There’s a certain point, halfway up the ladder, where it seems impossible. Just a little farther, you try and coax yourself. Just a little; I’m halfway there, surely I can finish this, surely it’s not that hard? And no matter how silvery-tongued and gold-throated you make yourself, your body won’t buy any of it, not so much as a penny’s-worth. I’m done, it says. Go find yourself a new body, because this one’s fed up and is about to let go and splat itself. And you’re forced to agree, and your wind-numbed grip begins to loosen – just a little – and then you realize that you’re now two-thirds of the way up the side of the tower since you’ve started this suicidal little conversation.
It’s much easier after that. Well, most of the time. Every year or two, someone loses the argument.
It’s messy.
The view from the top of the ladder makes up for it, I said to myself, as I rubbed down muscles that complained louder than my grandchildren. It really does. The village down there, on top of the peak, it has a nice view. The top of the ladder, the fishing platform, that little wooden skeleton floating in the upper zephyrs all those hard-fought yards above? That has a grand view, a view to make kings and priests drop to their knees and gasp. You can see everything as far as the clouds will let you, from the top of the sky to the foot of the mountain, all those thousands of yards below, drowning in the thickness of the lower atmosphere.
The air up here is different from down there; as sharp as a glasscutter, as cold and clean as a glacier’s spine. It makes you see spots for hours after your first ascent, and you never quite stop building up a tolerance. An expert skyfisher can stay up here for half the day and come down with a twinkle still in his eye, if not a spring in his step. I slept overnight once, thirty years ago, fuelled as much by bravado as exhaustion. I don’t recommend it. Not unless the catch is really worth it.
Today’s wasn’t. I looked over the big basket – a big man could stand in it nicely – next to Davro, my niece’s husband. Davro was a good skyfisher, but all he’d been able to grub up today were a few birds: some skinny Stovelings with their tubby, muscular bodies that could fly for days (and had to stew for hours for the least bit of tenderness), and an immature Banewing, all talons and beak and wide eyes that looked more puzzled than fierce on its adolescent frame. A sad sight, to see it go before it had a chance to really learn how to ride the wind down on its prey. And it was mostly bone and sinew, with very little meat.
“Scarce,” Davro agreed with my silent appraisal of his catch. “Not much out there today. The migrations must’ve stopped a little early this year.”
“They started late, too,” I said. “That’s true. But we’ve got a good catch from the summer still stashed away. Remember that Moaner family? Got all four of them, and there’s enough meat on those to feed a family each for half the winter.”
“You want to eat Moaner for half the winter?” Tender the big, passive cloud-wanderers might be, but tasty they weren’t. Not bad, just bland enough that one steak would drive a man to murder for some salt.
Davro grimaced. “Point made, Uncle. Still, we won’t starve. And that’s something.”
“Half the old coots down there would rather starve than live off Moaner meat. Or at least I wish they would. It’d save us all a lot of crabbing come midwinter. I swear, they’ll out-moan their meals.”
“You aren’t so far off from one of those old coots yourself, Uncle. ”
“Bite your tongue, boy. The difference between me and them –”
“–is you’d rather climb the ladder up here than sit around and listen to each other complain about back pains?”
“–is that I’ve still got my looks. And that too. It isn’t the backs that’s the worst part, though.”
“Oh?” Davro’s bamboo pole bucked in his hands, and he began to reel in the line, twisting it this way and that with old practice guiding his fingers.
“No. Carbuncles. And piles. Don’t get me started on the way they get started on carbuncles and piles.”
“A gruesome picture, Uncle.”
“And then there’s the warts.”
“Wonderful.”
“And the haemorrhoids are simply –”
“Uncle, I can’t reel this in while trying not to gag at any vivid haemorrhoid description you may have readied and aimed at my sensitive, lily-like ears.”
“Soft, weak. You can’t go skyfishing with a delicate stomach, nephew. What’ll you do if that’s a Plowmaw you’ve hooked there, and you loose your dinner looking at its pretty face?”
“If this were a Plowmaw, I’d be halfway across the sky right now, arching gracefully, and just reaching the point where I start falling, then screaming.”
“And spraying your last meal to the four corners of the wind right then’d be downright unpleasant, wouldn’t it?”
Davro chuckled as he snagged his catch in the nets strung up around him like a spider’s web. A single, smooth movement of his arm snapped up the wooden cudgel at his side and bludgeoned the squirming prey into passivity. It was a mature male Scudhoppler, beautiful plumage dulled and fletching into its winter coat now that its breeding days were done. Not the plumpest of birds, but those four skinny little wings of its crisp up nicely after just a few minutes in a pan.
