The ground cracked into hundreds of fissures, spreading out like a spider’s web. In an instant, the earth around the donkey crumbled, and Elia threw herself at the nearest clothesline. As the squealing animal fell away, swallowed by the mist below, the wind surged to send a sheet billowing within reach.
Swinging in the air from a fistful of fabric, Elia heard a snap above her head and looked up to see the last clothespins spring off.
For a second, she felt as though she was suspended in the fog.
Then she fell.
The first of three volumes in this thrilling series opens on the barren plains of Below, where a teenage boy named Hokk lives in isolation amid the remnants of our modern age.
On the floating islands in the skies of Above, Elia and her family are enslaved in endless drudgery. To Elia, the island’s edges are borders no one dares cross until the ritual burial that sends their dead Below. But a natural disaster is rumbling through Above, bringing both worlds—and Hokk and Elia—ever closer, until the day the earth crumbles below Elia’s feet and she falls.
When Hokk rescues the girl who miraculously survives plunging into the sea, he realizes she might be the key to finally ending his exile. Both teens are desperate to return to the homes they’ve lost, and their journey together will propel them across endless plains, shattered cities, mirrored palaces and a centuries-old battle for the very earth and sky around them.
