The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I remember it, Draoi,” said one muddle-faced poor man there. “Seven years ago, yes, that was the year when I was totally poor. Oh, how totally! I pawned everything I owned. And then I had to pawn my skin itself. I had to take it off too, and leave it hanging on a peg in the pawnbroker's shop. It may have been a wonderful year for you, but it wasn't for me. It may have been worth it for you. It wasn't worth it for me.”

  “As I think about things and lie on my back and look up at the flinty stars, I'm convinced that there are two skies,” Draoi said now. “One is the low sky, which is a fraud. The other is the high sky, which is genuine. There is a Little Bear in the low sky and a Big Bear in the high sky. There is a Little Draco (Dragon) in the low sky and a Great Dragon in the high sky. There is a false Cross in the low sky and a true Cross in the high sky. These two crosses are in the southern skies below the tropics. I sailed there in my youth.

  “And there are, no more than a mile over our heads, the Three Lordly Ones. These, though they are in league with the secret rulers of Ithkar and the whole world as well, are grubby fakes and servants of Thotharn. They are (usually but not always) one man, one woman, and one skrat or hermaphrodite. They are the false Three on the Floating Island in the low sky.

  “But high above them are the true Three, they who made the worlds, they who live in the true sky. Such are my night thoughts in these rocky hills above the great Fair at Ithkar, where even now the shills are playing that ‘Come in. Come into the Tents' music on their flutes and penny-whistles, and will be playing it all night long.”

  “Be careful,” a poor woman said. “The very stones here have ears.”

  “I'll not be careful.” Draoi chuckled. “I have not a care in the world, nor ever shall have again. I know that the stones have ears. And yet, by their stony nature, they're hard of hearing, if you'll permit me a poor man's joke.”

  “Draoi, you speak like the Seven Seekers, who came here and talked like that,” said a poor man who had a lively way about him. “They also spoke about the Three in the high sky. And now those Seven Seekers lie rotting in the swamp, each of them with a sharpened cross driven through his chest.”

  “Yes, that's always a hazard for those who indulge in speculations.” Draoi smiled in the starlit dark.

  A meadow mouse came to Peter Flaming-Arrow, climbed up on the stone that Peter was using for a pillow, and seemed to whisper something into Peter's ear. Then the mouse ran into Peter's breast pocket and was seen no more for a while.

  “Simplicity is good,” said the other poor magician who was named Asarlai. “Complexity is often good. But between them is the doubleness that is sometimes called duality and sometimes duplicity. It isn't good. The Floating Island in the low sky isn't good, nor are the three low-sky people who live upon it. Yes, you hard-of-hearing stones, I said it. And I know that you have mouths as well as ears. Inform on me, stones, if you will. And when you have done so, I will still be a man, and you will still be stones.”

  Asarlai was a poor magician who carried around with him gold coins equal to his own body weight. Whenever he attempted to spend one of the coins, the coin would whistle and then shout: “Shopkeeper, know that I have been stolen from Hudspeth the Horrible, the man who is vengeance itself. Accept me in payment only if you wish to die today.”

  So shop people would not accept the gold coins from Asarlai, nor would anybody else, even though they had no idea who the horrible Hudspeth the Horrible might be. Magicians often play such irreversible tricks on each other. Moreover, Asarlai was under a compulsion to carry the heavy gold coins with him wherever he went. But this kept him strong and healthy. He was a happy man. And many of the other magicians were not.

  “I also believe that there is a false lower sky and a true higher sky,” Asarlai continued. “The Floating Island in the low sky is the key to the falseness. And I also believe that the Three who live on the Floating Island, they who are called ‘the Three Lordly Ones’ and other such praiseful names, are servants of Thotharn and in league with our own anonymous rulers. My own personal familiar creature is this high-flying kite-bird here. I send him up to spy on the Floating Island, and he goes. But when he comes back from up there he is always in a daze, and he mumbles, ‘My lips are sealed, my lips are sealed.’ Dammit, kites do not have lips as such.”

