THE UNENDING SLOW-MOTION fall, which the Faerie called flying merely for the fun of teasing the non-winged ones, speared endlessly into the depths of Spheris. Allory and Hansanori spoke for the longest time about everything that came to mind, from their diametrically dissimilar childhood experiences to their hopes for the future. Conversation between them flowed like living sap. She had never spoken to a manfae – nor to anyone – so easily or openly, not even Yaarah, and in her limited experience of interacting with girlfriends, it felt different somehow. Different intimacies. A singular form of connection.

  So much for the little Scintillant to learn. As in – little? Yaarah would growl, gnarr! She did feel like quite the Faeling in these matters. Allory was nonplussed to discover that Hansanori had also oftentimes felt desperately lonely and misunderstood, despite being surrounded by tutors, servants, court functionaries and carefully selected so-called friends all his life.

  Meantime, Jhoranyal fielded so many subtly pleading glances from his team that eventually he relented and ordered his warriors to familiarise themselves properly with the environment.

  In other words, they started to play.

  Even the starchiest Dark Elf warriors could crack a few smiles, especially when the exuberant Chameleon Fae joined in to show them how to somersault, twirl and tumble. Shake a limb, Elves! The non-winged ones twirled off the slightly luminescent tunnel walls, as buoyant as Fae and blessed with the natural nimbleness of their kind. Several tried to show off an Ahlumviar dance and soon received tutoring in the forms of Chameleon aerial round dancing in return.

  Ah, the joys of cultural exchanges.

  With the hour growing late and no end to the shaft in sight, the warriors organised a watch and the rest of the group simply fell and fell and fell into the depths, fast asleep.

  Miles upon miles.

  Ten? Twenty? More?

  “Remember leagues?” Ash teased Allory early the following morning when they still had not arrived at anywhere that resembled, well – anywhere.

  Drawing himself up, Varzune declaimed, “Thus saith the Scholar Yaarah: ‘One multiplies leagues by a factor of 3.542 to derive the figure in miles, trrr-pssst.’ Is everyone sufficiently well informed now?”

  Perfect mimicry.

  The Golden Purrmaine produced a fine scowl plus growl as everyone chuckled at his expense. He mumbled, “Too early for that, frrr-grrr.”

  Allory moved over to check up on her Pixie friends. Chenixipi’s hairstyle, for the moment, was a sleek, fresh-out-of-water wave atop her head. This Scintillant had never had a day’s smooth hair in her life. Not jealous in the slightest. Chenixipi had been teaching the other Scintillants the theory of Pixie healing practises and swapping technical notes with them. Unexpectedly, her friend’s pixels kidnapped her and spent a few minutes seething about her Elemental form as if they had rediscovered a long-lost playmate. After Chenixipi gently told them off for their hijinks, the pixels produced a sound like a pixelated giggle and then proceeded to parade all over and around her body, showing everyone that they had picked up traces of scintillance and now glowed like a host of miniature fireflies.

  “Ooh, how pretty you are!” Allory exclaimed.

  The pixels responded by rearranging Chenixipi’s hair into a four-foot-tall exclamation mark atop her head, crowned with a coronet of one Scintillant Fae.

  Ahem! Cheeky Pixie magic.

  Garobixi took his chance to seize Chenixipi’s ears in order to deposit a resounding smacker upon her lips, which scandalised all the Elves so violently that Varzune took the opportunity to advise Jhoranyal to take notes. Copious notes. Ashueli shot back that he should mind his own flaming business. When the Jokerbro laughed, his flaming business got involved by popping him into a friendly headlock.

  A memory popped unbidden into Allory’s mind. To think that as a Faeling, she had believed her Momfae and Dadfae liked to wrestle together in the cocoon!

  So gullible. Blush.

  Catching Yaarah touching his whiskers as if they tingled, Allory asked him, “Is there any gravity left down here?”

  “It’s almost undetectable,” he noted, stroking said whiskers with a sage air. “We felines use our whiskers as electroreceptive, gravitational and pressure sensors, amongst other abilities.”

  Electroreceptive? Way over her sparkles. She mused, “So, we could accelerate to a crazy speed by using our wings or pushing off the sides of the tunnel?”

  He bared a few fangs lazily. “Well, someone woke up on the sparkly end of the lair this morning. Excellent thinking from the local glitter-brain, hrrr-prrrt! Given the strategic situation above, we should indeed make this visit as short and sharp as possible. I wish I knew how deep we had come.”

  “The outer shell of Spheris must lie be somewhere in this direction,” she mused.

  “True, mrrr-prrr.”

  “Which is strange. The air supply remains constant, but gravity is near zero? I didn’t expect that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, where does gravity come from, Yaarah?”

