Ah, now this was a beautiful icicle.
Thick at the base, a steady taper. Perfect symmetry. Just barely opaque. Twinned grooves to lighten the weight without compromising the balance or the strength. A tip that a needle would think of as sharp.
And all of it turned to uselessness on par with slush by a hint of a smear of a smudge of a tiny little crack two-thirds of the way down.
Nobody ever checks there. If they know a little they check the tip; if they know a lot they check the base, but nobody ever checks two-thirds of the way down. That’s where I check, because I’m the best ice-farmer around. And there’s two things that make me that: first, I check two-thirds of the way down; second, I know that the tiniest crack ruins the whole thing.
This icicle had been growing for months. I’d lavished as much care and attention on it as my own son. And now it was useless.
Well, I was used to that. I’d chop it out tomorrow and start over again.
“Father?”
Ah, yes.
“We’re here.”
I turn to my guests – my surprise guests, oh how could I have known they were there, what with all the coughing and shuffling and clumping of big booted feet – and put a smile on my face. Or at least removed as much of my expression as possible. “So you are. Welcome back. Who’s this?”
He looks down his arm and up the man’s arm and the look on his face tells me it before he even gets out the words. “We’re engaged.”
His name is Biln. He met my son when he was delivering lances to the knights up on the skylines and the knight receiving them was Biln, they talked, they met again, they fell in love. It’s so tepidly romantic I can barely hold the laughter off my face. Probably for the best; they mistake the quirks of my lips for smiles.
“When’s the wedding?” I ask over the soup. Biln has brewed it, turning a mess of half-eaten leftover root-scrap and salted fish into something with almost a flavour.
“We… were thinking in the spring.”
After the auroras fade away for a few quiet months, leaving the skylines empty and unmanned while they rearm and retrain. “Good. You’ll be back in time for the fading nights production run.”
Biln’s hand rests on his shoulder at the same moment his eyes leave mine, and once again I know what’s said before it begins. “Father…”
“What, you’re quitting? Don’t make me laugh. This is a family business.”
“Mothe-”
“Your mother’s sister’s children are idiots and don’t have an eye for this. You’re inheriting. What else could you possibly do?”
“The skylines need local icework too,” he says. “Not just lances.”
That question wasn’t meant to be answered. He knows that question wasn’t meant to be answered. He’d been letting it go unanswered since he was born.
“Well,” I say. “Well now. Look at you.”
After a minute or two of quiet eating, Biln takes his hand away.
It’s good soup.
A real pity, that. Would make this all so much easier if it were shit.
***
I walked them around the place after the meal, showed them how the season’s crop was coming on in the barns, took them up to the sleet-troughs to help check the gutters, even sent Biln down into the tanks with an icepick to clear out a bat colony. He did it without so much as a complaint; no knight too proud for civilian work here, though his training paid off: every one of the little bastards he brought up in his net had been speared precisely through the eye.
“A good shot,” I said. He nodded. Not curt, either.
I could almost like this man.
On the second day we begin the harvest. Me and him, side by side, and Biln carrying the fresh lances. The weight surprises him, but he doesn’t complain. The diligence from my boy surprises me, but then it doesn’t. For once, he isn’t doing it because I told him to. He’s doing it because this is the last time. Because he wants to.
Well.
“Long one,” I say, and I clear the beautiful icicle from the wall and pass it down. His eyes widen – he’s never seen anything so perfect. Because he isn’t the best.
He’ll be that someday. I’ll make sure of it.
Biln takes it and sixteen more besides before he makes the trip to the sledge. Thirty-eight lances in his arms, purest ice, destined to pierce the hearts of a thousand auroras each at the skyline, and he carried them without complaint.
Ah, I could almost like this man.
***
On the third day we fit the shipment. Final adjustments, handles attached, crates packed, markings applied. Grunt work that once I’d given to my son, now gone to Biln.
Biln doesn’t complain, and my boy keeps up. He would’ve done well as an iceworker on the skyline. Even without lances – if you can do lances, you can do anything.
Good handwriting on Biln. Strong, firm, certain, clear.
I could almost like that man.
The boy goes to get us mugs and as he leaves, I put down my chisel. “Not that one.”
Biln looked up. “Why?”
“That’s yours.”
He looks at the lance in his hand. Oh it was a beauty now. Barely a touch of steel required to leave it hungry for an aurora’s heart, it shines without light. “I can’t-”
“You can and will. I wouldn’t have a son-in-law go to war with anything else.”
Biln checks the tip. He even checks the base. And he nods thanks, and he bows once, very respectfully.
Ah, I liked him. Damnit.
On the fourth day they leave in the early morning.
If I was any judge it’d give way not on the first or the second or the third or even the thirtieth blow, not with his deft hand. Maybe the sixth major battle. Right where it was thickest, and when he’d be operating on instinct, surrounded by the auroras and unable to pause or hesitate. After he’d come to trust it. Yes, that would be it. I know these things.
Yes, I could have liked that man.
But you can’t let even the tiniest crack past your sight, or everything falls apart.
I wave goodbye once, shortly, then stamp inside and make myself a hot mug. I deserved it.
***
Months and days and however later, I wake up to midnight sun.
Nothing new there. How soft have I gotten in my elder years? Back when I was on the skylines we sat through this for half the year, and we never peeped about it.
Back when I was on the skylines. A long time ago.
A very long time ago. And farther north.
The muzziness cuts out of my head, my feet hit the floor running, and the floor shakes twice fast, sending me spinning against the wall. Something wet is on my shoulder and it might have come from my head.
Oh no.
This midnight isn’t sunny after all, it’s on brilliant fire, rippling and tearing. Bright spiralling sheets in the heavens, come to earth. Auroras, the sky come to earth to steal it away.
Steal me away. Oh no no no.
I scramble and scrape and claw my way across the boards; the world tipping around me, my nails are bleeding, the doorway is a thousand miles away.
This was insane. This was absurd. This was what the skylines were for. How had they gotten past?
How had they done that?
Surely it would take a grand breach. One little crack in the wall wouldn’t do this. One little crack wouldn’t let this pass. It would have to be more. One little crack couldn’t cause this.
The door slams into my face, my hand claws it open, and I drop through it and into thinnest air, like a stone. Above me the house and the barn and the tanks and everything all shimmer, clutched in the hungry sky, and they get smaller so very quickly that I don’t even have time to be frightened.
It was just one little crack.