by Mark Teppo
An hour after Tounee drags Dutash into one of the streams feebly running between burned, bone-covered fields, the fire dies down. Black dust remains. For months it blows through the desert, and there is no one who does not know its source.
Two sisters walk with the wind at their backs, blind, lost.
We find them. We who went to Caa to find the remains of our sisters bring them slowly back to the place where we have buried Nishir and Aree. As the wind speckles our skin with black, we wait—afraid and determined, angry and grieving.
Creezum Zuum
— Juli Mallett
Dear Writer-or-whatever-you-are:
The most intractable problem in panic attacks for you has always been the sense that at some point you’ll lose yourself in them, hasn’t it? At one point or another you will cease to be you, and you’ll be at best some half-deranged caricature of yourself, permanently unmade by terror. You will cease to be you, the individual you are will be lost, continuity will be shattered, and someone else will wake up in medias res, in the body you once called home, the mind that once was yours.
It’s about, it seems to you, the feeling of standing on a precipice. The way that when you cross a bridge that you used to be afraid you would go flying south towards the equator from, you brace and resist the whole way. Even when you’ve already crossed it, there is a lingering horror that perhaps you’re not the person that you were when you crossed it.
Rites of initiation sure cut to the heart of that, don’t they? So perhaps you should write about those. Not a baptism, though, or anything so silly as a secret society; no, you’ve been feeling quite well and truly cyberpunk lately, and so it seems right and good to have your protagonist’s story begin with walking towards some automaton or authority figure, the way that all good cyberpunk should be. Strike the balance between the BBC’s white, light sets for Doctor Who and Channel 4’s grainy, dark sets for the Max Headroom movie—walls with too many circular cut-outs or glass bricks with colored or too-white lights shining brightly or dimly from behind them. Perhaps we’re back to Doctor Who again—sounds like something from The Happiness Patrol, doesn’t it?
And while you’re doing your little bit to swing your canal boat of pirate literature just so so you don’t lose your balance of good taste and fall into the waters of lawsuit, you should perhaps quite punkily taunt a prick. Be obnoxious and ostentatious in how you enter the story in the middle of things (or in a substrate of beef) so that perhaps you might get to stand up in court some day, defending against allegations of plagiarism and copyright infringement from an inflated old fart, and shout: "Repent, Ellison!"
Rite and ritual are about transformation, some have suggested, and that is the essence of that precarious, precipitous feeling you’re so fascinated by. Much of it is how you lead into them, how you misdirect the conscious mind and make room for the unconscious to really connect with the archetypes and universal sensation you’re trying to highlight for the benefit of the transformee.
And you know full well that you have a tendency towards awkward didactic writing when you want to say something about psychology like that, so be mindful of that. Your usual way of defusing that—making transparent self-references that suggest that as the writer you’re aware of that you’re being didactic, in such a way that the reader will be inclined to forgive—isn’t going to cut it this time. Keep things simple and to the point, focus on the actions of the character, the plot, the movement of the whole damn thing.
The audience will have ears to hear, or damn well should. It’s true enough, of course, and even if they don’t understand it as well as you think you do, you can still tap into the nexus of existential anxiety that we all hold within us. Illusory non-control, true non-control, true control, illusory control. They know from years of reading mad pulp barkers and fake-hard neuroscience that they don’t emerge from any given moment the same person that they were going into it. That the them of the present cannot really give assent to their future actions, and that the future actor they will become doesn’t give a damn about that anyway.
The magic of ritual is in raising up that moment of movement, of permanent and irrecoverable change. Of marking one occasion very clearly on which the person that was ceased to be of their own free will, so that a new person might come into being and fully realize the hopes and dreams that were held so painfully close for an instant.
You, writer, try to hold on to that moment. It is a madeleine moment if ever there were one, because two whole lives meet in the conic section of time and space at the heart of it. The reader knows those moments, the sense of loss and hope, the sense of movement and stillness. You don’t need to guide them too much.