  Even though he floated comfortably mid-air without needing to flex so much as a wingtip, he drew himself up into a suitably stylish scholarly pose. Lecture time, expressed in gorgeous feline elegance.

  He purred, “My dear shimmering Elemental phenomenon, gravity is a powerful force that operates at the most elemental level of our physical environment and clearly, manages to thoroughly ignore your kind, an important detail which you and I should investigate at a suitable juncture. Fundamentally, gravity is the force exerted by two mass-bearing bodies upon one another in relation to their respective masses and distance, such as the force our Middleun exerts upon us – and occasionally, as exemplified by our supermassive Allory Fae.”

  He produced a learned smirk. Pernickety Purrmaine. She’d love to put another crimp in those learned whiskers. Best listen closely, then.

  Allory said, “So, Middlesun pulls us upward toward Centresky?”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Aye, and scholars posit that there’s a corresponding, similar counterforce that effectively pulls one down against the inner surface of Spheris. Ergo, we do not float up into Middlesun, which would be awkward, one might suggest.”

  Giggle for the joke. “So, the surface is more massive than Middlesun?”

  “Aye. Effectively.”

  “I suppose that’s why when I experienced – when I became a gravitational anomaly, we could call it – I found myself forced downward, cracking the ground.” Allory nodded slowly, puzzling it out. “Middlesun and I do enjoy a considerable level of affinity, I must say – but it does seem peculiar to me that a force so immense and fundamental could be evenly dispersed all the way around the shell of our spherical world and yet be stronger than the mass concentrated in Middlesun itself.”

  Had there been flies in the vicinity, his agape jaw would have gobbled them up.

  Pleasing.

  “I mean, we’ve seen the effect of Middlesun’s mass – if we’re talking about supermassive, then that’s her, isn’t it, Yaarah? Those attacks wobbled our entire world. The shell of Spheris must be a substance strange and wonderful indeed to keep everything in its right place, yet right beneath it there’s virtually no gravity at all. Can gravity be bereft of a direction in which to operate? Very odd.” She longed to scratch her sparkles like she used to scratch her antennae. “It does make this Faerie speculate, Yaarah …”

  “Speculate away,” he urged, with a slow wink of his left eye. “I can see you’re sparkling with ideas.”

  “Erm … so, I was just wondering, what if the Sentinel Trees and their structures serve not only to exchange heat but also gravitational forces?”

  “Mrrwll … gnarr?”

  She took that scrambled purr to signify his desire for further explanation.

  “Exactly, it would be marvellous and ever so elegant as a solution, right?” Allory wriggled her sparkles excitedly, wishing she had hands to wave about. “Could you imagine – aye! If that were true, it would probably mean that gravity acts far less as a static force solely related to the mass of interacting objects, but rather more like a living force, flowing like sap through a Faerie’s veins – or, in this case, through the fabric of our entire world!”

  “Mrrwll!”

  She crinkled her sparkles fondly toward her friend. “Alright there, Furball? Something stuck in your throat?”

  “Hairball?” Varzune offered. “Sparkle congestion?”

  “Aye … aye!” the scholar spluttered as their group clumped together around him. “Having a philosophical discussion with Sparkles is a sure invitation to having your worldview and, might I add, your entire brain turned inside-out, shaken up by an irritable Hyperdragon and blown into Pixie dust! I mean, mrrr-frrr, how’s it possible to redefine the entire discipline of gravitational physics in twenty seconds flat?”

  Allory put in politely, “By not knowing what under Middlesun I’m talking about?”

  “No, that’s my job,” Varzune informed her.

  “Sss … gnarrr-t that!” Yaarah hissed rudely. “I meant, by offering what – well, it has to be – a viable hypothesis that addresses only the most infamous conundrum in modern theoretical physics. The practical application of gravitational theory is an ancient problem which, until about a hundred years ago, was thought to have been solved by the Rruzi-T’shangu workaround, but that was disproven, mrrr-frrr – by Felidragon scholars, as it turns out – who proved that the gravitational constant isn’t constant as predicted. That became known as the Fangleak Fallacy … am I making any sense?”

  Allory offered her most reassuring smile. “Not really.”

  Varzune said, “Problem solved, problem not solved, and there are some really clever Felidragons Allory’s idea has just swatted around the collective furry earholes?”

  “Works for me,” Sabline grinned.

  Yaarah made a show of admiring her fangs. Who wouldn’t? They were just so … shiny. Allory inched away surreptitiously.

  Meantime, Ashueli scowled at everyone. “My homeland’s in mortal danger – not to mention all Spheris – and we’re blathering on about the inner workings of gravity? Move, people! And Fae. Felidragons! When we’re moving fast enough, to my satisfaction, I will permit you all to start thinking again!”

