by D. K. Fields
‘Then, even if it is, maybe we’ll still be too heavy. And then there’s all the complications of getting into the air, then finding the heat, then coming back down.’
So, a test. Very good, Berklum. A man of his craft. A man who takes care, takes the appropriate steps, doesn’t rush into the dream but plots his route. And you’ve put this all together with what you had lying about the workshop?
‘Only missing the rope.’
Rope? Yes, that makes a sort of sense. Rope to keep a hold of your test. You’ll need a lot of it, Berklum.
‘I know.’
You know, there’s one person who deals with rope all day. A lot of rope. He might—
‘I know.’
Ah, but how to ask Nibalt, that’s the question. He’s not home yet. And when he does get back, he’ll be tired and, in all likelihood, irritable. His guard will be up as well as his hackles. No, better to wait until morning when he’s too sleepy to be suspicious. Can your test – and your patience – stand such a delay?
‘Yes, yes.’
He returns his focus to the tabletop, where his test lies incomplete. We have a better look at it now, over his shoulder, as he tinkers with this and that. Even for a crude and swiftly assembled model there is evident craft in the wing structure, its arms and its mechanisms. That is what it means to be a craftsman: no matter what they turn their hand to, it will exhibit a degree of quality.
These wings resemble a tatterwing’s reasonably faithfully. Stretched hide makes up the membrane. Just what hide is that, Berklum?
‘Goat, mostly.’
And the arms, wrists and fingers? What are they made of?
‘Tin. Lightest I have to hand.’
Perhaps not all of my audience realised bats have fingers. At least, that’s what we call their wing bones. Amusing, isn’t it, how we feel so comfortable applying the names of our own constituent parts to beasts of all shapes and sizes? But then, bats cannot name their bones themselves, so who better to do it than a bonesmith?
This is why you were chosen, Berklum. This is why the girl with rainbow wings appeared to you, and you alone. You make bones, you prefer to make fingers – that’s good work, you say – and here you are, making fingers. That has a neatness that all the Audience can appreciate.
‘So you say.’
We do! We do say. You’ll have more than enough stories for the Audience when all is said and done. How long, do you suppose, it could take the Musician, and the Inker, and the Messenger, and any other you care to mention – how long might it take for them to grow tired of tales of Rustans flying through the air? Five generations? Ten? A hundred?
‘I just make bones.’
‘You do more than that,’ Newsands says from some dark corner of the workshop. ‘You do so much more. Even before this, you changed lives.’
She’s right, as much as it pains us to admit it. The wincher whose palms blister and burn, the tailor whose sight is failing, the miner whose shoulder locks up – all these people changed by your modifications. And that’s not even considering the countless accidents that leave people in need of your services. All those stories changed, helped, made more interesting.
Harrumph, he says, adjusting the tiny cogs that open and close a set of holes at one end of a wing.
There are many such adjustments to make as the night wears on. Moving parts need to be greased and oiled. His stitching isn’t poor, but it could always be better. Everything is balanced and weighed and tallied on various papers. At some point, Newsands retrieves the bowl of evening porridge left by Unun. He doesn’t notice her do it, the bowl just appears next to him, and he absently eats a mouthful every so often. Mushrooms, he thinks, but tastes very little. Dwelling any longer on this risks feelings of guilt, and he can’t face those, not now. So instead he works until he sleeps.
He is woken the next day by Newsands shaking him, and the sound of the house door closing. Nibalt! Hurry, Berklum, you need to hurry with those locks and catch him. Remember your coin purse, now. We’re after rope, lots of it, no questions asked. Damn, if we’d just had more time to think it through, to know just what to say, and how to ask him.
Do you know how, Berklum?
Berklum?
You look smug as you hurry down the street. You’ve thought this through already, haven’t you? Planned it while we were distracted by one thing or another. Maybe even talked it through with that multicoloured monstrosity. No matter. We can be patient when necessary. We can simply listen. There he is, just turning the corner, the hulking man who cooks your dinner and sleeps beside your daughter.
‘Nibalt! Wait,’ he calls.