“That’s it for me, Uncle,” said Davro. “Hope you have better luck on the evening watch, but I’m for home and food now.” He fixed a lid over his basket of catch, shoved it onto the big hook of the lift, and set about fastening all the ropes and knots that prevented it from spilling onto our roofs halfway down the descent. It wouldn’t take anything much bigger than a Stoveling to put a hole through a house from this height, or even half it.
“You know,” said Davro as he set the winch moving to drop the basket down, steady but slow, “I still remember the first time I asked you why we didn’t just use one of these to get up and down from here.”
“Oh yes.”
“You told me to stop asking stupid questions and whacked me on the head.”
“Well, I remembered my uncle telling me that back in the day. I figured I owed it to him to pass it on.”
Davro laughed – louder than the lame joke had required for it to be socially acceptable – and headed down the ladder, moving in parallel with his ticking, creaking cargo. If you were really good, your foot would touch dirt just before the basket did, so you could catch it. If you weren’t really good but thought you were, you’d probably fall off trying to beat it. A good weeding mechanism for braggarts, although a bit wasteful.
I stood up there for a minute before I moved to work, savouring the sounds that coloured the silence. The creak and whistle of the bamboo framework underfoot that made and held up this little island in the sky, our fishing platform. The rush and rumble of the wind and the clouds. Something out there, calling for food, warning, a mate, or just for the hell of it.
I sighed happily, and felt those aching muscles fade into insignificance. Davro was a nice boy, no bore to talk to, but up here wasn’t really meant for talking. Not even during the big migration rushes, where every inch was crammed with men and equipment straining as hard as they could to bring down the quarry, the platform so overloaded with flesh dead and living that it seemed like it was going to crash down on the spot. Even then, no one talked unless they had to. This was a place for doing things.
So I did things. I pulled my rod from my back, assembled it with care, all the long, whippy, hollow feet of it, stretching out and giving me a reach that spanned yards. I threaded its tip with the strong stuff, the string woven by my Vedna, near as tough as wire and nearly as stiff. I had a devil of a time knotting it, but when it was done, nothing short of a Plowmaw would snap that line, and I liked to think that even one of those brutes would’ve had to strain itself. I dotted its length with small glass-blown buoys, airy little things containing just enough helium to keep the line near-neutrally buoyant.
That was the bulk of the preparations. Now, the location, my favourite spot, a little nook tucked away on the northernmost dock. The skyfishing platform was roomy enough for a score and a half of men to scurry about, but it never felt large, not in the face of all that empty air. You were forever surrounded by a view that made the biggest man feel like an ant.
The sun had begun its dive. I baited the tip of the line, placed a big soft lump of Vedna’s thickbread on its tip. Heavy, firm dough riddled with all manner of fragrant little nuggets, meats, fruits, and vegetables alike. Not so good for a human to eat, not unbaked, but the smell brought the game in like fleas to a roaming cat. And as soon as they found it, they had to taste it, with just a quick mouthful, a little nip at the bait. Which usually ended up sampling one of the two dozen or so barbed hooks of varying shapes and sizes that studded the entire doughball. A nasty business, but I liked to think I was good enough to make sure it was over quickly.
Preparations: done. Location: done. Baiting: done. I whirled the line and cast, watched it soar into a nearby cloudbank. And then I sat back to wait and skywatch and politely ask myself what in the name of all the sticks in the forest what I was doing up here.
I was old. There was no denying that, dance around the issue with Davro as I might. Skyfishing was not a job for old men, or aging men, or anyone that wasn’t ready for an hourlong climb followed by a six-hour marathon of heaving in struggling prey and wrestling it to death, all in thin air. So was I doing it because I wanted to pretend I was still young? Or was the company of my near-peers really as grating as I talked it up to be?
Or was I just determined to do this because I didn’t know anything else?
I stared moodily at my bobber, a shiny bit of metal that glinted in the slowly-reddening light of the setting sun. Let’s face it, Farlen, I told myself, you love this. You like the view, you love the sweet sting of the cold breeze, you love that ache you don’t care about that pops up in your arms as you try to subdue a Moaner calf while its parents get ready to charge you. And you’ve spent your whole life doing it, and you’re damned if you’re going to step off that ladder, touch dirt, and never see the sky again except from below.
Except you’re going to have to, because your bones hurt and your back aches and all those piles and carbuncles you were bandying about with young Davro – who isn’t young, and is just a sign of your own advancing age, calling a midyears man young! – belong to you, and the only difference between you and those coots downstairs is that they’re smart enough to know when to leave off work and take up complaining.
Huh. I bet that they were drinking tea right now, while I shivered up here. I smiled through blue lips. Bastards didn’t know what they were missing.
The line shook, my mind snapped to attention, and the first catch of the eve started its laborious progress towards the dinner table.
Time spent on the skyfishing platform was different from time on the dirt. It had two modes, two tempos: waiting and reeling. Waiting, it slowed, swirled, eddied around me as smooth as a summer breeze. The line bobbed, the little buoys on it shimmered, and the cold settled in with the insidious ease of a cuckoo in a nest. Then would come reeling, where the world shattered into a new form instantly, where everything but the line and the muscles dropped out of sight and out of mind and overheated, bones baking against blood from the sweet, sweet strain of sweat.
Then with the plop of the catch’s body in the basket it was back to waiting, mind making a tally that sat unchanged somewhere in the back of the brain until it needed adding to again.
The first catch was a wandering Sicklejaw, a rarer sight than most (reptiles in the sky were always rare, scaly, gliding things, and ones this high up scarcer still), and a fierce fight until I managed to wrap my hands around its neck (a riskier, but faster kill than the cudgel, and one I preferred and maintained took more skill). Slightly rank flesh, but it was a female with a clutch tucked up in her long, curved underbill. The eggs were protected from all by her iron-hard beak, but now lay exposed to her poisonous saliva as the muscles in her jaw gradually relaxed. I placed them in the basket with care, and wrapped my blanket around them for cushioning. I wouldn’t need the warmth for now anyways. Vedna had knit that blanket, it was as thick and warm as could be and still light enough to be an easy carry al the way up. I didn’t really deserve her company.
Three Stovelings were next, the last of the evening, all spaced apart by no more than ten minutes, all with very little fuss. My mother had cooked them the best of anyone I knew, even Vedna, though of course I’d never tell her that. Most people thought the name was about their chewy, rubbery flesh, but she’d always said otherwise. “They’re like little stoves, of course,” she told me, and she’d hollowed out their tiny ribcages and stuffed them with whatever she could, fruit or vegetables. It tenderized them wonderfully fast.
A vast-winged, tiny-bodied Spiralling Crover, on its way down from the vaults of the sky above where it slept in the day to the lowlands of the underclouds, aching to feed on small nightbirds and bats. A bony, knobbly-poor meal, but with beautiful plumage and soft, insulating down that would make a fine pillow or coat lining, perhaps something for one of the grandchildren. Maybe little Aniese? Or wait, she wasn’t so little anymore, and would take resentment as being “babied.” Was Olmin still the youngest? They all grew up so fast, such a tired line that the old people had told him when he was young.
Now here was a real catch, a sturdy tug on the line with real weight behind it. No bird this, a bat, a Gloompounder, a big, slow browser of the high-altitude insects, the earl of batkind: fat, sleepy and thick, but with excellent taste. A real feast, and that short, thick fur would be handy. Easy catches too; if you could get by that first shocked and appalled outburst of theirs when they felt the hook’s prick, you were pretty much set. This would be a fine, tasty meal. I could share it with Davro, as thanks. He’d always been my favourite nephew. My brother was a better father than I was. Had been a better father than I was.
I grew cold all at once, and reclaimed my blanket from the Sicklejaw eggs, carefully nestling them on the fur of the Gloompounder’s belly and covering it with a wing.
Damnit, I was old.
Another Gloompounder bit the line as soon as I’d replaced it, a smaller specimen that might have been the other’s mate (hard to check the gender on Gloompounders, especially in the oncoming dusk). Another good meal, and a good sign. The night was proving fruitful, and I decided I’d lord it over Davro a little when I got home. Just ribbing, of course – luck couldn’t be helped.
The next catch soured my optimism as soon as I heard the squealing. It was a Chittle-Whistler, all legs, compound eyes, and carapace, with that damned pig-screaming orbiting it like a comet. My father had sworn by their meat, but he was the only man I’d ever known who’d willingly eat the things when other food lay nearby, or even things that were only food under the most relaxed definitions. Those things did not count among their number Chittle-Whistler meat, as far as I was concerned. If you wanted to eat bugs, you should at least eat little ones. Trying to consume one the size of a large boy seemed excessive.
I smacked it between the eyes with the cudgel – nothing to strangle, and there was no way I was touching that thing – moved to throw it over the side of the skyfishing platform that faced down the mountainside, far from the village, and stopped to consider an idea. Maybe I didn’t like Chittle-Whistlers. Maybe no one in the village liked Chittle-Whistlers. But there were plenty of things out there that did like them, and maybe I was being a tad too quick to discard useful bait.
