Aerial Paris

Below a shattered mirror, its frame rotted away long ago, Elijah saw the boots. It wasn’t easy to find good shoes anymore, he thought, incredulous. He was just old enough to remember a time when you might uncover an unclaimed pair of hand-made sandals, or even, on rare occasion, a pair of yellowed sneakers beneath putrefying food scraps, gnawing rats, and cast-off detritus submerged in layers of dirt and dust‑provided you could handle the stench.

 Back then you didn’t need to look far to find a body either, but many times the feet were bare. Anyway these days they were mostly picked over, and hardly recognizable besides. But never had Elijah found such a fine pair of boots, somehow immune to the thick coat of grime coating everything else. The bright orange leather, like a beacon among so many dull grays and blacks, drew his eyes from far away. They had almost no dirt at all, aside from the partially buried right toe, and a few stray shards of mirror. Easy to dust off.

 Elijah clutched these new treasures to his chest and darted between endless garbage heaps and mountainous ruins, following some pattern known only to him along the banks of what was once called the Seine. The boots were new, barely worn, if at all. Where could they have come from?

 Above, the Boats glided across the sky, impossibly light. Near the river, the sky was almost clear, unobstructed by the swaying skeletons of buildings long unused. As Elijah reached his tent his pace slowed. His grip on the boots relaxed. His eyes began to trace familiar paths along his piece of sky, following the Boats in their endless ebbs and flows. He lay on his back in a well-worn spot outside the tent, resting his head on folded hands.

Looking up, Elijah imagined a wealthy Sky-Dweller, his fine leather boots made obsolete by some new fashion, casting them carelessly into the clouds, with the rest of the day’s unwanted refuse.

He pictured himself, perched on the prow of a Sky Boat, nestled among the clouds and distended sails, floating, as if in slow motion. What would he see? Does any sign of life reach them from below? They might see scatted fires on the occasional clear winter’s night—faint threads of blue smoke rising, never quite reaching the clouds.

Maybe the Sky-Dwellers never look down at all. For that, at least, Elijah could not blame them.

Perhaps some of them are old enough to remember living on the ground. Or maybe none of them ever did – Elijah couldn’t be sure. He himself could not recall a day without the huge, sliding shadows, tracking strange, elegant movements from far above; the billowing sails, appearing as full as clouds themselves at even the slightest breeze.

***

The girl watched Elijah’s tent from above, as she had many nights before. She’d seen him, laying on his back, staring up in the sky, a faint smile upon his lips, for hours at a time. This, more than anything, was why she left her boots for him to find. It seemed a small gesture, almost pathetic, in a way.

But his relentless dreaming moved her, although she didn’t know his name. His eyes moved in a focused pattern, first one way, and then another. To him, it was no dream. She didn’t know what he was seeing, but it made her happy all the same.