Silas started to walk slowly out of the yard, his eyes aloft, and one arm held out to intercept any obstacles he might run into.
“Here Silas, let me help!” he heard Farah’s voice nearby, and then her hands were on his arm, taking charge of him. They walked through the city streets, where they encountered the other Movers, who were on their way back to the construction yard.
“How can he take three at once?” one voice asked.
“He’s Silas; he doesn’t have the limits we have,” Riesta’s voice answered calmly.
Farah led him on, and they reached the construction site minutes later.
“This has a good view,” he told his guide as they reached the park where he liked to watch the top of the towers.
He spread the three flat constructs apart, bring a whoop of anticipation from the workers high overhead. He hovered the three above the network of beams, then started to lower them slowly.
“Not here!” he heard thin voices shout, and he saw a cluster of workers beneath one of the triangular pieces waving their hands to indicate a new location for the platter.
Silas stopped the descent of all the pieces, then shuffled the designated one to the side, and proceeded to lower them all once more, until they came to rest in their places and swarms of workers began to connect them all to the beams beneath them.
“There; that’s done,” Silas said.
“That’s more that Cover wanted you to do,” Farah accused him. He turned down to look at the lovely girl who still had her hands on his arm. “How do you feel? Are you lightheaded again?” she asked.
“I feel fine; I could go back and get more,” Silas replied.
“No,” Farah told him firmly. “Cover said one time. I’m sure he meant one piece of the platform, not three, so you’ve already cheated once. You’re not going to do anymore.”
Silas looked at her and grinned. Her determination to intimidate him into obedience was charming, and she grinned back as she recognized how non-existent her authority over him really was.
“You need to do something else. Let’s go listen to a concert, shall we?” she asked. “There’s going to be a performance at the theater I showed you this morning.”
They walked to the theater and went inside, where soothing music filled the hall for the next hour, as sunlight streamed in through the skylights overhead. When the music was done, Silas was calm; he no longer needed to exercise his frustration. He’d done enough by carrying the three pieces of the platform, a quarter of the whole edifice that was being put in place for the upcoming. His action might upset the other Movers who felt he was upstaging them, but he wasn’t concerned about that; there were no long-term ramifications if he left the city, and if he stayed in the city, it would have to be worked out in the future.
But his fractured relationship with Mata still loomed on the horizon. The soothing music of the concert had helped to reduce the anxiety of facing his next encounter with the girl, but he was going to face the girl soon.
“I better go now,” he told Farah when they exited the theater.
“Would you like to go have a glass of wine?” the woman asked.
Silas pursed his lips as he felt tempted by the offer. He’d accused Mata of having drinks with other men, making him feel guilty of hypocrisy. “I can’t this time,” he reluctantly declined.
“I’ll see you tomorrow when we move some more of the platform,” he offered, then hastened away before he felt further tempted to change his answer and accept Farah’s offer to spend more time together.
He wasn’t ready to return to the apartment and face Mata either. He needed something to do, something that would require more time, and give him more time to prepare himself for whatever the meeting with Mata would bring.
He found that he was walking past the hospital where he had visited Melan a few days earlier. She had been a construction worker on top of a tower when an out-of-control beam had struck her from the tower roof. Only Silas’s quick reactions had saved her from falling to her death.
He stepped quickly inside, then wound his way through the corridors to return to the room where Melan lay in bed.
“You look healthier,” he spoke softly, seeing her closed eyes and unsure if she was sleeping.
She opened her eyes and turned her head on the pillow, then immediately recognized him and smiled broadly.
“Come in Silas! What brings you here?” she asked.
“I came to see you,” he answered simply, as he pulled the wooden stool to the bedside and plopped down atop it. “You’re looking better,” he repeated.
It was true. She had less bandaging around her torso, and the bruises on her limbs were fading. Her ankles were unwrapped, though still swollen.
“I’ll go home tomorrow, they tell me,” Melan smiled at Silas. “It’ll be nice to see my husband, Tiller. He’s hardly been here while I’ve been in hospital; he says he’s working extra hours so that he’ll be able to leave work to spend time with me at home while I finish healing. I doubt he will though; he’s always out trying to make more,” she explained.
“I’m sure he’ll be happy to spend time with you while you recover,” Silas replied.
“How does the construction go?” Melan asked. “I can’t see a thing from this window,” she gestured towards the far wall.
They discussed the progress of the platform for a while, until a nurse came to check on Melan, and Silas excused himself.
He had passed enough time to let his nerves calm, and he walked slowly back through the streets to the home of the Movers Guild, keeping his head low and his face hidden to avoid comments from strangers in the street, comments he was in no mood to face or deal with.
When he reached the Guild gate he looked up and saw a brief glimpse of Mata at a window, before the curtain fluttered shut. She was waiting for him.
When he opened the door, she sat in a chair, watching and waiting for him.
“Did you have a nice afternoon?” she asked in a civil tone.
“I did,” he answered cautiously. “I moved some platform pieces, I listened to a concert with Farah, then I left her and went to the hospital to visit Melan, the worker who was hurt in the accident with the beam. She’s feeling better,” Silas reported as he took a seat next to Mata and waited to see how the conversation would develop. Their last conversation had ended with implications of one of them moving out.