But you are feeling sort of cyberpunk and sort of wry and all that jazz, too. Not just sentimental about change, but also sentimental about the terribleness of the future. And not the future merely, but the future as you imagined it in your bleak Rust Belt youth, in which dystopian futures seemed not a fantastic stretch but a certainty, in which hackers were like gangs and buildings were either massive glowing towers in perpetual night or gutted husks in the pollution-red sunsets you loved to watch so much in your very, very early years. And so your protagonist walks forward, and they stand at the mouth of change, at a doorway, or perhaps something that looks rather like a damnable TSA-style metal detector, or pornoscanner as our contemporary retro-future dystopia has opted for instead.
You know that the miracle of those moments is that the protagonist, the self, doesn’t know if it’s going to last another instant, and even sort of knows that the self that emerges from the other side won’t really be the same all told, but that memory and experience will remain, along with the better halves of identity and individuality. Every ritual and every femtosecond of life rings out with the truth of that, of continuity and discontinuity, and the ultimate permanence of what people before our rationalistic, wealth-divided, techno-dystopian utopia might have called a soul.
And why should death be any different?
A Moment of Gravity, Circumscribed
— Fran Wilde
Djonn’s father owned the last ticker in the city and made sure everyone knew it. Brass-bodied, the ticker looked fragile and cold, its clouded glass face obscuring the dark symbols beneath. Despite its age, it ticked loud and regular, breaking the arc of a day into increments.
"You have thirty ticks to decide," Djonn’s father said when he made a deal. Djonn loved that Father knew how long a person took to make up their mind.
He longed to open the ticker, to find what made the yes-no-yes-no rhythm inside. After their dependent, Raeda, found the ticker far downtower a year ago, Father’s deals went yes more often than no. The ticker was a treasure. Father hung it high on their wall and wouldn’t let Djonn’s brothers fly with it. Djonn wasn’t even permitted to wind the ticker. Djonn was clumsy.
Father said so that morning before he took to wing, his satchel strapped to his chest, lumpy with small treasures.
Djonn’s three irritable brothers shook their heads and elbowed Djonn. They’d stayed up all night talking beneath the ticker’s sturdy rhythm. Now, they pushed Djonn out of their way, pocketed six noisy fighting birds, and flew to the market on the city’s southern edge.
Then Djonn’s mother climbed the ladder uptower to scour the roof with the other women. Raeda disappeared. Finally alone, Djonn teetered on a three-legged stool. The ticker said yes-no-yes, cold in his hands.
When the stool’s leg snapped, Djonn toppled, and the ticker cracked beneath him like a dropped egg. Bent metal pieces spilled golden across the floor. Djonn’s home fell silent.
When Father returned, he would hang Djonn from Harut tower by his toes until his nose bled.
Unless.
"Raeda!" Djonn shouted, hoping she lurked nearby. Raeda would help. Djonn scooped up metal pieces and bits of broken glass. Held them out to her when she straightened from the family’s small garden on the ledge.
"You unlucky boy," she said. "Gravity�
�s own monster." She sounded like Mother, which annoyed him. He’d turned twelve and deserved more respect, especially from someone younger.
Raeda’s robe was faded at the shoulders, and she’d hemmed the sleeves to her elbows. Her sunstruck skin looked green beneath the yellow cloth Djonn’s mother favored. She’d patched her wingstraps with spare spider silk; wore them crisscrossed over her still-flat chest. But she owned no wings: her only pair had ripped months ago.
Raeda took the ticker pieces. She paced back to the ledge and the better light, muttering.
"What do we do?"
She answered him by holding her hands out toward the empty sky. The sun played light across the shards. Djonn imagined them falling towards the distant clouds.
"No!" he shouted, moving fast. He yanked her away from the ledge. "Raeda, you’ll make it worse!"
Djonn grabbed the pieces. Hurried to hide them in his sleeping mat. The thick down pad sat folded atop a basket that held his things.
On a basket handle, Djonn’s messenger bird ruffled feathers in protest, then settled back to hooded sleep.
"You’d greet your father with handfuls of garbage?" Raeda teased him. "Your brothers will never let you live it down."
