by Steve Haynes
And that could only mean that Ahren was not alone.
That evening was damp. The mist hadn’t completely dispersed and it lingered in the air like guilt. Ahren warmed his hands by the stove, conscious that the light was a beacon for whatever or whoever stalked him. Clouds above obscured the stars. He scanned the cloudsurface, staring into the darkness. He wasn’t afraid of the dark but the unknown was a different matter. Terra incognita. Unknown land. Terror incognito.
He thought of how cartographers of the past had drawn maps to the edge of the world, a flat earth, before philosophers and astronomers said it was round. Then, if you sailed too far you would fall off the edge and into Hades or Hell or whatever underworld you subscribed to.
They’d said mapping the clouds would be impossible, but here Ahren was, sitting at the top of the world, the vast unknown stretched before him. He’d been in uncharted territory before, but armed with the tools of his trade he didn’t need to fear it. But how could he possibly know what the clouds contained? For all he knew monsters could be lurking in the cloudfog.
Ahren stared into the light of the stove. It was far better to draw out whatever it was and face it, than let the unknown haunt him.
Ahren was pitched beneath the prayer flags. He’d thought about tearing them down, of getting rid of all signs that someone had been here first, but he was reluctant to pull out the pole they were connected to. It disappeared deep beneath the cloud surface. It was the fact it could possibly upset a cloudmass, he told himself, rather than his fear of disturbing some kind of spiritual balance.
Ahren tried to stay vigilant but the prayer flags soothed him. They flapped rhythmically in the wind, lulling him to sleep, spreading their blessings like a blanket around his shoulders. Ahren stared at the colours. Each of the flags were decorated with images of different sacred animals but the one that he was drawn to most was the horse. A wind horse: lung ta.
Lucy liked horses. Lots of little girls did. He imagined her now – how old would she be? – and the image his mind conjured was a grown woman with flowing charcoal hair. She was riding a wind horse through the clouds, dipping in and out of the swelling peaks, racing along the cloudstraits towards the sky with its stars shining like tiny diamonds. He could almost see her face, her eyes narrowed in concentration as she guided the horse toward a burgeoning cloudmass, so sure she could penetrate the surface of the cloud just like the birds. A rallying cry, the sound of hooves, the jingling of bells, and then she was bursting through, breaking against the cloudface like an enormous wave, an explosion of particles, foaming and frothing, filling the air with billowing clouddust as insubstantial as breath.
Ahren woke to a blurred world. He lay against the entrance of the tent in his outgear, the sleeping bag a nest underneath him. He was annoyed at himself; it was dangerous to fall asleep outside.
Snow was drifting from the underbelly of the clouds above. The suffocating grey – blue colour of cold. Ahren moved, his body stinging with pins and needles.
Something darted up ahead.
Ahren paused, unsure if he’d seen anything. His mind was fuzzy like the landscape as he waited for the cloudmist to pass. He strained his eyes.
There was nothing there.
Though he desperately wanted a coffee, he decided to forgo breakfast and began packing up. He’d tarried here under the auspicious prayer flags long enough. Maybe it had been a mistake to stay here at all.
Again, a darting motion up ahead drew Ahren’s attention. He shone his torch into the white haze, hoping it would penetrate the mist. He caught something running between the clouds.
He stood on weak legs, edging forwards but pushed back by the wind.
‘Lucy?’
He waited a long time for a response but none came. When the cloudfog began to disperse he moved hastily on.
Ahren wished he were still dreaming when he discovered the body. He’d been alerted to it by a host of carrion birds, Himalayan vultures with white necks and tawny feathers making the cloudsurface ahead look dirty. They clung to their feast like a moving mantle, relinquishing their meal only when Ahren deliberately chased them away. Even then they took to the air lazily, unperturbed, and Ahren could still sense them above, circling him and the girl.