Nibalt falters, mid-stride. He turns enough to see you, Berklum, and his shoulders sink. Just a little, but there it is.
‘You’re up early, Berklum.’
‘Wanted to catch you, before work.’
‘Well, here I am, caught,’ he says, crossing his arms. Here we go, Berklum. Let’s hear it.
‘I need to buy rope.’
‘Do I look like—’
‘A lot of rope. A hundred feet,’ Berklum says. ‘I thought you, being a wincher, might know who supplies amounts like that.’
‘A hundred feet of rope,’ he says. He definitely wasn’t expecting that. He’s not only too sleepy, he’s also too surprised to be suspicious. And yet, he still asks, ‘Why?’
Here it comes. Settle in, everyone. We give you Berklum’s great deception…
‘I’ve been asked to make a kite.’
‘A kite?’
‘Yes, it’s a frame with—’
‘I know what a kite is.’
‘—popular among the Seeders, especially.’
Nibalt sniffs then rubs at his nose. ‘Nothing but bats fly in the mountains, every fool knows that.’
Every fool indeed, Nibalt.
‘A kite is what they want, which means rope. Which means’ – he pauses a beat here, like a master storyteller – ‘I need your help.’
Bravo, Berklum, bravo. The change in Nibalt is so profound, we can’t help but feel sorry for him. A grown man, weary and bitter and married, reduced to an eager boy.
‘I might be able to lay hands on eighty feet,’ he says. ‘Won’t be too cheap though.’
Berklum runs through the numbers and decides eighty feet should be fine. He’ll need some extra twine, maybe some thick thread, but that he can buy elsewhere. From his coin purse, he takes out a mark and gives Nibalt the rest.
‘This is too much,’ Nibalt says.
‘That’s fine, I trust you.’
Nibalt cinches the purse shut and nods. ‘Kites,’ he says. ‘Good work?’
‘Could be. Could be.’
*
So, what to do while we wait for Nibalt and his rope? Oh, you have that planned already. Well, by all means, proceed, bonesmith. Perhaps you don’t need us to tell your story after all, perhaps you can tell it yourself? No?
‘No time for stories,’ he says.
I hope the Audience didn’t hear that, Berklum. They can be vindictive on the best of days. But we’ll follow along; we’ll follow this new sense of purpose.
He passes the door to the workshop, stopping just briefly to check he did lock it, and then he is off up the winding street. Shops on either side are busy opening. Owners are sweeping the night’s dust and yesterday’s custom off their steps, hoping for a fresh day. The old local bonesmith garners a few nods of recognition, a kind of grudging – but long-earned – respect. They may not like you, Berklum, but they know they might need you one day. If they haven’t already.
At the vertical ropebox, he steps right in: no queue this early. The same is true at the box over to the ridge. We have a sense now, don’t we, of just where he’s going. Why else go to the ridge? Spine work’s dangerous, but he knows someone he just might trust.
On the box ride over he stares out at the clouds. There are no bats to see, not at this hour, but plenty of other things swirl among the billowing black. Ash. Rock. Sparks and embe
rs. A future. He holds out a hand, ignoring the concerned glances of the few strangers nearby. He holds out a hand and feels the wind. It pushes at him, insistent, as if it is saying, ‘I’m here, I’m always here.’
He looks for the rainbow, but it isn’t in the clouds. It’s waiting for him on the ridge, right when he steps out of the ropebox.
She falls in beside him without a word. He wonders if it’s worth telling her about the rope, about the test being almost ready, but decides she probably knows. When you’re not sure if someone is real or not, it’s difficult to determine their boundaries. What the extent of their power and their limitations is. You’ve wondered the same of us, haven’t you, Berklum? He shrugs, but Newsands doesn’t notice. Or doesn’t care. She seems determined today. Her gaze is fixed straight ahead and her arms swing by her side as if she’s marching into battle. A battle? No, you don’t think Lanthan will fight you on this. She’s a bonesmith who likes a challenge, likes good work, just the same as you.
