Iris woke up to the sound of a zephyr blowing overhead, blowing through the cracks in the walls of her shack, blowing through the gap where her right canine should be.
It was practically an open invitation.
Snick, snack, snap, open and shut went her wiry, rawbone jaws, chew, pulp, munch, down went half of the zephyr, leaving the other half to run away crying. Swallow, stretch, belch and the walls of the hut shook.
“That’s lucking,” she said, wiping away a shred of uncertain air currents away from her jowls, “that’s gooding. But not besting. Best is the whole thinging”
First things first, such a fortunate moment had to be recorded. Iris hobbled with purpose to the big moldy book that dominated the room, dominated the oaken table it rested on so thoroughly that it almost continually groaned. It was thicker through than the body of a child of ten years, and greater in height from header to footnote, and it was bound in the hide of a thunderhorse, though it was so aged that only the loudest flashs of lights would lead it to rumbling.
Iris heaved it open to the second-to-last page and chewed over her lip without gentleness. It had the consistency of jerky, and was a great comfort between meals, but her mind was elsewhere now. Important work had to be done.
Zephyr, she wrote. Chocolaty, with a hint of a sigh. Soft against the palate but only becomes more tender with each chew, mild as mother’s milk and twice as sweet, but just a hair’s-breadth short of cloying. Succulent raw, would cook using light sautéing with some fresh mushrooms.
Iris stretched her cramping fingers – her writing grew more and more roving and uncertain by the minute, like a drunken dog – and returned to her efforts.
Acquired by happenstance on awakening one early Tuesday morning. Set traps in likely locales and it will cheerfully bumble straight into them. Attempt nonlethal, relatively calming capture to ensure a lack of muscle tension in the meat.
Iris set down her pen with a grunt. It was made from an eagle’s wing, filled with the blackest blood of a stormcloud. Terrible tough, rank eating storms made, but they were useful. You could write pages about all the exciting, dangerous things you could do with their blood and flesh and electrical fields, and Iris had done that, at the cost of four fingers, several cumulative yards of skin, and the ability to control the direction of her right eye, which now did as it wished at all except the gravest moments.
“Almost doning,” she croaked, stroking the freshly inked page. It sparked, but didn’t smear. “So nearing. Just one more, my loveliest. One more, and then the world will know of all that I am knowing. One more.” She pursed her lips. “And what better day is there to go do this thinging, hmm? It is a sign of good luck. I should be off and away while it is lasting. Who knows, maybe it will being flying into my mouthing too, ehh?”
And so Iris prepared herself. She put on her bonnet made from briars, and took up her stone walking stick that could strike a bear dead with one blow, and on her back she slung her trapping-bag, which was woven out of her hair and was stronger than the strongest steel. She smiled, and her teeth shone like angels in the sunlight.
“It is good lucking,” she said. “I will catch a rainbow today.”
And she limped out the door.
Rainbows were harder to catch than they sounded. Things like that usually were.
For one thing, they were rare, rare, rare. If you wanted a chance, you either had to bait them – and they were wary of that, oh so wary – or wait and hope. And Iris was old and impatient.
For another thing, they were too big. Seven stripes! Seven colours! Each was more troublesome and fierce and touch-shy than the last, and if just one of them got away from your grasp the whole thing would wriggle after it no matter how hard you clutched.
Finally, they were as shy and quick to run as cats in a strange house. The first hint of the first sign of anything from anyone and they would be somewhere else before most people had even noticed they were there.
Iris had stalked nine rainbows before. Every time she’d gotten a little bit more frustrated, but today she felt confident. There was luck on her side this time. And luck beats anything.
Iris’s shack stood at the hinge of two mountains, huddled on top of itself in a scree of boulders and broken stone. On one side, a sheer drop. On the other, a soaring wall. Front and back, a small thicket of bitter-thorned shrubs that had been doing slowly for over one hundred years, and then empty space. No living thing had walked up there for as long as Iris could remember. Which suited her fine. She liked her privacy.
