They Fly at Ciron

by Samuel R. Delany

  “For the first moments of his plummet, I wondered if my friend might swoop down below him and catch him. But he only flew away. Then, I wondered, if the falling man might spread that cloak and use it, somehow, to fly with—but no. It closed in the air above him, straight over his head. He arrowed down—landing among the trees, some hundred yards off.

  “When my companion returned, I was still sure there’d be some explanation—that something had happened on the flight; but no: back on the ground the big fellow was laughing and strutting and boasting to us and all his fellows what a joke it had been; it seemed a joke—to some of them; and to some of them not.

  “But why—? I asked him at last. Why did you do it?

  “He cocked his head at me and said: He was wearing a cape, like the one who seared my wing with his accursed powergun!

  “But it probably wasn’t him, I told him. All the officers wear capes. You can’t just replace one person for another like that—

  “But he shrugged his huge shoulders. Well, I wasn’t ready to be a ground-bound female, limping along with only one wing and holiness to help me. Why not replace one with the other? Didn’t they flog four at random for the mischief of you and me? Oh, I see, he went on. I can hear it in your voice. Like all the others—among my people: You’re no longer my friend. You don’t like me any more. You disapprove. You are afraid. Well, there was no reason to think you’d be otherwise. I’ll find some one else to play with. Then he spread his great wings, with all their scars, and shook them in the sun; and beat them; and flew away.

  “But that’s when I was afraid.”

  Rimgia shuddered. “That’s terrible!” And after she shuddered, she watched his face, and thought what a sensitive and intelligent young man he was, to have such wonderful feet and hands. “If you wanted to do something like that, it would be better to take one of their dreadful guns and just shoot them through the fence!”

  “Mmmm,” Qualt said. But it was uncertain if he meant he agreed with her, or merely that he’d heard her. “Later—” Shadows around them became smaller and darker, larger and paler—“I and some of the others went to look at the Myetran who’d fallen among the trees. He’d taken down a lot of branches—and we put his body in a wagon.” Always the shadows moved. “As soon as I came back, I ordered the corral to be opened; and I told the soldiers inside to go—it was the corral I was in charge of; I mean, what were we going to do with them? And sullenly they went.”

  “Mmmm,” Rimgia said now, though it was as hard to tell what she meant as it had been when Qualt had said it. Then she said, because it was really why she’d come looking for him in his yard anyway: “Qualt, I like thee—I like thee very much. Dost thou like me?”

  “Yes, I…Yes…yes!” he blurted, stepping away from her to look at her wonderingly, then moving back to hold her tightly in his one arm—even while his other suddenly felt astonishingly empty.

  Rimgia looked up at the flying creatures who crossed and parted, and reversed, and lowered, and rose. “Maybe they’re not like us,” she said. “Maybe they’re different.”

  Qualt said, very carefully: “They are brave and wonderful and generous. They saved our village… He did so many things for me—for us. He was my friend—he’s still my friend. But because they do things that make me so afraid of their difference, that, perhaps, is why we might still be afraid of them a little. But come inside now, Rimgia…” He turned with her and pushed back his door hanging. “There’s something I must say to thee, must ask thee…”

  “Whatever is it?” and she stepped within.

  Gargula stayed on in the field. Several times, sensing the hour, Tenuk’s mule had turned to start back; but Gargula pulled him steady, sometimes with a jerk, staying late for much the reason he had started late.

  The first night on the common where Rimgia had lost her father, Gargula had seen an older sister whom he loathed burned till, screaming, she’d fallen dead among so many others screaming—and watched an aunt whom he’d loved far more than his mother trampled by her own friends. Like Rahm, Gargula had spent the night in the fetid and fouled cellar of the council house, that, as a boy, he had helped build. On his release he’d brought dead Tenuk’s mule to the field, a man—the only man to go to the fields that day—looking for something. But because the monotonous furrows would not yield it up, he might well have gone on plowing into darkness unto dawn.

  What halted him, however, was—well, it was music. But it was also thunder. A house-sized hammer struck among metal mountains might have produced those notes. Then, a voice joined them, but a voice like the sky itself opening up and starting to sing—or was it singing?

  The mule, then Gargula, stopped.

  Before the phrase ended, incomprehensible within its own roar, it collapsed into a laugh—but a laugh as if the whole earth had become woman and was laughing. Finally, there was a voice, with words actually recognizable:

  OH, DEAR— NO, I SOUND awful, RAHM!

  I’M AFRAID THAT WASN’T A GOOD IDEA AT ALL!

  JUST WAIT A MINUTE, WILL YOU?

  LET ME SWITCH THIS THING—

  Gargula stood, the field a-hum about him.

  Then, for whatever reason (not like a man who’d been given what he needed, but like one whom a certain shock had informed that what he needed was not to be found where he was looking), he unhooked the plow and, as the mule twitched a slate colored ear, turned with the animal toward town.

  To the west the sky was a wall of indigo, behind mountains whose peaks were crumpled foils, silver and copper. To the east above the tree’s back fringe, salmons were layered with purples, separated by streaks the cold color of flame—before which burned and billowed golden clouds. Above in the vault, coming together in yellowish haze, insect tiny, Winged Ones turned, one after the other, to fly toward the rocks.

