Farewell to the Liar

by D. K. Fields

  ‘Why me?’ he says.

  She leans closer, so close her button nose almost touches his own. ‘Because we’re going to do great things together, Old Man Berklum who is a bonesmith, and a bonesmith is what he is.’

  There is a knock at the internal door.

  He is distracted, the shock of being caught – caught doing what exactly is not so clear as the feeling – and when he turns back, the girl is gone.

  ‘Palla?’ Unun calls through the door. ‘I have dinner.’

  He isn’t hungry, but she doesn’t like it when he doesn’t eat. She doesn’t like it when he locks the door either. What if something happened? That’s what her look says now, as he stands back to let her in. Well, it did happen, didn’t it? A girl with rainbow wings.

  Unun clears space for a bowl of broth on one of the tabletops. She moves a few paces away, and waits. She is waiting for him to eat – she won’t believe unless she sees it for herself. Berklum obliges his daughter mechanically, spoon to bowl, to mouth, to bowl, all the while thinking of what the rainbow girl said: great things. And she said it with our words, the impish little thing.

  ‘Palla, what’s this?’

  Berklum blinks. The spoon wavers halfway to his mouth. Unun is holding a rainbow in her arms, and for a moment he sees a body in its folds – small, mostly skin and unmodified bones. Then she shakes the blanket open, and by the way she looks at the air in surprise, she expected dust and soot but finds it clean. A clean rainbow blanket. Berklum stifles a cry, pretending to have choked on the broth. He steadies himself at the tabletop, but Unun is not so easily fooled.

  ‘Is this new, Palla? I’ve never seen it before.’

  Careful, Berklum, such a colourful extravagance. ‘A gift,’ he says. ‘From a neighbour.’

  ‘Which one?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t remember. They’re all too nosey to leave me alone.’

  ‘That’s nice of them,’ Unun says, unable to keep the doubt from her voice. Generous, guileless Unun.

  ‘Tomorrow, I want you out of the workshop,’ he says. ‘I need peace, and you need some time with your husband.’

  ‘Palla, I don’t—’

  ‘No!’ he says with enough force to shock them both. ‘No.’

  In the ensuing silence, she folds the rainbow blanket and puts it next to his leather chair, where he sleeps. ‘Don’t get cold,’ she says quietly before she leaves.

  *

  Does she have a name? This is what he wonders as he watches the rainbow girl from beneath the blanket. She is tidying the workshop. In those first waking moments, he was gripped by a familiar concoction of irritation, irrationality and possessiveness – his workshop is his place of business, his livelihood, where he practises his craft, of which he is a master. Who is this little girl to tidy it, wings or no? Had he been fully awake, some kind of eruption would have been inevitable. Instead, he watches her and that volatile concoction changes to something tempered by a grudging admiration. The girl seems to know exactly how to carry his tools: with an amount of respect that doesn’t tip into reverence. She knows where they all belong in the chaos. Once cleared, she wipes and polishes the tabletops. She clears the ashes from the hearth and banks it with fresh coal. But she does not light it.

  Instead, she busies herself among Berklum’s rolls of paper. They are in the far corner of the workshop, as far from the hearth as possible, and he has to push himself up to see her properly.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ he says.

  By way of answering, she makes a triumphant noise and pulls out a large roll of paper. Perhaps the largest of them all. Her prize in hand, she hops onto the big tabletop with a flutter of her wings.

  A small, unconscious thing for her, but somehow, it has such beauty to send a crack along the hardened shell of an old man.

  ‘First we must draw them,’ she says.

  ‘Draw what?’

  ‘That’s how this works, isn’t it? When someone wants you to make something, you draw it first?’

  He shuffles over to the tabletop, doing his best to ignore the aches of yet another night sleeping in a chair. ‘When someone engages my services as a bonesmith, they first tell me their name.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I know whose order is whose for a start.’

  ‘Do you have many customers with these?’ she says, stretching her wings and rolling her shoulders.

  ‘It also helps when talking to them. I can’t keep calling you “the girl with rainbow wings”.’

