by Gene Wolfe
Musk pointed. "Stand right over there, see? Where it's three floors. I'll be up on that roof." The kite builder nodded and went back to the floater shed to crank open the main door, three floaters wide. When he picked it up, the new kite felt heavy in his hands; he had not weighed it, and now he tried to guess its weight: as much as the big fighting kite he'd built when he was just starting, with the big black bull on it.
And that wouldn't fly in any wind under a gale. He carried the new kite along the white stone path, then across the rolling lawn to the spot that Musk had pointed out. There was no sign of Hare and no dangling wire. Craning his neck, the kite builder peered up at the ornamental battlement, black as the bull against the mosaic gaiety of the skylands. There was no one there.
Some distance behind him, the cats were pacing nervously in their pen, eager for their time of freedom. He could not hear them, yet he was acutely conscious of them, their claws and amber eyes, their hunger and their frustration. Suppose that the talus were to free them without waiting for Musk's order? Suppose that they were free already, slinking through the shrubbery, ready to pounce?
Something touched his cheek.
"Wake up down there!" It was Musk's husky, almost feminine voice, calling from the roof.
The kite builder caught the wire and fastened the tiny snap hook at its end to the kite's yoke, then stepped back to admire his work as his kite swiftly mounted the dressed stone, his kite like a man smaller and slighter than almost any actual man, with a dragonfly's gossamer wings.
Hare was coming over the lawn with something pale in his arms. The kite builder called, "Let me see that," and trotted to meet him, taking the white rabbit from him and holding it up by its ears. "It's too heavy!"
"This is the one he said to bring," Hare told him. He retrieved the rabbit.
"It can't lift one that big."
"There's no wind anyhow. You coming up?"
The kite builder nodded.
"Come on, then."
Entering the original villa by a rear door, they climbed two flights of stairs and clattered up the iron spiral that Silk had descended two nights before; Hare threw open the trap door. "We had a big buzzard up here," Hare said. "We called him Hierax, but he's dead."
Somewhat out of breath, the kite builder felt obliged to chuckle nonetheless.
They crossed the tiles and scrambled up onto the roof of the wing, the kite builder holding the docile rabbit again and passing it to Hare when Hare had attained the higher roof, accepting a hand as he himself scrambled up.
Musk was sitting on the battlement, practically hidden by the kite. "Show a little life. I've been waiting for an hour. Are you going to have to run with it?"
"I'll hold the spool," the kite builder said. "Hare can run with it. But it won't fly without a wind."
"There's wind," Musk told him.
The kite builder moistened his forefinger and held it up; there was indeed some slight stir here, fifty cubits above the ground. "Not enough," he said.
"I could feel it," Musk told him. "Feel it trying to go up."
"Naturally it wants to." The kite builder could not and would not conceal his pride in his craft. "Mine all do, but there's not enough wind."
Hare asked, "You want me to tie the rabbit on?"
"Let me see him." Musk, too, lifted the rabbit by its ears, and it squealed in protest. "This is the little one. You putt, you brought the little one."
"I weighed 'em. There's two lighter than this, I swear."
"I ought to drop it off. Maybe I ought to drop you off, too."
"You want me to get them? I'll show them to you. It'll only take a minute."
"What if it gets threshed and goes off? We haven't got any more this little. What'll we use in the morning?" Musk returned the rabbit to Hare.
"Two of them, by Scylla's slime. By any shaggy gods you want to name. I wouldn't lie to you."
"That's not a rabbit, it's a shaggy rat."
A passing breeze ruffled the kite builder's hair, like the fingers of an unseen goddess. He felt that if he were to turn quickly he might glimpse her: Molpe, goddess of the winds and all light things, Molpe, whose suitor he had been all his life. Molpe, make your winds blow for me. Don't shame me, Molpe, who have always honored you. A brace of finches for you, I swear.
Musk snapped, "Tie it on," and Hare knelt on the sun-soft tar, whipping the first cord around the unfortunate rabbit and tying it cruelly tight.
"Split along!"
"Cooler. I can't see a shaggy thing I'm doing here. We should've brought a lantern." "So it can't fall out."