  Gargula walked Tenuk’s mule to the path.

  As they came out under oak leaves, he heard the visiting singer’s voice, harmonizing with her harp-notes. A group had gathered at the well—a number of the village young people who were friends. There was Rimgia, and Abrid, and Qualt. Though he could not see her, certainly Naä sat at their center, on the well wall, singing, playing.

  As he looked among the listeners, Gargula saw that Rahm’s black hair was now braided down his back—the way you were supposed to wear it after you’d come in from a wander. Things, Gargula reflected, were, finally, settling into the ordinary.

  And a bit of the weight at the back of his tongue, that had made it too heavy for speech all day, he finally and surprisingly swallowed. (Across the common a line of elders, in their woven robes, walked toward the council building’s plank door for that evening’s special meeting.) Gargula blinked in the road, at the branches leaning from the underbrush—so that, only when the Myetran officer was three steps away, sling buttoned down over his gun hilt at his leggings’ black waist and puma pelt fastened around black shoulders, did Gargula see him.

  Without a nod, the lieutenant walked by man and mule, to the south-east, the sun’s fire on the puma’s lids and bared teeth, on the bronze hair and brown cheek, making him squint—so that Gargula, who turned to watch Kire as he passed, did not even catch the color of his eyes.

  —New York/Amherst

  June 1962/June 1992

  RUINS

  LIGHTNING cracked a whip on the dark, scarring it with light.

  Clikit ran for the opening, ducked, fell, and landed in dust. Outside, rain began with heavy drops, fast and full. He shook his head, kneeled back, and brushed pale hair from his forehead. Taut, poised, he tried to sense odors and breezes the way, he fancied, an animal might.

  There was the smell of wet dirt.

  The air was hot and still.

  Blinking, he rubbed rough hands over his cheeks, pulling them away when the pain in his upper jaw above that cracked back tooth shot through his head. A faint light came around corners. Clikit kneaded one ragged shoulder. Dimly he could see a broken column and smashed plaster.

&
nbsp; Behind him, the summer torrent roared.

  He stood, trying to shake off fear, and walked forward. Over the roar came a clap like breaking stone. He crouched, tendons pulling at the backs of his knees. Stone kept crumbling. Beneath the ball of his foot he could feel sand and tiny pebbles—he had lost one sandal hours ago. He stepped again and felt the flooring beneath his bare foot become tile. The strap on his other sandal was almost worn through. He knew he would not have it long—unless he stopped to break the leather at the weak spot and retie it. Clikit reached the wall and peered around cautiously for light.

  In a broken frame above, a blue window let in Tyrian radiance. The luminous panes were held with strips of lead that outlined a screaming crow.

  Clikit tensed. But over the fear he smiled. So, he had taken refuge in one of the ruined temples of Kirke, eastern god of Myetra. Well, at least he was traveling in the right direction. It was Myetra he had set out for, uncountable days, if not weeks, ago.

  In a corner the ceiling had fallen. Water filmed the wall, with lime streaks at the edge. A puddle spread the tile, building up, spilling a hand’s breadth, building again, inching through blue light. As he looked down at the expanding reflection of the ruined ceiling, he pondered the light’s origin, for—save the lightning—it was black outside.

  He walked to the wall’s broken end and looked behind for the source—and sucked in his breath.

  Centered on white sand a bronze brazier burned with unflickering flame. Heaped about its ornate feet were rubies, gold chains, damascened blades set with emeralds, silver proof, crowns clotted with sapphires and amethysts. Every muscle in Clikit’s body began to shake. Each atom of his feral soul quivered against its neighbor. He would have run forward, scooped up handfuls of the gems, and fled into the wild wet night, but he saw the figure in the far door.

  It was a woman.

  Through white veils he could see the ruby points of her breasts, then the lift of her hip as she walked out onto the sand, leaving fine footprints.

  Her hair was black. Her eyes were blue. “Who are you, stranger?” And her face…

  “I’m Clikit …and I’m a thief, Lady! Yes, I steal for a living. I admit it! But I’m not a very good thief. I mean a very bad one…Something in the expression that hugged her high cheekbones, that balanced over her lightly cleft chin made him want to tell her everything about himself “But you don’t have to be afraid of me, Lady. No, really! Who are—?”

  “I am a priestess of Kirke. What do you wish here, Clikit?”

  “I was…” Dusty and ragged, Clikit drew himself up to his full four feet eleven inches. “I was admiring your jewels there.”

  She laughed. And the laugh made Clikit marvel at how a mouth could shape itself to such a delicate sound. A smile broke on his own stubbled face, that was all wonder and confusion and unknowing imitation. She said: “Those jewels are nothing to the real treasure of this temple.” She gestured toward them with a slim hand, the nails so carefully filed and polished they made Clikit want to hide his own broad, blunt fingers back under his filthy cloak.

