FSF Magazine, May 2007

by Spilogale Authors

  The huge new contrivance itself, part machine and part factory, looked wholly alien as it squatted amid the spring mud at the brown edges of the filthy lake. The opening of it was cause for yet another party at the hall. People were getting blas about these occasions by now. They commented on the varieties of cake and beer with the air of connoisseurs, and were cheerfully unsurprised when the first turning of the great camwheel failed to occur. Nevertheless, the grandmistress gave a speech up on a podium, and both she and it were more than pretty enough.

  Looking down from Burlish Hill through that long winter and into the spring that followed, Nathan absorbed tales and rumors along with the scent of coalsmoke that now drifted on the air. Lights shone now often from the windows of Stagsby Hall, but they were nothing compared to the fume and blaze that glowed beside it. On still days, he heard shouts in odd accents, the toots of whistles, the grumpy huff and turn of a huge and awkward machine, the call of strange spells. The first summer of this new competition, though, went well. Nathan aimed to be as reliable and competitive as ever—in fact, more so. He cut into his savings, reduced his rates, and the crop that year was as good as the previous one had been bad. There was more than enough grist to keep him working night and day, and the winds mostly came when he needed them. Meanwhile, all the machine down in the valley seemed capable of delivering was broken deadlines. If the local farmers took a little of their trade to the new grandmistress, it was more out of curiosity to see the great steambeast at work, and because of her looks, rather than because of the quality of the service she offered. Knowing something of farmers and their nature, Nathan didn't doubt that the novelty would fade. And he was a miller, and there had always been a mill up on Burlish Hill. He was prepared to trust the winds, and the seasons, and be patient.

  Nathan was also sanguine about the other changes he noticed in the world. He'd understood long before Grandmistress Smith had laid it out before him on that clever map that one of the main reasons for his success as a miller was the improvement in haulage and communication that the spread of the new steam railways had brought. When a line finally reached as far as the Lincolnshire coast, he was happy to use it to visit his mother at Donna Nook; it saved several hours, and meant he no longer sacrificed an entire day's work. On summer's mornings, the cramped, chattering carriages drawn by those odd new machines were filled with families from the big cities heading for a day out at new resorts. He sometimes even stopped off himself for a stroll along the promenade, although to him the Lincolnshire coast remained essentially a wintry place. This, he thought on a freezing, blustery day when the gaudy new buildings were shuttered and sand gritted the streets, is real weather, brisk and cold and sharp.

  The tracks now also ran to the town markets, where the steam and the screech of whistles added to the traditional stink and chaos of the cattle pens, the clamoring baskets of geese and chickens, the shouting and the pipesmoke. There were new animals now, as well. Horses that were too broad and strong and stupid to be called horses, and frighteningly fancy ducks and hens. In this new age of new magic, there were also strange new trades. Still, the tall rooms in which the auctions of grain took place remained places of golden, if bustling, calm. The mass of grain itself was stored in barns or warehouses. All that was here were wicker baskets containing samples, which you could thumbnail the husks off to taste the soft white meat inside. Nathan relished the whole day, and the entire process. He would, he sometimes reflected, have come to these auctions even if he didn't trade himself. He even enjoyed the conversations, which were invariably about the air, the earth, and the crops.

  Market day that September in Louth was busy as ever, and the roar of voices and the jostle of shoulders was entirely familiar. Standing toward the back, Nathan was tall enough to see over the caps and heads of the factors and farmers, and still had a voice that the older millers who clustered at the front had lost. Then, as the bidding commenced, he noticed a shift in the usual ebb and flow. There was a surprising swirl of attention near to the auctioneer's desk, and it was centered around a solitary head of flaming red hair.

  It was the same at the next auction, and the one after that. Against all tradition, Grandmistress Fiona Smith—a woman, and no member of any of the recognized agricultural guilds—was bidding on her own behalf. Not only that, but she was far better at getting the auctioneer's attention than anyone else in the room. Worst still, the masculine reserve of these country guildsmen meant that they withdrew from bidding against her at prices that were far too low. Essentially, she was getting her grain on the cheap because of how she looked.