  Quite right, Berklum, that won’t do at all. We’re already tiring of that phrase, no matter how vote-winning it was to begin with.

  ‘What would you like to call me?’

  ‘So far, nothing but a nuisance.’

  A nuisance that has tidied your workshop. Oh, Berklum, if only you drank even a drop, you’d be a favourite of the Drunkard.

  ‘Newsands,’ the girl says, cleaning the sound somehow to make the ‘new’ and the ‘sands’ ring clear as crystal. ‘I like that.’

  We like that too, seeing how it irks Berklum.

  ‘Well then, Newsands, what would you like me to make you?’

  ‘Draw first,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, yes, draw first then I make it. That is, if you can afford it.’

  The girl smiles, which changes her from a girl to something much different. ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t for me. It’s for you. All of you.’

  Did you feel that? A chill?

  No, you don’t believe in that sort of thing, do you, Berklum?

  But we do. We felt it.

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘It’s time you found your wings.’

  *

  Perhaps this is a development the Audience anticipated? Perhaps having listened to so many stories – thousands of stories over thousands of years – members such as the Musician or the Weaver spotted the symbolism earlier in our tale? Was Newsands’ gift of a feather too much, they may ask? Surely not for the Drunkard or the Dandy, not for those easily distracted or those who seek a simple escape in their stories? Those Audience members will be wondering just how Berklum, an old bonesmith who only wants to do good work, could ever turn his hand to something so ambitious, so audacious as sending the Rustans to the sky.

  And the Critic? Well, there is no pleasing them, is there?

  But Berklum, he was not expecting such a twist.

  He stares hard at this little girl, this Newsands who appears and disappears on a whim, who comes bearing promises of great things without a coin purse about her person. One day it will shame him to recall his first thought at this moment, but we understand when he says, ‘Unun won’t like it.’

  That aging smile from the girl again. ‘Oh, she will. She will.’

  So mollified – and it didn’t take much – he turns to the blank roll of paper. He weighs it down at the corners with a hammer, some tongs and two metal toes, and then smooths the surface with his hand. A simple, unconscious gesture that became habit long before he became the master of this workshop.

  ‘Wings,’ he says.

  Not so hard to imagine, are they, especially with a bright pair right in front of you.

  ‘May I?’ he asks.

  She opens them, stretching them as wide as they’ll go, by way of invitation. The violet band at the bottom of her wings separates, each feather becoming a spear tip, fading to shafts of blue and green until they are bands once more. He runs a finger delicately up the rachis. Is that a new word to you, Berklum? No. Of course not. A bonesmith knows such words, words that describe the parts of things. Not so different from a spine, really. And what do we know about spine work?

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ Berklum mumbles, good sport that he is.

  But this is a wing, a feather, and this is the hollow shaft where it meets the colourful barbs – the rachis. The Audience know this word, but it never hurts to remind them of their knowledge.

  Further up he touches the deep red of the downy top cover
ing. Here, he presses the issue and feels solid bone. But light, so light he worries his touch has hurt her, and he glances to her face. She is staring just as he had, as if the wing is a new wonder to her too. She looks terribly serious, Berklum.

  ‘Impossible,’ he says, letting the wing go. He briefly considers the blank paper, then flees from it. ‘Impossible,’ he tells the furthest wall. ‘Impossible.’ He rubs his hands on an oiled rag, just to rid himself of the feel of feathers.

  ‘And yet… ’ She pirouettes.

  And yet.

  ‘You’re too heavy,’ he says.

  She pouts. Then proves him wrong by flapping her way up to the high shelf. There she settles, kicking her heels against the wall.

  ‘We’re too heavy. Our bones, our muscles, our organs. None of it purposed for such a thing as wings.’

  ‘Are we purposed to run as swiftly as a horse?’ she says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you see as far as the eagle, Berklum?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you can, by arranging curved pieces of glass. You arrange for the horse to do the running for you. And you even root through fire as the ash beetle does, thanks to those metal tools of yours.’

