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.
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.
This story is sadder than most of what I write. But it has a hopeful ending.
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.
*****
It was nearly dark when the winds finally brought Bjorn home.
What was left of home.
That morning, when he had set out to hunt elk, he had left a modest but bustling ecosystem of four linked airships, floating in the sky: One for him, his wife, and his two daughters. One for his three sons. One for his sister and mother. One to store their diminishing supplies.
Now, all that was left was a wreck on the grassy plains.
Bjorn couldn’t wait for his balloon’s agonizingly slow descent. While still forty feet in the air, he tossed a rope over the side and slid down, an axe lashed to his back, wrath in his eyes, panic in his heart. He stopped only long enough to lash the rope to a tree, then sprinted across the plain. A cry erupted from his throat—of desperation, of anger, of loss.
The wreckage of the four airships was spread out across the rocky plain. The wooden gondolas lay in smashed and broken heaps, still tied to each other by long ropes. Around them lay the charred and blackened remnants of their balloons, the fires that had consumed them long since spent.
Bjorn waded into the wreckage, bellowing as he tossed debris aside, heedless of the cuts and scrapes he inflicted on his hands and legs.
When he found what he had desperately hoped not to find, the bellows gave way to sobs.
*****
Bjorn’s family was dead.
He found all eight of them in the broken wreckage: His wife. His five children. His sister. His mother. All of them.
He had dreaded the worst as soon as he had seen the smoke. But he had hoped against hope that the fire had just been an accident—that a fire pan had flared up, that a single balloon had caught fire, but that his family had reacted in time to save those on board and cut the balloon loose from the rest.
But that wasn’t the case. No. They had been attacked.
The evidence was not in what he found, but what he didn’t find. None of their tools. None of their supplies. Nothing of the slightest value.
He curled his hands around the handle of his axe. His family had been slaughtered, their aerial homes pillaged, then the balloons set afire as the perpetrators sailed off, leaving the gondolas to fall hundreds of feet to their doom.
And he hadn’t been there to stop it.
After a feverish half hour of frenzied searching to confirm his fears, Bjorn stood still in the midst of the wreckage, staring at the smashed remains of what had once been an intricately crafted railing. Soot and dirt caked his hands, his arms, and his tangled hair. The last rays of light were retreating across the landscape, until only the tops of faraway trees were aglow. Still he stood, silent, rendered mute by shock and loss.
When darkness fell, he set to work.
With his axe, he hewed at the grass, then fell to his knees and scraped at the ground with his bare hands. Once he had cleared the soil he had broken, he rose to his feet and raised his axe again. Working so, inch by inch, he carved a tomb into the cold ground. The Near Moon and the Far Moon watched over his progress, lighting the landscape with their green and red light as they flitted behind the passing clouds.
An hour into his work, he began to curse the gods.
Curse the gods for the chieftain’s son who had insulted Bjorn’s wife the previous summer, sparking a fight.
Curse the gods for the fearsome strength of Bjorn’s punches.
Curse the gods for the deadly outcome of that match, which Bjorn had regretted instantly but could not recall.
Curse the gods for those who had banished Bjorn’s family from their ancestral tribe.
Curse the gods for the storm that had destroyed their spare supply balloon.
Curse the gods for the passing merchants that had cheated them in their poverty.
Curse the gods for the failed hunts.
Curse the gods for the broken tools.
Curse the gods for the plague that had ripped through their ranks last winter, leaving four dead.
Curse the gods for the marauders that had killed the rest of his family.
Curse the gods for making him live on.
Alone.
*****
It was morning when he finished digging the grave.
The Near Moon had set three hours into the night, denying him of its steady light. The Far Moon had followed three hours after that, leaving him with only the tapestry of the stars to light his work.
Now, the Sun rose to balance the night with its inevitable day.
Bjorn’s feet dragged with exhaustion as he gathered up the bodies of his family and laid them in the rough-hewn hole. Then with the last of his strength, he pushed the mound of excavated dirt over the top.
“Such is the way of the Hakiru,” he recited as he finished his labor. “We rise from the earth to live in the skies. We fall from the skies to die in the earth. In this, as in all things, there is balance.”
Then he collapsed on top of the pile of broken earth, and sobbed until sleep claimed him.
*****
“Tie it fast, ye unlucky air-lobbers!”
Bjorn awoke. Ants were crawling all over his left leg. One side of his face baked from the sun; the other side ached from the soil and rocks pressed into it.
The distant voice barked another order. “I want five lines this time! No repeat of last week’s fiasco.”
Bjorn cracked his eyes open. Daylight flooded his retinas. He blinked, squinting, until his vision cleared.
An unfamiliar cloud frigate floated just fifty yards away.
Bjorn lay still, waiting for the fog of exhaustion to leave his head. The sun was high overhead. Had he really slept half the day away?
The cloud frigate was docking, its crew scurrying around, some on the gondola, some already on the ground, tying mooring lines fast. He tried to count them. Ten. Fifteen. Maybe a score total. They sported garish colors and an assortment of weapons.
So the murderers of his family had come back for more.
