On (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  Tighe’s mood sank. So much happiness, so much energy, and he felt exhausted and depressed. He knew why, deep down, but did not think about it. He did not want to think about it.

  He crossed to the wall and bent, to try and slip past everybody without being noticed. He had no place here. It was impossible for him to go up to Tohomhe’s house. There wouldn’t be any work for him anyway, but the thought of the weaver’s simple jollity was more than he could bear. He wanted to find a dark place and lie down. He wanted to sink into shadow.

  He made his way along the wall with small steps towards the public ladder, thinking to go up to the higher crags and ledges and find a peaceful place to be alone. But here was Wittershe, her pretty face smiling its unique smile, a bundled package of fodder grass for her father’s monkeys under her left arm.

  ‘Hello, my Princeling,’ she said, reaching out and touching his face with her right hand. ‘I should say, my Prince.’

  ‘Wittershe,’ he said. He felt tears prick through the blankness of his misery. She was so pretty.

  ‘You haven’t been down our ladder in a while, my Prince,’ she said, in a sultry tone. ‘Did you not have pleasure when you were down before? Are you not anxious for more?’

  Tighe tried to speak, but words didn’t come out. How could he explain it to her? His blankness of mood, his hopelessness. She moved closer to him and he could smell her particular smell again. It reached past his misery into the core of his body, started the twinkling sensations of desire bubbling in his belly. ‘Wittershe,’ he said again.

  There was something he wanted to tell her, but he didn’t like to think about it. He did not want to think about it. Couldn’t she see?

  ‘My sweet Tighe,’ she was saying, her breath touching his cheek. ‘I think about you and miss you. Why not come down the ladder? Why not do so now?’

  ‘The itinerants,’ said Tighe, with a gasp.

  ‘You say?’

  ‘The strangers. They were starving.’

  ‘The Doge sent them all up the stairway yesterday,’ said Wittershe, leaning a little away. ‘Everybody has talked about it. Good riddance – they were a curse upon our village, everybody says.’

  ‘Three were too weak to go,’ said Tighe, his voice deep with misery.

  Wittershe looked quizzically at him. ‘You say?’

  ‘They were too starved even to stand up – but they are not here this morning.’

  ‘I suppose they have gone as well,’ said Wittershe, offhand. ‘I have to take this fodder down to my pahe, but then I’m free for a little while. Why not spend the time with me, for an hour?’

  There was a spurt of something in Tighe’s breast, breaking the ice a little. ‘No! Wittershe – can you not see it? Where did the last of the itinerants go?’

  ‘They went up the stairway. My pahe was cross that they were given free passage when he and every other villager has to pay a debt to step up the Doge’s stair, but even he thinks it good riddance. They were a curse.’

  ‘Some of them went up the stair,’ said Tighe, grabbing her arm, eager to make her understand, ‘but there were three too weak to go up the ladder.’

  ‘Tighe,’ said Wittershe, dropping her bundle to the floor to prise his grip from her arm.

  ‘Where have those three gone?’

  ‘Gone away,’ said Wittershe. ‘How does it matter anyway? Up the stairway.’

  ‘No.’ He pulled her towards him. ‘Don’t you see? Don’t you see what my Grandhe has done?’

  ‘Tighe –’

  And then, with a voice like thunder, or the strongest of dawn gales, Tighe heard his Grandhe. ‘Grandchild!’

  He looked around. Grandhe was standing on the main-street shelf looking straight at him – pointing at him, holding his wooden staff up to point in his direction. His two deputies were behind him, as always. Everybody on the main-street shelf had stopped their labour and all were staring at him.

  ‘Grandchild! Leave that heretic’s slut to herself.’

  Wittershe looked mortified. She wriggled free from Tighe and stepped back. But Tighe’s blood was running through his head now, making pulsing noises in his ears. He felt a curious raising of spirits, a feeling of lightness in his torso as if he might float away and up, all the way up to God sitting in majesty on top of the wall. He turned to face his Grandhe.