Hare rose. "All right. It won't." He took the kite from Musk. "Should I hold it over my head?" The kite builder nodded. He had picked up the reel of wire; now he moistened his finger again. "Want me to run down that way?" "No. Listen to me. You have to run toward me, into the wind-into whatever wind there is, anyway. You're running so that the wind will feel stronger to the kite than it really is. If we're lucky, that false wind will lift it enough to get it up to where the wind really is stronger. Go down that way, all the way to the comer. I'll reel out as you walk down, and reel in as you run back. Any time the kite wants to lift out of your hands, toss it up. If it starts to fall, catch it." "He's from the city," Musk explained. "They don't fly them there."
The kite builder nodded absently, watching Hare.
"Hold it by the feet, as high as you can get it. Don't run until I tell you to."
"It looks real now," Musk said, "but I don't know if it looks real enough. It'll be daylight and sunshine, and they can see a shaggy scut better than we can. Only they don't always know real from fake. They don't think about it like we do."
"All right," the kite builder called. "Now!"
Hare ran, long-legged and fast, the kite's wings moving, stroking the air a trifle at every stride as though it would fly like a bird if it could. Halfway along the long roof he released it, and it rose.
Molpe! O Molpe!
At twice Hare's height it stalled, hung motionless for an instant, dipped until it nearly touched the roof, lifted again to head height, and fell lifeless to the tar. "Catch it!" Musk screamed. "You're supposed to catch it! You want to bust its shaggy neck?"
"You're worried about your rabbit," the kite builder told him, "but you've got more, and you could buy a dozen tomorrow morning. I'm worried about the kite. If it's broken it could take two days to mend it. If it's broken badly, I'll have to start over."
Hare had picked up the kite. "The rabbit's all right," he called across the roof. "Want to try again?"
The kite builder shook his head. "That bowstring's not tight enough. Bring it here."
Hare did.
"Hold it up." The kite builder knelt. "I don't want to put it down on this tar."
"Maybe we could tow it behind one of the floaters," Hare suggested.
"That would be riskier even than this. If it went down, it would be dragged to rags before we could stop." By touch alone, he loosened the knot. "I wanted to put a tumbuckle in this," he told Musk. "Maybe I should have." "We'll try it again when you've got it right," Musk said. "There might be a wind in the morning." "I'm going to fly Aquila in the morning. I don't want to be wondering about this."
"All right." The kite builder stood, wet his forefinger again, and nodded to Hare, pointing.
This time the enormous kite lifted confidently, though it seemed to the kite builder that there was no wind at all. Fifteen, twenty, thirty cubits it soared-then dipped - swooped abruptly with a terrified squeal from its passenger, and struggled to climb again, nearly stalling.
"If it gets down below the roof, the house'll kill the wind."
"Exactly right." The kite builder nodded patiently. "The very same thought had occurred to me earlier."
"You're pulling it down! What are you doing that for? It was going to fly that time."
"I need to slack off the lower bridle line," the kite builder explained. "That's the string going from the feet to the yoke."
To
Hare he called, "Coming down! Catch it!" "All right, that's enough!" Musk's needler was in his hand. "We'll try again in the morning. We'll try it again when there's more wind, and it had better fly and fly good when we do. Are you listening to me, old man?"
Hare had the kite now; the kite builder released the reel crank. "About that much." He indicated the distance with his fingers. "Didn't you see it dive? If it dove like that into this roof, or into the ground, it could be completely wrecked."
While Hare held the kite up, the kite builder loosened the lower bridle siring and let it out the distance he had indicated. "I thought that I might have to do this," he explained, "so I left a little extra here."
Musk told Hare, "We won't risk it again tonight."
"Be quiet." The kite builder's fingers had stopped, the bridle string half-retied. Far away he had heard the murmur of the dry forest, the shaking of raddled old leaves and the rubbing a million dry twigs upon a million more. He turned his head blindly, questing.
"What is it?" Hare wanted to know.
The kite builder straightened up. "Go to the other comer this time," he said.
"It had better not break." Musk slipped his needler beneath his tunic.
"If it breaks, I'll be safe," the kite builder remarked. "You couldn't repair it, and neither could he."
"If it flies you'll be safer," Musk told him grimly.