  Nathan was shocked to discover that seemingly sensible men could act like such fools. If a batch of corn or oats was selling at a price he knew to be ridiculous, he made sure he made a better bid. Sometimes, he pushed things too high, and the red head that absorbed so much of the hall's attention would give a negative shake. Still, grain was grain, and he had the stuff stored at his own expense until he found the time and the energy to have it delivered and ground. He'd always thought of himself as hardworking, but in that season and the ones that followed, he surprised even himself. The mill turned as it had never turned, and there was always something more that needed to be done, and even a decent wind wasn't always enough for him. On days when there was a moderate easterly, or a keen breeze from the north, Nathan still found himself looking up in frustration at the slow turn of his mill's sails. Finding a wind hanging hooked in his lean-to that made a close enough match to the one that was already blowing was an entirely new skill, although it was one he did his best to learn. Sometimes, on the right days, the whole mill spun and thrummed with a speed and a vigor that he'd never witnessed. It was thrilling, and the needs of the many mechanisms dragged the songs from his throat until he was exhausted and hoarse. On other days, though, the winds fought angrily, and the mill's beams creaked and its bearings strained and its sails gave aching moans. Such strains inevitably increased the wear on the mill's components, and the costs and demands of its maintenance soared.

  On cold winter nights, when there was now still grain in need of grinding, or flour that somehow had to be dried off before it could be sold, he dragged himself to the desk with its books of spells and accounts at which his father and many other generations of Westovers had sat. But the nib trembled, his lungs hurt, and the red and green figures could no longer be persuaded to add up. He'd once never have thought of leaving any job half-completed, but now he staggered off to snatch the few hours’ sleep with the colored inks still warring. Then he dreamed of storms of figures, or that the mill was storm itself, and that the air would never stir again across all of Lincolnshire if he didn't work its sails.

  * * * *

  Nathan had got little enough in reply on the rare occasions when he'd mentioned the wind-seller to his fellow millers. Did the man come to them on those same still, hot days on which he always seemed to visit Nathan? That hardly seemed possible. Was there just one wind-seller, or were there several of their species or guild? And where exactly did he come from—and what essential substance was it, after all, from which his winds were made?

  A flat, hot day. The mill groaning and creaking, and Nathan's bones filled with an ache for the time—it seemed only moments ago—when there was always too much grain, and never enough hours in the day to grind it. This summer, though, he'd had to rein in his bidding in order to keep up his repayments to the bank, whilst the carts had borne their grain less regularly, and in smaller amounts, up Burlish Hill. The farmers never looked Nathan directly in the eye or told him what they were doing, but the evidence was down there in the valley, in a pounding haze of noise and heat. Could people really work in such conditions, when the day itself was already like a furnace? Nathan wiped his face. He hawked and coughed and spat, and worked the bloody phlegm into the dry ground of Burlish Hill with the heel of his boot. Just last week in Gainsborough, he'd been having a bite of lunch at one of the inns beside the market before taking the train that now reached Burwell, only
five miles out of Stagsby itself. His bread roll had tasted gritty and sulfurous. He'd spat it out.

  A distant engine chuffed across the landscape, trailing its scarf of steam. Somewhere, a whistle blew. Nathan coughed. No grist in need of grinding, but he still had half a mind to unlock the lean-to and take out whatever winds he had left in there, just for the ease they brought to his breathing, and the cool feel of them twisting in his arms....

  A gray shimmer was emerging from the valley, and it was too stooped and solitary a figure for his heart to begin to race. Nathan remembered his fear and excitement back in the times when his father had been master of this mill, and every spell had been new, every wind fresh and young. Still, it was good to think that some things didn't change, and he almost smiled at the wind-seller; almost wished him a cheery good day.

