Parting the theatrical bank of dyed black coal-smoke and cemetery-dirt fog with a gentle breeze from its forward porch fan, the [Gu Family Flying Courtyard] descended into the lower atmosphere of World #8—the Elder Twin of the Lantern & Agricultural Worlds.
According to the Sector 5 Merchant Guild’s almanac, July on Worlds #8. Moreover, #9 Was supposed to be the height of the Golden Wheat & Paper-Lantern Festival, when warm ninety-degree summer sunshine ripened ten million acres of spirit-grain. Moreover, Every village hung glowing red and gold harvest lanterns along their irrigation canals.
Yet as the five children leaned over the courtyard’s white picket fence to look down at Lantern City. The capital of World #8, they found a scene that looked like a community theater production of a haunted house gone completely out of control.
In the middle of a ninety-degree summer afternoon, fifty giant cast-iron Coal-Smoke & Dry-Ice Fog Machines had been bolted to the city’s ancient bell towers. Belching thick, artificial gray-black clouds across the sunny sky to block out the sun. Along the main cobblestone avenues.
There, Farmers were trying to dry their harvested wheat on straw mats. Hundreds of angsty teenage cultivators in heavy, tattered black raven-feather cloaks were marching up and down in the sweltering heat, sweating buckets under five layers of black wool. Meanwhile, Sprinkling handfuls of gray fireplace ash over the clean sidewalks and sighing loudly at the sky.