  Clikit’s eyes darted about between the fortune piled before him (and beside him! and behind him!) and the woman who spoke so slightingly of it. Her `ebon hair, though the light from the brazier was steady, danced with inner blues.

  “Where are you from?” she asked. “Where are you going? And would you like to see the real treasure of the temple?”

  “I am only a poor thief, Lady. But I haven’t stolen anything for days, I haven’t! I live out of the pockets of the rich who stroll the markets of Voydrir, or from what I can find not tied down on the docks of Lehryard, or from what is left out in the gardens of the affluent suburbs in Jawahlo. But recently, though, I’ve heard of the wealth of Myetra. I only thought I would journey to see for myself…”

  “You are very near Myetra, little thief.” Absently she raised one hand, thumb and forefinger just touching, as if she held something as fine as the translucent stuffs that clothed her.

  And dirty Clikit thought: It is my life she holds, my happiness, my future—all I ever wanted or all I could ever want.

  “You must be tired,” she went on, dropping her hand. “You have come a long way. I will give you food, rest; moreover, I shall display for you our real treasure. Would you like that?”

  Clikit’s back teeth almost always pained him, and he had noticed just that morning that another of his front ones (next to the space left from the one that had fallen out by itself a month ago) was loose enough to move with his tongue. He set his jaw hard, swallowed, and opened his mouth again. “That’s…kind of you,” he said, laying two fingers against his knotted jaw muscle, eyes tearing with the pain. “I hope I have the talents to appreciate it.”

  “Then follow…” She turned away with a smile he desperately wanted to see again—to see whether it was a taunting one at him, or a glorious one for him. What he remembered of it, as he trotted after her, had lain in the maddeningly ambiguous between.

  Then he glanced down at her footprints. Fear shivered in him. Alabaster toe and pink heel had peeked at him from under her shift. But the prints on the white sand were not of a fleshed foot. He stared at the drawn lines—was it some great bird’s claw? No, it was bone! A skeleton’s print!

  Stooping over the clawlike impression, Clikit thought quickly and futilely. If he went to search along the walls for pebbles and stones and fallen chunks of plaster, she would surely see. At once he swept up one, another, and a third handful of sand into his cloak; then he stood, gathering the edges together, twisting the cloak into a club—which he thrust behind him. At another arch the woman turned, motioning him to follow: he was shaking so much he didn’t see if she smiled or not. Clikit hurried forward, hands at his back, clutching the sandy weight.

  As he crossed the high threshold, he wondered what good such a bludgeon would do if she were really a ghost or a witch.

  Another brazier lit the hall they entered with blue flame. He went on quickly; deciding that at least he must try. But as he reached her, without stopping she looked over her shoulder. “The real treasure of this temple is not its jewels. They are as worthless as the sands that strew the tile. Before the true prize hidden in these halls, you will hardly think of them…” Her expression had no smile in it at all. Rather, it was intense entreaty. The blue light made her eyes luminous. “Tell me, Clikit—tell me, little thief—what would you like more than all the jewels in the world?” At a turn in the passage, the light took on a reddish cast. “What would you like more than money, good food, fine clothes, a castle with slaves…?”

  Clikit managed a gappy grin. “There’s very little I prefer over good food, Lady!”—one of his most frequent prevarications. There were few foods he could chew without commencing minutes of agony, and it had been that way so long that the whole notion of eating was, for him, now irritating, inevitable, and awful.

  A hint of that smile: “Are you really so hungry, Clikit?”

  True. With the coming of his fear, his appetite, always unwelcome, had gone. “I’m hungry enough to eat a bear,” he lied, clutching the sand-filled cloak. She looked away…

  He was about to swing—but she turned through another arch, looking back.

  Clikit stumbled after. His knees felt as though the joints had come strangely loose. In this odd yellow light her face looked older. The lines of character were more like lines of age.

  “The treasure—the real treasure—of this temple is something eternal, deadly and deathless, something that many have sought, that few have ever found.”

  “Eh… what is it?”

  “Love,” she said, and the smile, a moment before he could decide its motivation, crumbled on her face into laughter. Again she turned from him. Again he remembered he ought to bring his bundle of sand up over his own balding head and down on the back of hers—but she was descending narrow steps. “Follow me down.”

  And she was, again, just too far ahead.…

  Tripods on the landings
flared green, then red, then white—all with that unmoving glow. The descent, long and turning and long again, was hypnotic.

  She moved out into an amber-lit hall. “This way.…”

  “What do you mean—love?” Clikit thought to call after her.

  When she looked back, Clikit wondered: Was it this light, or did her skin simply keep its yellowish hue from the light they had passed through above?

  “I mean something that few signify by the word, though it hides behind all that men seek when they pursue it. I mean a state that is eternal, unchangeable, imperturbable even by death …” Her last word did not really end. Its suspiration, rather, became one with the sound of rain hissing through a broken roof in some upper corridor.

  Now! thought Clikit. Now! Or I shall never find my way out! But she turned through another arch, and again his resolve fled. She was near him. She was away from him. She was facing him. She faced away. Clikit stumbled through a narrow tunnel low of ceiling and almost lightless. Then there was green, somewhere…