9. To Fall Far from the Tree

Dilova used everything she had learned. How to steer. That she had enough time and could slowly let the wind catch her wings. That she could tuck in her little foot to reduce drag. She believed she could fly.

And she flew.

Wow wow wow! Her father fell fast. His small wings were hopeless, as expected, and his panicked flailing did not help either. The emptiness of the air allowed her to predict exactly where he would end up, and fly there in a straight line.

On the first attempt, she missed her father due to a steering mistake. She circled back and grabbed him with her foot on the second try. The only foot she had and therefore incredibly strong.

But she hadn’t accounted for her father’s weight. She couldn’t lift him up with her small wings, and the ground approached more rapidly than before.

Above her sounded a crack as if the sky itself broke. Cosmo flapped his large wings and pushed the stairs aside with gusts of wind, again and again, until the stairs were tilted too far to support their own weight.

Something snapped inside colossal structure, as if the stairs were a finger trying to bend, and the top steps came loose.

He yelled at the animals. A few still tried to climb the highest step, but most realized what had happened to Fiante.

The stairs broke off, one step at a time.

Cosmo kept blowing, angry and panicked—but the stairs had never been built for stability. Although Cosmo attacked the top, the stairs now cracked in multiple spots, which broke into loose pieces all racing to hit the ground first.

Equids jumped from floating stone to floating stone. Rabbits hopped from broken branch to broken branch. Eeris repaired the bottom of the stairs with strong ivy, but the structure seemed too vast even for the gods. Dilova still tumbled down with her father in her grasp.

Until she saw the solution.

She steered and soon landed on the lower stairs. She looked her father in the eyes, but he didn’t see her. He stared past her, she didn’t know at what. She had to nudge him several times before he got the sense to walk down.

“There was nothing,” he mumbled. “There was nothing. There was nothing.”

Dilova kept pushing until her father was safe enough. Then she climbed back up again, towards the highest step still intact, and dove once more. In her flight, she picked up a small Equid desperately clinging to a falling smooth stone, whom she gently put down on a lower step.

And she took the stairs to the highest point again, dove, and caught two rabbits whose step had been blown away and now pierced a tree trunk below like an arrow.

She kept going, even though she couldn’t save everyone. So many animals had already fallen and not survived. But as long as parts of the stairs remained, she could dive, so she could fly.

The debris fell like snowflakes into the camp, on top of trees, and ricocheted off the Maybemountains. Though their garlands were already gone, the party had now truly begun.

Some Equids used the falling stones as transport. When a rock carrying no less than seven Equids landed safely in a treetop, as if they could steer it, everyone cheered.

On Dilova’s next run across the stairs, she was joined by a raccoon who could take seven steps at a time. Bella! She came! While Cosmo had largely blown away the stairs, the raccoon brought the last stranded animals down unharmed.

It wasn’t over yet. Debris kept falling, stones larger than their heads, wooden planks as long as a tree, as if a hundred tiny asteroids crashed down. This time, they were sent on purpose by the godchildren.

The Equids gathered in caves. The rabbits quickly dug new burrows. The Gosti swung from tree to tree until they trusted the leafy roof above them.

Dilova saw her chance to fly disappear. They would never build such a tall staircase again.

Now, however, she knew she could do it. She knew how to fly, she knew she dared. So she quietly said goodbye to the stairs and went looking for her father.

Instead, she came across the Proto-Turtles. Abrahon had brought his brothers and sisters, but they paid no attention to the animals. They picked up the stair remnants and threw them onto their backs.

By now, the stairs were barely higher than an old tree. Eeris locked the last bit in flowers and ivy, like a statue that needs decorating, to the point where newborns would think a grayish tree had always stood here, never any stairs.

Bella landed amidst the turtles. “Go. Return to the sea and never come ashore again. Or I swear Ardex will burn you alive.”

Abrahon snorted. Their shells were already loaded with piles of material. “As you say, little goddess. We’ll manage just fine.”

The turtles turned around. They took their path of destruction in reverse, back to the Midterra Sea. Their large following of disciples trailed closely behind, but not before grabbing some stair remnants too.

Dilova found her father lying on the ground, staring at the sky.

“There was nothing. There was nothing. There was nothing,” he mumbled endlessly.

“Dad? It’s me. What are you saying?”

He didn’t respond. His eyes seemed to have been replaced by glass marbles without function. Dilova could pull his legs, touch and bend his body any way she wanted, and he didn’t react.

Bella knelt next to her. The black-and-white fur was a warm blanket around Dilova’s exhausted feathers. “I’m sorry, girl. I have unfortunately seen this before. Your father’s mind is broken. I don’t know if it can be fixed.”

“Yes it can. I’ll make it work. One step at a time.”