky sentinel.

Marcus didn’t even care about defending Dracolius from the invaders, and didn’t seem much interested in flying. He still applied. Still got in. Then never came back, not even to say goodbye, as if I lived miles and miles away from the academy.

He thinks he’s better than me now, I suppose, just because he was accepted and I wasn’t. The worst is that, for a moment, I thought I could find happiness outside the academy. I thought I could lead a simple life with a fisherman’s son. It wasn’t love, but companionship, serenity, maybe just wanting to hold on to something that felt safe at the time.

Perhaps it was my body reacting to the moments when he brought me to the beach meadow, his skin against mine. I used to tell myself it was like plain bread, not delicious, but satiating. The more he satiated me, the more that hunger grew. He made me think I could one day love him, even if I had sworn never to let a man become the center of my life.

At least the illusion didn’t last long. He wasn’t really my type, even if he was good looking, with tan skin, green eyes, and light brown hair. I wouldn’t have chosen him, but he insisted; he was always there, always coming to the restaurant to see me. Perhaps it was what drove me to him; the thought that someone would always be there.

He forgot me as soon as he found something better.

I glance at the dark-haired instructor at the Foros table, thankfully looking down at his cups. Someone good looking like him could think he’s better than me, I guess, except that I don’t think I would have a chance with him. Would going to the beach meadow with him feel like plain bread?

He looks up at me, and I stare at the sky, wondering what insanity has come to my mind. Fine, Marcus has been gone for a year, and that’s a long time, but imagining lying down with an instructor, even a young and good-looking one, isn’t going to help me now.

I tell myself I’ll have plenty of opportunities to find interesting men in the academy, but all it does is make me even more anxious to pass the Trial.

Auranius takes off from the hill, his large shadow covering the grounds and the academy as he flies over us towards the ocean. At least he reminds me that I want to fly even more than I want to fuck. And still, I want both.

I want everything: the glory, the excitement, the fulfillment. I want to feel air beneath me as I float over our kingdom, like I’ve seen sentinels doing so many times before. Every time, my heart caught in a hiccup, my chest tight, that yearning deep like a knife lodged in my sternum.

My eyes focus on the table with the hourglasses, when a shadow covers us. My gaze lifts, expecting to see Auranius returning, but it’s a cloud. Gray and heavy, but lonely. More clouds are forming over the sea, clouds that will become liquid and fall before sunset.

Every evening in the summer, a thunderstorm hits us, usually at around five in the afternoon, and today it won’t be different. But the Trial should be done by then. Hopefully.

More candidates go up and down the towers, while I try to conjure the most unsexy image I can, just to banish any bizarre thoughts about the instructor. Fish innards. Rotten fish innards. And yet they remind me of Marcus. Bleh. I focus on the trials instead, even if my anxiety mounts every time a new candidate steps forward.

Meanwhile, clouds and more clouds cast shadows over us, and I can no longer see the time on the sundial, even if I’m sure three was a long time ago.

Thunder roars in the distance. Shit. What if they postpone the Trial because of the rain? What if they cancel it? Electricity feels heavy in the stuffy afternoon air, and my heart beats, beats, beats. Would the clouds listen to me if I told them to wait? My life’s suspended here, hoping for a chance.

More thunder roars, and my body feels stiff and cold, anxiety like a second layer of skin. An instructor steps out of the signing table and walks towards us. Please, please, please, don’t tell us the rest of the Trial is canceled today. Please. It’s my last chance.

“Three batch. Come forward.” His voice is solemn and low.

Forward?

I get up in a fraction of a second, and stand before him, as five other people do the same. We’re a small group, like some kind of leftovers.

He lines us up far from the remaining two o’clock batch—and I’m the first. Relief washes over my body right as another thunderclap splits the sky. We don’t have an hour before the rain.

The instructor walks to the back of the line and calls the girl standing there. It’s when I realize that, in reality, I’m not the first, but the last.

My mind is a blur as more and more clouds cover us, as one by one, the candidates take their turns. I can’t make the rain wait, can’t make everyone go faster, and yet for some reason, my body thinks that by getting stiff and bouncing around my feet, it can wield time and weather.

A thick drop of water hits my face, and I hear, “Next!”

The young man in front of me heads to the sandglass table, and my heartbeat echoes through my veins, as if it had climbed to my neck, behind my ear: thump, thump, thump.