  ‘You killed them!’ he screeched. He didn’t intend for his voice to come out so high-pitched, but his emotion was too strong for easy control.

  ‘Grandchild!’ bellowed Grandhe.

  ‘You killed them – you came in the night and threw them from the world. Killer! Murderer!’ He was crying now and his outstretched arm was trembling. Everybody was silent. Tighe could sense even Wittershe absolutely motionless behind him. Only his Grandhe’s face moved, the rage and astonishment warping the features.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but only a strangled, furious sound emerged. Then he sucked in a deep breath, and shouted ‘Be careful, my daughter’s son,’ he bellowed. ‘I say –’

  ‘You killed them and you killed my pas!’ screamed Tighe. ‘You did it! You threw them off the world to die.’

  ‘You may be my daughter’s child,’ yelled Grandhe, his face distorted strangely by his wrath, ‘but you’ll be punished like a criminal for saying such things.’

  ‘Everybody knows, but nobody says,’ screamed Tighe, the tears coming fluently now. ‘Everybody knows you killed my pahe, killed the Prince. You killed my pashe, your own daughter.’

  Grandhe howled, really howled. Then with a gesture of both arms he sent his deputies forward. The two young men started lumbering towards Tighe, crossing the main-street shelf in large strides. And Tighe could barely see them through his tear-bleared eyes. The sound of Grandhe’s voice came upon his ears again. ‘How dare you say such wicked things,’ but Tighe was already turning on his heels, already lurching away down the main-street shelf. It was less than conscious. Some animal part of his being refused to be snatched by his Grandhe’s men, refused to be beaten again. He had no idea what the villagers were doing or saying. He was blind to everything except the blurry sense of his own feet pounding the pressed mud and patchy grass of the shelf.

  He ran clumsily, trying to clear his eyes by rubbing the back of his hand over them. He could hear his own sobs and the thump of his pursuers behind him. He felt as if he had spoken the unspeakable and had got no relief.

  He reached the far end of main-street shelf quickly, and doubled back to clamber up to the ledges that led away and up to the Left. His pas’ house was on one of these ledges. Somebody – Tighe didn’t recognise who – stood stupefied as he rushed past and the Priest’s deputies hurried after him.

  The deputies were older than Tighe, with fuller strides. They closed the distance between them rapidly. Fingers clutched at Tighe’s clothes. They almost had him. The sensation of near capture brought a sharp, sudden nausea into Tighe’s stomach. He shimmied to avoid their grasp and kicked out to accelerate up the sloping ledge.

  And, with a nauseous flurry in his torso, his foot went over the edge. The ledge swung up, and Tighe braced himself for the impact of his face against the hard mud. But no impact came and then the ledge was withdrawing from him. Wind leapt at his ears, smacked into his face and body.

  His stomach clenched and bucked within him. But it was appallingly true. He was falling.

  Falling and turning.

  There was the fleetingest glimpse of ledges whipping past him, and then he was head over toes and nothing but sky, and the distant clouds. The wind was screaming now, its voice huge in his ears. He was screaming too, probably. Probably, but he couldn’t tell because the enormous rush of air took everything from his mouth and whisked it away. It cloaked him in soundproof stuff; it chilled him and robbed his body of heat.

  Everything.

  A strong taste of metal in his mouth. His mouth was dry.

  He tumbled again and the wall panned past him. He realised then that his arms and legs were thrashing,
kicking and clawing at nothing, at air. With another great visceral lurch he felt himself propelled awaywall, so violently that his head slumped back and his limbs trailed behind him. Then he toppled, twisted, and was pushed hard again. The wind was a giant hand, pawing him, flicking him outwards. His stomach contracted violently and his breakfast came gobbling up at his throat. A streak of pale vomit spread away from him and he flailed and cried.

