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Genre: Fantasy
About macey-museLocation: England Home Region: Age:19 Website: http://macey-muse.livejournal.com Favorite novels: Ender's Game, The Empire Trilogy, The Hogfather, Temeraire, Isavalta Favorite writers: Terry Pratchett, Raymond Feist, Chris Bunch, Naomi Novik, Sarah Zettel Favorite music: Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, AnCafe, Loreena McKennitt, Suzanne Vega Non-noveling interests: music, poetry, maths, fandom |
Joined: Juli 1, 2008 This Year: Official Participant NaNoWriMo History: NaNoWriMo posts: 36 NaNoWriMo buddies: 11
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Synopsis: Skymetal
There is a library in the land of Mallea which does not touch the ground; its roots were ripped from the earth decades before our tale begins. For years, its turreted silhouette drifted from city to city, resting here for a week, there for a month, wherever knowledge was sought.
But the only thing more dangerous than knowledge is imperfect knowledge put into practice, as the people of the land were soon to see. For in their prideful ignorance, the library released a plague upon them, a terrible virulent disease from which few recovered, and which fewer still could avoid. In her panic and guilt, the Librarian declared that they would take up what uninfected children they could, and flee into the wide blue sky. And so it was; the library did not anchor itself again, but instead drifted, self-sufficient and purposeless.
This is not that story. This is a story of a child, of friendship and courage and betrayal. A story, eventually, of sacrifice, and of love.
Nathaniel has never known anything but the Library - its twisted towers and infinite shelves, stacks clawing up into the distant ceilings where cobwebs reign. He's a book child, one of the uncounted many taken in when the land below fell. They are fed and clothed, taught as well as the librarians are able, but there simply aren't enough adults to care for them. To love them. So they are left for the books to raise.
Isabelle is not. She's something different, something Nathaniel doesn't understand - a child from the farm caves beneath the city, she's known love all her life. So why has she left it? How did she end up here, a ragged pile of cloth crumpled in an obscure reading room dedicated to the cultures of Below, arms scratched and skeletal? Nathaniel doesn't know. He takes her back to the stacks where they sleep, brings her food and water, and waits for her to wake.
Somewhere beneath the Library's subbasements, in the caves that riddle its roots, a twisted man’s creations are beginning to stir. In that chamber, before the eyes of the skymetal creatures, one of their lives will be changed forever. And that will have further-reaching consequences than any could have guessed.
Excerpt: Skymetal
Isabelle was leaning out across the stone, her clothes and hair billowing behind her like a figurehead in some pirate adventure book. “Be careful!” Nathaniel said, quickly moving to stand next to her.
“Don’t worry,” she said absently, “I’m not stupid enough to fall. But just look!” She tilted her head back and started to laugh, spinning slowly in place, trying to see everything at once.
Up above them, the great skymetal mirrors glinted in the dying light, like flocks of birds coming home to roost. In the day, they harvested light for miles, reflecting it down through the mirrored tunnels to the farm caves beneath the library. Now, though, as the sun set, the mirror stewards were guiding them back down onto the domed roof of the central archive, to rest until dawn gave them purpose again.
The tower they were on was one of the shortest. They were near the edge of the library, and behind them its pointed towers and arches rose up like a particularly intricate mountain, with clefts and ridges and windows reflecting the sky. All the histories agreed; the library hadn’t been designed. It had grown. The lowest halls had been the first to be built, an open-air complex complete with the narrow, winding alleys of the time. When future generations had run out of room to expand, they’d simply strengthened the walls and continued upwards. It was a long-running myth that somewhere in the library was a room containing blueprints for every stage of its existence, right back to when it had been nothing but a stone plateau riddled with caves all the way to the present and, some said, right on into the future.
Some people even said that the man who designed the Ring had found the plans in that room. It had been, after all, an impossible idea. And it had certainly driven him insane.
The view behind them, though, was nothing to the view before them.
If he leant out as Isabelle had done, he could just about see the edge of the library. It wasn’t that far away, but with all the buildings between the tower and the edge it was difficult to make out where exactly they ended. He couldn’t see the Ring, though; that was hidden beneath the curve of the rock on which the library rested.
That wasn’t the reason Nathaniel came up here, though. That wasn’t why, when he’d found a reference to an old observatory tower, he’d climbed every tower he could find that fit the description until he’d found this open rooftop.
No, that wasn’t the view that mattered. Up here, you could see the land.
It spread away as far as the eye could see, tangled forests and gleaming rivers, rolling fields and the glint of waves on the sea far below. From up here, it felt like he could actually see the land curving, like he could watch it fall away beneath them. From up here, nothing could touch them. Of course, that made the ground below just as out of reach for all of them; they were trapped on this flying fortress just as much as they were protected by it.
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