  ‘That is different,’ he says, obstinate. But despite himself, he is gnawing at the edges of the problem. He drifts back to the paper, and begins to draw.

  *

  What of dear Unun? You may ask. Banished from the workshop – banished from what is now her palla’s, but will one day be her own. Is she enjoying a day with her husband? Don’t laugh, hold your cynical sniggers, such a thing is possible. But, sadly not for Unun. Her dear husband has already washed, dressed and departed. He looked tired. He did not sleep well.

  In fact, neither of them did, with Unun tossing and turning. She does the same now, awake, lying among twisted, threadbare sheets. She is wrestling with more than just the peculiarities of her palla; she is wrestling with her future. Something she is caught between wishing for, and wishing away. At least the Audience understand such mortal complexities.

  Eventually, when she can turn over the soil of her problems no more, a seed of an idea falls – from where, who could say – onto that most ready of places: the restless. She only glimpses it, a flash of a thought, dismissed for being too bold but alluring all the same. She could ask… but no, no, that would not do. They might… no, no, why would they?

  It wouldn’t be the first…

  ‘No!’ she says, wringing the sheets with both her hands. Though she knows this seed will grow regardless, she still finds solace in fighting it.

  At the basin, she splashes cold water on her face, washes under her arms and dresses in a simple, thin robe. She does this because it is what she does in the morning. She eats because she is hungry, and chews mint because she likes the taste. None of this is because she intends to visit someone. And that someone couldn’t be an old friend.

  And that old friend couldn’t be, by chance, a moneylender.

  Ah, the games we play with ourselves.

  Unun makes ready to visit Hassi, the moneylender who nearly died by the metal foot of her palla-in-law. By the time she closes the door behind her – not the workshop door, with all its locks and heaviness, but the house door, which is plain and locks just once – by the time she is on the street, the game of that morning is gone. In its stead is resolution.

  She will borrow money today, enough to clear their old debts and enough so Unun may take over the workshop. Somehow she convinces herself such a thing is a clean start. She decides it is time for her palla to retire.

  Do you hear that, Berklum?

  He can’t, not through that heavy workshop door, not through the years of quiet servitude that Unun has given him. Besides, he is too busy drawing the impossible.

  Unun doesn’t have to go far, just four doors down. Hassi’s home is large, but not ostentatiously so – it just isn’t burdened by a bonesmith’s workshop. Unun knocks, metal to metal, and waits. She is kept waiting just long enough for a seed of doubt to fall – from where, who could say – beside the sapling that has become her conviction. Until this moment, she hadn’t realised how closely she’d been clinging to that conviction, how important the feeling of doing something was. She doesn’t want to feel lost again.

  The door opens. Purpose returns.

  The core of an apple flies past her shoulder and is swallowed by the street.

  ‘Osum, that’s enough!’ Hassi says. She is wielding a broom like a spear, jabbing at the monster of her own making, the monster that stalks the high shelves of her home. Her youngest. ‘Back. Back I said. Meiter has a visitor.’

  A pudgy face appears in the top corner of the doorway. ‘She’s not wearing shoes.’

  Both women look at Unun’s bare feet with equal surprise.

  ‘I… Sorry,’ Unun says. ‘I’ll come back.’

  ‘No!’ Hassi says with a vehemence that surprises them both. ‘No, please, come in.’ She applies the broom liberally, and a flurry of boyish limbs retreats from the doorway.

  Hassi’s home smells of old, dust-laden rugs. It’s not unpleasant, just different. Bonesmiths have no love for rugs – they catch fire too readily. But Hassi has decked her home in them; so many patterns that Unun finds it difficult to look in any one place for long, but they are soft beneath her feet. She is led into a comfortable reception room – another luxury lost to a bonesmith – and offered a seat. There’s a small hearth, laid but not lit, and a table between the two settees. The table is conspicuously clear.

  As Unun sits, she keeps her gaze firmly set on Osum, the little boy perching high above them. More specifically, his hands, in case he finds something more substantial than an apple core to throw. Like a metal foot. When Unun told her palla the story of the foot, she embellished as any good storyteller does. There was no end to Osum’s dropping; his meiter’s laughter did nothing to stop him – though it made for a better story, didn’t it?