Bjorn slowly extended his arm, pushing it through the dirt until his fingers found the handle of his axe. He drew it to him slowly, then slid his grip along its length until he held it at what he hoped was the best position for a fight.
He wouldn’t know. He was a father, not a fighter.
Well, he had been, anyway.
The marauders finished docking their ship and started toward him, spread out in a scraggly line. A large man in the middle—the captain?—barked out orders. “Krizmon, Azura, stand guard. Everyone else, see what you can find. We can spare half an hour, then we move out.”
Bjorn tensed his body, then leapt to his feet.
The raiders jumped. “Blistering barnacles!” one of them shouted. “I thought he was dead!”
One of them, a reptilian creature called a korrik, with red tattoos covering her scaly face, leveled an arrow at Bjorn. “If he takes a step forward, he will be,” she said, her voice clearly directed at him.
Bjorn raised his axe, considering his options. He knew he couldn’t win this fight. But he didn’t care about winning. He just wanted to take out as many as he could before he fell. Should he throw his axe at the leader, then retreat to his balloon to retrieve his spears? Should he try to take out the korrik archer instead?
The captain held up his gloved hand, his eyes on Bjorn’s axe as if he had a suspicion of Bjorn’s intentions. “Easy, there, big fellow. No need for this to get ugly.”
Bjorn raised his axe higher. “Tell that to my wife and children, kirkuthan!”
The captain took a step back, his face twisting. Kirkuthan was a particularly vile title among the Hakiru, reserved for those who showed absolute disregard for the balance of the world and the value of life.
The female korrik stretched her bow back. “Just give the word, Capt’n.”
Bjorn brought his arm back.
“Wait!”
A shrill voice broke the tension. Out of the marauders’ ranks stepped a snippen—a small animal, resembling a squirrel but about the size of a housecat. She stepped jauntily forward, a garish blue bandana around her long ears and a large assortment of knives stuck into her belt.
The captain shot her a glare. “Ensign Twigly, stand down!”
The snippen—Twigly, apparently—ignored him. She looked at Bjorn and gestured at the wreckage behind him. “You thought we did that, didn’t you?”
Bjorn didn’t respond.
“Well, we didn’t,” the snippen continued. “But we do have a good guess who did. His name is Svengor the Scourge. Black-hearted marauder. He’s got a half score of cloud frigates, painted pure black and crewed with the most merciless band of cutthroats that has ever sailed the skies.”
Svengor the Scourge. Bjorn had heard that name before, spoken by merchants in hushed, frightened tones. Bjorn spoke with a voice raspy from thirst. “I though Svengor hunted far east of here.”
This time the captain answered. “He got flushed out of his normal hunting grounds and turned west.” The captain patted a bandage on his arm. “We had a run-in with him just a week ago. Nearly lost our ship. We’ve been trailing his path of pillage ever since.”
Bjorn looked around at the ramshackle crew, mulling over the words he had heard the captain shouting as they had approached. His eyes narrowed. These weren’t priest-warriors, sworn to keep the skies safe as their duty to the gods. These were mercenaries and opportunists. At best. “Trailing him . . . to help those he harms?” Bjorn challenged. “Or to scavenge on any loot he leaves behind?”
Twigly shrugged. “To be honest, a little bit of both.”
Bjorn kept his axe raised. “Why should I believe you?”
Twigly shrugged a second time. “I dunno. Doesn’t really make sense for us to raid your balloons, then come back the next day for . . .” She stopped talking. Her eyes had come to rest on the mound of disturbed dirt under Bjorn’s feet. Understanding dawned in her eyes.
“Oh,” she whispered. When her eyes met Bjorn’s, their edges glistened.
“I’m so sorry.”
Her expression of sympathy broke the tension in the air. With it went Bjorn’s surge of strength. Feeling suddenly dizzy, Bjorn let the axe slip from his grip to thud into the dirt. Then he bowed his head, barely getting his next words past the lump in his throat.
“Please. If you have any respect for the fallen . . . help me send my family’s home back to the skies.”
*****
An hour later, Bjorn stood at the edge of a crack in the world.
It was a long crevasse, far too wide to jump over, interrupting the otherwise unbroken terrain. Its walls were broken and jagged, as if some ancient mighty force had ripped the ground apart. Looking over the edge, Bjorn could see the walls extend down, down into darkness—and at the very bottom, barely visible, a streak of light blue.
The sky on the underside of the world.
Behind him, the crew of the ramshackle cloud frigate worked to haul over the broken wreckage of what had once been his home. Hardly anything remained now—just the smashed frames of the gondolas, with half-burnt ropes and scorched leather piled on top.
Ensign Twigly joined him to look down into the endless depths of the crevasse. “Piddling pudding cakes!” she muttered. “Still gives me the shivers every time I find one of these.” She noticed Bjorn’s confused face and explained. “I didn’t grow up here like the rest of you. Back where I come from, across the Great Sea to the south, we don’t have crevasses. I mean, we do, but they just have rocks and dirt and dead mice and stuff at the bottom. Not a whole other sky!”
“Then where do you send your homes when they die?” Bjorn asked.
