Nathan’s father would already be standing and waiting, his arms folded and his fists bunched as he watched a solitary figure emerge from the faded shimmer of the valley. The wind-seller was small and dark, and gauntly pale. He wore creaking boots, and was wrapped in a cloak of a shade of gray almost as thunderous as that of the sack he carried over his thin shoulders, within which he bore his collection of winds.
“So this’ll be the next one, eh?” He peered forward to study Nathan with eyes that didn’t seem to blink, and Nathan found himself frozen and speechless until his father’s hand drew him away.
“Just stick to business, wind-seller, shall we?”
It was plain that his father didn’t particularly like this man. After all, every miller worth his salt prided himself on making the best of every kind of weather, come storm or calm, glut or shortage. Still, as the wind-seller unshouldered his sack and tipped out a spill of frayed knots, and especially on such a hot and hopeless day as this, it was impossible not to want to lean forward, not to want to breathe and feel and touch.
“Here, try this one.…” Spidery fingers rummaged with a hissing, whispering pile to extract the gray strands of what looked, Nathan thought, exactly like the kind of dirty sheep’s wool you saw snagged and fluttering on a bare hedge on the darkest of winter days. “…That’s a new, fresh wind from the east. Cut through this summer fug clean as a whistle. Sharp as a lemon, and twice as sweet. Delicate, yes, but good and strong as well. Turn these sails easy as ninepence.”
Already, Nathan could taste the wind, feel it writhing and alive. Slowly, reluctantly, his father took the strand in his own hands, and the wind-seller’s mouth twitched into something that was neither a smile nor a grin. “And this one.… Now this will really get things going. Tail end of a storm, tail end of night, tail end of winter. Can really feel a bite of frost in there, can’t you? ’Course, she’s a bit capricious, but she’s strong as well, and cool and fresh.…”
It was nothing but some bits of old willow bark, torn loose in a storm and dampened by trembling puddles, but already the windmill’s sails gave a yearning creak. Nathan’s father might grumble and shake his head, but the haggling that followed all of this conspicuous advertisement was always disappointingly brief. They all knew, had known since before the wind-seller’s shape had first untwisted itself from the haze of the valley, that—strange things though they were, the knotted breath of forgotten days—he would have to buy his share of these winds.
Although no one else believed them, master millers swore they could taste the flavor of the particular wind from which any batch of flour had been turned. The weather prevails from the east on Burlish Hill, unrolling with a tang of salt and sea-brightness from the blustery North Sea, but no wind is ever the same, and every moment of every day in which it blows is different, and setting the mill to just the right angle to take it was, to Nathan’s mind, the greatest skill a master miller possessed. Even as you sang to your mill and anchored it down, it responded and took up the ever-changing moods of the wind in her sails. But the feelings and flavors that came from the wind-seller’s winds were different again. On dead, dry afternoons when the sky was hard as beaten pewter, Nathan’s father would finally give up whatever makeweight task he was performing and grumblingly go to unlock the lean-to at the mill’s back where he kept the wind-seller’s winds.
The things looked as ragged now as they had when they fell from the wind-seller’s sack—nothing more than dangling bits of old sea-rope, the tangled vines of some dried-up autumn, the tattered remains of long-forgotten washing—but each was knotted using complex magics, and what else were they to do, on such a day as this? Already writhing and snapping around them—a gray presence, half felt, half seen, and straining to be released—was the longed-for presence of some kind of wind. Up in the creaking stillness of the main millstone floor, and with a shine in his eyes that spoke somehow both of expectation and defeat, his father would break apart the knot with his big miller’s hands, and, in a shouting rush, the wind that it contained would be released. Instantly, like the opening of an invisible door, the atmosphere within the mill was transformed. Beams creaked in the changed air and the sails swayed, inching at first as the main axle bit the breakwheel and the breakwheel bore down against the wallower that transported the wind’s gathering breath down through all the levels of the mill. The farther sky, the whole spreading world, might remain trapped in the same airless day. But the dry grass on Burlish Hill shifted and silvered, and the mill signaled to every other hilltop that at least here, here on this of all days, there was enough wind to turn its sails.
