The Brink of Balance, Part 1/2
A hot-air balloon and a spear aren’t the best tools for hunting. But Bjorn didn’t know that.
Author’s note:
A year ago, when I ran the Kickstarter to launch my first book, the 5 highest backers got a special reward: They got to invent a character for my book (specifically, for a crew of swashbuckling aerial pirates), AND I would write a short story about that character.
This is the first of those stories, about a carpenter named Bjorn.
Bjorn’s character was created by my grandfather, Larry Hansen. This story expands the one-line origin story that my grandpa wrote for Bjorn—who he is, and how he joined the pirate crew.
I enjoyed writing this story because it allowed me to explore the culture, technology, and lifestyle of the sky-dwelling Hakiru, a civilization referenced only in passing in The Pyromancer’s Scroll. On the way, I got to explore how the Hakiru’s sky-bound lifestyle impacts their worldview—one centered on the vigilant maintenance of balance.
Enjoy!
The Brink of Balance
A hot-air balloon and a spear aren’t the best tools for hunting.
But Bjorn didn’t know that.
He was a carpenter, not a hunter.
Bjorn rode in a wicker basket barely large enough to fit his bulky frame. The basket hung suspended from a large, teardrop-shaped balloon, stitched together from hundreds of strips of animal leather.
He had built this basket with his own hands. He had been a boy then, three decades earlier, training under his father to work wood and bend branches to his will. He still remembered the exact song his father had been singing while they had worked. Bjorn sang it now, his clear voice piercing the vast sky:
Sky and air, wind and snow
That is the Hakiru road
Born amid the endless sky
Who would walk when you could fly?
It was probably the worst thing he could do at the moment—proclaim his presence to the herds of elk he was supposed to be tracking.
He was a singer, not a tracker.
He sang the song—merrily, and with perfect pitch—as he pulled a cord next to him. The cord ran up to a fire pan suspended above him, which heated the air in the balloon. When he tugged on the cord, it closed the vents around the firepan, decreasing the rate that the charcoal inside burned. After a minute, the balloon began to respond to the drop in heat, shrinking slightly, its sides bulging ever so slightly less. With the delicate balance of weight and lift disrupted, the balloon began to descend.
Bjorn felt all of this, as naturally as a sailor feels the movements of his boat. He had spent nearly his whole life in balloons: sleeping, eating, playing, cooking, singing, crafting. He walked on solid ground only a few times a week, for the tasks that couldn’t be done aloft: foraging for fruit and herbs, chopping wood, washing clothes.
And, too often in recent months, digging graves.
He scanned the landscape, his calloused hand shielding his gaze from the late morning sun. In all directions stretched the same mottled terrain: pine forests and grassy plains, dotted with hundreds of tiny lakes that reflected the sunlight like silver. It was the same terrain he had always known—infinitely varied, invariably the same, and monolithically flat.
And there—in one of those stretches of lighter green amid the dark green swathes of forests—a cluster of elk, looking no larger than ants from this high up.
“Thank the gods,” Bjorn murmured. Maybe in the wake of last winter’s scarcity, the world was slipping back into balance, and he’d have a catch to bring home for his sons to skin and his wife to roast over their homeship’s fire pan.
Bjorn checked his spears. He had learned his lesson and brought three this time. Two were crude constructions of obsidian, made earlier that week by his daughters. Only one of his spears was bronze. In these lands, metal was expensive. Every piece had to be imported from civilizations much farther south. A nomadic balloon society simply was not conducive to metallurgy. Not to mention mining.
He felt a shift as his balloon descended into a wind layer heading in the direction of the elk. With a tug on a second cord, Bjorn opened the vents on his fire pan to stop the balloon’s descent.
The elk had not seen him yet. Another minute or two and he’d glide right over them, maybe eighty yards up.
He wiped his sweaty palm on his tunic, then grabbed the bronze-tipped spear and leaned over the side of the balloon. As he waited to drift into range, he closed his eyes.
“Gods grant me a true eye and a steady arm,” he breathed. “To balance out my blind anger and unbridled strength last summer.”
He opened his eyes, aimed at the largest elk below him, and threw his spear with all his might.
The next moment he was grabbing the next, not waiting to see if the first found its mark. Below him, the elk sprang into motion, scattering in all directions. One sprinted directly under his balloon: he cast his second spear at this one.
His throw missed by inches.
He grabbed his last spear and sent it after the second. But by then all the elk had scattered into the surrounding forests.
Breathing hard, Bjorn studied the ground where he had made his first throw, hoping to see a heap of brown fur with a spear sticking out of it.
Nothing. His first throw had missed.
Bjorn hung his head. His curse still weighed down his family.
He tugged on his cord to descend and retrieve his spears.
*****
Solid ground always felt wrong at first.
Bjorn expected it to give a little, to respond to his weight as he jumped over the side of his basket. Its failure to do so was always slightly disconcerting—like the solid earth did not acknowledge his existence. Like his actions had no impact on the balance of the world.
Or maybe that the world had never been in balance to begin with.
As always, he shook the feeling off as he got to work. His bronze spear had chipped on a rock—thankfully on the side, not the vital tip. Good. He had neither silver nor skill nor access to a smith to have it repaired.
Leaving his balloon lashed firmly to the ground, he grabbed his spears and plunged into the trees.
*****
Three hours later, Bjorn returned with a rabbit.
He had been hoping to find one of the elk. But the herd had fled far, and he had no skill to track them. The rabbit had been a lucky find, spotted unexpectedly on his way back to the balloon. He had also filled his bags with berries, edible roots, and hopefully-edible mushrooms. His wife would know for sure.
He was a craftsman, not a forager.
By the time he returned, the fire in his balloon had almost petered out, leaving the basket firmly on the ground and the balloon floating half-limp above it. Hastily, he added more charcoal and coaxed the fire back to life, feeling both alarm and relief at his close call. If the fire had gone out completely, the balloon would have collapsed to the ground—and refilling it was impossible to do alone.
As the balloon re-filled with hot air, Bjorn loaded up his finds and untied the slack mooring ropes. Then he squeezed his huge frame back inside the wicker basket and waited for the balloon to gain enough lift to start his journey home.
That’s when he saw the smoke.
It was a thin, black plume, rising into the sky a long way away—back to the east, where he had come from.
Back toward home.
Panic spiked through his veins, followed by adrenaline. “By the balance of the world, let it not be so,” he whispered, staring at that far-away column of smoke. “Let it not be so!!”
But though his muscles urged to run, to fight, all he could do was wait the agonizing minutes for his balloon to take flight.
Waiting on the brink of balance.
This is very well written. Tight and focused. It hits all the marks (unlike Bjorn's spears) for a good episode. It is so easy to meander when writing—I think your discipline in this is far greater than my own :)