Two chains and more away, Hare could hear their voices. "All right?"
Automatically the kite builder glanced down at his reel. The trees had fallen silent now, but he felt Molpe's phantom ringers in his hair. His beard stirred. "NOW!"
Hare held onto the huge kite until he was halfway across the roof, and loosed it with an upward toss. Immediately it shot up fifty, then sixty cubits; there it paused, as though gathering strength.
"Up," Musk muttered. "Away hawk!"
For a full two minutes, the kite soared no higher, its transparent wings almost invisible against the skylands, its human body as black as the shade, the rabbit a writhing dot upon its chest. At last the kite builder smiled and let out more wire. It climbed confidently, higher and higher, until it seemed that it would be lost among tessellated fields and sparkling rivers on the other side of the whorl. "Is that enough?" the kite builder asked. "Shall I bring it down?" Musk shook his head.
Hare, who had joined them to watch the kite, said, "Looks good, don't it? Looks like the lily thing."
"I want my money," the kite builder told Musk. "This is what we agreed upon. I've built it, you've approved it, and it will carry a rabbit."
"Half now," Musk whispered, still watching the kite. "I don't approve until Aquila goes for it. I'm still not sure it's going to look right to her."
Hare chuckled. "Poor little bunny! I bet it don't even know where it's got to. I bet it's lonesome way up there."
Musk contemplated the distant rabbit with a bitter smile. "It'll get some company in the morning." The mounting wind fluttered his embroidered tunic and pushed a long strand of curling hair across his handsome forehead.
The kite builder said, "If you don't think that it will deceive your eagle, tell me what changes you'd like me to make. I'll try to have them finished by morning."
"It looks good now," Musk conceded. "It looks exactly like a real flier holding a rabbit."
IN BED, TOSSING and turning, Silk drove the deadcoach through a dark and ruined dreamscape, the land of the dead still a land of the living. The wind was blowing and blowing, fluttering all the yellow-white curtains of all the bedroom windows, fluttering the velvet hangings of the deadcoach like so many black flags; like the slashed poster on Sun Street with old Councillor Lemur's eyes gouged out, his nose and his mouth dancing, dancing in the wind; like the kind face of old Councillor Loris cut away and blowing down the gutter; like Maytera Rose's wide black habit, heavy with hemweights and death but. fluttering anyway while the tall black plumes bent and swayed, while the wind caught the black lash of Silk's dancing whip, so that when he intended to whip one black horse he whipped the other. The unwhipped black horse lagged and lagged, dogged and dogged it, snorted at the billowing yellow dust but was never whipped. He should have been for cheating his brother who sweated and lunged at the harness though his flanks were crusted with yellow dust that the white foam had already dyed black.
In the deadcoach Orpine writhed naked and white, Silk's old torn cotton handkerchief falling from her face, always falling but never fallen, always slipping but never slipped, though the wind whistled against the glass and carried dust through every crack. While whipping the wrong horse, always the wrong horse, Silk watched her clawing Chenille's dagger, saw her claw and pull at it though it was wedged between her ribs, saw her clawing like a cat at the red cat with the fiery tail, at the fine brass guard all faceted with file work. Her face beneath the slipping handkerchief was stained with her blood, forever the face of Mucor, of Blood's crazed daughter. There were sutures in her scalp and her brown hair was shaved away, her black hair shaved by Moorgrass, who had washed her body and shaved half her head so that the stitches showed and a drop of blood at each stitch though her full breasts leaked milk onto the black velvet. The grave awaited her, only the grave, one more grave in a whorl of graves where so many lay already watched over by Hierax, God of Death and Caldé of the Dead, High Hierax the White-Headed One with her white spirit in his claws because the second one had been a brain surgeon, for whom if not for her?
Nor did Silk, alone in the padded black-leather driver's seat, know what any of these things meant, but only that he was driving to the grave and was late as usual. He always came to a grave too late and too soon, driving nightside in a dark that was darker than the darkest night, on a day that was hotter than the hottest day, so that it burned the billowing dust as an artist's earths are burned in an artist's little furnace, glowing gold in the heat, the black plumes billowing while he whipped the wrong horse, a sweating horse that would die at the grave if the other did not pull too. And where would Orpine lie, with the dead black horse in her grave?