The winds themselves were often awkward and capricious things; unseasonably hot and dry, awkwardly damp and gray. They seemed to come, in that they came from anywhere at all, from points of the compass that lay beyond north and south, east or west. Even as Nathan and his father began gladly heaving the contents of all the waiting sacks into the chutes, the atmosphere within the mill on those days remained strange. Looking out though the turning sails, Nathan half expected to see changed horizons; to find the world retilted in some odd and awkward way. Lying in his bunk in the still nights afterward when the winds had blown themselves out, he pictured the wind-seller wandering the gray countrysides of some land of perpetual autumn, furtively gathering and knotting the lost pickings of a storm with those strange agile fingers, muttering as he did so his spells over rags and twigs.
The other children at the school down in the village—the sons and daughters of farmers, carpenters, laborers, shopkeepers, who would soon take up or marry into the same trade—had always been an ordinary lot. Perhaps Fiona Smith should have stood out more, as Nathan often reflected afterward, but she was mostly just one of the girls who happened to sit near the back of class, and seemed, in her languorous demeanor, to be on the verge of some unspecified act of bad behavior that she could never quite summon the energy to perform. Nevertheless, she could hold her own in a fight and throw an accurate enough stone, at least for a girl. If he’d bothered to think about it, Nathan would have also known that Fiona Smith lived at Stagsby Hall, a structure far bigger and more set-apart than any other in the village, which had a lake beside it that flashed with the changing sky when you looked down at it from Burlish Hill, but he envied no one the size of their homes; not when he had all of Lincolnshire spread beneath him, and lived in a creaking, turning, breathing mill.
He was surprised at the fuss his parents made when an invitation came for the Westovers and seemingly every other person in Stagsby to attend a party to celebrate Fiona Smith’s fourteenth birthday, and at the fussy clothes they found to wear. As they walked on the appointed afternoon toward the open gates of Stagsby Hall, he resented the chafe of his own new collar, the pinch of the boots, and the waste of a decent southerly wind.
It was somewhat interesting, Nathan might have grudgingly admitted, to see such an impressive residence at close hand instead of looking at it from above. Lawns spread green and huge from its many golden windows toward a dark spread of woods, and that lake, which, even down here, reflected the near-cloudless sky in its blue gaze. There were indecently underdressed statues, and there were pathways that meandered amongst them with a will of their own. Of greater importance, though, to Nathan and most of the other villagers, was the food. There was so much of it! There were jellies and sausages. Cheeses and trifles. Cakes and roast meats. There were lurid cordials, sweet wines and varieties of ale. Sticky fingered, crusty faced, the younger children took quarreling turns to pin the tail on a blackboard donkey, and those of Nathan’s age soon lost their superiority and joined in, whilst the adults clustered in equal excitement around the beer tent. There was also a real donkey, saddled and be-ribboned and ready to be ridden. But the donkey whinnied and galloped as people attempted to catch it, kicking over a food-laden table and sending a mass of trifles, jellies, and cakes sliding to the grass in a glistening heap. The adults laughed and the children whooped as the donkey careered off toward the trees, wat
ched by the stiff-faced men and women in tight black suits, whom, Nathan had divined by now, were the servants of Stagsby Hall.
The afternoon—for the villagers, at least—passed in a timeless, happy whirl. Much beer and wine was drunk, and the children’s livid cordials seemed equally intoxicating. Trees were climbed; many by those old enough to know better. Stones, and a few of the silver trays, were skimmed across the lake. Then, yet more food was borne out from the house in the shape of an almost impossibly large and many-tiered cake. The huge creation was set down in the shade of one of the largest of the oaks that circled the lawns. Nodding, nudging, murmuring, the villagers clustered around it. The thing was ornamented with scrolls and flowers, pillared like a cathedral, then spired with fourteen candles, each of which the servants now solemnly lit.