She was right, but Djonn bristled. "They’ll blame you too. You’re meant to look after me."
"You’re old enough to mind yourself," she said.
With her back to the ledge Raeda watched Djonn and waited. The city’s towers rose bone white behind her, set off by blue sky.
Djonn looked at the hook where the ticker once hung on their home’s central wall, behind the circle of three-legged bone stools and bright yellow cushions. Where the family crowded for dinner. Where Father made deals with friends like Raeda’s uncle Maru, and the wingmaker, and others who gambled on fighting birds, or needed a helping hand.
His heart did a pitterpat imitation of the ticker. Yes-no-yes. Djonn met Raeda’s eyes. "You can help me."
Raeda mended clothes. She cleaned. She weeded the family garden and mulched it with guano from the roof. She looked after Djonn and told him stories. She scavenged treasures from downtower and brought them to Father. Or she had, until her wings ripped beyond all repair.
Djonn cleared his throat. "You must help me find another ticker, Raeda, before Father comes home." He said the words firmly, as Father would. He thought about counting to thirty.
Raeda shook her head. "There are no more. I’ve looked."
"There must be! Somewhere!" He thought of all the tiers where his ancestors had lived, descending into the clouds.
Treasure came from below, Djonn knew, passed one generation to the next up the city’s bone towers until something broke or disappeared. Father kept an eye out for metal and glass, to keep it from being lost. "The weight of things drags folks down until they lose everything," he said. "No one falls or starves downtower if I can help it." He’d say that and nod at the ticker.
He liked lenses and tools especially. And knives. Raeda, whom Father sheltered when trouble befell her uncle Maru, had proven especially good at finding those. Plus a few rarer treasures, like the ticker. But finding treasures had grown difficult. Metal and glass were rare in a city of bone and birds, clouds and sky.
Last night, Djonn’s brothers had whispered about the clouds below. How treasure hid far downtower. Yes, for those strong enough to fly that low, strong enough to carry it up. How Raeda knew more than stories. Yes. How she knew what hid in the clouds, yes, maybe even in the broken tower, Lith.
Father had shushed them, furious. No. The clouds hid many dangers. Were too far down. Lith was a story. No. Leave Raeda alone.
Now, if Djonn could win Raeda’s help, perhaps he’d find a treasure better than the ticker before Father returned.
Raeda crossed the bone floor near the yellow cushions and knelt, pressing her back against the central wall where the ticker had hung. She tucked her feet beneath her in a posture entirely made of no."He’ll blame you too," Djonn said.
She looked at him, her brown eyes calm. "He knows I do not drop things."
Djonn always dropped things.
But Djonn paid attention when Father made deals. He knew give and take, the importance of speed.
"My old wings, Raeda. They’re yours if you take me down to salvage."
At this, she looked out to the ledge, out at the sky, the city’s towers. She flexed her fingers, worn rough on the fibrous ladders she used to climb from one tier to the next on their tower.
The city’s fifty-eight spires were beyond her reach. Without wings, she could only climb up and down, never to another tower, never far away.
Djonn silently counted to ten, then walked to where she sat and held out his hand, as he’d seen Father do. She put her hand in his, and they clasped the deal.
Her lips parted in a smile, too quickly.
Perhaps, Djonn worried, she knew he’d kept his old wings to take apart, to see how they worked. Perhaps he’d decided wrong, or too fast. But a deal was a deal. Raeda would take him downtower on the ladders to salvage, and when they’d found something to replace Father’s ticker, they’d come back up and he’d give her the wings.
He found a soft silk satchel in his basket; bound it over his shoulder and to his hip. Reached for a spare coil of rope ladder.
"You’ll give me my wings now." She said it softly, still kneeling.
Djonn felt the moments slipping away.
When he nodded, Raeda smiled. "And I will take you into the clouds to find a treasure."
"What?" Djonn’s pride at his first deal crumpled. Not even his father dared the clouds, their storms, the giant birds that prowled there.
