Epic of Aravinda 1: The Truth Beyond the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

Avani.

CHAPTER6
     
    ASLEEP UNDER A TREE
     
     
    Zahn had to be very quiet when reentering the house. It was just a few hours before dawn, and his father was still fast asleep. Quietly, he walked up the hall to his room and hid the fragment, which was no longer glowing, at the bottom of a wooden chest where he kept some of his clothes.
    The moon bathed his room in cool light, and in minutes he was fast asleep.
    The following day, Zahn realized just how difficult it would be to sneak the fragment into the observatory without anyone knowing. All of the equipment was shared, and he was surprised that their stringent record-keeping procedures had slipped his mind during the previous night. Every subject, every scientist, and even every drop of rain was recorded for future reference and analysis. Zahn wondered if this was life’s way of saying that perhaps he wasn’t meant to find the fragment in the first place. After all, if this turned out to be from another world, why did he deserve to be the one to discover it?
    Yet by the end of the day, the routine at the observatory regained its place as the foremost subject on Zahn’s mind, which gave him some relaxation since the more he thought about the fragment, the more he felt unsure about what to do about it.
    On the second day, he consciously decided to push the thought of the fragment out of his mind whenever it occurred to him. Sometimes he would tell himself, “I’ll deal with it later.” And other times he would say, “A solution will come. I just need to wait a few days.”
    By the third day, Zahn knew he had a problem. Everything in his life somehow seemed stale. He realized that he couldn’t continue to keep this secret, perhaps the largest secret Avani had ever known, to himself.
    Even worse, he knew that despite the fragment’s small size, it was still possible that someone from the observatory had detected the fragment during its descent and was going to start combing the beach any day now. He had tried to find out if anyone had noticed it, but soon discovered that he lacked the authority to perform a system query of such breadth and depth.
    All of these thoughts made Zahn feel physically ill. After he returned home from the observatory that day, he walked down to the beach and followed the beachside path which weaved in and out of the forest. And then, Zahn did something he hadn’t done in years: he talked to the trees.
    After making sure no one was in the vicinity, he told them all about the fragment and about what it might mean. He also told them about his difficulty in sneaking it into the observatory, and how each day he had been pushing the thought of it out of his mind. The blue-leaved trees wafted in the wind, almost seeming to say, “We hear you, but your obstacle is within yourself.”
    Once he’d found a spot where there was a good view of the bay through the leaves, he sat down with a tree to his back and closed his eyes. He was exhausted from the day. Exhausted from keeping the secret.
    Even though the sun was still a few hours above the horizon, Zahn fell asleep under the trees. As he slept, light filtered through the leaves above him, bathing the path and Zahn’s face in a slightly bluish hue. In his slumber he dreamed once more, but this dream was stranger than the last.
    At first, he was back at NearSky base, a small outpost not far from Ashraya. It was a rather popular place to visit, and dozens of towering cliffs made it an ideal place to glide from. In the dream, Zahn was standing on a cliff, wearing a glider. He looked down at the sheer drop below, and from behind him he heard a familiar voice.
    “Jump, Zahn!” he heard his mother say.
    But he was afraid.
    “Zahn, You’re ready! Everything’s prepared.”
    Hearing his mother’s voice gave him confidence, and he jumped. Air filled the glider’s wings, and he soared over the radiantly blue forest hundreds of meters below. Then he looked up and saw something that shouldn’t have