“That’s what I still don’t understand about you Hakiru,” Twigly said. “Homes don’t die. I mean, they kinda do. I mean, the structure itself doesn’t. . . . We just repair it or tear it down. We don’t hurl it over a cliff!”
Bjorn walked over to the remains of one of the gondolas. He ran his hand over the splintered wood, careful not to get slivers. He had built this gondola with his own hands. Chopped down the trees. Carved the wood. Shaped the hull. Sanded and polished every surface. It had been an anniversary gift to his wife, soon after their third child had been born.
“We come from the earth,” Bjorn rumbled, still studying the structure. “And so to the earth we return. But our homes come from the skies. The wood of the gondola—where does it come from? The trees, that breath the very air to make their wonders. The skins of the balloons—they come from the pterosaurs and wyverns, rulers of the skies. And the Prime Vapor that makes our balloons float? It is a gift from the gods themselves, a secret from the very edge of the sky.”
He laid his hands on the gondola. “And so, to maintain the balance, it is to the skies that our homes must return.”
He pushed.
The pile of wood, rope, and burnt leather teetered on the edge of the crevasse, then fell crashing into its depths, rebounding off the rocky walls to either side as it toppled down, down, down . . .
Never hitting a bottom.
As Bjorn’s home diminished into a dot in the endless blue, he sang.
Air and sky, storm and rain
That is the Hakiru way
Living mid the endless sky
Flying till the day we die!
*****
After all the wreckage had been sent to its aerial grave, Bjorn stood at the edge of the crevasse for what seemed an eternity, staring down into the endless depths.
Eventually, he became aware of the captain—Captain Roderick, he had learned in the last hour—standing next to him.
Bjorn cracked open his parched lips. “Thank you.”
The captain gave a curt nod. “It was our duty, and our honor.”
They stood for another long moment.
“You have a question for me,” Bjorn observed.
Roderick tugged at his beard. “I do . . . but if you are not ready to talk . . .”
“My balloon is not for sale.” Bjorn would need that to find an aerial village where he could take up employment. Without it, he was stranded—especially with his lack of foraging or hunting skills.
“That wasn’t my question,” Roderick said. “We noticed the find handiwork of your gondolas. Are you a carpenter?”
Bjorn rubbed some dirt off his calloused hands. “I can work with wood, rope, leather.”
“Good. We’ve been needing some repairs, but no one on my crew has the expertise. We could offer you a lift and share our meals if you could lend a hand over the next couple days.”
Bjorn snorted. “Several days? I saw the shape your ship is in. I’d have work to last me till next summer.”
“Good!” Roderick said, not seeming miffed at all at the assessment of his ship’s condition. “We’ll take you on until next summer. Longer, if you want to stay. With some training with the sword and axe, I could see you becoming one of the best warriors on our crew. What do you say?”
Bjorn looked up from the crevasse, studying Roderick’s pockmarked, scruffy face. Then he turned to study the rest of the crew, who were gathered around two of their members locked in a wrestling match. The shouts and laughter reminded him of the tribe that had once welcomed him. The home he had once had.
“One condition,” Bjorn said.
“Name it, and it’s yours,” Roderick vowed.
Bjorn put a hand to the axe hanging from his belt. “One day, you will help me find Svengor the Scourge. And when we do . . . he’s mine.”
*****
A half-hour later, Bjorn stood on the deck of Roderick’s ship as it lifted away. Bjorn’s one-man balloon had been collapsed, folded down, and stowed abord Roderick’s ship along with its wicker basket. Bjorn had no more need of it, and it would fetch a good price at the next village.
As they drifted higher into the sky, Bjorn kept his eyes on a mound of disturbed dirt, watching it diminish into a brown speck amid the dappled landscape.
And then he began to bless the gods.
Bless the gods for the life he had built with his wife, and the many years of happiness they had shared.
Bless the gods for the children he had raised, and the many memories he carried of them.
Bless the gods that his family’s sufferings and wanderings in banishment were finally over.
Bless the gods that they had died together, without prolonged suffering or pain.
Bless the gods that he had been spared, to return his family’s bodies to the earth, to surrender their home to the sky, and to seek vengeance on the kirkuthan who had murdered them, to set right the Balance.
Bjorn finally took his eyes off of the ground far below, to look at the band of pirates bustling around him. Twigly stood at the prow, eyeing him with a twinkle in her glance as she ate a carrot.
Bjorn smiled.
Bless the gods that his punishment was over, his curse finally satisfied.
Bless the gods that he had been given a new family, and a new home.
Bless the gods that after losing everything he loved, the only thing he could do now was to gain.
Bless the gods that a life brought down to the darkest depths must eventually be raised up.
Bless the gods for the Balance.
Then Bjorn ran his hand along the rough surface of the railing, while his other hand reached for a piece of sandpaper in his pocket. It was time to get to work.
After all, he was a carpenter. Not a theologian.
You may also enjoy . . .
Wow, what a great backstory! I wonder if and how you will incorporate Bjorn's story in the future books. Keep up the amazing work!
I didn't get around to reading this story right away, but I'm glad I finally dug back through my emails and read it! I enjoyed Bjorn's character perspective and the insight into this unique culture you've developed. Your writing flows so well and is enjoyable to read! (: