Farewell to the Liar

by D. K. Fields

  No one else sees it happen, do they, Berklum?

  Acti is on the other side of the room. It’s nothing to do with him.

  The blankets fall, and inside them is a rainbow.

  Another rainbow. The perfect ordering of colour. Nothing accidental or coincidental about it. The bleeding spectrum of all we can see, all we can know, how we understand the world around us. There, wrapped in the dirty blankets of a small Rustan boy.

  As they hit the floor, everyone looks up at the noise. The mystery dawns on them slowly – Lanthan turns to Acti, Acti shrugs, as surprised by his own innocence as anyone. But even his very presence is enough for the two women to relieve themselves of this small burden of the unknowable – the boy, the shelf, the blankets falling from a height. Simple cause and effect, even if they can’t quite discern every connection.

  But not you, Berklum, you don’t dismiss it. For you, it’s the second small wonder of the day.

  He stands before the pile of blankets as if it is a shrine to the Stowaway. He’s ready to offer up his secret, his story of a secret, in return for… what, Berklum? What would you like to know?

  ‘Who is she?’

  She, Berklum? She? What is this ‘she’? A rainbow beneath you in clouds, a rainbow beneath you in blankets – where is the woman in this?

  ‘A girl,’ he mumbles.

  Oh. Oh, I see. That is how you’ve decided to shape this idea, this happening: a girl. Is she in the rainbow, or of the rainbow?

  ‘She is the rainbow.’

  Ever the romantic, ever the sentimentalist. This is what comes of cutting people open and replacing parts of them with metal. There is nothing left for a man or woman who does such a thing daily; they must at some stage find beauty somewhere. So this is yours, Berklum: the rainbow girl.

  He kneels at the blankets but doesn’t offer the Stowaway a story. Instead, he wants to find one. He reaches out, tender and tentative, and picks up a blanket. Rough – even to his calloused hand – he wants it gone, away from her, so he tosses it aside. Nothing. Another blanket, this time too threadbare to even register. Still nothing. More and more blankets are cast from the heap, but no girl.

  There! You see it, don’t you? A flash of blue running to purple? Hurry, Berklum, hurry before she’s gone again.

  He is frantic; he isn’t thinking, not breathing properly. So when he sees it on the bare rock floor, he doesn’t recognise it. He searches for a girl, perhaps curled in on herself, perhaps lying on her back, perhaps crouched and ready to run.

  He stares at the feather.

  ‘A feather.’

  That’s right. That’s what it is. He knows this because of the hollow shaft at the bottom. But if it weren’t for that, he would struggle. It is large, too large for any of the birds in the Tear; wings that size would be a liability with all the embers and hot ash in the air. Mark that, Berklum: a liability.

  But look at those colours! The vane is a long, almost square bar of unrepentant colour. The base of red, shifting through shades that are only too familiar, but then comes the shock of it. Blue and green, Berklum. They are enough to part the clouds that swirl between the Rusting Mountains. They are what catches your eye among a Rustan boy’s rags. It is hard for anyone who lives outside the Tear to understand the rarity of real blue and green. So easy are they to take for granted when one is always above, another always below.

  Tell them, Berklum. Tell them when you have seen such a thing.

  ‘Never.’

  Quick, you must hide it. Quickly now, old man.

  ‘Palla? Are you all right?’

  Good, good, into your heavy robe with it. Make sure no hint or flash of incriminating colour can be seen. They will take it from you. How could they not?

  Unun kneels beside her palla. She doesn’t understand why he is down there, the pile of fallen rags off to one side, the bare floor in front of him.

  ‘I… I thought I saw a stray spark,’ he says. ‘In the blankets.’

  Masterful. Bravo. We will shape this story, together, into a legacy. One that won’t be forgotten again.

  She helps him back to his feet. His explanation hasn’t quite satisfied, but she isn’t sure why. She feels it, doesn’t she, Berklum? The tug and pull of events beyond our control. Impossible to discern in the moment, but they crystallise with the hindsight of generations. Now, Unun feels her palla lying to her, and she doesn’t know why.

  ‘I’m not lying,’ Berklum says, as any good, dishonest man would. ‘I saw something.’

  ‘I know, Palla, I know.’ She holds his hands for a touch too long. Then she leads him back to Lanthan’s table. They watch the woman stitch the livid flesh of a hip, careful but assured, as if closing the door of another’s home behind her. Unun asks questions unobtrusively. Lanthan applies a salve to ease the anger and memory of her incision, and to avoid infection.

  For a long minute, they stare down at the prone body. Two bonesmiths and their apprentices. That tug and pull again, Berklum. You feel it, don’t you? The symmetry of the four of you, attending this table, here in this workshop. How could it be anything but the beginning of a story worthy of the Audience?

  No, don’t touch the feather. Not yet. Not yet.

  *

  Old Man Berklum, the bonesmith, returns home with his daughter and with his secret. They don’t stop – not for a drink, not to look in windows, not to talk to strangers. Berklum has eyes only for his feet. He doesn’t want to see the rainbow again. Why not, Berklum? What has you so scared? Are the colours too much for a Rustan of your years? And look how Unun worries.

  That’s right, you’ve both been furtive since leaving Lanthan’s workshop. In the quiet streets of the ridge and in the ropebox back to the spire. She wonders why you don’t look out at the clouds, or down at the Tear, or ahead to home. She isn’t used to you mirroring her, both turned inwards, shoulders hunched against the catastrophes that are all too easy to imagine. Just how strong are those ropes, do you think? How old are they? How many journeys have they felt the strain of, how many times have they gone slack then tight then slack? You don’t want to answer such questions. That’s understandable. Perhaps you’re tired of questions, just as you’re tired of talking.

  That’s one story of the Audience. You’ve surely heard it, though perhaps you don’t believe. This story says the Audience is so old, so ancient that they stopped wanting to talk altogether. They have nothing left to say. They have seen too much, heard too much, and so little changed. It explains their silence, doesn’t it? Not the Silence, but their silence. But perhaps there’s not so much difference between the two. Both are total, seemingly unending, and it’s frightening to dwell on either for long.

  The point of this story, Berklum, is that we may want an audience’s attention, we may demand it even, but their silence? Their total, unending, damning silence? Nothing could be worse for a storyteller.

  And yet, people tell their stories to the Swaying Audience every day.

  Where’s the applause?

  ‘You were keen to be away from our workshop today,’ Berklum says, eager himself to think on something, anything, else. ‘Why?’

  Unun sighs. She had just been pondering the same. She considers her own lie, or perhaps the simpler approach of silence. ‘Because of Nibalt.’

  Is that your doing, Berklum? Raising a daughter who can’t lie? At least, not with you looking right at her.

  ‘Why because of Nibalt?’ he says.

  ‘He would have been… difficult. If we’d seen him before the sale, there would have been an argument, I just know it. He says you haven’t sold anything in months.’

  ‘He’s right, I haven’t.’

  Unun turns to face her palla. ‘He thinks it’s time I take over the workshop.’

  ‘He’s probably right again.’

  ‘Palla, no!’

  She’s scared, Berklum, but you don’t need to be told that. You see it for yourself, and you were the same at her age. Such a thing is too much responsibilit
y. What good does responsibility do for the young?

  ‘But I was always going to sell those fingers,’ he says. ‘Why would Nibalt have been a problem?’

  ‘It’s not that simple, is it? One sale in months – he would see that his way.’

  *

  ‘One sale in months.’ Nibalt says this, these exact words, as his wife foretold. He stands, huge, in their small kitchen. One eyebrow arches, thicker than most men’s fingers, and he blows on his tea. Nibalt drinks tea when he returns from work. It helps his aching muscles, and he’s not too proud to admit it. He is one of the unseen winchers of the spire. His toil keeps Rustans moving. So he drinks tea, like an ox cradling a white tulip.

  ‘Fingers,’ Berklum says, wiggling his own. ‘Good work.’

  ‘All work is good work,’ Nibalt says.

  ‘Not so, not to someone who creates. There’s a difference.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do!’

  Unun puts a hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Please,’ she whispers, just for him. Look at them, Berklum. Look how they tolerate you, your outbursts, your whims. See the restraint from a man who handles taut ropes all day long. Which will snap first, do you think?

  Nibalt sips his tea. He embraces Unun – they kiss, they are young again with each other. Her worries lift like the bad clouds they were.

  Because the man is no ogre. He may hulk like one, and wouldn’t that be simpler for those listening? If he threw that bulk of his around, broke the already chipped crockery, raised his hand to his wife. Drank, whored, smoked bindleleaf. An easy figure to hate – isn’t that what we’d prefer Nibalt to be? You shake your head, Berklum, because you know. You know it doesn’t work like that. Life isn’t so simple. But our stories are. So, what is this, Berklum? Your life or your story? Maybe we’ll decide later, when we’re near the end.

  ‘He’s no ogre,’ Berklum mutters.

  Not an ogre, no. He wants to replace their winter throw with something thicker, something with Seeder wool or Perlish down. He wants to buy cuts of meat without wincing as he hands over the marks. He wants his wife to be happy in her work, not fretting about her palla. Does an ogre want such things?

  ‘I said he wasn’t.’

  That you did, Berklum, that you did. But away with you now, old man. Shoo, shoo, down to your workshop and leave us with the two lovers. We deserve a little lightness. We deserve the warmth of another. There must be more to our stories than the shadows we cast, or the disappointments we swallow, or the hurt we turn our back on. We’re not done with you yet, Berklum, and we know where to find you. Everyone knows.

  ‘He looks worse today,’ Nibalt says, once they’re alone. ‘Pale.’

  ‘He insisted we both go to the ridge. I should’ve known it would be too much.’

  Unun pours herself tea, as her husband readies a meagre meal. It is he who chops the vegetables, picks the single spice and rations the salt, stirs the broth. She has no aptitude for such simple tasks – she’s a bonesmith, albeit an apprentice. Whatever she turns her hand to, turns to metal. At least, that’s what Nibalt says. A broth such as the one he prepares now would somehow, under her influence, become molten. Filings would settle on the bottom, rust would redden where pan meets broth, and every mouthful would make him suck his own cheeks. She can’t taste such things, and he says that’s the problem: she has no taste. You can imagine the jests that follow well enough.

  So, instead she watches him. He chops vegetables as if guided by an equation. Their asymmetrical nature is a challenge to be overcome, a form of chaos to be set to order. Occasionally he is bested and must resign himself to uneven chunks of potato, though tonight he is satisfied. The rhythmic thud of knife on board is a soft way to fill their silence. But it doesn’t last long.

  ‘Did he really sell something today?’ Nibalt asks.

  She wonders how deep his distrust goes – a disbelief that her palla might actually make a sale or, worse still, that they might lie about it.

  ‘Fingers, just like he said.’ She puts down her cup as if to say, this is serious, I’m telling the truth, you can believe if you try. ‘And there was promise of more.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘The bonesmith on the ridge,’ Unun says. ‘She’s so busy, she has more work than she can manage.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be something.’

  ‘She said she’ll pass on work like fingers. The kind of work Palla likes.’

  Nibalt clears the chopping board straight into the pot. ‘That’s good,’ he says, but Unun can’t be sure if he means the broth or the news of work. He measures, to the grain, the salt he adds. ‘The food is almost ready,’ he says. And without needing to be reminded, he sets out three bowls.

  *

  Meanwhile, Berklum descends to his workshop, away from his family. He locks the door behind him, and this is the door from the house to the workshop. An internal door, for the use of those that work and live there, not one to be used by customers. He locks it now because he doesn’t want Unun to follow him. Why is that? We might wonder.

  But Berklum doesn’t know why either, he just did it. He crosses to the forge and stokes the embers. Why? He doesn’t know that either, not really. There’s a want in him somewhere. It’s strong but old, and its roots are as deep as anything that grows on the spire. He just calls it ‘good work’. Those are only words – weak things to describe something much greater.

  So, he stares at the hot colours of the forge and finds some comfort there. Red, orange, yellow. Colours he knows better than any other. Better than the blue of a sky the Union takes for granted. Better than the green the Seeders work so hard for. He sits with those familiar colours like friends who don’t need to talk. He sits, then falls asleep. But not for long.

  *

  ‘Hello?’

  Wake up, Berklum. You heard right: someone is calling for you. You aren’t dreaming, but it will feel that way. It will feel that way for some time.

  ‘Hello?’

  Berklum comes to in his worn, tough slipdog-hide chair. It has as many scars and burn marks as he does. His mouth is tacky with sleep, and he can smell his own stale breath. Not the most glorious way to wake up, and not an unfamiliar one – a marriage bed is a sharp kind of loneliness to a widower. A day of aches and pains is preferable to that. But Berklum, we’re losing our focus. There was a voice, remember?

  He grumbles by way of a response.

  Look who’s here, Berklum. You have to look, up there. See?

  A small, round face, framed with blonde hair. A girl.

  That’s your first thought, and it’s not so wrong as to be worth telling the Drunkard. A little girl up on the high workshop shelf. Such a thing has happened before: Unun loved to watch you from up there. And she wasn’t a dropper, remember? She respected the workshop. A dream, that’s your second thought. A palla’s dream of simpler times that were, at the time, anything but.

  Only, Unun isn’t – wasn’t – blonde.

  Unun didn’t look so old when she was so young. This girl, she looks old. Even with her round, pink cheeks that are so smooth you doubt they have ever seen the sun. But age shows in many ways.

  ‘Hello, Berklum.’

  You flinch at your own name – your name said in a girl’s voice, but with the weight of all the Audience behind it. Your hands are shaking, Berklum.

  ‘H—’ He clears his throat. ‘How?’

  How, indeed. But how… what?

  The girl smiles, and he’s ready to weep in relief. Both the internal door and the workshop door are still locked. He locked the latter in leaving, the former in coming – locked from the inside. These are the details he remembers, details that he clings to, even as their clarity tells him – as we keep telling him – this is not a dream.

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid,’ the girl says.

  He didn’t realise he was scared until she said so.

  ‘How did your parents? Where did you get in here?’ He muddles his questions, but she unders
tands. She understands that, and so much more.

  ‘I’m coming down now. Don’t be scared.’

  Why, why would you be sca—?

  She unfurls her wings and glides down from the shelf.

  She has wings, this girl, as long as her arms and sprouting from her shoulders. Her feathers are all the colours of the rainbow.

  From inside his robes, Berklum pulls the feather he found earlier. It’s hers, as if there could be any doubt. He holds it out to her, but she shakes her head.

  ‘That was a gift,’ she says. She stands before him, no more than four feet tall, and entirely at ease. Her arms hang by her side, and her wings at rest. She is wearing a pale blue dress, cinched with string around the middle. Her hair is bound by a wreath of ivy. All of which is to say, she could not possibly look less Rustan.

  ‘I saw you,’ Berklum says, ‘in the clouds.’

  ‘You did.’

  She had been flying in the Tear, as easily as she flew down from the shelf.

  This eclipses all other thoughts for Berklum. His earlier questions – how she came to be in his workshop, where her parents were, sensible questions, both – are forgotten. Were he to follow either too far, he would not like the answers, because they speak of even less tangible impossibilities than a girl with wings.

  ‘May I see your hands?’ he asks softly.

  She rocks back on her heels, then forwards, before giving a little nod. It’s a precocious gesture, more innocent than she has seemed so far. We are growing to like this girl, aren’t we, Berklum?

  She shows him her palms, because she knows what he is asking. They are as bald as his own, but smooth where his are lined and calloused.

  ‘Would you like to see my feet?’

  She has one half-raised before he says no.

  ‘I’ve never had the hairs,’ she says. ‘Not in all my years.’

  Listen to her, talking like she has more stories for the Audience than you do. Perhaps she does. One of those stories could tell of a Rustan aberration. A girl with wings, hiding between the ridge and the spire, cast out by a family unable to understand their own daughter. No friends her own age; those hair-handed children who climbed like spiders would look jealously at her flight. It is just as plausible a story as any other. But it’s not true.