Tessa Gratton

“The Day the Sky Opened”

a Five Mountains story

In the eastward middle of the empire a town named Shards of Summer sprawled next to a snaking river ruled by several small heron spirits rather than a great spirit of its own. The town was famous for the blue agate mined there, found nowhere else in the world. Raw, it was milky and ragged, with long streaks that in moonlight resembled aether-threads. Polished, the agate became a perfect piece of a hot summer sky in the palm of the hand. 

The sky agate was expensive not only because it was so often so pure, and because it was rare, but because all the known veins had been discovered on lands under the care of two families who quickly married into each other and set whatever prices they liked—within the bounds set by the local justiciar who answered directly to the imperial palace. 

Forty-ish years ago, on a night ravaged by a late spring storm, two things happened: on an estate south of Shards of Summer, the wife of the first son of a wealthy farmer went into labor, while her husband nearly drowned in a flash flood. He’d been trying to save six plow horses with his cousins when he was hauled underwater—and one of his cousins, too. Battered against the pasture and dragged toward the forest, they gasped and clung to each other. They caught themselves on an old chestnut tree. The water tore at them, and at the tree, and slowly, slowly, pulled the chestnut out of the earth. In the darkness and lashing rain, the two young men could only hold tight and cry out for any listening spirits to help them. The chestnut tree was home to a spirit, in fact, and because of their prayers and tears, it was able to lick up enough aether to survive the death of its house without becoming a demon. 

The sun rose, and the floodwaters passed, leaving the two young men soggy and wrung out. When they were able to climb off the tilted chestnut, laughing with giddiness at having lived, they knelt on the muddy ground and thanked the spirit. They promised to bring honey cakes and some of their grandma’s barley wine for it, and offered it blood and spit to live off of until it could find a new house. Would it like a shrine, or another tree? They could carry it to the house or the family shrine and maybe some of the old spirits and guardian ghosts would welcome it. 

The two could not see it, but they felt the cool tingle as it kissed their foreheads and cheeks. They heard a tiny voice like the the sound of a needle against thimble say, look here

And the spirit pushed at both young men until they followed it to where the roots of its chestnut house stuck half-up out of the crumbling, muddy earth, revealing a cleft in the bedrock. Instead of shadows, the inside of the world shone brilliant blue. 

An hour later, the young man burst into his wife’s house with a blue agate the size of his fist, just in time for the midwife to pull a large baby from his screaming mother. The baby’s eyes opened immediately, according to everyone who was there—and they swore the child looked right away at his father, and his eyes were as startling blue as the gem. 

Demon-kissed blue—summer sky blue. 

They named the baby The Day the Sky Opened, and although his eyes darkened to a very human brown, slips of blue could still be seen in his pupils when the light was right—or just wrong, or when the moon was a sliver at dawn. He was quiet and determined, and very, very strong, which had been his great-grandmother’s demon gift, too, though his grandfather and mother’s demon gifts were more aligned with dexterity and precision. Strength was better, Sky’s mother said, because even as a child he gave the best hugs. 

By the time Sky was nine years old his family were not only successful farmers, but rich from the huge vein of sky agate discovered on his birthday. He had four little brothers and sisters, only one of whom was also demon-kissed, and everything was prosperous and settled enough that when Sky said he wanted to go to the capital and join the army, his mother offered to buy him a commission into the Warriors of the Last Means. But Sky was very aware of the advantage of his strength—it was hard being a child too much stronger than all one’s friends—and this young child told his mother he wanted to earn his way up from the ground. His mother was both proud and aggravated, but sent him to the army with money and weapons even though he was too small to know what kind of weapons would eventually suit him best. And she sent him with a pocket full of sky agates, both raw and polished, and a small mountain icon carved from the wood of the very chestnut tree that had revealed to his father their destiny. Only Sky knew that the old spirit from that chestnut tree, a flighty but surprisingly powerful cardinal, left with him, using the mountain icon as a temporary house and eating bits of his food and drinking from his tea. And also occasionally laughing at his classmates as they fumbled through their training.

Sky never fumbled.  

On his fifteenth birthday, Sky visited home to see his family for the first time in three years and to tell them he’d been invited into the palace as a member of the imperial guard. He took the cardinal spirit to visit its old tree, which bent over a small stream now, preserved next to the entrance to the agate quarry, and asked if the spirit would like to have a sword-house built for it. While they were in Shards of Summer, he could visit the local witch-smith and design a sword for himself—which he needed to do anyway—but they could imbue it with the proper sigils and aether cords so that as Sky practiced he could attune the sword and the cardinal spirit together and eventually the cardinal could become a sword-spirit. 

