Heaven

King Mesfin woke up with red eyes and a sore neck. Out of habit, the first thing he did was, walk to the window and open it. His kingdom slept below...

Wait.

This wasn't his kingdom. Every house and farm was covered with white stuff. It was too fluffy to be snow. Something white floated past his eyes. Mesfin caught it. It felt like cotton. Soapy, wet cotton.

Clouds, he realized.

There was another thing that was bothering him though. Among the mass of clouds, there were new colorful houses and strange people with wings.

The third bothering thing was this. It was morning. The sun was there. But the sky was still dark.

He heard the door to his bedchamber flung open behind him. He turned to find Sir Bahran, Knight of the Sun, and commander of his Imperial Guards, bow low.

"Your majesty," Sir Bahran said. "The sky has fallen."

"Heave on!" King Mesfin shouted. They all followed his words, heaving the clouds—even the angels. King Mesfin liked to think of himself as a man of the people. That was why he was down here, working with everyone.

"Are you sure this will work?" Angel Razrael asked him.

Razrael was scary. He had expected their kind to be beautiful, especially the women. (Yes, angels had sex. He was a witness to this fact.) The Angels' Queen—if he could call her so— however, was really old and had ten horns. At different places on her body. He had asked earlier, and she had said it was a natural phenomenon. Men grow a beard as they grow up; Angels grow horns.

"I bloody hope so," he said, trying to take his eyes off the red horn on Razrael's nose. "Has anyone told you that you could be descended from a rhinoceros?"

"Excuse me."

"Never mind. Heave!" And they heaved.

Everyone in Lapita, Mesfin's capital city, including the angels, was trying to lift the clouds a few inches up from the ground. Mesfin's theory was that once a little way up, as clouds are lighter than wind, they would be easier to push. So would all the angel's houses on top of them.

"Master musician!" he called. "Sing us something, please. Something to aid our work."

The one-eyed royal musician—whose name Mesfin tried to memorize a lot of times, but always failed—bowed, cleared his throat, and began to sing. Soon the king was clapping with his subjects.

This is why they love me, he thought. I am one of them.

Now that he noticed, none of the angels were joining them. They had also stopped working.

"What is this shit?" Razrael asked.

Mesfin took his hands off the cloud and looked at her, confused.

"Music," he said. "It's called music. M-u-s..."

Razrael laughed. Her teeth were yellow. When she finished, she signalled an Angel a few feet to the right. This one had no horns on his body.

"Show them what music is." Razrael patted the new angel on the back. "Give them a freestyle." Then she started doing things with her mouth. Things that made Mesfin want to jump and dance.

The new angel began to speak really fast. It was so fast King Mesfin couldn't make out most of what he was saying. But it had rhythm like no other rhythm he had heard before. He realized his feet were kicking the floor. With that same rhythm.

King Mesfin tried to listen to the Angel's words.

"Heave-on..." Something. Something. "Heave-on..." Something. Something. "heavan...." Something. "heaven..."

While the angel was still singing—if that was what he was doing—King Mesfin returned his hands to the cloud.

"Heave on," he shouted. Everyone heaved.

This time the cloud moved.

It was another morning. King Mesfin was back in his bedchamber, looking out the window. The sky was back in its place.

"Where do you reckon the angles went?" Sir Bahran asked him from behind.

"I don't reckon. I know where they went." King Mesfin said. "There is this place called Heaven."