Today the west mountain suited her intuition of luck. The zephyr had come from the west, it only stood to reason more might follow. She took her walking stick between her teeth and pulled herself up the cliff hand-over-hand until her house lay below her no bigger than an ant’s and a thin ledge came to her grasp. It was just wide enough for her to shimmy on, greasy hair clawing its way free from her bonnet in thin strands as she wiggled her way to the broader grounds of a little mountain meadow. The air tasted clean and sharp enough to cut taste buds clean out of your mouth.
Iris bit into it four times as she walked, chewing each forty times with her needle-bright teeth. A little snack to whet her appetite properly for when she found the big game. The rumble of her quarry’s home was already loud in her ears.
The waterfall started maybe halfway up the mountain and dropped straight to its base, smashing its face into the cliffs three or four times on the way down. It sounded like the world’s largest bear being woken up from the world’s coziest nap with the world’s pointiest stick, drawn out long. Iris sometimes hummed along with it when she was thinking. It made her floorboards creak and the lantern flicker.
She looked at the spray and roar, then squinted at the sky. “Too early for the misting,” she commented. “Waiting time.”
So grey Iris sat down there, near the top of the waterfall, with her walking stick, and she hummed along to the waterfall as she repaired the small damage that the wind’s careless buffets had done to her bonnet of black briars. She sat there for three days, sustaining herself only on nips and bites of the most faintly eddying breezes, watching and waiting and waiting some more.
On the fourth day, the rainbow came.
It was thin and translucent in the sunlight, a bit uncertain and startled as to its existence. It stretched across the mountain sky with the tentative air of a bird first flapping its featherless winglets.
The rainbow lasted ten minutes, and in that time Iris made no move at all. She was old and experienced; she’d lost her first two rainbows to hastiness and greed. Patience was her watchword now.
“Time loses nothings,” she muttered into her teeth, “and it brings luckings. And luckings beats anything.” And she bedded down for the night with her trapping-bag as a pillow, resting her skull on its unbending coils.
On the fifth day, the rainbow came again in the morning. It was more solid now, more sure. It was a vain creature, as all its kind were, and it flittered most fetchingly in the sun, still wobbly but bolder and more adventurous, testing its limits. It swayed and it shimmered and once it even doubled itself in a fit of pique, though the effort seemed to exhaust it.
Iris hummed in thought, masked by the waterfall’s ever-roar. A double rainbow was twice the catch, but twice the difficulty. Should she wait longer even, hoping for it to properly split itself?
“No, no, noing,” she scolded herself that night. “Greed is a curse. A rainbow is a rainbow is a rainbow, doubled or no, and better one than none, truth be telling.”
On the sixth day, the rainbow was mature. It stood astride the valley of falling waters like a prince newly crowned, with the confidence and beauty of a freshly-greened maple. It held a shimmer in its sides that was the secret envy of every trout and the love affair of countless bad poets, and it knew it and owned it. It made Iris’s mouth water just looking at it.
“Soon, soon, sooning,” she said that night, speaking to her walking stick in a fit of pique that evening. “Sooning.”
On the seventh day, the rainbow innovated some more. Secure in its resplendence, bored in its effortless existence, it shaped itself in strange ways. It reflected from ice particles in some clouds, bending itself into a halo. It shifted its perspective no less than three hundred and sixty times. It even tried to see what was over the mountain top, but grew dizzy before it had grown large enough. And then evening came, and it tucked itself away for the night again.
On the eighth day, the rainbow was confident, determined, and bursting with impatient new ideas. It faded into the visible edge of light with the casual ease of those who belonged there, and was grabbed by fingers so strong and quick that it didn’t even know anything was wrong until a bag of grey iron was spread over its head and it was stuffed straightaways into it.