The cardinal agreed, and it was lucky that it did, because when Sky arrived at the Palace of Seven Circles to begin his first rotation with the imperial family, the great demon nearly refused him entry. Sky, suddenly confronted by a wall of shadows, knelt slowly and placed his sword on the hard-packed earth right there beyond the first gate of the seventh circle. “Great demon,” he said, “my sword is attuned to aether, and imbued with the spirit that has known me since I was born. I ask you to allow me to bring it within your house, to better protect the Family of the Moon.”

what is your name? the great demon asked. 

As his peers and the Commander Blue Archer (who was also demon-kissed) stared with either surprise and fear in the case of the new guards and interest in the case of the commander, Sky said, “The Day the Sky Opened, great demon.”

and your sword

“It is unnamed, great demon. Would you do us the honor?”

ask Nothing

Sky frowned, but nodded, and the great demon vanished. Commander Blue Archer clasped Sky’s shoulder and nudged him onto his feet, saying, “Strong work, and you’ll have to show me how you invoke the aether when you spar.”

It took several days before Sky understood what the demon had meant by ask Nothing. 

He quickly fell into his new life, with its complicated, breathtaking schedule. Between training and working shifts he did little but inhale meals and sleep for a few hours at a time. It was as he’d expected, except for the additional training lessons in manners and stillness—the stillness lessons he loved, for they felt like both meditation and intense games, requiring him to notice and remember incredible amounts of detail, without reacting to the details or reacting to anything at all, really, but for a direct threat. He did not make friends, but he didn’t expect to. Being demon-kissed kept most at a distance, and he rarely bothered asking questions or conversing at all with his neighbors in the palace barracks. Still, being an excellent sparring partner and patient teacher gained him a good reputation. Also, Sky could see spirits and shadowy traces of the great demon, and always made sure his peers left offerings for the few spirits tolerated by the demon (mostly in the flower gardens, as well as dawn sprites who liked to gather in beams of sunlight and a few salamanders who lived in the palace shrines, tending the candles). Most folk thought the great demon kept out all other spirits, but he could plainly see it wasn’t true. Only the palace witches were in on the same secret, and the weird little girl who followed the prince around. Her name was Nothing, and when Sky met her, he realized the great demon had intended for him to ask Nothing to name his sword. 

Sky did not ask. 

In his defense, he had been extremely preoccupied at the moment by the Heir to the Moon. 

Under most circumstances, Sky would have been considered too new and young to be put in charge of the prince’s daytime security, but there was an emergency in the Commander’s family the same day half the barracks were out doing maneuvers and the last thing the Blue Archer did before putting his second-in-command in charge was to suggest to her that she hand the Heir over to The Day the Sky Opened. So she did, harried enough by the rash of sudden decision-making. 

Sky found himself in the Lily Garden in his black-and-blue uniform, his sword on his back and hair braided into a precise topknot, sweating under the sun and staring at Kirin Dark-Smile, fifteen years old and reclining half naked against a round pool of spindly white dragon lilies. The objectively beautiful prince was lithe and long-limbed, barefoot and with his trousers rolled up past his ankles, a cerulean robe hanging half off one shoulder and loosely tied at his waist. His elbows propped him against the pool, and his chin was tilted up to reveal lines of a gorgeous neck. Sky’s heart immediately began to pound in his skull. 

There was a younger girl, maybe thirteen, sitting in the lily pool, water up to her waist and surrounded by clinging lily pads. Her hands dug into Kirin’s heavy black hair, trying to part it into several pieces for an elaborate braid. At least, that is what Sky assumed she was doing, with a three-tined amber comb in her teeth and a scowl of concentration across her pale brow. 

Sky managed to tear his gaze from the prince—his lips curved in the slightest smile, his sharp, high cheeks flushed perfectly pink, and his dark lashes sliced against those cheeks—to do his job and notice all the details of the Lily Garden. It was empty but for the three of them, and though the cluster lilies and moon lilies were arrayed in messy concentric beds none were tall enough to hide anything, and the redwashed walls spilled with hanging lilies rather like curtains, but again, unless they hid cracks in the wall or hidden doors, they were alone. 

“Who’s that?” asked a small, annoyed voice, garbled from the comb in her mouth. 

The girl scowled at him, but Prince Kirin lifted his head and sat gracefully, lips breaking into a wide, lopsided smile. “A guard we don’t know,” he said. 

Sky bowed, not lowering his eyes—doing so left them all vulnerable—and said, “The Day the Sky Opened, Heir. I am yours until the evening rotation.” 

He struggled then, not to look away. Yours had not been what he’d intended to say. 

The prince’s smile tilted even more. “The Day the Sky Opened, is it? And demon-kissed? Where are you from?”

“Shards of Summer,” he said. 

