Painting the Sky [4]

"When I was a child," Vaska said, "I spent a great deal of time in the forest with my father learning how to survive."

"But why?" Ingrid asked. "Your family is so rich."

"Perhaps my father foresaw a time in our lives in which our riches would fail us. Or perhaps he thought the concept of currency would one day become meaningless. As it stands now, our currency is pegged to lease time for contract crystals. Time spent in control of an elemental is the ultimate backing, the final real value behind the notes issued by banks. This is true for all banks everywhere in the world."

"Nobody has thought of something else?"

"Long ago, some backwater places tried to peg their currency to precious metals. But these places were generally underdeveloped because they didn't have access to elementals. Furthermore they lacked the military strength to stand up against empires which did command elementals. So they are all gone now. All that's left are the banks and the families that control the banks and the empires those families have created for themselves."

"I see."

"One day when I was older my father gave me some basic survival supplies and he sent me out into the forest alone and he put guards at the edge of the forest to prevent me from leaving. He made me survive without help for the entire winter. It was a bad year and the snow went on for six months without stopping."

"How horrible!"

"When I survived he did something to me. I'm not sure what. But after that day I was bonded to Erika and my luck turned bad."

"Your father sounds like a terrible person."

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"I think my father is cursed in his own way."

"In what way?"

"He is cursed with some vision of the future which is known to him but which is impossible to communicate in a way which does not come across as insane. I think it's the same in every era. People don't have imagination. They, for lack of a better term, castrate themselves with tales of the greatness of their ancestors."

"Are you saying he is trying to change the way currency works?"

"Maybe. But I don't see how that would be possible. The contract crystals are absolute. They are enforced by the Queen of Light herself."

"The light is the source of faith, hope, and forgiveness," Ingrid said. "Could the Queen of Light forgive the contracts? That would be a good thing to do I think."

"Why do you think that?"

"Maybe the people who have the elementals don't want to spend their lives exhausted like you were that one time."

"Or maybe they do."

"Why would anyone want to do that?"

"People believe in all sorts of things. There are all sorts of religions out there teaching people to fight and die. Some religions teach people to sacrifice their children."

"How horrible!"

"My point is that you can make people believe anything. The banks must be doing something to make sure the people with the contracts never think the forbidden thought, that they might denounce their contracts and thus bring down the entire world economy."

"And your father was afraid that might happen."

"Or maybe he knows how to make it happen."

"Maybe he knows how to make the Queen of Light forgive the contracts."

"Maybe."

Vaska turned the canvas for Ingrid to see. She had painted a wedge of dark sky with a turquoise moon over a patchwork of rippling sand and ocean swells, yardangs and ventifacts and mushroom rocks of impossible height looming on a horizon wracked by sandstorms and whirlwinds. There were little floating islands in places far away which Ingrid had not noticed in that sky, exaggerated in their features according to some vision which only Vaska saw that day. Ingrid was certain there were little dwellings on those islands.

"Are those homes on the islands?" Ingrid asked.

"I think so. You didn't see them?"

"I was focused on flying."

"They were behind us. Behind the portal. I was able to look back there. You must have been focused on what was ahead of us."

"I was."

"But I saw them. They looked like homes. Towns and temples on top of the floating islands."

"Who do you think lives there?"

"I don't know."