‘Myself: Why can I see through you, Bird-Master?
‘B-M: Because I'm so underweight that there isn't much substance to me. I weigh only one kilogram or two-and-a-quarter pounds, whichever is less. That's not enough for a ten-year-old boy to weigh, not even a ten-year-old boy who was born only today.
‘Myself: Why are some people not able to see you at all?
‘B-M: Because some people have very poor eye-sight.
‘At that point the Bird-Master broke off our dialog and began to sing:
‘Be he alive or be he dead,
We'll spill his blood, Oh red red red!’
‘And he began to conjure up the Ghost of Gaetano Balbo. Or he began to marshal the birds and bugs into forming themselves into that ghostly masquerade. At that point also, the Bloody Red Mummers came and began to get loud and ugly and murderous.’
Notae Diurnae, November 5, of the Second Year of the Life of Epikt and the Twenty-Ninth Year of My Own Life, Valery Mok.
‘Being a person of remarkably sound, and untrammeled, mind, I may be the right person to chronicle this episode. I am Diogenes Pontifex, scientist and sybarite. I am not (because of the ‘minimal decency rule’) a member of the Institute; but I have the run of the place, and I contribute most of the better items to the Journal.
‘This afternoon, November 5, the Bloody Red Mummers came to cause a tumult. The air had been full of the smoke and reek of burning straw and leaves and stubble. The reek had somehow the smell of burning flesh in it, like Ancient Sacrifice. It blotted out the sky and it turned the sun red. The rotating ‘mills’ or towers of excited birds had their high tops hidden in the eye-stinging haze. It was quite chilly all day (when the Elk had whistled last evening, the temperature had dropped thirty degrees instantly), and the weather wouldn't warm up again till the birds were gone.
‘The Bloody Red Mummers were excited, and the birds were very excited with anticipation of their voyage through the high air. They chattered and howled and screamed in all their dialects, and the most strident of them all was the Magpie. The excited magpies always sound, with their shrieking croaks, as if they were in the throes of death. Nobody except the Bird-Master could understand all these railing dialects of the birds. But where was the Bird-Master?
‘Only an Archon-Ochlos, a Mob-Master could have understood all the jabbering of the Bloody Red Mummers. The Mummers are a very social club. They had a band and a string-band. On any other day of the year, they were capable of making real, if a bit deformed, music. But on November 5, their album contains only ‘Chantey to Hang a Man By’, ‘Rag to Draw-and-Quarter a Man By’, ‘Aria to Burn Man Alive By’ and ‘Motet to Eat the Soul of a Man By’. It was randy, raunchy music. Most of the Mummers had bikers' goggles clipped to their belts.
‘The mystery of the smell of burning flesh was solved by the discovery of the barbecue. (This same mystery was solved by this same discovery every year.) The barbecue was so big and so near that it had gone unnoticed. The carcass turning on the giant spit was neither of the cattle nor the swine species. It weighed at least a thousand pounds, and it was either a horse or an elk. Some years, when the Mummers were not able to shoot an elk, they would substitute an old horse. In either case, the carcass would be that of the Whistling Elk, to fulfill the ritual.
‘A thousand pounds, and there were about two hundred of the Blood Red Mummers. They'd eat plentifully if not well. And they'd drink plentifully. They had a hundred gallon barrel of 'Poor John's Corn-King Corn Whisky', a back-country whisky one of whose slogans was ‘A sound whisky to skin a mule by’.
‘The Dog-Fight was always an advertised attraction for the Fall Festival of the Bloody Red Mummers, but I can remember no year in which more than one of the fighters was a dog. This year, neither of them was. It was a battle-to-the-death between the badger named Anthony and the wolverine named Gulo. For those who liked such things, this was a fight that would be remembered for many years.
‘ “Go to the cave you know in the little hill just behind the ravening beasts and see whether the Bird-Master's summer bones are there already,” I told Epikt the handy thinking-and-speculating machine. He went like the wind, and like the wind he returned. “The outlines of his bones are starting to form there,” he said. “He doesn't slip out of them as easy as he says he does. They will grow in the cave and diminish in himself for the several hours he is in travail over them. Several of the bones look as if they were broken though, and several of them look as if they were charred. But where is the Bird-Master himself?”
