The Glass Skylark

Heat shimmered above the furnace like a living mirage, bending the view of the floating markets beyond the workshop windows. Kae drew the gather from the glory hole and rolled the glowing globe on the marver, palms steady, breath measured. The glass recorded his breathing the way a pond remembers a pebble. Outside, Aeralis drifted on pale currents, its terraces pinned to the skeleton of an ancient leviathan that had once learned to hover. Air tasted of ozone and roasted sesame from a street stall that popped seeds in an iron pan, a sharp, homely smell that snuck in under the door.

“Mind your wrists,” called Tavi from her low stool. She was a slim thing in old quilts with eyes like polished walnut. Her cane tapped twice as she rose to check the wavering shape at Kae’s rod. “Lift on the turn.”

“I’m lifting.” Sweat trickled behind Kae’s ear. He turned, lifted, breathed through the blowpipe. Gold thinned to a pellicle, a bubble swollen by his lungs. He sheared the lip and tilted, letting gravity draw a beak, then nudged with tongs. Out of heat and breath, a little bird began to show its curve.

Pia’s reflection bobbed in the window, a small face with freckles pressed to the glass. She flung the door wide. “Kae! The festival strings are up on the cusp. There are sugar kites shaped like whales!”

“Tell them to bring one down here,” Tavi muttered, but her mouth twitched.

“I will,” Pia said solemnly, then leaned toward the furnace with both hands behind her back. “Is that going to fly?”

“It’s going to cool,” Kae said. He parted the bird from the rod with a practiced twist and slid it into the annealer. The quiver in his forearms slowed. He wiped his brow with the back of his wrist and looked out through the window at the wide light-gilded decks. Streamers hung from guy wires above the rim, catching sun like scales. The day swelled with music from bamboo flutes and clacking spoons. Somewhere higher, he could hear the steady thrum of the lifting turbines.

He loved that sound. It was the city’s pulse.

He took a stool beside Tavi, and she reached for his hand. Beneath the quilts her fingers were cool, the skin thin as rice paper. “You breathe too deep,” she said. “You leave your breath inside the glass, and it’s wasted on a trinket.”

“It’s not wasted if it’s beautiful.” He grinned. “I’ll mend your oil lamp later. It’s smoking.”

“Fix the chimney and I’ll forgive it.” She peered at him. “You still haven’t been to the registry to argue about your permit?”

“I argued yesterday. The clerk said come back tomorrow.” He lifted one shoulder. “So I will.”

“Your father would have cursed.”

“I am not Father.” The words came out softer than he meant. He glanced at the annealer’s dull glow until his eyes watered, then took a breath of cool air from the window, letting it rinse his chest.

The turbines’ tone shifted a semitone lower. Kae felt it first in his teeth, then in his bones.