It was definitely a girl. Ahren could tell that much. A young woman, actually, by her size and shape. He stared down at the body; it was repellent to see so much of what made up a person but still he stared. The flesh of the face was entirely gone, as were the skin on the torso and the tops of the legs. What was left resembled the crude carvings of an unskilled butcher. Red and wet with glimpses of white bone gleaming beneath muscle and sinew.
‘Jesus,’ Ahren said to the wind.
Around the hollow of her face was a mass of dark bloodied hair, blown into a halo by the wind.
Ahren put a hand to his forehead. How had she gotten up here? Perhaps she’d put up the prayer flags. If so, it hadn’t proven lucky for her. He couldn’t see any traces of clothing. She wouldn’t have been wearing outgear, that stuff was pretty costly. He touched the material he wore for reassurance and cast a glimpse up at the vultures above. Had she been stripped and left here?
Ahren didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t right for a body to be destroyed by scavengers. It needed a burial. But there were limitations in the clouds. He couldn’t bury her up here. He thought about dragging her to the edge of a cloudmass and pushing her over the edge. But he didn’t like the thought of her body hurtling toward earth, landing more broken than it was now, and who knew where she would end up? Yet while the body remained here it would only pollute the clouds. It would draw scavengers, and eventually maybe people, with questions. He wished she would just disappear.
The birds circling above waited for him to make a decision. They watched him move on before swooping down to resume their feast. There was nothing Ahren could do. He hoped the birds were swift about it.
I wandered lonely as a cloud.
Ahren walked the rest of the day in no discernable direction. His footsteps were not buoyed by the clouds as usual, but heavy and concrete. He couldn’t get the image of the women from his mind. He wondered who she was. Her identity along with her flesh, were being picked clean by the vultures.
But more depressing was the fact the clouds didn’t belong to just him anymore. Someone else had been here first. And though he had not known of her existence until that afternoon, the notion that he’d been alone all those months was a myth.
He should have been glad perhaps, had he ever really wanted to be alone?
In response he heard the tintinnabulation of bells.
And in the distance he saw a girl.
It had been a long time since he’d seen a child, a real child, not just the one that inhabited his dreams. It had been a long time since he’d seen anyone for that matter, besides the corpse a few miles back. Ahren sighed. When had the clouds become so populated?
He hoped she was a hallucination; that he had conjured a strange mirage out of cloudmist, but then the girl addressed him.
‘What are you doing up here?’
Ahren was somewhat taken aback. He wanted to ask the same question but worried it would sound childish.
‘Lucy?’ he asked instead. The girl moved closer, out of the blur and shook her head.
‘Are you the one whose been following me?’
She nodded.
‘Why?’
‘To see if you were real.’
Ahren looked down at himself, half expecting his body to be grainy and blurred, made of the same transient substance as the clouds. He looked real enough.
‘Are you satisfied?’
The girl nodded again, retreating back into the fog.
‘Wait!’ Ahren called, ‘Wait!’
He followed the ringing of bells, chasing behind like he was playing hide and seek. Except the girl was too swift
and light-footed in the clouds. She disappeared ghost-like, only to reappear a few moments later with a smile and a wave of encouragement. She seemed to want Ahren to follow, though he had no idea where they were going. She was his only guide.
He considered turning around and finding his way back through the cloudmist to his equipment but this was the first person he’d seen on the clouds, apart from the dead young woman. Perhaps they were related? Still it had been impulsive and potentially dangerous abandoning all of his stuff and running after her. Maybe he’d been up on this cloudface too long. Maybe the altitude was affecting his sanity.
Out of the cloudmist came the façade of some kind of construction.
‘What the . . .’
It was a cabin. It was comprised entirely of wood and had an aged look as if it had been there for a long time, though Ahren knew that was impossible. It appeared to be built on the clouds though Ahren couldn’t see a cloudbase. Above the rafters hung the limp bodies of rabbits. A rocking chair on the porch was covered in the hide of some animal.
Suddenly the little girl was in front of him again. Closer than before. Ahren noticed she was wearing a fur coat with toggles at the front, a woollen hat on her head.
‘Do you wanna come inside?’