  An outburst of stress?

  The Golden Purrmaine nodded immediately. “Let’s move.”

  Still, despite Ash’s outburst, Allory knew that the issue of gravity had to be significant. She sensed that at some deep level there might be a link between the existential weight of souls and the real, physical effects she and the others had seen reproduced both upon her and upon Middlesun. Ariavanae was likely a factor. Maybe even light itself. How did that factor in? Could the life-force or life-magic of souls truly produce real gravitational effects, and could it be that ariavanae was the culprit, creating the link between the metaphysical and the physical realms?

  As she pondered these conundrums, she peripherally noticed the Elves working on picking up speed by bounding from one tunnel wall to the other and back again at a shallow angle. One or two Chameleon Fae jeered or joshed them in good spirits, but Varzune suggested that they link hands all the way around the tunnel, lean forward as far as they reasonably could and start sprinting downward – and soon, it was the Chameleons who were in danger of being left behind. Elves in a hurry were no slouches. Graceful storms in motion. They soon graduated from running to skimming and their group to moving at easily ten or fifteen times the speed they had been before.

  The tunnel’s rushing by became mesmeric …

  Time appeared to flicker. Allory found herself returning from a period of deep meditation to find the Seer Amazas sitting facing backward upon Sabline’s back, lecturing everyone about a time when the Deepwoods were truly alive. He called Ahm-Shira by an ancient Elven term tu’shin lama erkulli, or ‘the place where life is tethered,’ adding that the term could also mean ‘grounded.’ Appearing to notice her renewed attention somehow, he slipped in an offhand comment about how the Wraith could only exist in the presence and power of ariavanae.

  Thunderbolt! Yet … all Spheris was steeped in magical power. What good would that insight do?

  Pity there was no convenient hole and a Giant-sized – no, Middlesun-sized – boot to get rid of the foul entity once and for all. Boom! Out you go! And stay out!

  She noticed that when Amazas told his stories about how the ancient powers of Fae, Elf and Deepwoods had come together in a time of great prosperity, mutual learning and peace, his eccentricities disappeared. He related stanza after stanza in a calm, singsong cadence.

  Oh, and Allory observed that Sabline and Yaarah had each taken a group of Elves and Fae in tow, spreading their wings to almost touch the tunnel edges as they powered downward, the overall speed now limited only by the friction of the sweetish-smelling air itself. The Scintillant rode in the crook of Ashueli’s neck, while the Elven Princess held hands with Jhoranyal and Barakunal. The Master had his eyes closed, but he appeared to be listening intently.

  How lonely it must have been to imagine he was the only Elemental left. How concerning. What had become of the others as years turned into decades and centuries? Had Middlesun’s life-giving power been waning all this time? For how long? Was this the Wraith’s influence, the slow degradation or consumption of all living, magical things?

  Could Spheris itself be dying?

  A billion bones scream a truth no creature should ever want to hear …

  Quietly, against the pulse of Ash’s neck, she said, “When we get a chance, Ash, would you ask your father to tell us about being an Elemental?”

  “I will. Why?”

  “My friend, if you and I want to live long beneath Middlesun, we need to learn everything we can about … well, being ourselves.” A fierce nod briefly compressed her sparkles. “That little Faeling from the jungles – we can’t afford her anymore. We need to be more. Learn more. Find a way –”

  “We should never forget her,” the Elf interjected.

  Allory hissed in negation.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. The past shapes who we are. For example, physically speaking, you will always be diminutive in size –”

  “Runt-o-mini-Sparkles? Thanks.”

  “Allory Fae! Hush,” her friend huffed in annoyance. “That voice? Whack – smack – bash-bash – clobber – understood?”

  “Eep.” Giggle. “I obey, o mighty Elemental Elf.”

  “About time. Yet between the two of us, mini-Sparkles, who is the mighty Elemental? Bearer of souls? Beater-upper of Giants?” Those eyebrows’ wagging drew a chuckle from her partner. “All I’m saying is that we can’t help being made the way we are, but the sap of our being – discovering the true sap of our beings – is perhaps the greatest endeavour of our lives. Can our sap change? I believe it can. Look at me, look at you. I believe you can and will break the shackles of your past. That is who you are – Allory Life-Weaver, born to shine.”

  Suggids on top of suggids! Sweetblades hammers it home …

  Allory shivered against her friend’s neck for the longest time. At last, she breathed, “I can’t thank you enough, Ash.”

  “I’ll be a pain in the sparkles anytime you wish, my friend. All you have to do is ask.”