  Then, miraculously, he was tossed upwards. His pulsing stomach registered the shift in direction, not down but up, as if a spectral cord was attached to his back and was now yanking him upwards. He was facing the wall, too, so the shift in motion made itself plain to his eyes too. The landscape of the wall slowed, stopped, began rewinding. A broad ledge heavily overhung, very distant, uninhabited, probably a singleton, moved judderingly down his vision, and he knew he was travelling up. The thought that the Divine had intervened occurred to him; that the Divine was going to lift him back up to his village. Or maybe this was what it felt like to be dead – maybe he had died of falling. Died of fright. And now his body was tumbling still, falling to wherever it was that people fell to, but his spirit had been pulled out and was going to fly upwards upwards to heaven. To see his pas. To see pashe, I’m sorry pashe …

  Or, he was dreaming.

  But no dream could be this solidly present in his stomach. And his guts registered it again, and the visceral tumbling, lurching, started once again, built rapidly from nothing like a seed growing in his deep insides. He was dropping again, falling down and gaining speed. Had it been a freak gust of wind carrying him up?

  And the horrible sense of starting to fall, of moving down again faster and faster. Another violent push wallwards, then a turbulent juggling, wallwards, awaywalls, wallwards, awaywalls. His eyeballs hurt. His throat was hoarse. His skin shivered with the extreme cold in great jerky convulsions.

  The wind was playing with him throwing him around like a fallen blade of grass. He barely had time to register this realisation.

  It was the cold. That was the worst. He realised the immediate terror of the fall was shrinking, but the cold was getting worse. His fingers and feet were painful-sore with the chill of it, and the wind was pushing through the webbing of the weave of his shirt and trousers to give his body genuine aches. He was falling – no, moving sideways, hurtling back towards the wall – no, falling again, diving down again. But the surprise was going and now the cold was the worst of it.

  Falling to wherever fellers went. Wherever the starving itinerants had fallen to. Wherever his pas had gone. To the very bottom of the wall, maybe.

  But maybe there was no bottom; maybe those who fell did so on and on for ever. But they still died – a part of him was amazed that he could be so rational, that he could think it through like this – he supposed. Died of the cold, most like. Or of hunger. Or thirst, maybe. He looked up. Much closer to the wall now. Maybe that was how fellers died. Maybe they just smashed into the wall as they went down and were broken to a million pieces.

  Then he thought, with his whole body stabbed with pain from the cold of it, that maybe he could steer away from the wall. If he stretched out, and tried to dive down, maybe the direction of fall would be awaywalls. If he got far enough out he could avoid the –

  Instant blackness, and

  And breath was punched away. A profound jarring, like a slap from a giant’s hand. His spine howled with pain, his face was numb but dribbling a spout of warmth from his nose, as he lurched away and sharp fingers snagged him in a spiky embrace. That was the last thing: being grasped by unyielding spars of something.

  Only a period of shady perceptions and most of those perceptions of a wall of pain that stretched right through him. It hurt, in crescendo pulses, as he breathed. His left foot hurt terribly. A pain pulsed through his sinuses.

  2

  Kite-boy

  1

  He began emerging from the darkness. It was sometime.

  It was difficult to tell the time, and

  His whole body ached. He kept his eyes pressed shut and tried to think the pain away. It was no good. His left foot hurt swingeingly. He tried not to think about it, but the pain kept intruding itself in his thoughts. He couldn’t think a way round it. It was no good.

  His eyeballs stung with the light. Grey light, sharp. He looked around, and it took a time to piece together the

  Fell asleep again! He kept falling asleep in the middle of things. He had the sense of people moving about him, sometimes of soup being dribbled along a stick into his mouth. When he had been younger he had fallen ill with fever and his pahe had nursed him in this way; pouring a little sticky broth from a cup so that it ran down a fat stick and trickled into his mouth. But his pahe was dead, and his pashe too, and with that memory Tighe started crying.

  People hushed him, and words flowed through the air. But the words meant nothing to him.

  He tried sitting up one morning, but the effort was too much and it made his feet hurt badly and his back. He cried out. ‘Ach! Ach!’ Somebody, wearing face paint and a bizarre headdress, moved from the shadows and leant over him. More of the words, but they made no sense to Tighe.