“Caught! Caught! Caught!” laughed Iris, waving her bonnet overhead in triumph, where its cruel thorns tore at the belly of an innocent breeze. “Caught at last and caught for realings! All one, two, three, four and so on to seven stripes! All of them! All mine!” She laughed so loud that the rocks bleached white with fright everywhere she stepped all the way home down the cliff as she skipped with joy, jostling and bruising the poor rainbow something fierce as it wriggled in her trapping-bag.
“Caught!”
Iris’s home had no cage for her prisoners, but she was wily. She pulled the rainbow out of her trapping-bag by the scruff of its neck and stuffed it inside her black briar bonnet. At every wince the rainbow made, a hundred tiny spikes poked its flesh terribly.
“So good, so good, so gooding,” chuckled Iris. “The last one, the lasting! The final page of my booking! The last sampling! Where shall I start, where shall I be starting? Inside or outside? One big bite or three little ones? Shall I eat it raw or cooked, kill it with my sticking or eat it raw and struggling? Choices! Choices!” She poked the rainbow in the heart with her finger, and it nearly doubled up from the pain.
“If you want to eat me,” said the rainbow, “you had better listen to what I have to say. Eat me now, before my colours fade! By four days time they’ll have faded away, and they’ll be deadly poison to an old hag like you.”
Iris squinted at him. “Liar, liar, lying liaring,” she hissed. “You know well what brightness and light do to an old woman’s tummy. You want me to eat you fresh and sparkling, so bright it burnsing! You evil thing! I’ll coop you up for all four days, and eat your rawing! RAW!” She hissed and laughed and spat once and went to bed with a snore that could scrape lichen off rocks.
Cooped up in its prison of black briars, the rainbow smiled so hard that its teeth nearly jumped out of its mouth. Then it sat up as straight as the thorns would allow, cupped its hands to its mouth, and sang in a sweet low voice.
Winds, winds, here I am, here I am. Rainbow, your prince, is all caught up. Attend me! Help me! Winds, winds!
There was a quiet whistle from far away, and in swept the east wind, wet and lush as a steaming river, long as the end of the world. “Trouble, my prince?” it whispered warmly.
“Free me, free me,” said the rainbow, in a hushed voice. “I have three days before I die, if I am not freed.”
“I will do as you ask on this day,” said the west wind, “and then I am needed elsewhere in the wide world.” And the west wind breathed deeply in and out and flooded the dried old briars with damp, nurturing moisture, suffocating their bitter thorns.
“Free!” called the rainbow. “I am free!” And it leapt out of the wilting briars, and straight into the iron-haired trapping-sack of Iris.
“Woke me woke me woke me!” she yelled. “Smells of clean water and warmth? In my home? Unkind thing! Unwelcome fooding!” She beat the rainbow so hard that it nearly went black as well as blue, and all the next day, the second day, as she wrote notes in her old creaking book she gave it the evil eye.
“Watch it carefullying,” she muttered aloud as she wrote, “or it will be most escaping. Pah!” And then she knotted up her trapping-sack and left the rainbow alone for the second night.
The rainbow huddled in a heap, nursing its bruises, and waited until the old woman was fast asleep and louder than ever, then it hitched itself up, put its fingers to its mouth, and whistled high and fast.
Winds, winds, here I am, here I am. Rainbow, your prince, is all caught up. Attend me! Help me! Winds, winds!
There was a low hum from far far away and up came the south wind through the floorboards, dry as a bone’s soul, turbulent and coarse. “You ask for aid, my prince?” it spoke softly.
“Free me, free me,” said the rainbow, begging open-handed. “I have only two days to live if I am not freed.”
“I will do as you ask on this day,” said the south wind, “but then I must soon speed someplace.” And the south wind spoke strange words that made the air jump and billow with dry, fierce heat, and the iron-hard hair of the trapping-sack withered and shrank until it was no more than a tight little collar around the rainbow, which burst it with a quick shake of its head.
