No Present Like Time

by Steph Swainston

  The loading continued night and day under Mist’s impatient gaze, but it took a week before the stevedores’ footsteps stopped resounding up and down Petrel’s ladders and in the hold. The gale-force wind filled the sails and hauled us forward, and we began to crash through the storming seas outside the harbor. I retreated below to tell Lightning the news.

  I took the first turn to watch over Lightning. When awake, he refused to allow the pain to affect him and was as courteous lying in the sickbay as in his palace. I wished that I had his self-assurance, but I don’t have the security that comes from never questioning my place in the world. Rhydanne always see my wings and flatlanders see my cat eyes.

  Because wolves track lonely boys, I was hunted out of Darkling in the melt season of the year I later calculated to be eighteen-ten. I was unaware that the high airstreams would carry me to the biggest city of hungry rats, bewildering to a mountain child, and proving nearly impossible to escape. Until I joined the Circle I was always pushed on, only ever seeking to get away from the places in which I was trapped. I became so used to defending myself that in the Hacilith chemist’s shop, when I began to feel I belonged, my behavior left me ruined and homeless again.

  After the avalanche I ran down from the devastated valley keeping Mhor Darkling’s colossal crags on my right, onto the plateau and warily toward the pueblo. I sneaked into the storeroom of the distillery, desperate to find food, filthy and tottering from exhaustion. I had not run such a long distance on my own before.

  I descended a gravel and damp matting slope into the dark cellar and splashed onto a stone floor. It was covered with a good six centimeters of standing water. Drops ran down the dank walls and fell from the ceiling, plinking rhythmically. This was so wrong. Did anyone know the store was flooded?

  It was like creeping into a cave. The cellar was stifling with the smell of pounded meat; the freeze-dried pemmican had become a sodden, slimy mass. But I had grown up with the smells of pelts drying and antler soaked in urine to soften it for carving, brown fat spitting on a cooking fire of burning bones, the reek of split long bones boiling to make grease.

  I reached up and pulled down one of the baskets of dried berries that were stacked in piles of five. Rhydanne count in base five because it is warmer to keep one hand in a mitten. Besides, five of anything is a lot in the mountains. I ate an entire basketful of bilberries and cloudberries. Then I scooped water from the floor and lapped it out of my cupped hands until I was satiated.

  Throughout my childhood in Darkling, I mainly ate meat. So when I reached the city I lived by stealing sizzling burgers from market stalls, which was as near to meat as I could find. When I figured out what fruit was, and how to peel it, I changed to pilfering apples and oranges, loving the intense sweetness, although to start with they gave me indigestion. The first words of Morenzian I learned were the tradesmen’s cries and curses.

  I crept back to the distilling room and checked that it was deserted. I dashed out of the stone doorway, left the pueblo and jogged onto the plateau, while biting grit from under my nails. The dull sun shone a white pathway in the overcast sky. A skinning wind blew from the direction of Scree gorge, carrying the roar of the meltwater torrent and bobbing the sparse heather patches. Thick snow lay in hummocks everywhere, receding from dashes of black rock. Muddy blots in the distance were chamois, wandering along the vast plateau. Above them ancient glacier scratches scored the distant cliffs, as if in desperation.

  Two Rhydanne sprang out in front of me. I dodged with a cry but they blocked my path. They were adults, I was as tall as them but not as strong. I didn’t know the man’s name but I knew his reputation. Being the area’s fastest runner, he had caught a lot of women and lorded it over the other men. He had married and keenly defended a very desirable fellow hunter, who stood beside him.

  A handful of condor feathers quivered in her long matted hair; it was dried back with ochre paste and red daubs stained the hair roots on her forehead. She had a pierced bear-canine necklace, and wolverine claws strung on the babiche lacings of her tasseled puma-beige breeches. She looked old, perhaps thirty-five. They both had knives on their belts and armfuls of plain bangles, prized possessions that confirmed their status. As the mountains grow, earthquakes and erosion sometimes uncover veins of Darkling silver that Rhydanne beat into jewelry.