You’re lucky – maybe not so lucky as to tell the Latecomer – that Lanthan doesn’t have a recipient on her table. Instead, she is at her forge, faceguard down, and turning something with her tongs. Her son, Acti, is on the other side of the heat and watching closely – as an apprentice should. Where’s your apprentice, Berklum? Oh, you don’t want to think about that, we know. But we won’t be the only ones asking today, so you’d best have an answer.
When he clangs his metal fingers on the door, by way of announcing himself, neither bonesmith nor apprentice flinch. They don’t even look up. Not until Lanthan is satisfied with whatever she’s forcing from a comfortable orange to a blistering yellow. This she takes to an anvil and beats with a hammer, once, twice, ten times or more. Then with all the excitement of the workshop, she drops her tongs in a bucket of water and the hiss of steam fills the air. He waits at the door, respectful and patient because that is the only way he knows how to behave.
‘Berklum,’ she says, lifting her dull metal faceguard.
He takes that as permission to enter.
‘I’d been meaning to send word. I might have some work for you soon,’ she says. ‘Toes.’
‘Good,’ he says. ‘That’s good.’ He’s thinking not of himself, but of his daughter. It is good she will have some solid, reliable orders when she takes over.
‘You’re alone,’ she says.
He can’t help glancing to the little girl beside him. Not his own daughter, but a girl who chose him. Lanthan sees the moment differently, of course. She feels something complicated, something hard for her to describe were she to try. Something close to pity, but pity edged with the knowledge the same will befall her, in her time.
‘I’m here as a recipient, not a bonesmith,’ he says, by way of explanation.
‘Is that so.’ She doesn’t believe you, Berklum. Doesn’t believe it’s possible for a bonesmith to just be a recipient. Just as the Caskers’ sangas make the worst patients, you will be a terrible recipient. Unless she puts you out cold, that is. But today is not the doing of the thing. Today is the planning, the designing, the negotiating the price. You have done all you can alone – now you need to discuss it with Lanthan.
‘It’s a modification.’
‘And it’s of a kind you can’t do yourself,’ she says.
It’s hard to say, isn’t it? Hard for you to admit you need help from another bonesmith – even one who has done that very thing herself.
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Why do I get the sense I’m not going to like this?’ she says.
‘It’s your kind of work…’
‘Go on.’
‘But it’s something new. Never done before.’
Her expression is one of confident scepticism. She doesn’t believe there is anything new to be done with iron and copper in all the Rusting Mountains. One day she may be right. Not today.
‘Show me,’ she says.
Newsands gives him the roll of paper. We’re used to this trick of hers by now, as is Berklum, but to Lanthan and her apprentice the paper appears from nowhere. One moment Berklum is standing there empty-handed, the next he is offering the roll to Lanthan. This is enough to distract her from the unsettling moment.
But not so her apprentice, Acti. He still bubbles with the curiosity of the young, still values the dream-like as highly as more practical matters. He shuffles over to Berklum and peers in front, behind and all around the old bonesmith. Without knowing, he has danced around Newsands too, danced a jig merry enough for the Companion. She watches on, stifling her giggles with a hand. But she has to be quick when he pokes the air, just where her head had been. A hop and a skip, and she’s off, away into the workshop.
By the tilt of his head, Acti thought he heard something just then. Poor boy, we hope he’s not the kind to worry at such a mystery.
At a table, his mother is worrying at a very different, but equally concerning puzzle. She’s weighted down Berklum’s paper at each corner and is now squinting at the contents. Bonesmiths have their own way of making their notations, of course – no two craftsfolk are the same, really. But she can read his measurements well enough. And just where on the body these modifications will be made is also clear as a Seeder sunset. But…
‘What’s it all for?’ she asks.
‘Does that matter?’ Berklum says. He doesn’t join her at the table, doesn’t need to – he knows that paper better than he knows his own mind.
‘It might. Will it hurt anybody else?’
Undoubtedly.
‘Only if they get the same thing done to them,’ he says.
‘I respect you not wanting to tell me – a Rustan’s modifications are their own business – but you know what that means; I might have to make decisions when you’re on the table.’
‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t trust you.’
She glances at the design. ‘I use my own materials.’
‘Of course.’
‘And it won’t be cheap. Spine work’s—’
Dangerous.
‘Dangerous,’ he says, a beat after we do. See, we’ve learnt one or two things from this story, haven’t we?
‘Difficult,’ she says, firmly.
‘Whatever price you think is fair.’
‘All right then,’ she says. She points to the paper. ‘What is this supposed to do?’
He joins her then, the deal done. They talk bonesmithery – a kind of talk heavy with technicalities of materials and measurements, stresses and forces, mechanisms and casual butchery of the flesh. Lanthan has her own thoughts on how certain things can be achieved on a man’s shoulders, and how the movement of that part of the body can be best harnessed. Berklum listens to her expertise and, together, they improve the design in a number of ways. When they both straighten from looking at the design, Berklum does his best not to wince. He is pleased with their plans.
He is pleased with how his wings will soon attach to his body.
*
That evening, Nibalt returns home with eighty feet of rope and an empty coin purse. He’s drunk. If he had the inclination to tell it, and Berklum had the inclination to listen, his tale would be one of Seeder spirits bought to grease the wheels of commerce. Barrooms up and down the spire, different but the same tacky floors, smoke-clouded ceilings and raised voices.
So it is that a drunk Nibalt pounds on the workshop door, with eighty feet of rope over his shoulder and the beginnings of a headache. He hands the rope over with a grunt, and that is that. None of the questions, none of the needling, none of the disapproval that Berklum had been steeling himself against. When he closes the workshop door, he can faintly hear Nibalt struggling with his keys for the house door. You’re right to wonder what Unun will make of him, Berklum. Let us tell you. It’s not how you imagine.
There’s no fight, not even an argument between husband and wife. She makes him tea. Then she makes him evening porridge. He’s grateful without the endless apologising of the drunk. Then they lie down together, neither
speaking but neither able to sleep right away. Just together, companionably, as their world refuses to stop spinning – one drunk, one worried. In short, it’s nothing like your marriage, Berklum.
‘That’s right,’ he says, hefting the rope.
He gets to work and doesn’t allow himself sleep until he finishes building the test. He packs the wings and the… body into a small hand cart – the kind allowed in the vertical ropeboxes – and finally, he slumps into his slipdog hide chair.
Newsands appears just as he is closing his eyes. Her serious face softens with a smile.
‘This is good,’ she says. ‘I’m proud of you, Berklum the bonesmith. So very proud.’
He isn’t up early the next day, but that is no matter. In all the spire, the Rusting Mountains and the Union beyond, there’s not a single man, woman, or child who is impatiently waiting on Old Man Berklum or his discovery. How could they be, when they know nothing of it? Even the girl with rainbow wings has apparently infinite patience. What of the Audience, you say? Yes, perhaps you are right. Perhaps they are ready for this story to race towards a conclusion. But it is difficult to race so, when we’re following an old man as he wrestles a cart along uneven streets.
The best we can do is skip over his trials and tribulations with the queue at the vertical ropebox, the many rest stops he takes leaning against his cart as he struggles for breath, and the curt answers he gives those idly wondering, ‘What’s in the cart, old man?’ Let us skip to a rested Berklum at the same vista where he watched the tatterwings. He has napped through the midday heat, watched over by a girl who might not be there. The test lies spread out on the ground. He has checked the various fastenings, stitches and mechanisms and is satisfied. He is ready.
Newsands is also ready. For once, the girl is going to do more than speak in enigmas and produce Berklum’s possessions from thin air. She is going to carry the test to the wind.
It will be a simple test really, for all its players, its workings and its moving parts. Berklum will stand firmly on the ledge the whole time, and he will hold the ropes connected to the test – as a boy holds string attached to a kite. Newsands’s role is to fly out from the ledge, carrying the test with her, so as to launch it mid-air; it is too heavy to simply wait for a passing breeze as one would when launching a kite. And if the test flies, if it can rise and fall on the hot winds of the Tear, it will be a success. If it falls…