  “My lips are sealed, my lips are sealed,” the totemic kite-bird now spoke in imitation of Asarlai's imitation of him. And then the kite winked, as could easily be seen in the starlight. He was a good-natured bird, but perhaps not intelligent enough to be a good familiar to a magician.

  “Oh, I'll go up there in the morning and find out just what the Floating Island is and who lives on it,” Peter Flaming-Arrow said. “If the updrafts are right, I can fly higher than this kite-bird. And the false powers of the low sky will only be able to seal my lips with real fire, with hot fire to be remembered.”

  “Peter Flaming-Arrow, before you go skylarking in the morning, know you that there are three of us magicians here present now,” Draoi said. “Three of us can effect a covenant between you and the mouse in your breast pocket. And you do need a covenanted familiar.”

  “I see only two magicians, you and Asarlai,” Peter Flaming-Arrow said.

  “There is a third one present who will not identify himself. But he will be the third one in our effecting, and we can effect the covenant.”

  “Perhaps the mouse and I already have our private covenant.”

  “Yes, you two do have a private covenant, Peter; but it has not been magicked. We can magic it for you. It will make a difference.”

  “Magic it for us, then,” Peter Flaming-Arrow cried.

  Then the three magicians, Draoi and Asarlai and one other, confirmed by magic that the mouse (it stuck its head out of the breast pocket of Peter Flaming-Arrow and assented to the pact) was now a covenanted familiar of Peter Flaming-Arrow, who could ride on updrafts in the boat without a bottom.

  At night, when the secret ruling people are together, they talk about the machinations by which they rule. They plot and conspire; without such interests, ruling would hardly be worth carrying on. This night, the first night of the great Fair at Ithkar for the Year of the Black-Footed Flying Fox, some of them, from Ithkar and also from the outlands, were together in a plush house on a hill above the fair. “The main expense of our wireless system is the wires for it,” one of the secret rulers was giving an account. “Copper hammerers do not hammer out fine wire for nothing. And we need the wire-wound kick-coils to talk by wireless with our eye and thunder-base in the low sky. We should invent a cheaper way to do it, but at the same time we must not let our inventiveness spread to the people. We saw an example of unauthorized inventiveness on the day just past.”

  “You mean the inventiveness of Peter Flaming-Arrow, I suppose,” said another of the cryptic and anonymous rulers. “Well, his laughable boat-without-a-bottom did rise out of the water and waft itself in the air for some distance above the river Ith. And by that device, this Peter came into the Harbor of Ithkar from the Ith River without using the canal. It was a small thing, I suppose, and the onlookers were undecided as to whether they should be amazed at what they had seen or whether they should forget that they had seen it. About half of them did the one thing and half of them the other. Well, he is only a fletcher who puts feathers or wings on arrowshafts. And this time he fletched wings onto a light boat and flew it briefly. But we have to have an explanation, or at least a name for it.”

  “Skull, tell us the name for it,” another of the covert rulers said to a futuristic skull on the table there.

  “The name of it is ‘glider,’ ” the skull said. “And the additional trade of Peter Flaming-Arrow is named ‘glider pilot.’ The light and broad fletches or wings on the light boat will let it raise itself on updrafts of air, and will let it slide along on level air, also.”

  “We understand how the bird-mockery of a boat works,” said another of the rulers (if you didn't know them, you could hardly tell these
purposely inconspicuous rulers apart), “but we are a little bit dubious as to how the mind of Peter Flaming-Arrow works. How is it fletched?”

  The futuristic skull on the table had been dug out of a future stratum of earth that in clear truth had not been laid down yet. This suspect stratum was in the Improbability Hills not far from the Galzar Pass north of Ithkar. This skull that had been dug out of future time would answer simple questions out of its future-based knowledge. But the ruling persons had learned not to expect great things from this skull. The skull had not been (or rather, it should be said that the skull would not be) the skull of a genius.

  “Suppose that the magnetic motor, that toy devised by the cooper (copper-cask division) John Slackwit, should be combined with the ‘glider’ of Peter Flaming-Arrow?” one of the rulers asked the skull. “What would the result be?”

  “The result would be a flying boat capable of flying anywhere in the low sky at will,” the skull said.

