VIVIENNE - PAST

In the Above, there was no outside. Logic said there must be, but in the weeks Viv had been here, she found no evidence of it. Every door led to another room or hallway, every space hemmed in by strict walls, sometimes bare, other times decorated by signs, posters, pictures, or nonsense she supposed was art. Never windows. No gradual morning dawn and evening dusk.

Light came and went quick as a snap at regulated hours. Everything was regulated, from the single clean outfit that appeared in her wardrobe each day to the plates of food that rose out of the counter, reliable as any sunrise.

She had been given a Tablet, a slim device like a piece of paper but clear as glass. Unlike glass, it did not shatter if she dropped it and could roll into a thin cylinder.

The thing fascinated her. It always had something for her to learn and tasks for her to complete. If she didn't do as it told her, an automaton would come to ensure she did. They were human like, but always missing something.

"Why don't you have skin?" she asked one.

"This unit has yet to earn it."

"How does one earn skin?"

"You are my assignment, Mistress Vivienne, so I ensure you meet your deadlines and are well cared for. When you are fully chosen, you will reward me."

In Dictamnus Village, a reward was food one liked or higher pay, trading up for stronger or more precious materials, not something as simple as getting skin. Viv ran a hand across the soft flesh of her inner arm. She had to live up to their expectations. She had to become whatever "fully chosen" meant so she could reward these clockwork beings with the simple things they wanted—things she had never had to earn and taken for granted.

She feared constantly that the robed figures would come and say she wasn't as special as they had thought. No gift to the Above had ever returned to a Surface village, and she determined not to be the first sent back.

So Viv went beyond the Tablet's regimens, completing every assignment twice or three times, staying in labs and classrooms long after other students. Other gifts. The Tablet noticed her activity and adjusted her schedule. It had assigned her extra reading and ordered she remain in this room until done. She had pushed herself, and it pushed her further, and today she couldn't hear herself read over her growling stomach.

Staring at the wall accomplished nothing, but Viv couldn't help it. She never thought she would miss the musty smell of the forest after rain, how it would clog her throat and distort her voice. She knew now why it did that: Pockets of helium were common in her area, stirred from their caves by storm winds. It wasn't magic like the villagers said, remnants of curses washed from some other location.

Picking crops in the field had been hot and hard, but she missed that, too. What good was having skin if it never felt the warmth of daylight?

Logically, there must have been an outside, and Viv wanted to find it, even if it meant boring through a wall.

A crash came from behind her. Before its reverberations ended, she was on her feet before and standing backward on her desk chair, Tablet held like a shuriken, as her conscious reasoning caught up with her reflex.

The sound had come from the sealed custodial closet in the corner. Back home, noises like that meant a vermin problem. Usually, they raided pantries. What one could want from a cleaning cabinet was illogical, but magical creatures from the Middle and Above could eat poison and like it or die of a good meal.

Determining the Tablet was not a viable weapon, Viv pocketed it, returned her feet to the floor, and lifted her chair above her head. Inching toward the closet, she reached a leg as far as she could and flung open the door.

A large, living something tumbled out in a tangle of custodial tools. With a warrior's cry, Viv planted her feet and swung the chair.

"Attendez! Attendez! Attendez!"

At the last moment, she realized this was not a roar. Those were words. Someone was telling her to wait. She pulled back. The chair scuffed the floor alongside her, and she caught herself against it.

"You speak?"

"Not often, but I do." His voice was rich and smooth as melted chocolate, containing only the slightest wheeze from his entanglement with objects she assumed were fancy evolutions of mops and brooms. He lay mostly on his back, feet unseen somewhere in the closet still. One long-fingered hand was raised to ward off the chair that was no longer a threat.

Viv sat in said chair. "You're human."

He let his hand drop and grinned up at her. The straight hair sprawled around his head in wild spikes was so dark, it fooled her eyes into seeing the color blue. Iridescence, she recalled from the assigned reading this wasn't helping her finish. His eyes were the same.

He might not be human—she had never seen a human who looked like him—but her homesick heart wanted to believe he was. At least he had skin, swarthy skin that appeared baby soft. Though she guessed he had to be about a year older than her—seventeen or eighteen—his beard was fine, almost invisible, not scraggly like those of the boys her age back home.

"What are you doing in a custodial closet?"

"Waiting for you to leave." When she gave him a look demanding further explanation, he went on. "So I could leave."

She intensified her look.

"Maybe I did not want you to see that I had walked into a closet instead of out through the door."

"This whole place is one big maze of closets." Viv stood and offered him a hand.

He didn't take it. "Maybe so, but I am going to keep lying here and pretend I am invisible."

"That would be a shame." She clasped his hand, and had she really been so long without human contact that she forgot what it was like? He was so much warmer than she expected, she fought a flinch. "You're kind of cute."

Surprise bent his chiseled features into o's, and he pivoted into a sit, gripping her hand between them. For a moment, she thought he would kiss the back of it. His breath washed across her skin, warm as he was, as he whispered, "No one has ever told me anything like that."

"Because you hide in closets and pretend to be invisible."