The girl in the pond had gone back to concentrating on the prince’s hair, though because of how he’s sat straighter, she leaned up on her knees to reach: she was soaked and her layers of robes clung to her. It was more than unseemly. 

Kirin Dark-Smile nodded. “I have a comb with seven polished sky agates. It’s nearly as handsome as you.”

Sky’s jaw clenched. He said nothing. 

“The Day the Sky Opened,” the prince said again, softer, his gaze dancing all over Sky. 

Most people assumed his name had to do with a rainy legend, a storm marking some festival, the end of a drought—some reason to celebrate the sky opening. Sky didn’t mind, he didn’t think very deeply about the name himself. It was his, and more than that hardly mattered. He knew what he wanted from life, he understood—thought he understood—his strengths. He’d been teased about the demon-kissed indigo tones in his hair gleaming like the sunset on storm clouds, or the blue highlights on his brow and cheeks, girding his knuckles and deepening the shadows under his jaw being the color of water in fresh rain cups. He’d been told he was much more like a mountain than rain, and never bothered reminding them that rain made floods and entire rivers, that unless a mountain was a volcano, rain was much more dangerous. 

So Sky assumed the prince would also go with storms, as Kirin’s expression narrowed into a very sharp curiosity, and he stood up—ignoring the little squawk from the pond girl—and walked nearer. Sky was very careful not to move. He was slightly older than Kirin, but the prince was slightly taller. Thinner and lankier, and glided barefoot across the path of smooth white pebbles. The robe slid even farther down his left shoulder, and Kirin folded his hands behind his back, tilting his head as he studied Sky. 

“But what?” the prince asked softly. 

“Heir?” Sky asked, throat dry. 

“What did the sky open? And what was found inside?”

The words—half whispered, both intimate and bordering on clinical—stabbed into Sky and he felt exactly like he was being opened up, and that Kirin Dark-Smile was looking right at something inside him. Only Sky had no idea what.  

“I don’t know, Heir,” Sky said. He swallowed and yet again forced himself not to look away from the beautiful prince. 

“Hmm,” Kirin said. Then he smiled, a much brighter smile accompanied by a high little laugh. It clearly said: let’s find out but Kirin spun around, robe flaring enough to brush Sky’s shins. “Nothing, you’re a disaster,” he said to the pond girl. “Sky, this is Nothing, she also needs your protection.”

“I don’t,” the girl said, but quietly, looking shyly down at the comb in her hand. 

“I will protect the prince first,” Sky said. 

Kirin slid him a displeased look over his bare shoulder, but beyond him, nestled among the heart-shaped lily pads, the girl—Nothing—smiled to herself and her eyes briefly flicked up to Sky’s. 

A mere two months later, Sky was permanently assigned as the prince’s bodyguard. Kirin himself had forced it to happen, he bragged at Sky, rather flippantly—like he’d just moved a piece on a game-board at a whim. For a lark. Sky, heating up at the tone, suddenly realized he could see a slight tension affecting the flutter of the prince’s lashes, and wondered how much of Kirin’s behavior was an act. 

The girl, Nothing, was a problem. A security problem, at least, for she crept around the palace in the very walls, crawled across ceiling beams, and seemed to know every weakness in every room to exploit. And she always, always could be found near Kirin. He obviously loved her—though as a friend or as a pet it was often difficult to tell. Sky was caught glaring at her one morning as Kirin was being fitted with a ritual gown for the upcoming midsummer blessing and Nothing poked her head out from behind a diaphanous wall-hanging to whisper at the prince. 

As they walked side-by-side to Kirin’s appointment in the library, the prince knocked his shoulder against Sky’s and said slyly, “She is known by the great demon of the palace. Harmless.”

Sky turned his cool glare onto Kirin. For now he had to glance slightly up, but Sky was certain by next year he’d be the taller of the two. Kirin laughed at the look and touched his shoulder onto Sky’s again. 

“Nothing for you to worry about!” he teased. 

But Sky recalled that the great demon had told him to ask Nothing to name his sword, and that made Sky wonder if the great demon was just as too-much enamored with the spindly little orphan as Kirin. 

At least once a month Kirin Dark-Smile found a moment to ask Sky if he’d figured out what the sky opened. 

“No, Heir,” Sky always answered. 

The first midwinter Sky spent at the palace, Kirin wore the sky agate comb in his hair, pairing it with vivid silver and indigo robes, black and violet around his eyes and the same sky blue on his lips and on his fingers. He was impossible to look away from, and more than one courtier mentioned it seemed the prince had found a new accessory in his demon-kissed bodyguard. The uniform and demon blood complimented the prince’s attire so very well! 

Sky glowered, but when Kirin looked slyly at him, Sky couldn’t help liking the idea. More than liking it—he felt hot belonging.  