An even deeper sigh than that which had signaled the lighting of the cake passed through the crowd as Fiona Smith emerged into the space that had formed around it. Nathan hadn’t consciously noticed her presence before that moment. Now that he had, though, he was immensely struck by it. He and many of his classmates were already taller and stronger than the parents whose guilds they would soon be joining. Some were already pairing off and walking the lane together, as the local phrase went, and even Nathan had noticed that some of the girls were no longer merely girls. But none of them had ever looked anything remotely like Fiona Smith did today.
Although the dress she wore was similar in style to those many of the other women were wearing, it was cut from a substance that made it hard to divine its exact color, such was its shimmer and blaze. Her thick red hair, which Nathan previously dimly remembered as tied back in a ponytail, fell loose around her shoulders, and also possessed a fiery glow. It was as if an entirely different Fiona Smith had suddenly emerged before this cake, and the candle flames seemed to flare as though drawn by an invisible wind even before she had puffed out her cheeks. Then she blew, and all but one of them flattened and died, and their embers sent up thirteen trails of smoke. Smiling, she reached forward as if to pinch out the last remaining flame. But as she raised her hand from it, the flame still flickered there, held like a blazing needle between her finger and thumb. Then, with a click of her fingers, it was gone. The entire oak tree gave a shudder in the spell’s aftermath and a few dry leaves and flakes of bark drifted down, some settling on the cake. The villagers were already wandering back across the lawn, muttering and shaking their heads, as the servants began to slice the object up into spongy yellow slices. They were unimpressed by such unwanted displays of guild magic, and by then, no one was feeling particularly hungry.
Without understanding quite how it had happened, Nathan found that he and Fiona Smith were standing alone beside the remains of the cake.
“You’re from up there, aren’t you?” She nodded through the boughs toward the mill. “Bet you’d rather be there now, eh, with the sails turning? Instead of down here watching a good day go to waste.”
Although it was something he wouldn’t have readily admitted, Nathan found himself nodding. “It was clever,” he said, “what you did with that cake.”
She laughed. “All those faces, the way they were staring! I felt I had to do something or I’d explode. Tell you what, why don’t we go and have a look at your mill?”
Nathan shifted his feet. “I’m not sure. My father doesn’t like strangers hanging around working machinery and it’s your birthday party and—”
“I suppose you’re right. Tell you what, there’s some of my stuff I can show you instead.”
Dumbly, Nathan followed Fiona Smith up toward the many-windowed house, and then through a studded door. The air inside was close and warm, and there were more rooms than he could count, or anyone could possibly want to live in, although most of the furniture was covered in sheets. It was as if the whole place had been trapped in some hot and dusty snowfall.
“Here.” Fiona creaked open a set of double doors. The room beyond had a high blue ceiling, decorated with cherubs and many-pointed stars. “This.…” She shook out a huge, crackling coffin of packaging that lay scattered amid many other things on the floor. “This is from Father. Ridiculous, isn’t it?” A sprawled china corpse stared up at them with dead glass eyes. Nathan had always thought dolls ridiculous, although this one was big and impressive. “At least, I think it’s from him. His handwriting’s terrible and I can’t read the note.”
“Your father’s not here?”
“Not a chance. He’ll be in London at one of his clubs.”
“London?”
“It’s just another place, you know.” Shrugging, Fiona aimed a kick at the doll. “And he’s decided I can’t stay here at school, either, or even in Stagsby. In fact, I’m sure he’d have decided that long ago if he’d remembered. That’s why everyone’s here today—and why I’m wearing this stupid dress. It’s to remind you of who I’m supposed to be before I get dragged to some ridiculous academy for so-called young ladies.”
Fiona crossed the room’s considerable space toward the largest of all the sheeted objects which, as she tugged at its dusty coverings, revealed itself to be an enormous bed. Enameled birds fluttered up from its silken turrets as if struggling to join the room’s starry sky. Nathan had seen smaller houses.