"Touché, I avoid others or they flee from me."

When had his face leveled with hers? This was too close. She should retreat, but Viv couldn't feel her legs. He was some magical being for sure, perhaps with poisoned breath. It smelled so odd, like baking cinnamon but metallic, too, like fish.

She grimaced. "You must be quite the monster."

He turned away and stood at his full height, like a tower in the shape of a human. Wizards were tall, she knew. This wasn't a Surfacer, another gift to the Above like her classmates. He belonged here.

He plopped on a desk, and the pose reminded her of a sea lion, but he was too regal for that image. Casual as he seemed, there was some real lion in him, too. "You are the monster, taking so long on your whatever in here that I ran out of snacks."

"Oh, the horror," she said in a false gasp.

"Quite the travesty," he said matter-of-factly.

Her retort vanished at his look. He wasn't fully teasing; if he got hungry enough, she would be the new snack.

Swallowing, Viv returned her chair to her desk, sat on its edge, and resumed her reading.

He moved nearly silent, but the temperature of the air shifted with him. She had read the same sentence four times, including in an undertone, when his fingers slid over the top of her tablet and tapped. Sound burst from the device, and she dropped it. Flat on the desk, it continued to play the violin.

"How— How is it doing that?"

"The Tablets can do basically anything."

It was singing now, too, a woman's voice. Viv didn't know the words, but she caught the name Alejandro over and over.

He picked up the Tablet, aligned it between their faces, and tapped some more. Viv's visage appeared as if in a mirror, then distorted as if it had been drawn in pencil.

With a gasp for how amazing that was, she took the device and repeated his taps. This time, his reflection appeared.

The o's returned to his expression, then flattened. "Non, non, non, you cannot take pictures of me." He pinched the screen, and his image disappeared.

"Bring it back," Viv demanded.

"I deleted it. It is gone."

So, she took another, and another when he pinched that one, and five more while playing keep-away.

"Stop that. Forget I ever showed you how to do it," he snapped, and she froze. Again, he wasn't quite teasing, and instinct said if he wanted to hurt her, he would.

"The Tablet can do anything," she quoted. "Could it make me forget, like erasing words written in the dirt?"

His expression slanted in a sly look. "Who are you?"

She straightened. "I'm Vivienne. My friends call me Viv, but you cannot because I'm not sure we're friends yet. Your name?"

His dark eyes flicked away from her, lingering on the wall as if he, too, had thoughts of boring through it and exploring outside. Only, he was so huge, he probably could go through the wall if he wanted.

Eventually, he whispered, "My name is Alessandro."

"Because the song was about Alejandro?" she deadpanned.

"No." He looked at her, all trace of teasing gone, and she didn't like the feeling. She stood in a cold, blank classroom in a place called the Above, but when he looked at her like that she was deep in a cave that would collapse if she so much as breathed, bringing the entire weight of the world down upon her.

Then he blinked, and the spell was broken. As she slumped in her seat, he took the tablet and wiped away all the pictures they had taken. The music was gone also when he held the device out to her.

"You didn't do that out of vanity." Her voice was too soft in the near silence, quiet like the ever-present hum here as unseen machines pushed the air around. "There's a reason you can't have your presence recorded."

"I do silly things sometimes that I am not supposed to, like talk to gifts from the Couvrir."

"You're not from the Surface."

It wasn't a question, but he confirmed with the slightest shake of his head anyway. "And you are. Do you know where the others go?"

That question she had avoided. Her class had shrunk considerably over only a few weeks. No pomp and ceremony, individuals were simply not there the next day. It brought up worries of being sent back.

"They disappear one by one," he said as if reading her thoughts, but the rest was not an analogy she would have conceived or wanted, "like the fish in my snack bag. If I were them, I would wonder what was going on."

"Do you know?"

Again he shook his head. The Tablet had hovered in his grasp too long, and he set it on the desk, then clasped his hands in his lap.

Viv mimicked the pose, except her shoulders were hunched, her hands wringing each other. "I was chosen as a gift to the Above, and I study to become something called fully chosen, but I don't know what that means, and I don't know what it will mean if I fail."

"Then I will find out for you."

"We're strangers, Alessandro." She didn't believe that was his name, but what else would she call him? "Don't get yourself in trouble for me."

His grin returned, the one that was as beautiful as any daybreak. "Trouble sounds like a good snack. What is going to stop me?"

The robed ones, servants of the Above, though she suspected he was one of them. They had their own hierarchy she didn't understand yet, and some seemed more formidable than others.

"Have you seen glowing rings like eyes within some hoods?"

"Those are Hiboux, high denizens, and they run the place. They're not human, by the way, so they will not risk being seen by a gift uncloaked on the chance of scaring them. I avoid them by rote, so you do not have to worry about them catching me."

"There are signs everywhere restricting access—"

"What is a sign going to do?" He swung an arm at the closet. "That one could have said 'Do Not Enter,' and it would not have stopped me from walking in there."

"Except that one actually says placard de conciergerie, or custodial closet, so it's a dead end."

He leaned closer. "Sometimes signs lie."