Skylands

Skylands is the southern homeland of the sylphs, an airborne region whose floating islands and isolated customs expand the world beyond Underland and the lands below. It is presented not merely as a distant place but as a self-contained society shaped by flight, communal identity, and the memory of liberation from Saul’s tyranny.

Geography and First Appearance

Skylands enters the narrative through Leeza, who identifies herself as a sylph and explains that her people rule the skies and come from the Skylands of the south. The location is later seen from the approach to Sylphvr: a group of strange floating islands hangs above a flat valley, arranged in a circle around a crystal-clear lake. Waterfalls descend from each island into the lake, while the ground directly beneath the formation is bare and stony. Without sunlight, vegetation cannot grow there, leaving the lower landscape desolate beneath the beauty overhead.

The contrast between the islands and the valley gives Skylands a sharply divided spatial character. Its inhabited realm appears elevated, luminous, and fluid, whereas the shadow beneath it is empty and deprived of growth. The scenery therefore makes elevation a physical fact and an imaginative condition: the sylphs live above the ordinary ground, while the abandoned land beneath them registers the cost of that separation.

A Separate Sylph Society

Skylands is described as disconnected from the lands below. Messages cannot easily be sent upward, and Arlite can dispatch someone directly across a skywave but cannot simply send communications from below into the aerial realm. This logistical barrier explains why Sola and Yal could not attend Lucy Hammond and Alvar’s wedding despite being among Alvar’s dearest friends. The separation is consequently practical as well as symbolic; Skylands maintains distance through geography, infrastructure, and the difficulty of crossing between levels.

The customs associated with Skylands also distinguish the sylphs from humans of Axus and the gobli. Sylph relationships are described as equal partnerships marked by fierce devotion and lifelong monogamy. Their loyalty is so complete that the death of one mate is said often to leave the other dying of a broken heart, and sylphs are not known for cheating on their spouses. Public affection is accepted rather than concealed. Modesty follows another standard as well: clothing can hinder flight, so many sylphs wear little beyond a loincloth and elaborate jewelry, placing the ability to fly above clothing in their hierarchy of values.

Leeza embodies the cultural meeting point between Skylands and Underland. Although she retains her wings and identifies herself as a sylph, she dresses modestly because she lives in Underland and serves its court. Her presence shows that Skylands is not sealed off completely, but that movement between societies requires adjustment, translation, and a willingness to explain unfamiliar practices.

History and Political Connections

The sylphs’ history is tied to Alvar’s campaign against Saul. Leeza states that Alvar set her people free from Saul’s tyranny, after which some sylphs returned home while others remained in Underland to work for the good king. Skylands thus functions as both a homeland recovered from oppression and the source of a continuing alliance with Alvar’s restored rule.

Sola’s history makes that political connection more personal. Saul captured her and placed her in a gilded cage as decoration in his gallery. She met Alvar there, recognized his plight, and wanted above all to return to Yal, her mate. Her captivity turns the aerial people’s freedom into something concrete: the tyrant’s power reduced a being associated with open air and flight to an ornament enclosed behind bars. Her eventual connection with Alvar links the liberation of Skylands’ people to the rescue of an individual whose identity and relationship had been deliberately confined.

Alvar’s friendship with Sola and Yal also gives Skylands an intimate place in his network of loyalties. He speaks of them as among his dearest friends, while the difficulty of contacting their homeland explains their absence from his wedding. Skylands therefore remains politically allied with Underland without becoming absorbed into it; its inhabitants can serve Alvar and share his history while preserving a distinct community above the lower lands.

Narrative Significance

Skylands broadens the story’s recurring concern with spaces that regulate identity and access. Underland City is quiet under curfew, Goblia is reached through a dangerous pit of unguarded stairs, and the truth room associated with Sola is enclosed by circles of water and mirrors. Skylands offers a contrasting spatial order: its defining boundary is not a gate or staircase but altitude, flight, and disconnection. The question of who can move upward, who can communicate across levels, and who must remain below becomes part of the world’s political structure.

For Lucy Hammond, the approach to Skylands produces wonder even amid panic. The floating islands, waterfalls, and clear lake give her a glimpse of a society whose physical environment makes its people’s defining ability—flight—seem natural and necessary. At the same time, the bleak ground beneath the islands prevents the image from becoming uncomplicated fantasy. Skylands is beautiful because it is elevated, but its elevation also marks distance, inaccessibility, and the material consequences of living apart from the world below.

As a location, Skylands therefore carries several meanings at once: it is the sylphs’ homeland, a realm liberated from Saul, a culturally autonomous space, and a test of the boundaries separating peoples. Its apparent remoteness does not remove it from the central conflicts. Instead, the aerial realm shows how tyranny, friendship, marriage alliances, and cultural difference extend across the entire layered world of the novel.