‘The Mummers had seven scarecrows and they would play Mummers Roulette with them. The scenario was that six of them were real scarecrows (without life, or animated only by a Maisfeldgeist or Corn-Field-Sprite that had moved into them to live), but the seventh one was to be a living man. And how long could a living man hide among the scarecrows to avoid hanging, and what were the odds?
‘There was a Slippery Elm Tree there with seven branches. Each branch had a block-and-pulley lashed to it; each pulley had a line running through it with a noose on one end of each line. Each noose had, or soon would have, a neck in it, of one of the scarecrows or of the living man. And standing near was an iron fire-box mounted on a four-wheeled wagon to which were hitched four mules. The fire was so hot that the smell of mule sweat and scorched mule hair was heavy.
‘The noise of the towering, wheeling birds was near deafening, washing over the whole countryside in cascades of sound. But a man with canny ears could hear the ducks and geese already pealing off the top of that mill and sliding south in their V-formation with their high altitude barking.
‘Oh, Oh, one scarecrow had living and frightened eyes in him. And another, and another. It was one scarecrow and seven living men, not one living man and seven scarecrows. Somebody said that the Mummers' initiation rite was always on November Fifth, and that the candidates for initiation were always so-noosed. And if one of them was hanged instead of the scarecrow, why there would be only five instead of six new Mummers that year.
‘Oh no, Oh no, there were six noosed men, and the seventh of them, playing the role of a scarecrow, was the Bird-Master. He looked more scarecrowish than any of them, but he was the Bird-Master. And the Bird-Master was going to be hanged by the Bloody Red Mummers, hanged and drawn and burned to ashes. Why were not the members of the Institute doing something about this? Because six strong Mummers had been assigned to hold each Institute member, Gregory Smirnov, Valery Mok, Aloysius Shiplap, Cogsworth, Glasser. Well, five of them to hold each member, and a sixth to hold a knock-out tranquility needle at ready for each of them if needed.
‘There was ritual and rampage, and finally there was the “Heave Ho!” cry coming from two hundred Mummer throats. And six crews simulated the horrifying heave, and the seventh crew heaved indeed, and jerked the Bird-Master eight feet into the air. Mummers then went up on ladder arrangements and opened him up and pulled the stuffings out of him — but was it real entrails, or was it only cornhusks and straw that came out?
‘That screaming, that screaming, it will haunt me forever! Only two things in the world have such a scream, the Magpie when it is excited to overflowing, and a man when he is dying by hanging and is opened up and emptied out. Then the mules pulled the fire-box under the dangling body to consume it.
‘And then the shrikes came savagely out of the milling towers of birds; they beset the Mummers and began to tear out their eyes. They blinded about a dozen of them before the fellows got their bikers' goggles on.
‘ “Epikt, go look again at the bones,” I said, “and have a look at the badger and the wolverine.” Epikt the Ktistec Machine went.
‘The ashes that had been the Bird-Master fell from the tree. Only a short end of still-burning rope dangled down. I raked through the ashes (the Mummers were too busy warding off the shrikes to pay attention to me). There seemed to be nothing solid in the ashes. Yes there was. There were two blue eyes, the Bird-Master's eyes. And there was a grin; but what the material element o
f that grin might be was a mystery. The Bird-Master winked at me. Yes, with a lidless eye he winked at me. Then there was a ‘whoosh!’, and he was gone out of the ashes. He was away!
‘I will never cease to be amazed at the variety of creatures in our world, especially such one-of-a-kind creatures as the Bird Master.
‘Epikt returned. “It's funny,” he said. “The bones were smoking and broken when I got to them, and then they suddenly healed. A Mynah bird walked into the cave and said ‘New bones for old, hahr, hahr, new bones for old.’ Then the Mynah bird walked out again. And the badger seems to have whipped the wolverine, though they're both pretty much torn up.”