  “We have too many fakeries stabled in that low sky to have persons meddling around there. And yet we have the interceptor's angle on Peter Flaming-Arrow and on anything he might try to do. If he thirsts, he will have to come down to our spring and drink. What we need now is some creative destruction. We will make Peter Flaming-Arrow fulfill his own name and legend. Indeed, it is time that we gave another legend to the people, and here is one almost ready-made. What do you call that new device of the armorer Jasper Shortlegs, skull?”

  “Rifle is the name of it. It's a crude, handmade rifle, too heavy by ten times, and it fires the messiest incendiary shots that I've ever seen. It should be cleaned up or else done away with. It isn't made for stylish shooting.”

  “We will use it one time, skull. And then we will do away with the messy flame-shot thing. And with Jasper Shortlegs, also, and with John Slackwit, and most of all we will do away with Peter Flaming-Arrow. Skull, we are not greatly impressed by you even though you were dug out of the future. In all honesty, are you greatly impressed with us?”

  “I'm impressed by your irrationality. It's beyond anything I ever met with in my own time. I'm impressed by your illogic. And above all (or should I say ‘below all’?), I'm impressed by your reeking magic, your cloying magic, your suffocating magic. I don't know where you got it, unless from Thotharn.”

  “How odd that you believe in Thotharn in the future when we've left off believing in him in this present.”

  “You don't believe in him? I thought you used him,” the skull said.

  “Certainly we use him. And now that we know him so well, now that we have him on our own payroll, we find him the least believable creature anywhere. What little bit we get from him is hardly worth getting. Not only that, but we find him the least impressive creature anywhere, except maybe yourself, manless skull.”

  Then all the rulers who were present pronounced a ritual:

  “Indeed, the people are becoming like us in their knowing. Lest perhaps then—” The ends of the sentences were never verbalized by the rulers; they were only thought. And after a short pause they pronounced the first part of another verse of the ritual:

  “This is the beginning of what they would do. Hereafter they could not be restrained from anything which they determined to do. Let us go, then, and thereby confuse—”

  So the secret rulers of Ithkar, and of other places, also, conspired how they would confuse their ruled ones with shot and fire and legend.

  “In the middle of life, every lightning man, every arrow man, must be wrapped in the dismal clouds of death, and he must die that death. But if he is a true lightning man, a true arrow man, then the limit of his death will be seven years. When the mouse shall trumpet with the voice of thunder on the mountain, then you will know that the lightning man has wakened from his death.”

  —The Book of Jasher

  “The mouse must not go with you, Peter Flaming-Arrow,” said the poor magician Draoi the next morning. “The mouse must remain here. The mouse must be you here until you come back again. The mouse will be you, but to the eyes and ears of the people he will still be a mouse.”

  “Yes, all right,” said Peter Flaming-Arrow.

  “Yes, all right,” said the totemic mouse familiar. And it came out of Peter's breast pocket and found itself a safe nook in the rocks.

  Then Peter Flaming-Arrow was almost ready to begin his morning flight. He had tested the winds and currents and drafts, and they were right. He lacked only two new long feathers. In reality, the feathers played a very minor role in fletching his boat-without-a-bottom. But he was a trained fletcher and he retained his fletcher's superstitions on the necessity of two new feathers on any new enterprise, and about the luckiness of the feathers of the coppertone eagle.

  Peter Flaming-Arrow whistled a coppertone eagle down from the low sky. All competent fletchers are able to whistle birds down to them. He killed the eagle. He took the longest feather from each of its wings and added them to the wings of his flying boat. Then he tore the bird apart with strong and canny hands and spread out its entrails for the fortuning of himself.

  “The entrails indicate that I will die this morning unless I forego my flight,” Peter Flaming-Arrow spoke with great shock. “This is intolerable to me, that I should die in my flaming youth. It is also intolerable that I should give up my sky flight. I was born in vain if I give up the flight now, just when I have brought it to possibility. I must think about this, and I ask that you magicians think about it, also.”

  “Maybe there are compensations for dying, Peter Flaming-Arrow,” the poor magician Draoi said without a lot of hope.