  Without sense, the words were like music, and the music acted like a lullaby. He slept again.

  It seemed to him that he was never able to sleep for very long, because the pain woke him up. He tried explaining this to the person with the painted face and the headdress, but there was no sign of comprehension on the other person’s face. Sometimes it was as if there was another person, with the same paint on his face and the same strange headgear, but different features. It was hard because the pale paint on the face made the features somehow difficult to see.

  ‘How long have I been here?’ he asked. But they just ignored his question.

  By now he was able to sit up, although it rasped his feet pulling them over the mattress. But it meant a great deal to him to be able to bring his head up, to look around. When they came to feed him again he took the spatula and the bowl himself and spooned the soup in like an adult. He felt all right in the head, not hot about the temples or sweating from the eyes. His back was not as sore. Only leg joints hurt, and his feet in particular. The left one was broken. He couldn’t see it because, for some reason, it was covered in a fat cake of mud.

  When Tighe examined this mud – a strange pale mud, but dried mud none the less – he scratched away with his fingernails and started pulling fragments away from it. One of the attendants hurried over and stopped him, gently but firmly moving his hand away from the thing.

  He understood. Once a boy-boy had fallen from an upper ledge, and had been lucky enough to land on the main-street shelf rather than falling all the way off the wall. But he had put his arm out of the shoulder and broken the bone. His pas had strapped thick bamboo to the arm and smeared it all with mud too to hold it steady whilst it healed. Only that mud had flaked off in hours and they had had to replace it every morning and evening. This pale, dried mud seemed to stay intact the whole time.

  He ate, slept, drank. The soup was called poltete. One of the attendants pointed to it and repeated the word, until Tighe copied it. Tighe tried the other way about, ‘My name is Tighe, Tighe,’ but the other didn’t seem interested.

  He woke early every morning and hauled himself upright into a sitting position. He was in a low, wide space; only recently excavated from the wall to judge by the roughness of the walls. There was a line of a dozen mattresses, each woven from fat reeds unfamiliar to Tighe, spaced equally between one wall and the other. Tighe occupied one of the mattresses near the middle. In his early days in this place there was another body on the mattress three along from his, an impressively large body that lay on its back rasping as it breathed. By the time Tighe was able to sit up the body had gone, dead or recovered, he never found out.

  He was struck, as soon as he could clear the dried, snotted blood from his nostrils, by how antiseptic the air smelled. It was remarkable, as if the walls had just been scrubbed with
soap.

  As Tighe’s health improved, he moved on from eating only the poltete. Sometimes grubs were mixed into the soup and once he was brought a piece of something so delicious it had to be meat, although not a meat he had ever tasted before. He started each day with grass-bread so warm it was evidently just baked.

  When he needed to piss he rolled to the edge of the mattress and pissed on the floor, in the way he was used to doing, the way he had always done it at home. He even tried scooping dirt over the puddle, as he would have done at home, although the gesture of stretching hurt his legs. But one of the attendants came over speaking their gibberish, obviously horrified at what Tighe had just done. An elaborate mime made it clear that Tighe was expected to piss into the bowl on the other side of the mattress. The bowl was filled with platán leaves, and Tighe slowly came to understand that he was expected to take the leaves out of the bowl and keep them to shit into; that the bowl was to be used for his piss. After he had taken on board this alien concept he did as he was told and used the unfamiliar devices as instructed. Attendants sometimes carried the bowl outside and each time he filled a platán leaf with his waste it was carefully gathered up and removed. Maybe they used it for their gardens outside, or maybe cast it over the edge of the world. Tighe couldn’t know.

  Another patient was brought in, bleeding from his nose and ears and whimpering like a piglet. He was the centre of attention for half an hour; all four medical attendants hurrying around him, leaning over him, mopping him and applying something to his lips. But he stopped his noise after a while and lay still, and half an hour after that a strange smell started from that part of the room. The attendants carried out his nerveless body and Tighe was alone again.