  The man flapped his old cloak. He seemed to give a shiver as he studied the hot, dry horizons. “The hardest of all seasons, eh?"

  Nathan shrugged. Almost every farmer said something similar to him when they came up here. It was usually a prelude to their explaining how they couldn't afford his normal rate, and it was scarcely in his interest to agree with them. But Nathan found himself nodding. This really was the hardest of all seasons.

  "I've a hundred remedies....” The wind-seller unshouldered his sack, and there they all were beneath: a knotted multitude of rags, but such beautiful things, especially on a day such as this. Storms and airs and breezes hazed about them in a thousand hurrying tints of blue and black and gray. Nathan knew how to drive a bargain, and the Elder knew he wasn't in position for extravagances, but he couldn't help feeling stirred, drawn, excited. And was it his own wheezing breath or the mill itself that gave off that needy groan?

  Nathan barely heard the wind-seller's patter about his products. He of all people didn't need to be told about the poetry of the skies. He lifted a tarred and bunched handful of northerly rope that wasn't from the north at all, and felt the bitter bliss of it swirling around him, then the soft twine of a southwesterly blown in from far beyond every southwesterly horizon. Its breath in his face was the laughing warmth of a kiss. He bore them all, great stirring armfuls of them, into his stone lean-to, and hooked them up on their iron hangers, where they stirred and lifted with a need to be let loose. It was sweet work, delicious work, to hold and be taken hold of by this knotted blizzard of winds, and Nathan found that he no longer cared how many he really needed, nor what he could afford. By the time he'd finished, there was nothing left beyond the sack itself, and, had the wind-seller offered it to him, he'd have taken that as well.

  Nathan was sweating, gasping. He was possessed by hot spasms, shivers of cold. How much had he actually paid for this glut? He couldn't recall. Neither did he particularly care. But as the wind-seller whistled through thin lips and laid the empty thing of rag across his back, Nathan felt that today he was owed something more.

  "Tell me, wind-seller,” he asked, although he knew that such questions should never be asked outside those who belonged to a certain trade or guild, “exactly how is it that your winds are made?"

  "It was your father I used to deal with, wasn't it?” The man's cold gaze barely shifted, but it took in all of Nathan, his mill, and his hill. “Although you and he might as well be the same. Same mill, same man, same sacrifices, eh? But it's always slightly behind you, isn't it?—I mean the best of all days, the keenest of winds, the sweetest of grain. It's never quite where you're standing now. And the longer you work, the more you give up, the more time hurries by, the more it seems that the strongest breeze, the whitest clouds, always came yesterday, or the day before."

  "You're saying your winds are taken from the past?"

  Twisting his neck, the wind-seller gave a shake of his head. “Time was, there were no sails up here, no millstone—and no miller, either. But the winds still came, and the sun rose and fell. Back then, people saw things clearer. You, miller, you've merely given up sweat, and years, and the good state of your lungs to keep this mill turning, but for those people it was the seasons and then the sun itself that had to be turned.” The wind-seller laughed. It was a harsh sound. “Imagine—the blood that was let, the sacrifices they made, to ensure that spring arrived, that the next dawn came! But the past is gone, miller—used up. It's as dry and dead as this ground, which has been seeped of all its magic. What we're left with are the husks of our memories. Just like this sky, and this land...."

  Nathan watched the wind-seller's shape sink down into the valley's haze. Might as well, he reflected, have tried talking to the winds themselves.