“This used to be Mother’s bedroom. I’d come and just talk to her in here when she was ill from trying to have a son. Of course, it didn’t work, so now my father’s stuck with a girl for an heir unless he goes and gets married again, which he says will be when Hell freezes.”
“All of this will end up as yours?”
Fiona gazed around, hands on hips. “I know what you’re thinking, but my father says we’re in debt up to our eyeballs. I’m sure that you Westovers have far more money than we Smiths, with that mill of yours. My grandfather, now, he was the clever one. Had a real business mind. He was a proper master smithy. He was high up in the guild, but he still knew how to work a forge. He used to show me things. How to stoke a furnace, the best spells for the strongest iron.…”
“And that trick with the flame?”
Fiona looked at Nathan and smiled. Her eyes were a cool blue-green. He’d never felt such a giddy sense of sharing, not even when he was working hard at the mill. “I’ll show you his old room,” she murmured.
Up wide, white marble stairways, past more sheeted furniture and shuttered windows, the spaces narrowed. Nathan caught glimpses through windows of the lake, the lawns, Burlish Hill, and then the lake again as they climbed a corkscrew of stairs. Cramped and stuffed with books, papers, cabinets, the attic they finally reached was quite unlike the great rooms below. Fiona struggled with a shutter, flinging sunlight in a narrow blaze. Nathan squinted, blinked, and gave a volcanic sneeze.
She laughed. “You’re even dustier than this room!”
Standing in this pillar of light, Nathan saw that he was, indeed, surrounded by a nebulous, floating haze. “It’s not dust,” he muttered. It was a sore point; the children at school often joked about his powdery aura. “It’s flour.”
“I know.” Something fluttered inside his chest as she reached forward to ruffle his hair, and more of the haze blurred around him. “But you’re a master miller—or you will be. It’s part of what you are. Now look.”
After swiping a space clear on a sunlit table, Fiona creaked open the spines of books that were far bigger and stranger in their language than the mill’s Thesaurus of spells. The same warm fingers that he could still feel tingling across his scalp now traveled amid the symbols and diagrams. Guilds kept their secrets, and he knew she shouldn’t be showing him these things, but nevertheless he was drawn.
“This is how you temper iron.… This is an annealing spell, of which there are many.…” A whisper of pages. “And here, these are the names for fire and flames. Some of them, anyway. For there’s always something different every time you charge a furnace, put a spark to a fire, light a candle, even.”
Nathan nodded. All of this was strange to him, but he understood enough to
realize that flames were like the wind to Fiona Smith, and never stayed the same.
“Not that my father’s interested. He likes to joke about how he got through his grandmaster exams just because of the family name. And I’m a woman, so there’s no way I can become a smithy.…” She grew quiet for a moment, the sunlight steaming in copper glints across her hair as she gazed down at the vortex of flame that filled the page.
“What’ll you do instead?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at him, fists balled on the table, her face ablaze. “That’s the frustrating thing, Nathan. These of all times. All the old spells, you know, the stupid traditions, the mumbling and the superstitions and the charms and the antique ways of working, all of that’s on the way out. Modern spells aren’t about traditional craftsmen—not when you can mine the magic right out of the ground. That’s what they’re doing now, in places up north like Redhouse and Bracebridge, they’re drawing it out of the solid earth almost like they extract coal or salt or tar or saltpeter.”
Nathan nodded. He knew such things as mere facts, but he’d never heard anyone speak about them—or, indeed many other things—with such passion.
“I’m lucky. That’s what my grandfather used to say. I’m lucky, to be living in this time.” She shook her head and chuckled. “The future’s all around us, just like the world you must be able to see from up on your hill. And this, now this.…” She pushed aside the book, and took down a large and complex-looking mechanism from a shelf. “He made this himself as his apprentice piece.”
It took up most of the table, and consisted of a variety of ceramic marbles set upon a complex-looking arrangement of arms and gears, all widely spaced around a larger and even brighter central orb that might have been made of silver, gold, or some yet more dazzling metal.
Everywhere: Volume I of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod Page 23