What kind of strange fantasy world had he stumbled into? Ahren could see a wind turbine attached to the roof. It appeared to be a perfectly self-sufficient homestead and infinitely more comfortably than his tent. He stood dumbfounded.
The girl shrugged and went inside. Now that she had led him here she seemed disinterested in him. Ahren wondered why she had brought him. More alarmingly, Ahren wondered if she was alone, like him. He couldn’t bear the idea of a child alone in such an unremitting land. He climbed the steps and opened the door.
A cloud emerged. Ahren took it to be cloud vapour at first until he smelt tobacco. It was an aroma Ahren hadn’t smelt for a long time. It surrounded a man drawing on a pipe. The lips that held it were entirely obscured by a heavy, yellowing white moustache. He had a long fur coat like the girl’s. Ahren had the impression of some colonel from some long ago war.
The man stepped out of the smoke. He didn’t say a word. Ahren was not one for words either, having exhausted them in his conversation with the girl. They stared at each other for a long time, both painfully sorry at discovering the other’s existence. Their fantasy of isolation shattered.
‘You’d better make yourself at home,’ the man said at last.
Ahren followed him into a warm interior. The smell of stew, mingled with tobacco suffused the room, which was aglow with candles. It was a basic room, though comfortably furnished. In the corner a bird sat on its perch. A bird of prey, maybe a falcon or a kite, though Ahren wasn’t sure. It was tethered and hooded, though it hopped in agitation sensing an intruder. A bell tied around its leg rang with its every movement.
‘I see you’re a Company man.’ The man pointed at the branding across Ahren’s outgear.
‘I’m a cartographer. I work for whoever pays.’
The man nodded and gestured towards the stove. Ahren sat down, removing his gloves and holding his hands to the flames.
‘Been up here long?’ Ahren asked.
‘Since last November.’
‘Last November? But what about the cloudslide?’
‘We were lucky. It passed us by.’
Ahren made some calculations and began altering the contours of the map in his mind.
‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ the man began, pulling up a chair, ‘these clouds can’t be mapped.’
Ahren remembered all the people below who’d said the same thing. Only the Company believed it could be done. When you had enough money you were allowed to believe anything.
‘Nearly mapped this entire cloudstrait,’ Ahren said, feeling a pride he hadn’t felt in a long time.
‘Not what I meant. It can be done, I’m sure. You’re proof of that. But doesn’t mean that it should.’ The man drew heavily on his pipe. ‘Too much change. Clouds don’t want it.’
How did this man know what the clouds wanted? Ahren remembered the prayer flags, the way they blessed the land. Were they to appease the clouds?
‘Can’t have too many folk coming up here,’ he continued. ‘Only room for a few. Best that this land stays undiscovered, if you ask me.’
Ahren could understand why he wouldn’t want to share this world with anyone else. Ahren didn’t want to share it either. Maps brought developers, and developers meant people.
‘I’m just doing my job.’
‘I’m sure you are.’
Ahren sized up the man. Would this be something he thought worth fighting over? He was conscious of the map folded into the pocket of his outgear, close to his chest. He regretted leaving his equipment, anything he could use as a weapon. No-one knew he was here.
‘Do you wanna see my pictures?’ the girl said. She thrust a series of crayon drawings under Ahren’s nose. Pictures of constellations, the stars connected like dot to dots.
The man pulled her back protectively, though she still held her arm out at Ahren.
Ahren took the pictures. They were drawn well, though not to scale.
‘These are really good.’
The girl beamed.
‘Sally, the man’s going to be on his way.’
Ahren returned the pictures.
‘I have more if you wanna look?’
Ahren looked towards the man and back at the girl.
‘Sure.’
The little girl grabbed Ahren’s hand and led him to the other side of the room. Dozens of pictures crammed the walls, the constellations forming elaborate patterns.
‘Don’t you ever look down?’ he asked
Sally shook her head. ‘Never.’