  These hunters were out of their territory, which I knew to be on the other side of the aiguille-lined ridge called the Raikes. They were not at all impressed by the farouche shock-headed boy who, having summed them up, was trying to flee. They strode around me. I couldn’t dash between them; I was trapped.

  “What is this?” she said with curiosity. Her eyes drilled into me like pale shards of bone.

  “He’s an Awian. Stocky as he is, he’s young.”

  “Alone?”

  They looked around. “If he is an Awian he’s not old enough to be here by himself, I do declare. An orphan, then.”

  The woman spoke slowly, “Are you an orphan? Or abandoned?”

  I said nothing.

  “What are you doing here?” the man asked.

  With overwhelming isolation I thought, I do two things: I can keep people company or I can leave them alone.

  The woman shot out a wind-burned hand and started pinching my feathers. Her husband gave a laugh and pick, pick, picked at the other wing. I yelped and sprinted away. Why were they doing this to me?

  The cold wind lifted my dirty hair. My soaked feet were freezing; my three layers of fur socks had been shredded when I scrambled among the landslide rock shards.

  I ran frantically over low outcrops, knocking stones from their frost-shattered surface. The Rhydanne kept pace without quickening their breath and all the time they laughed and plucked my feathers, leaving a trail of the ones they managed to detach. The woman poked me and I staggered; the man shoved me back to ward her. I made a break but she leapt and pushed me; I fell over and broke the ice on a snow patch. I got to my feet whimpering with frustration and the numb pain from last night. The woman teasingly flicked my head and tore the hood from my alpaca wool jacket. The man pulled all the horn buttons off and the belt that kept it closed, since I had long out-grown it. They packed snow down my back. If they stripped all my clothes off, I would die of exposure. I thought that was their intent.

  I wish I had realized then that my ability to fly would awe all Rhydanne, because it was faster than they could ever run. If I’d known that I would have armfuls of bangles; if I’d known that I would own the Spider, and remind them of the fact with free drinks every year, then I wouldn’t have sobbed and darted about in vain attempts to escape, tears rolling down my face.

  I wrenched free and ran as fast as I could. The man gave a double whistle. The woman whistled once to show she understood and they spread out on either side of me. They’re hunting me, I thought with horror.

  I swerved away from her and ran straight. Her mate narrowed the gap and forced me toward her with a laugh of pure joy. The ice inside my collar rubbed my skin raw and was seeping down my neck; the cold air seared my throat.

  They easily followed their hunting system and mercilessly passed me between them. For them it was a leisurely pace but I was trembling and close to pissing myself with fear.

  The third time around a stack of antlers marking a meat store scraped in the frozen ground I realized that they were deliberately making me run in large circles. I yearned to jump far away from Scree-to leave every one of the Daras and hunters. Blind with tears I swerved abruptly and headed straight for the gorge. They chased me, grinning. The lip of the crevasse loomed far too close. They halted, called, “Stop!” I heard concern in their voices but I wasn’t falling for any tricks.

  I spread my wings and glided over the gorge. The ground fell away and I was suddenly one hundred meters in the air above lashing milk-white water.

  The Rhydanne clutched each other, their mouths agape. Apart from Eilean, they were the first to see me fly. But I remember terror rather than triump
h as I watched their figures shrink into dots. A powerful air current grabbed and hurled me up. The Pentitentes Ridge of Chir Serac lengthened, covered in cone-shaped ice formations. Mhor Darkling’s highest white peak pulled down past my wings; the entire mighty, beautiful massif spread out beneath me.

  Above my world, a steady broad slipstream of wind blew to the southeast. I fought for breath in the thinnest air and talked myself calm. “Then that’s the way I’ll go. Wherever I land has to be better than this.” I turned with the wind stream and let it speed me away.

  “Jant?” Lightning’s voice sounded amused. “Jant, wake up! Are you all right?”

  I sighed. “Yes. Don’t worry about me; how are you?”

  “Bearing up. Burning, weak. Snatches of music keep going around and around in my head. You look dazed too.”

  “I was just thinking,” I said. “Reminiscing about my childhood.”