“Free!” yelled the rainbow. “Free! I am free!” And it leapt out of the window and was nearly in the air when Iris’s stone walking stick strike it in the back, knocking it prone.
“Woke me!” she snarled as she thrashed the rainbow without mercy. “The sound of sanding? In my stone homing? Thief! Burglaring of my hospitaliting!” She cracked the rainbow across the head so hard that it saw eighteen stars at once, then stabbed it through its middle and right into the dirt with her walking stick. Squirm and cry as hard as the rainbow might, it could not budge itself and for all of the third day she refilled her eagle’s-wing quill with the bright blood of the rainbow. “Proofing,” she said. “Proof of my capturing.” She went to bed laughing and in no time at all she was asleep for the third night.
The rainbow cried for some hours, hurt and alone and growing more dim by the day. It missed the sky so much, and the ground hurt against its back. But still, when the pain had grown dim, it pursed its lips, cleared its aching throat, and hummed strong and angry.
Winds, winds, here I am, here I am. Rainbow, your prince, is all caught up. Attend me! Help me! Winds, winds!
There was a fierce shriek from farther away than ever, and down came the north wind, storming in the chimney and through the fireplace, colder than a corpse’s heart, fierce and hungry. “You need help, my prince?” it rumbled, nails needling on the rainbow’s skin.
“Free me, free me,” said the rainbow, pawing at its feet. “I will die tomorrow if I am not freed.”
“I will do as you ask on this day,” said the north wind, “and then I must fly away to eat.” And the north wind reached down with one clawed hand and tore the walking stick free and cast it to the floor where it shattered into a thousand frozen fragments, leaving the rainbow to struggle quickly to its feet.
“Free!” screamed the rainbow. “Free! Free! I am FREE!” And as it screamed it ran, ran, ran, and it was barely out the doorway before Iris was pelting pell-mell after it, roaring and spitting.
“Fooding!” she shrieked. “Mine, food, mineing! Come and be eaten!” Her feet cracked the rocks between her toes, her breath curled at the nape of the rainbow’s neck, and it nearly fainted from fear. In between the terror, panted between footfalls, too small to hear for any distance at all, the rainbow called “help!”
There was a soft whisper, just a little ways away, and curling up to wrap around the rainbow as it ran came a gentle little zephyr that had been hiding just down the mountain as it mended itself, so close that it could hear even the tiny little cry for help that the rainbow made, as luck would have it. “Are you all right, prince?” it asked with worriment.
“Please,” gasped the rainbow. “Save me. Save me.”
“I am small and half-eaten,” said the zephyr, “but I will do everything I can.” And the small zephyr sped all the way to the waterfall and seized a handful of its precious spray and whisked it back again quicker than anyone could ever run, woman, man, rainbow, or witch, so gently that not a single drop was wasted. “A path, a path!” called the zephyr as it threw the water into the air, and as the rainbow ran straight up the waterdrops back into the sky it burst into full colour for the first time in four days, as brilliant and bright a light as may ever be seen anywhere. It turned night to day, set Iris back on her heels with a squeal, and in Iris’s shack the old thunderbeast-bound book smacked itself shut with a snap and let out a thunder that would’ve made the mightiest storm stand proud.
The earth shook, the sky yelled, and the hinge of the mountains that Iris’s cabin stood upon – the broken rocks, the shaky cliff, the crumbling wall – fell all to pieces at once in a heartbeat, smashing all the way down to the bottom of it all until nothing was left that was bigger than a gentle calm.
“That was a good thing you’ve done, little zephyr,” said the rainbow as it shone in the sky. “A very good thing.”
“Thank you, prince,” said the zephyr.
“You will watch over the west, if the sky will permit,” said the rainbow.
“But I am small,” said the zephyr.
“You are gentle,” said the rainbow. “That is important. And small means nothing. Luck means everything. And you have been good luck to me.”
And that’s the way it was.