"Hi-yup!" he shouted, but the horses did not heed him, for they were at the grave and the long sun gone out, burned out, dead forever until it kindled next time. "Too deep," Chenille told him standing by the grave. "Too deep," the frogs echoed her, frogs he had caught as a boy in the year that he and his mother had gone to the country for no reason and come back to a life no different, the frogs he had loved and killed with his love. "Too deep!" and the grave was too deep, though its bottom was lined with black velvet so that the sand and the cold clay would never touch her. The cold, sinking waters of underground streams that were sinking every year it seemed would never wash Orpine, would not rot her back to trees and flowers, never wash off Blood's blood nor wet the fiery cat with the black mouse in its jaws, nor the golden hyacinths. Never fill the golden pool in which the golden crane watched golden fish forever; for this was no good year for golden fish, nor even for silver ones.
"Too deep!"
And it was too deep, so that the yellow dust would never fill it and the velvet at the bottom was sprinkled with sparks that might flicker at last but hadn't flickered yet as Maytera Marble told him pointing, and by the light of that one 'there she was young again, with a face like Maytera Mint's and brown gloves like flesh covering her hard-working steel fingers.
"Too long!" he told the horses, and the one that never pulled at all lunged and plunged and put his back into it, pulling for all he was worth, though the wind was in his teeth and the night darker than any night could be, with never a patch of skylands showing. The long road under- ground was buried forever in the billowing dust and all this blowing brush.
"Too long!"
Hyacinth sat beside him on the padded leather seat; after a time he gave her his old, bloodstained handkerchief to cover her nose and mouth. Though the wind bayed like a thousand yellow hounds, it could not blow their creaking, shining, old deadcoach off of this road that was no road at all, and he was glad of her company.
Chapter
5
THE SLAVE OF SPHIGX
It was Molpsday, Silk reminded himself as he sat up in bed: the day for light-footed speed, and after work for singing and dancing. He did not feel particularly light-footed as he sat up, swung his legs over the side of his bed, and rubbed his eyes and his bristling jaw. He had slept-how long? Almost too long, but he could still join the sibyls in their morning prayers if he hurried. It had been the first good night's sleep he had gotten since… Since Thelxday.
He stretched, telling himself he would have to hurry. Breakfast later or not at all, though there was still fruit left and vegetables enough for half the quarter.
He stood, resolved to hurry, received a flash of pain in his right ankle for his effort, and sat down again abruptly. Blood's lioness-headed stick was leaning against the head of the bed, with Crane's wrapping on the floor beside it. He picked up the wrapping and lashed the floor with it. "Sphigx will be the goddess for me today," he muttered, "my prop and my support." He traced the sign of addition in the air. "Thou Sabered, Stabbing, Roaring Sphigx, Lioness and Amazon, be with me to the end. Give me courage in this, my hour of hardship."
Crane's wrapping was burning hot; it squeezed his ankle like a vise and felt perfectly wonderful as he trotted down the stairs to fill his washbasin at the kitchen pump.
Oreb was asleep on top of the larder, standing on one leg, his head tucked beneath his sound wing. Silk called, "Wake up, old bird. Food? Fresh water? This is the time to ask."
Oreb croaked in protest without showing his face.
There was still some of his old cage left, and a large, live ember from the fire that had cooked no vegetables last night. Silk laid half a dozen twigs across it, puffed, and actually rubbed his hands at the sight of the young flame. He would not have to use any precious paper at all!
"It's morning," he told the bird. "The shade's up, and you should be too."
There was no reply.
Oreb, Silk decided, was openly ignoring him. "I have a broken ankle," he told the bird happily. "And a stiff arm - Master Xiphias thought I was left-handed, did I tell you about that? And a sore belly, and a fine big black-and-blue mark on my chest where Musk hit me with the pommel of his knife." He arranged three small splits on top of the blazing, snapping twigs. "But I don't care one bit. It's Molpsday, marvelous Molpsday, and I feel marvelous. If you're going to be my pet, so must you, Oreb." He clanged shut the firebox and set his shaving water on the stove.