Late that night, Kirin caught his hand just outside his chamber, still elaborately dressed, painted and perfect, and he tugged Sky closer, so that they were a breath apart and the bright amber flecks in his eyes shone. “At least, The Day the Sky Opened, you should open for me.”

Sky’s lips did just that, parting over a gasp, but he stepped back very quickly, bowed, and left. 

The Heir to the Moon was absolutely forbidden. Until he took the Moon into his mouth, became the emperor, nothing lesser than the Moon could be inside of him. Even the prince’s spoons were blessed by priests and witches; his food prepared by an aether-wise cook dedicated only to the Family of the Moon. He had special soap and hair oil, and teacups made of quartz charged under the full moon to make his water suitable. 

It didn’t matter that Kirin had a secret smile, not dark at all, but quiet and pretty, that he smiled to himself when he read something he liked. It didn’t matter that he rolled his eyes at Sky when someone at a banquet said something especially ridiculous, then later did a perfect impression just for Sky as they walked into the sixth circle to the Heir’s quarters. It didn’t matter that Kirin argued flawlessly with his tutors, running with them in elaborate circles of history or poetry, whatever they asked, and then asked Sky’s opinion regardless of the subject matter. It didn’t matter that he prince loved to spar with two small swords or a heavy staff, and fought so hard there was no room for Sky to let him win. The sweat dampening his hair, the hot gleam of competition in his eyes, the way the tip of his tongue appeared as he panted afterwards, the way he started stripping off his outer layers before he’d even disappeared behind the privacy screens lining the edges of the bathing pool, letting the robes fall like petals around his feet, arms raised to loosen the ties in his hair and slide fingers through the braids until it was a sleek black fall. It certainly did not matter how badly Sky wanted it to be his fingers in that hair. 

By the time Kirin was seventeen, and Sky just eighteen, he did know exactly what the prince would find if he put his hands on Sky’s chest and dug his fingers in to peel back skin and muscles and bone to reveal his heart. 

What mattered was the afternoon when Sky arrived at the prince’s chamber to escort him into the city for an arranged aether duel Kirin was sponsoring. He tapped his knuckles to the door frame and Kirin said, “Sky if that’s you come in,” and Sky did just in time to see Kirin take a honey’d petal from a small cup in Nothing’s hand and pop it into his mouth. 

Sky halted, staring. 

Nothing frowned at him, then she darted away, vanishing behind a trunk where Sky knew there was a tear in the wall leading into the smoke ways she haunted. 

“Sky?” Kirin was frowning, too. “What’s wrong?” 

“You…” A tiny grain of sugar glinted on Kirin’s lip. 

The prince licked it away, absently, then raised one dark eyebrow. “The candy?” Then his surprise melted into dark, wicked delight. He dropped one shoulder and glided toward Sky. His trousers were wide as skirts and so dark a red they were nearly black, fluttering like a gown, especially with the long layers of his shirt and robes in more reds and maroon and pinks. Even his lips were pink, and his hair braided up with red silk. He was so, so beautiful. And looking at Sky in the most deadly way. 

“The great demon doesn’t care,” the prince said. “About what I put in my mouth. So long as I don’t, oh…poison myself or something.” Kirin laughed. “You’re scandalized.”

“Yes, prince,” Sky managed. And maybe he was a little bit angry, too. 

Kirin got close enough to flatten his palm to Sky’s chest. “The Day the Sky Opened, what is that look in your eye?” He leaned in, too close. 

Sky’s pulse thundered, and he backed up a step, then another. But the closed door was behind him. Kirin didn’t stop, leaning in with his hand trapped flat between them. He fluttered his lashes, but his expression became serious then. He’d never looked less playful as he stared at Sky’s eyes, and all over his face. Then he dipped his head in, and against the shell of Sky’s ear he whispered, “Are you holding your breath?” 

He was. And he couldn’t drag in a breath at all—it would be too full of Kirin, too much. It would matter too much. 

“You’re more than honeyed petals, Sky,” Kirin said, the words trailing down his jaw, along his pulse. 

Then Sky felt fingers on the soft skin behind his ear, on his earlobe, and the prince pinched. 

“Kirin,” Sky said, a hiss because if he gave it voice it would be more like a sob. 

“Ah, Sky, Sky.” Kirin pushed his cheek to Sky’s cheek, and Sky felt so cold compared to the brilliance of the Heir to the Moon. 

Then Kirin leaned back, his hand still over Sky’s heart, but he met Sky’s gaze again, and Sky was afraid of what the prince might see. 

Whatever it was, Kirin smiled—not his tilted dark smile, but the quiet, pretty one he only gave to himself when he read something he liked. And he said, gently, “Sky, will you open up for me?”

And Sky kissed him hard, with lips and tongue and teeth.