  The dingy cabin creaked and lurched. The Archer nodded approvingly and said, “Please tell me about it. It must have been wonderful, living in the mountains and being free.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The ocean was a choppy swell laced with lines of foam, a breathing shape over the back of which the Petrel rolled. The mastheads were beginning to glow, freezing spray cracked from taut sails, and she listed hard to starboard as she slid rather than sailed down into another trough.

  A passing squall blew the surface of the waves opaque and slated rain horizontally onto the gleaming deck. Water dripped off the strips of lead nailed over Mist’s cabin door. White rain screamed down so strongly I couldn’t see through it. It pounded the waves flat.

  I slid the forecastle hatchway open on its runners and peered down into the sickbay. Lightning’s figure was just visible in the gloom. The bed had been hooked to the padded leather wall and he sat propped up, a glass of brandy cradled in his big hands. He pressed his back to the wall in an attempt to relieve the pain that still immobilized him. I teetered uncertainly on the creaking threshold until he beckoned me down. “Come in. It’s so tedious lying here for weeks. I’ve either been talking to Rayne or listening to my own heartbeat in the pillow. Close the hatch, please; the chill seems to nip into my wound.”

  I dangled off the ladder as the ship lurched unexpectedly, and dropped onto a spare sleeping bag by the opposite bulkhead. “I was just on deck getting some fresh air-if you can describe sea air as fresh. We keep sliding down the waves sideways, they’re like black pyramids. Mist’s furious; in the teeth of the storm we’re getting nowhere and Gio is increasing his lead. Wrenn hasn’t stopped being sick yet. Where’s the Doctor?”

  “Collecting clean water from the stove. I am in good hands.”

  The ship rolled and molten wax poured off the candles in the lantern. The flames jumped up high on their long wicks. Lightning blinked. He winnowed out his uninjured wing to scratch between the contour feathers, then folded it up by hand and tucked it under his voluminous surtout coat. The creamy candlelight cast his face into pallor. He was clean-shaven and, through long practice, fastidiously neat. Living on a ship for three months is like camping at the Front and Lightning knew how boredom, bad conditions and long waiting cause men’s discipline and ultimately their behavior to degenerate. The bandages under his barn-owl-yellow coat were fresh and crisp.

  He said, “I worry about Cyan; I need to see her more. I only have a short opportunity to raise her and I can’t depend on Swallow to do it properly. This is such appalling timing; last century the Emperor could have done without me for a decade. Poor Cyan, she always looks delighted when I visit, though she’s different every time, she grows so fast. Jant, one day you might find that you rely on prominent features to recognize people from one decade to the next.”

  He veered from Low to High Awian, an outrageously complicated language in which every noun has a case, a tense, one of three genders and one of two social classes. Most of the verbs are irregular, and the least slip in the forms of address can cause offense. I am not sure whether High Awian became so intense through its long evolution in their aristocracy or deliberately to discourage aspiring farmers, tenants and Morenzians.

  “This is the longest time I have failed to practice. I’ll be in a sadly Challengeable state when we reach Tris, but it is my responsibility to catch Gio. This hurts, Jant; it certainly hurts. I can still feel the steel piercing my side-cold and inflexible. Have some brandy. I’m not drinking much, it would be disastrous for my aim, but it really is better than ours.”

  “It’s the only decent drink on board,” I said. “Mist left in such a hurry that we’ve taken Gio’s leftovers for rations. My guts are shrinking; I’ve had nothing but soup and juice all week. Can I bring you any?”

  “No, stay awhile and talk. I have a Messenger’s errand for you…”

  “What is it?”

  “It is somewhat unusual.” Lightning stared into the center of the cabin. It was easy to underestimate how debilitated he was, with those overdeveloped shoulders. I waited patiently; perhaps he was rambling. The warm round smell of wax pervaded the berth, making it rather cozy. The rain smelled green; the ship’s oakum soaked it up and stank like a wet dog. Thankfully it was difficult to envisage the breakers tearing over the main deck; above us the shredded topsail cracked and plaited. The driving waves caught red dusk like smallpox as sunset flashed under a suffocating sky, transforming the sailors’ frantic activity into a series of stills.