Ahren tried to remember how long it had been since he had looked. It was always accompanied by an overwhelming feeling of vertigo. He felt it now. Here in this room, with these strange people, his eyes full of stars, he felt as if he were plummeting back down to earth.
‘I draw pictures too,’ Ahren said at last.
‘Will you draw me one?’ Sally asked. Ahren remembered the map he’d drawn for Lucy. Nothing good had come of his drawings.
‘Maybe.’
Sally smiled and Ahren was reminded of how long it had been since he’d felt the warmth of another’s company.’
‘Sally, time for bed,’ said the man.
Sally looked disappointed that her time with a stranger was at an end, but she conceded.
‘You can keep this one,’ she said, handing Ahren’s one of her drawings before withdrawing to her bedroom.
The man poured Ahren a measure of whisky and busied himself at the stove. He dished up a bowlful of stew for Ahren. It smelt incredible. Ahren took the bowl gratefully, trying to dismiss images of carrion birds devouring the woman’s corpse.
‘How’d you come to be up here?’ he asked between mouthfuls.
‘Some folks need a little more space.’
Ahren looked at the man again. It was likely he was a fugitive. Ahren wished again that he had some kind of weapon on him.
‘How do you survive?’
‘We have our own means,’ the man said, pointing toward the bird. It appeared asleep now, clutching its perch with strong talons. It was easily capable of hunting rabbits, maybe even bigger prey.
‘And I have my nets.’
‘Nets?’
‘Cast ’em over and see what I can catch.’
Ahren couldn’t help but be impressed with the ingenuity. They’d made a homestead in the most inhospitable place on earth. But it was built on insecure foundations; Ahren had done the calculations, the cloudslide could have unsettled more than they knew. But Ahren sensed that this man would rather be swept away into oblivion for a few good years in peace, than go back down below.
‘Where’s Sally mother?’ Ahren asked, tipping the bowl and fishing the dregs.
The man tapped his pipe against the table. He looked right at Ahren. ‘The only reason I’ve been hospitable,’ he said, ‘is because of that little girl. If it were up to me I’d have thrown you off the edge of this cloudface to see if you’d fly. I don’t like Company men, and I’m sure as hell not going to share everything personal with a stranger.’
Ahren found he couldn’t make eye contact. ‘I found a body a few miles back. A young woman, from what I can tell.’
‘What are you implying?’
‘How did she die?’
The man shrugged. ‘We all die.’
‘If a crime’s been committed the authorities need to know.’
‘We’re not on earth now, Company man. The law doesn’t apply in the clouds. There’s only one authority here. ’
Ahren shifted uncomfortably. It sounded like a threat. ‘I thought I was alone up here,’ he said.
‘We ain’t never alone.’
‘There’s more?’
He nodded.
Ahren’s head hurt. The cabin felt too warm, too crowded, almost suffocating.
‘Well thank you for your kindness,’ he said, standing. ‘I’ll be on my way now.’
The man nodded. He seemed relieved.
‘Say thank you to Sally,’ Ahren gestured with the picture in his hand.
He walked out into the night, the sky decorated with real stars. The man stood in the doorway within a cloud of his own making.
‘Sky burial,’ the man said.
‘What?’
‘It’s how we dispose of the dead. Give them to the sky.’
‘You knew her, didn’t you?’ Ahren pressed.
‘There’ll be nothing left in a few days,’ the man said, retreating inside. ‘She’ll be part of the clouds then.’
Ahren’s father wasn’t a particularly religious man, yet in his study, above the bookcase filled with Ahren’s favourites poets – Yeats, Wordsworth, Dickinson – hung a huge map of the Garden of Eden. It didn’t just depict the Garden of Eden but many other significant biblical locations as well: Mount Ararat, the resting place of Noah’s Ark, the kingdom of the Queen of Sheba. Ahren had memorised the outline, drawn to the Tower of Babel, reaching higher and higher to the heavens. The architects then had not been driven by the need for space, but for the desire to touch the divine. At the time, Ahren couldn’t understand it, though he marvelled at the enterprise.