“She says her husband, Tiller, will be taking her home tomorrow, so she’ll finally get out of the hospital and get to see him too,” Silas rambled.
“You say her husband is named Tiller? Is that a common name here?” Mata asked with a mild frown.
“I don’t know,” Silas replied puzzled by the question.
Mata seemed to process the information internally for a moment, then moved on.
“Are we going to continue to live together while we’re here?” she asked.
“I don’t want you to leave,” Silas replied bluntly. “I know you like your friend, Tiller, more than you care for me now,” he paused.
“Is your fencing partner named Tiller?” he sought confirmation, as the same coincidence struck him that had occurred to Mata.
“He is,” Mata spoke, with a troubled expression.
“Has he ever mentioned having a wife?” Silas tried to clarify the troubling coincidence.
“No, he’s never said anything like that. He can’t be married,” Mata denied the implication. “He wouldn’t have said,” she paused, “he didn’t talk like a married man.”
“You’re sure?” Silas asked, ready to push to cast any darkness upon the man who seemed to have been weaning Mata away from him.
“I think so Silas; I’m not sure,” Mata vacillated. “We don’t need to talk about him. We should talk about us.”
“Next time you see him, ask him if he knows Melan, the construction worker who was injured,” Silas pressed one last comment.
“I will,” Mata conceded. “And what about your honey girl? Farah? Is she
married too?”
“I don’t think so,” Silas answered defensively. “But she’s not trying to woo me the way Tiller is with you. She just has helped me with the transport. She’s been my guide and friend, and nothing more,” Silas felt his answer was truthful, though he thought for a moment about Farah’s offer to have a glass of wine, and wondered if it might have been a subtle step towards seduction. It wasn’t, he was sure.
“You can come with me tomorrow and be my guide while I lift more of the platform,” Silas offered.
“I can’t; not if you want me to grill Tiller about his alleged wife,” Mata countered.
Silas shrugged.
The conversation stagnated after that. The pair ate a silent dinner and slept silently on their respective sides of the bed that night.
In the morning, they were awakened by an early arrival and pounding on their door.
“Silas, wake up! It’s urgent,” Silas tried to rouse from his slumbers to comprehend what was happening. He recognized Cover’s voice calling loudly from the front room of the apartment.
“What is it?” he pulled on clothes and stumbled to the bedroom door, then went out.
Cover was pacing back and forth. “We need you. There’s been a mistake.
“An astronomer,” the instructor began.
“What’s that?” Silas asked about the unfamiliar word.
“It’s a person who studies the stars and the planets,” Cover replied. “This one knows about the sun and the length of the year in particular. He says that a hundred years ago, the sun and the calendar were aligned differently.”
“What’s that mean?” Silas asked, still sleepy and unable to comprehend.
“In the hundred years since the last visit of the sprites, the years weren’t all exactly even. They all are actually a little less than a complete year – there’s just a fraction of an hour every year that is short,” Cover offered.
“So?” Silas didn’t understand.
“So, over a hundred years, we’ve pretended to use more time than we really had. It’s making some holidays creep a little earlier in the year; the entire calendar is unadjusted. And that includes the anniversary of the dance of the sprites. We don’t have as many days left to be ready for the sprites as we thought!” Cover finally made the story relevant to Silas.
That was something Silas could understand. He wished that the breakfast tray would arrive so that he could begin to eat while he contemplated the news.
“How many days do we have?” he asked.
“The sprites will be here tomorrow!” Cover replied dramatically.
“Tomorrow?” if the breakfast tray had been present, and if Silas had been eating, he would have spit out a shower of crumbs from his mouth as the startled word exploded out. “We have to finish the platform today?” he asked.
“Yes,” Cover answered succinctly. “Get dressed; we’re going to the yard so that you can started transporting the pieces from the yard to the towers.”
Silas rubbed his face with both hands as he tried to evaluate the situation. He had moved three pieces of the platform as once; there were only eight pieces left to move. He seemed likely to be able to move all the pieces of the platform within the day.
“Let me clean up; I’ll be back,” the boy told the small, wizened man, and then he returned to the bedroom, where Mata was sitting up in bed.
“I heard loud voices. Is there a problem?” she asked.
“Someone’s made a mistake. They think the sprites are coming tomorrow. We have to finish up the platform for the sprites to dance on today,” Silas explained as he quickly prepared himself to leave. “I don’t know how long I’ll be,” he warned.
“Good luck,” Mata said with a grim smile. “I’m sure you’ll save the day.”
Silas passed the breakfast tray on the stairs, and he grabbed pastries off of the tray going up while he was going down. He munched on the food during the walk to the construction yard, where many workers were still arriving for the start of their daily labors.
Cover spoke to a foreman, who hurried to send a crew of construction workers to the towers in advance of Silas, so that they would be prepared to connect the pieces he delivered to the framework when he arrived at the towers.