  Lightning breathed, “It is autumn again…her birthday. I should be with Martyn. Since the Circle was founded I have never missed the date, my long-kept secret. If I could order Petrel around and sail for Awndyn, I would.”

  “Count me in!”

  He gave a bitter smile. “I knew that at some point I would fail Martyn. It matters not, when Gio is persuading mortals to massacre us. But although my tradition is just a whim, I find breaking it makes me uncomfortable and I fancy she will miss me.” He looked away. “I suppose you are eager to know what has been eating me up for one and a half thousand years…”

  Lightning stared into space for a long while. He judged the time was right and suddenly said, “Jant, I want you to carry a message to a dead woman. If I am killed fighting the rebels, you must visit the mausoleum and speak to her about the circumstances of my end. Explain why I can no longer come to see her.”

  He feigned interest in his brandy. “My cousin’s body lies in an aventurine casket near the tombs of generations of my family, in a high-ceilinged sepulchre. You will find it among the trees on the man-made island in Micawater lake, in the palace grounds. I visit her once a year; I should be there today. I always leave the door ajar so that a shaft of light falls across Martyn’s tomb. She loved the lake, you see. She used to trail her hand in the water, for the suspended mineral flecks that reflect the sunlight.

  “You will see one clear track that my steps have made through the dust that lies thickly over every surface, from the entrance to the head of her vault. I sit beside the inscription that I keep free of dust. For the space of a few hours I tell her all the events of the previous year. I say that I visit as promised, because I still love her.

  “I always bring balsam flowers. I store them in the underground bow room, which you have not seen. It is near the ice house, a beehive-shaped cellar, a cool, homeostatic store where the bows hang horizontally on stands. The flowers must be white because they set off her magnificent deep red hair so well. They must be balsam, as in the rhyme that no one even remembers anymore: balsam for lovers, willows for brides, briar for maidens, lilies for wives.

  “When I have finished telling her the news I leave the balsam, gather up the dried remains of last year’s bouquet and row back across the lake.”

  Lightning rubbed his forehead and sipped at the brandy. In his mind’s eye he stroked the glistening green stone, sitting on the plinth while maple leaves fell past the mausoleum portal and doves cooed in the baroque cote.

  “Martyn and I were struck with pure and sincere love,” he said very sourly.
I was startled, but I suppose nothing causes bitterness so much as a downfall from ecstasy. “I don’t know why. Maids of honor packed my mother’s entourage. There were ballrooms full of girls, all very pretty and accomplished, but not one of them was real.

  “As a child Martyn was often at the palace. Then one banquet night we noticed each other and everything changed. We fell through into a panorama of hidden possibilities. We stared at each other across the laden table; nothing else existed. Without a word we rose together and left the hall. She was nineteen years old, I was twenty-nine. My conscience made me hesitate; she took my wing and led me to the antechamber, where she pushed me into the cloaks hanging on the wall and allowed me to kiss her.

  “We rushed to the stables at midnight. ‘Don’t you want to escape?’ Martyn said. She was wild, she didn’t care. She charged her white hunter at hedges and ditches, taking the jumps at a mad speed and I galloped beside her.”

  An unruly smirk that I had never seen before appeared on Lightning’s face. He looked almost boyish. “‘Don’t you want to escape?’ We escaped a lot after that-every opportunity we had.” He held his index fingers ten centimeters apart. “I was this far from quitting the court, marrying her and exiling ourselves. We were this far, one fistmele, from escaping properly. I wish I had had the courage; she would still be alive today. She would be here now.

  “I sometimes fought Insects but my lineage shielded me. Martyn and I spent most days in a world of our own. My family never mentioned it but they knew. Oh yes, they knew. The court thrived on Mother’s blissful love for Garganey, but my love for her sister’s daughter was taboo.

  “We talked for hours and rode great distances, far from the palace to converse in the forest. All those long conversations, words came so easily. At dinners we were careful to sit apart. In dances she was serene and unperturbed while I tried hard not to look.

  “Martyn was a peerless rider. I remember her perfume, her sepia and sage silk, her strong limbs, pale skin, and her auburn wings that she would spread like an excitable girl. She had seen so many forests the green of them stayed in her eyes.”