  “Oh, the dead clearly have knowledge of things that we are ignorant of,” Peter agreed. “But when one encants up dead men and questions them, they answer with such great sorrow and agony as to make it seem that, for all the special knowledge that they have, they've got the worst of the bargain. What I want is the best of both worlds.”

  “The eagle entrails indicate that you'll die only in a special way,” the poor magician Asarlai said with a little flicker of hope. “But they do not indicate wherein your death will be special.”

  “Do it, Peter Flaming-Arrow,” the dead coppertone Eagle suddenly spoke in his harsh eagle voice. “You'll have my two greatest feathers with you. They know the way up the tall and tipsy air. Do it, Peter Flaming-Arrow.”

  “After all, I'll be you, and I'll still be here,” the mouse said thoughtfully. “And the time for you to fly is right now. The warm fetid air from the swamp (I was a swamp mouse before I was a meadow mouse) is now blowing as strong as it ever blows in the mornings. But try to die some place where I can come to you easily.”

  “Thank you, my friend, my mouse, my covenanted familiar, my self,” Peter Flaming-Arrow spoke. Then he gathered his light boat-without-a-bottom about him and ran down the slope toward the cliff edge. The warm swamp wind was at his back, and the cool wind from the ocean was almost in his face. He ran past the edge of the cliff, and then he went up instead of down. The warm swamp wind overrode the cool ocean wind, and Peter rode the bucking updraft as if it were a stallion.

  Now he did the things that he had been born to do. He was cousin to the little heading winds and brother to the updrafts. The fabric-bark-feather lifting fletches of his light boat were like extensions of his own skin. And the rudder was his legs, which dangled and flailed and tipped and guided his boat. None except a bottomless boat could have been so guided by him.

  The early sky was overflowing with sunshine that spilled down and drenched the air and the earth below with leaping light. There were only two or three skimpy clouds in the sky, and Peter Flaming-Arrow didn't know which one of them was the Floating Island.

  “Speak to me with morning thunder so I'll know you,” Peter called his cheerful greeting upward. And one of the clouds did speak with a curious bronze-throated thunder that was the special mark of the Floating Island. No other thunder had ever been like it. It wasn't overpowering, it wasn't great, it wasn't even extremely loud, though it tried
to be. It was only unmistakable. Peter rose and wafted and steered to the cloud of the thunder signature, knowing that it was the Floating Island.

  Oh, it wasn't large, half an acre in area maybe, and not more than ten cubits thick, a thin rough floating disc made out of air-filled and cloud-colored tufa-rock. But how did it float?

  “The masters of the Floating Island are my masters at the arithmetic of flame and air,” Peter Flaming-Arrow said happily. “Here we have real magic, and yet magic is only the advanced form of the arithmetic of flame and air.”

  He wafted and soared a bit above the Floating Island. Then he landed in the middle of it. He stepped out of his boat and was confronted by the Three Lordly Ones, and a talking post, and behind them a little gibbet or gallows for hanging people on. And behind the gibbet were three great sheets of green bronze hanging from stanchions, and three ponderous hammers with which to beat the characteristic thunder out of the bronze sheets. That is what a thunder machine consists of. It is almost the most simple machine anywhere.

  “The goof has landed,” one of the Sky Lords said to the talking post. The Sky Lord was a rough-looking sort of man.

  “Hang him, then,” said the talking post. “You can be sure that he has the prophetic red mark of the noose around his neck, for you can plainly see that his whole body is one ruddy red mark. Hang him, and be sure that you break his neck.”

  “Aye, we'll hang him, and then we'll cruise with him through the buzzard sky until his bones are stripped. And then we'll put his bones with the others.”

  Peter Flaming-Arrow noticed that there were six skeletons on the tufa-rocks behind the gallows. “Six of them,” Peter said in wonder. “Six persons have been here before me and have died here. Did they all use the same device I use, or did they use six different devices?”

  “Yes, six of them,” one of the other Sky Lords said to Peter, “and you'll be the seventh. It's always good luck to be the seventh of anything.”