Perfect Ruin. Lauren DeStefano. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Lauren DeStefano
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Героическая фантастика
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007541218
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      FOR

       MY FAMILY,

       who knows

       the importance

       of dreaming

       beyond the edge

       of our world

       Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

      —Jalāl ad-Din ar-Rūmī

       The first humans were especially ungrateful. After the birth of the sun and the moon, they asked for stars. After the crops rose from the ground, they asked for beasts to fill the fields. After some time, the god of the ground, weary of their demands, thought it best to destroy them and begin again with humbler beings. So it goes that the god of the sky thought the first humans too clever to waste, and he agreed to keep them in the sky with the promise that they would never again interfere with the ground.

      —The History of Internment, Chapter 1

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Chapter 26

       Chapter 27

       Chapter 28

       Chapter 29

       Chapter 30

       Chapter 31

       Chapter 32

       About the Author

       Also by Lauren DeStefano

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       1

       You have all heard the warnings about the edge. We have been told its winds are a song that will hypnotize us, and by the time we awaken from that trance, it will be too late.

      —“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten

      WE LIVE ENCAPSULATED BY THE TRAINS. They go around in a perfect oval at all hours, stopping for thirty-five seconds in each section so the commuters are able to board and depart. Beyond the tracks, after the fence, there’s sky. Engineers crafted a scope so that we can see the ground below us. We can see tall buildings and other sorts of trains—some of which disappear underground or rise onto bridges. We can see patches of cities and towns that appear stitched like one of Lex’s blankets.

      We’ve never been able to craft a scope advanced enough to see the people—it isn’t allowed. We’ve been banished to the sky. I’m told they can see Internment, though. I wonder, what must we look like to them? A giant oval of the earth with rocks and roots clinging to the bottom, I suppose. I’ve seen sketches of what Internment looks like as a whole, and it’s as though a giant hand came down and took a piece right out of the ground, and here we are floating in the sky.

      When I was a child, I used to think about the day Internment was ripped from the ground and placed in the sky. I used to wonder if the people were frightened, or if they felt fortunate to be saved. I used to imagine that I was a part of Interment’s first generation. I’d close my eyes and feel the ground under my feet going up and up and up.

      “Ms. Stockhour,” Instructor Newlan says, “you’re dreaming with your eyes open again. Page forty-six.”

      I