Yet Djonn’s brothers thought Raeda knew more about the clouds than she was telling. And yes, Djonn needed a treasure that would save him from Father’s rage and his brothers’ ridicule. So he swallowed his doubts and retrieved the old gray wings from his basket for Raeda. Gave them to her.
He lifted his new wings, all gold spidersilk and fine bone battens, from the basket. He slipped the straps over his shoulders. At the last moment, he lifted his bird from its perch, removed its hood, and fed a piece of dried goose into its sharp beak. The bird stretched its wings, flew to the ledge and waited for him there.
Raeda secured the gray wings to her wingstraps, and checked Djonn’s to make sure those were tight. Then she turned and leapt from Djonn’s family’s ledge, snapping the wings open as she jumped.
An updraft filled the wings’ faded silk, and Raeda laughed.
Djonn unfurled his new wings carefully and checked the grips and battens as he’d been taught to do. The wingmakers were skilled, but tears could happen, even on new wings.
"Come on!" Raeda shouted, now gliding just beyond the balcony. She’d found a fine vent, and let it lift her to glide in a near-perfect circle.
Djonn swallowed his nerves and leapt after her.
Raeda glided away from the tower, then raked her wings back. Djonn took a deep breath. When she dove, he followed, though he hated the steep plummet.
They dropped past tiers where families like Djonn’s crowded, down the cold drafts to dingier levels streaked with the garbage of those living above. In the neighboring towers’ shade, Djonn could see evidence of Harut’s central walls thickening, pushing the living spaces toward the tower’s ledges and the inevitable drop.
In Raeda’s stories, told while she cleaned or hemmed or tended the garden, people sometimes went into the clouds and didn’t return.
"They’re not strong enough, or they lose track of time, maybe."
She’d told the stories with a smile, teasing Djonn about his skinny arms. "Your bones need to fill in. You’d get blown off the towers in the clouds." She’d poked at him, but been careful around the bruises. His brothers had sharp elbows.
The city grew away from the clouds, and people rose with it, she said. New bone tiers grew atop old ones, and, below, the central walls grew out, filling the towers. Even as the tools of Djonn’s grandfathers’ grandfathers
pitted thin and dull, the city rose. The people rose out of the clouds, with the city, and were safer for it.
She hadn’t told stories since her wings ripped.
When Raeda pulled up and began to glide the city’s drafts again, Djonn prepared to circle the wide tower. They’d fly below the occupied tiers, beyond the places Djonn was allowed to go. Djonn breathed faster as they made the long glide around. He hoped no one saw them.
But with her wings spread full, Raeda dipped to the left and disappeared into the sun’s glare.
Djonn twisted his head from side to side, frantic. His wings wobbled. Above, a class of young fliers, five- and six-years-old, flew tiny, ambitious arcs on patchwork wings over a net held by their teachers. Beyond the tower, an older group dove and mock-battled in the breeze. Below, only birds skimmed the air near the older tiers. The wind whistled in Djonn’s ears.
He looked up to the tower’s full height. He couldn’t see them, but he knew his mother, her friends, and their youngest children were still on Harut’s roof. They scrubbed at the bone with the rough scourweed that grew in the moist joins between tiers, hoping to make the tower grow higher.
Djonn’s message-bird slowed beside him, knowing it wouldn’t get another piece of goose if it lost its master.
He scanned the thick clouds far below. Was she already down there? He saw no sign of it. Had she skipped out on him? Stolen his wings? Father would blame Djonn for much more than the ticker.
A low whistle made Djonn peer under his left wing. Between the shadows of the thick towers, gray wings flashed in the sun. Raeda banked towards the city’s eastern edge.
"Come on!"
Raeda turned to shadow as she used the neighboring tower’s windshear to accelerate. Djonn struggled to do the same, whispering "wait!" He wobbled in the shear. Then he too pushed beyond his home towers.
A long glide later, he saw their destination: a gap carved in the city’s horizon by a blackened stump. Lith.
Djonn had thought it only one of Raeda’s stories. Even neighboring towers had risen far beyond the broken tower, had begun to forget.