  * * * *

  Conversation after the markets in Lincolnshire bars always came free and loud. Nathan had never been one to seek out companionship, but now he found that there was some consolation to be had in sharing a glass or two, and then a few complaints, after another pointless morning at the auctions. Grandmistress Smith was less of a novelty these days, and she won her bids less easily, for there were other steam mills at Woodhall and Cranwell, and an even newer, bigger one in construction at South Ormsby. The world was changing within the giddy scope of one generation, and it wasn't just the wind and water millers who were losing out. Elbowed in with them amid the hot jostle of sticky tables in those bars were hand weavers, carters—even smithies: for all that the Smithies Guild was hand-in-glove with the financiers who constructed these new machines, it was the high-ups, the pen pushers, the ones who wore out their fat buttocks by sitting at desks, who made a nice living, and devil take the old ways and local village businesses founded on decent, traditional skills. It was an odd coalition, both alarming and reassuring, and the talk turned yet more furious as the evenings darkened and business suffered and the drink flowed.

  Plans were hatched, then laughingly dismissed as more beer was bought. But the same complaints returned, and with them came the same sense of angry helplessness. Nathan was never a ringleader, but he and everyone else around those tables soon agreed that there were better ways to spend your time and energy than sitting uselessly in a bar. They were guildsmen, weren't they? They had their pride. Better to go down fighting. Better still to resist wholeheartedly, and not go down at all.

  They met one night at Benniworth. In the morning, the precious furnace that had just been delivered was found transformed into a dented mass of metal as if by a hailstorm of hammerblows. They met again at Little Cawthorpe. A culvert beneath the embankment of the new railway that would bear coal from Nottingham far quicker than the old canals was blown apart, although the damage was far less than might have been expected, considering the amount of explosive that was used. Lincolnshire earth, as any farmer would have attested, was notoriously slow and sticky stuff to move. Something stronger and better was needed, and Nathan brought it with him the next time they met outside Torrington in an owl-hooting wood.

  "What you got there, miller?"

  Lamplit faces gathered around him, edging and prodding to get a glimpse of the oddly lumpen knot he held in his hand.

  "Something alive, is it?"

  "Something that'll make them think twice about stealing the living off decent guildsfolk?"

  Nathan couldn't bring himself to explain. He merely nodded, and felt the glorious lightness of a wind that had come from a point in the east to be found in no compass. These men didn't really expect to understand. Theirs was a loose alliance, and they remained almost as wary of each others’ skills and secrets as of those they were campaigning against.

  They called themselves The Men of the Future by now, because that was the opposite of what their wives and neighbors shouted after them, and their target was another mound of earth, although this was far bigger than the railway embankment. Steam mills and their associated machinery were even greedier for water than the watermills they replaced, and a reservoir to supply one such new machine had recently been constructed here in Torrington, taking up good grazing land and creating more aggrieved men. As, shushing each other and stumbling, they came upon it through the moonless dark, th
e clay bank looked huge. They laid the several caskets at its base. Then they turned toward Nathan.

  "Whatever that thing is, might as well use it now, miller."

  Nathan nodded, although his movements were slow. The wind that twisted in his hand gave off a sharp scent of spring grass. Leaving it in this marshy spot was like destroying a treasured memory. But what else could he do?

  They scrambled back through darkness from the hiss and the flare of the fuse. A long wait. The thing seemed to go out. A dull crump, a heavy pause, then came flame and earth in a sour gale, and a white spume of water lit up the dark.

  The men cheered, but the rumbling continued, shaking the ground beneath their feet. Some were knocked over, and all were splattered by a rain of hot earth and stone. There was more fire, and then a boiling, roaring wave. They ran, scattered by the power of all the enraged elements that they had unleashed. It was lucky, it was agreed when heads were finally counted as they stood on a nearby rise, that no one had been buried, burned, drowned, or blown away. It looked as if the dam was entirely wrecked. Several fields had certainly been turned into mire. People would have to listen to Men of the Future now.

  It was a long walk home. Drenched, muddied, Nathan kept to the edges of the roads although he scarcely expected to encounter any traffic on a night this black, but then he heard a rumble behind him. He turned and saw what seemed to be a basket of fire approaching. Then he saw that it was some kind of wagon, and that it was powered by steam. For all his increasing familiarity with such engines, he'd never heard of one that ran along an ordinary road, and curiosity made him reluctant to hide entirely from sight.