‘Ah well, so am I pretty much torn up. But I'll recover. And I'll see the Bird-Master again on March 19th when he usually comes back with the birds.’
Notae Diurnae, Diogenes Pontifex, Familiar but not a Member of the Institute for Impure Science (because of the minimal decency rule).
‘The hour of absinthe is over.’
—G. K. Chesterton
‘The Bird-Master is also the name of a straw-man scarecrow who is hanged by the neck from a tree and then set on fire, a sort of atonement ceremony that I do not fully understand. But the straw-man (or some spirit in him) does sometimes cry out when he is set on fire. Reputable witnesses have testified to this.’
‘Appendix B’ to Further Legends of the Country Between the Cross-Timbers and the Shining-Mountains, Harry Fire-Island
Flaming-Arrow
Peter Flaming-Arrow from Kara Cove was in trouble with the men and masters of half a dozen trade-guilds. His own trade was that of a fletcher, one who feathers arrows. “But a fletcher may fletch anything,” Peter argued. “Not only can he put feathers or wings on arrows, but he can also put them on wagons or boats or himself.”
“No, he cannot put feathers or wings on wagons,” said the wainwrights or wagon-carpenters. “If there is a reason to put feathers or wings on wagons, that would pertain to our trade and not to his.”
“No, he cannot put feathers or wings on boats,” said the boatbuilders. “If there were a reason to put wings or feathers on boats, that would pertain to our trade and not to his. Indeed, the sails that we do put on boats are wings, if you will forgive us our metaphors. Beyond that, the boats that this Flaming-Arrow man does build are illegal and defective, for they have no bottoms in them.”
“It's true that the boats which I build have no bottoms,” Peter admitted, “and it is for this reason that I claim that they are not boats and they are not illegal. They are arrows, though not in the regular arrow-form. And where I intend to sail them or shoot them they will not need any bottoms in them.”
“No, Peter Flaming-Arrow may not put wings or feathers on himself,” the magicians said. “If there were reason or possibility for putting feathers or wings on human persons, that would pertain to our magic trade.”
“What I am working with is not magic and does not pertain to the magicians' trade,” Peter Flaming-Arrow insisted. “What I am working with is the arithmetic of flame and air; rather simple arithmetic, rather simple flame, rather complex air.” Well, Peter irritated people when he talked in that complex and airy way of his.
“This man Flaming-Arrow has no right to deal in flame at all,” said the candlemakers, the lamplighters, the fire-swallowers, and the weapons-makers (Greek fire division). “He has failed in his apprenticeship in all of the flame trades and he has no business with fire at all.”
“Oh, stuff it, the whole bunch of you!” Peter always cried out, but he laughed when he cried out such things. Peter was as pleasant a person as you would ever meet, and it was possibly for that reason that he remained unhanged. Indeed, it was pointed out that he'd been born with the red mark of the hanging noose around his neck and that he had it yet. And it was argued with passion that one who was born with such a red mark around his neck would unfailingly end up on the end of a rope. Peter Flaming-Arrow, however, was one great red mark all over. His complexion was a ruddy-red flame color entirely, as was his hair, and even the pupils of his eyes. People could just barely see the redder mark around his neck even after it was pointed out to them. Well, it was there whether they could discern it from the rest of him or not. If he hadn't been such a laughing and friendly fellow, this would have been held against him even more than was the case. A barefaced young man himself, as well as a wrestler that none of them would tangle with, he mocked all the beard-wearing and mustache-wearing men as cowards who hid their true faces behind their whiskers. Since the great majority of the men did so hide their faces, and as Peter Flaming-Arrow said other abrasive things as well, there was sharp resentment against this arrow man. It was even said that he was not so barefaced as he seemed, that he wore a red mask at all times, and that his true face was otherwise.
Peter Flaming-Arrow also tangled with the scribes, the antiquarians, the astrologers (meteorological division), the fortune-tellers (bird-entrail division), the bards, the priests, the herbalists (psychedelic and hallucinatory herbs division); he tangled with them all on the question of conflict of occupations and trades.