  But it is a wail, not laughter, that begins this turn in the story.

  Such a sound of pain, low and guttural, that everyone glances back to the doorway. What wounded animal is this, that stalks the halls of a moneylender?

  ‘My eldest boy,’ Hassi says, no more than a whisper. ‘He’s lost his hairs.’

  Unun gasps, raising her bald hand to her mouth, her own pain remembered afresh then.

  ‘He just wanders the house, making that sound, always running a hand along the wall. He screams worse if I try to pull him away.’

  ‘Oh, Hassi… ’

  ‘He won’t go outside. Scared he’ll see his friends.’

  ‘Why?’ Unun says.

  ‘He’s early. This shouldn’t have happened for another year yet.’

  An extra year, a year of wailing isolation; the enormity of such a thing is not lost on Unun.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Osum, take your brother upstairs,’ Hassi says.

  But the boy doesn’t move from the high shelf. He stares at the open doorway. From the twist of his lips and the sweat lining his hair, he knows exactly what horrors lie beyond. The horrors of adulthood.

  ‘My boys will have plenty to tell the Amateur, and others besides.’ Hassi pours Unun a glass of water. ‘Plenty of stories for those leeches.’

  Unun forgives the woman’s mild blasphemy, knowing the Audience hear much worse every day; insults they can abide, it’s Silence they abhor. Even the Mute, the self-loathing fool. Caught between the wanting of a thing, and the shame of that wanting; who would be so at war with themselves? Whether it’s stories, or a bonesmith’s workshop… Who would spend their life that way, Unun?

  She doesn’t answer. That’s a privilege of her palla’s. Instead, she tries to express her sympathy once more, but Hassi has had her fill.

  ‘So, what brings you four doors down?’ Hassi says.

  ‘Without shoes,’ Osum adds.

  Unun blushes, can’t help it, but at least her feet are fairly clean. ‘Business,’ she says. ‘I want to
borrow some money.’

  ‘“Want”,’ Hassi echoed. ‘That’s not a word I hear so often. Need – that’s what I hear more.’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘What is it like?’

  Unun can’t look the woman, or her youngest son, in the eye. But she at least has the strength to say it out loud. ‘When I take on the workshop, I don’t want to take on my palla’s debts too.’

  ‘Why?’

  The simple questions are the hardest to answer.

  ‘Because I’m not buying the workshop from him now,’ Unun says, firmly. ‘The loan is to secure the future of it. So I control the future of it. That’s mine, and I want it on my own terms.’

  ‘And what terms are those?’

  ‘The kind that are mine, not my palla’s. The kind I decide on.’

  ‘I see. That we can accommodate.’

  *

  Old Man Berklum, a bonesmith for more years than he’s been a father, is also wrestling with numbers. These numbers won’t sit still on the paper. If he so much as glances away, they skitter and shift, arranging themselves as they see fit into no kind of order. Wilful numbers that defy his attempts to tame them, and to tame the forces they represent.

  He hunches over his table, a lone candle close enough to warm the side of his temple. If he had hair left, singeing would be a real risk. In the shadows of that candle, roll after roll of discarded papers are scattered about the floor. All kinds of sketches, some detailed and intricate, others no more than impressions in fat lines of charcoal. But for their differences they have a singular thing in common: the sweep of a wing.

  This, of course, is the easy aspect of the impossible. The difficulty comes in making such a sweep translate to flight.

  That he can’t do it is quickly apparent. There is just no amount of molten, shaped metal that can turn Rustan into bird. But he tries, and tries again. His fingers are blackened to the second knuckle from the charcoal and his eyes dry from staring.

  When he finally does put down the charcoal and stretch his grumbling back, he realises he is alone. The high shelves are empty of little girls with rainbow wings. He feels the sudden, irresistible urge to touch those wings again, to feel the varying softness of the different feathers. He wants to hold that which he’s been hunting among rolling dunes of paper; he wants to see those colours after so much black and white.