“I’ll take those three,” Silas indicated three finished pieces. The workers who were not dispatched to the towers began to work with gusto on the remaining pieces, to finish them in as timely a fashion as possible. Farah was absent from the unexpectedly early start to the day’s labor, so a passerby on the street, a young boy named Alexan, was randomly recruited to safely lead Silas to the towers while the preoccupied transporter looked up and carried the cargo above the city.
Minutes later, the operation began, as Silas lifted the broad, flat sheets of dark metal and wood into the air, then began to follow the leadership of young Alexan across the city while the morning traffic flowed through the streets.
They arrived at the towers while the construction crew was bustling about, trying to rapidly prepare themselves to go to work. Silas steadily floated the pieces in stable positions in the sky, waiting impatiently for the crew to catch up to the urgency of the new deadline for completion of the project.
There was a sudden burst of shrieks and shouts behind Silas. He was curious as to the cause but didn’t dare risk taking his eyes off the floating pieces in the sky.
“What is it?” he asked Alexan.
The boy didn’t know, and Silas sent him to find out.
“The people,” Alexan came running back. “Some of the people said they saw a sprite watching you!”
“What?” Silas inadvertently shifted his eyes from the sky to the boy. Alexan’s face was anxious and earnest as he looked up at Silas.
“My lord! It’s what they said. A blue sprite appeared in the sky for two seconds not far behind you, then disappeared,” the boy insisted. “I can’t say any more. I didn’t see it myself.”
Silas’s eyes turned back to the air above the towers, where his platform components wobbled slightly as they continued to lazily circle the incomplete platform and the scurrying construction crew.
“It’s impossible,” Silas said flatly.
“I think they,” the boy nodded back at the excited followers, “all believe they saw one.”
Silas shook his head and waited for the foreman of the construction crew to give a signal that all was ready, and that it was time to proceed. The double pump signal came two minutes later.
Silas lowered the components into place, one after the other, then gave a half-smile of satisfaction, and turned.
“Thank you,” he dismissed Alexan, as he prepared to return to the construction yard to pick up three more sections. “You were a big help.”
The boy departed, and Silas wove through the crowds on the street as he returned to fetch more panels for the platform.
Farah was waiting for him when he arrived. “You shouldn’t have started without me,” she scolded him.
Cover was still in the yard as well.
“There’s a bit of a problem,” he told Silas, who rolled his eyes at the comment.
“Because of the shortage of time, the crews on the towers aren’t going to be able to fix the weak spot in one of the beams between towers, from the damage the beam suffered when it was installed,” Cover looked up at Silas as he explained. “The beam won’t be strong enough to hold the center component of the platform.”
“What do we do? Just let there be a hole in the middle of the platform?” Silas asked in exasperation. He knew they had discussed the topic once, many days before. He had forgotten the issue and presumed that the problem had been fixed. Apparently, it hadn’t.
“Well, no,” Cover said, looking at Silas speculatively. “There’s another option.”
Silas looked at his skeptically.
“You could wait until tomorrow to put that last piece in place,” Cover began.
“But the ceremony’s tomorrow!” Silas protested. “If there is a cerem
ony, which there won’t be, because there are no such things as sprites,” he uttered beneath his breath.
“Yes,” Cover confirmed, “and so, once you put the last piece of the platform in place, you would remain with it, and hold it in place with your power until the ceremony is over,” he looked away from Silas, but glanced at him with a covert sideways look.
Silas turned bright red.
“I am not going to go dancing with the sprites!” Silas blustered.
Heads around the yard turned to stare at him.
“And sprites aren’t real,” he told Cover in a lower voice.
“Then you have nothing to worry about. You go to the top of the tower and hold the plate in place, no sprites show up, and you’re done. You can end your work on the tower. You can continue your lessons without any interruptions. Or you can do whatever you choose,” the instructors replied in a reasonable tone.
Silas rolled his eyes at the deceptive simplicity of the answer.
“Or Mata and I will be free to leave the city?” he asked.
“That was our agreement,” Cover confirmed.
Silas suddenly realized that a part of him wanted to leave the city. He felt the urgency with a greater strength than he had felt at any time since his first arrival in the city. He felt it for the first time in a long time; it was if a spell had been lifted from his heart.
“Alright. I’ll stand up on the platform tomorrow and hold the plate in place,” he agreed. It would be nearly the last thing he would do in the city for the Movers Guild.
“Farah,” he called the girl. “Are you ready to guide me?” he asked.
Minutes later, with the girl’s hand on his forearm, Silas traipsed through the streets with another watchful contingent of followers, moving three more pieces of the platform to the tower tops. He had only two pieces left in the nearly empty construction yard. He’d move one with his last task of the day, and then move the final piece the next day, during the foolish culmination of the whole process of constructing the platform.
Farah did guide him for the delivery of the last piece of the platform that day, in the early afternoon.
“I need to go run some errands,” she told Silas when the last job was finished, seeming to be less interested in spending time with him than she had before. “You did a good job today,” she patted him on the back as they stood near the base of the tall towers, then departed, leaving him on his own.
The Pearl Diver Page 24