“A man should be able to fletch feathers onto arrow shafts without meddling in a dozen other trades,” some people argued with fair logic. (Other toes that Peter Flaming-Arrow stepped on were those of members of the logicians' guild.)
For a man who generated so much goodwill because of his laughing and pleasant personality, Peter Flaming-Arrow also generated a lot of ill will by overstepping the narrow bounds of his trade and tongue. The good and the ill tendencies slid past each other with much friction, and a resolution of forces began to develop.
“What Peter Flaming-Arrow is generating is a cyclone,” several persons of the weather predicters' guild remarked ponderously. “That is what is generated when things of contrary tendencies come together and become entangled.”
“No, I am no cyclone man,” Peter always argued. “What I will really generate by these antipathies is updrafts. Oh, how I love to ride on updrafts!”
In that particular year (the annalists refer to it as the “Year of the Black-Footed Flying Fox,” but that name has not yet received popular acceptance), Peter Flaming-Arrow of Kara Cove came to the great fair at Ithkar as he usually did in odd-numbered years. He did not come by the main trade road, not by any of the minor trade roads; nor did he come by either the East River or the Bear River. He came up the Ith River from the sea or from somewhere very near the sea. (Nobody knew where Kara Cove, which Peter said that he came from, was to be found.)
Well, many persons came up the Ith River from the sea, and then used the canal to come into the Harbor of Ithkar itself. But Peter Flaming-Arrow (in his boat that had no bottom) came up the Ith River all the way. He did not use the canal bypass for the last part of his voyage. There is some dispute about how he did this, and in a boat without a bottom. His own explanation, that he did it by the “arithmetic of flame and air,” did not seem a sufficient explanation to all the people.
At night, when rich people get together, they talk about their conspicuous acquisitions and their conspicuous consumptions. There is a lot of fun to be had in talking about these shining things. (Various sorts of peoples do get together almost to excess at night at the great Fair at Ithkar.)
At night, when the ruling people get together, they talk about the machinations by which they rule. No, the rich people and the ruling people are not the same. A rich ruler would be like a fat athlete. Though both are common, both are bunglers. Rulers are no good when they carry the load of property. Ruling for the love of ruling is the thing.
When the people of the Floating Island are together at night, they talk about the arts and the magics, about the exciting angers and the blood-spillings, about the novelties and the ever-more novelties, and about the concupiscence of the flesh. The talk of the Floating Island is always quite fleshy. And people of this floating middle-world, more than others, need novelties and excitements.
When poor people gather together at night, they often
talk about the ultimate things, about the philosophies and the strange things of the world, and also about the skies and the sky-dwellers. This is because the poor people (more than other people, and especially at the great Fair at Ithkar) sleep under the open sky and so are reminded of the ultimate things and the sky things. Other people sleep under various roofs and so are reminded of their own varieties of things.
Peter Flaming-Arrow was a poor person (in odd-numbered years at least), so he slept under the open sky and talked about sky matters with his poor peers. Also in the group were two poor magicians. This in itself was interesting, for most magicians are not poor.
The name of one of the poor magicians was Draoi (you may pronounce this name as “Dree,” if you wish to be correct). And the name of the other poor magician was Asarlai. Draoi had one striking trick, striking to all except other magicians, at least. He would disappear of a sudden, and in his place there would be a talking crow. “Draoi is gone for a moment,” the crow would croak. “Whatever you may wish to say, say it to me. I am his familiar.” But some people thought that the crow was more than Draoi's familiar. They thought that the crow was Draoi himself.
“The reason that I am poor is that I once made an enviable deal,” Draoi said now. “The deal was that I should be totally rich for one year and then poor for the rest of my life. It happened so, and it's been worth it. I was not merely totally rich: for that one year, I owned the world and everything and everybody in it. I was the all-powerful Midas of the universe. That was the ‘Year of the Golden Plover.’ It was only seven years ago, but now it has been dropped out of the total of the years. People even affect not to remember the year. Aye, but they do remember that wonderful year in their underminds!”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 307