I cut free the legs – no sense in making the lure too bulky – and set them aside, then re-attached the limbless head and torso to the line, setting aside the chewed-upon scraps of the sweetdough (it had been near finished anyways – but with this, the night could stretch on a bit longer). The buoys were measured, checked, and another four or so were added on to compensate for the heavier drag. Then with a cast, it started all over again. Something in the back of my head pointed out that the sun had set, and I should be heading home inside the hour. Vedna and the family would be setting out dinner without me now, it warned, and I’d miss the scraps. I devoutly ignored it.
It was a matter of minutes before the next catch was champing at the Chittle-Whistler’s bit, and the weight and heft of it nearly caused me to lose my feet from glee alone. Up up and up over the side it came, rattling and thrashing against the bamboo hard enough to rock the platform, a big fat Twulkee’s Owl, the black sheep of its particular family with its long (for an owl) beak and small (again, for an owl) eyes. It hissed at me, and I laughed back as I brought it down. Good stewing flesh, and that beak would make a fine razor. But only a razor for the cautious. The beak was sharp, yes, but just a little too sharply curved at the tip. Treat it like a straight blade and you’d have a slit throat before you knew what from when.
A Spreadwing Gloompounder was next up, the giant of its particular family, as fat and round as a butterball with wings like big paper fans. It put up much more of a fight than its lesser cousins had, if only because of its impressive weight. Towards the end it grew exhausted and hung limp, and the force of the dead weight nearly dragged me over the edge.
Deep breath, stretch your back. My, that hurt, didn’t it? Odd, didn’t feel so bad at the time. Deep breath again, keep it coming, back to work.
Another Chittle-Whistler, never a species to shy from cannibalism. I smacked it between the disgusting eyes and threw it away, allowing myself the brief luxury of watching the body pinwheel to a speck and then nothing against the grey rocks. Very satisfying, perhaps inappropriately so. The air made me gasp, and it reminded me of that one fistfight I’d had up here with brother Rackle, Davro’s father. We’d loved the same girl. He’d won the fight, found the girl wasn’t worth it, and moped for three years before finding his wife Yema. And her sister Vedna, well, she’d found me soon after, hadn’t she?
The best fight of my life, although I couldn’t breath properly for weeks after it.
A wait, a pause, and then a heave and a pull. And what a heave, what a haul! I could recognize that pull anywhere, in my sleep, in my grave; it was a Highbacked Trellmador, a grand swimmer of the skies, a bird built like the beautiful, delicious, unnatural offspring of a fish and a bull, with a beak that was a blunt instrument. My whole body was the rod for an hour there, a long, hard wrestle of skinny arms against wings that could concuss a horse with a blow. Twice my feet nearly left the platform’s surface, and each time I hazily considered checking to see if I’d remembered to tie the knots in my line securely, each time dismissing it – I might lose the catch!
At last it hurled itself at me head on, with a screech like cracking rocks. I skipped, hopped, and fell over, it couldn’t check itself, and with a thud that shook the ladder to its roots it smacked onto the platform, too stunned and exhausted to even flap.
It took me five minutes to kill the thing, tired as I was, thick as its skull was. And what a haul I’d send this down with the basket strapped to its side, in a special harness. Out of season by a great magnitude – Highbacked Trellmadors were early migrators, and they might not fly fast but they flew long. This thing’s kin should be clear to the winter nesting grounds by now, and I had no idea what on earth had possessed it to stay so long as the nights grew cooler.
I turned to the basket, then hesitated and looked at my rod and line. The Chittle-Whistler, though ragged, remained intact. And Highbacks tended to flock in mated pairs. Maybe this was an unlucky bachelor heading home alone after a long, fruitless search for a partner. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I should find out before I started to climb down the ladder, completely exposed and open, with no shelter and nowhere to run. Highbacks paired closely, to say the least.
Besides, said that little thing in the back of my head, you want to prove that you’re still the best. That you’re not old. I told it shut up, and then realized I’d spoken aloud without intending to.
All right then. The last cast. Just to be sure, to be safe. The air was getting to me. I heaved the rod back, flicked, and watched the ungainly, half-chewed corpse go spinning away into the night, bobber shining in the flicker of my lantern.
It vanished suddenly, and I had barely any time at all to grin before that familiar, deep haul rung in on me, with a savage undercurrent that told me I’d been exactly right. I laughed a bit – well, coughed, what with the cold and all – and thanked every star above me that I hadn’t tried to leave the shelter of the platform, however simple it was.
Of course, now I had an angry bird twice my size and my full weight attached to a string that I couldn’t let go of. Still, it was probably better this way.
The line shook, and I spilled half out over the ledge, gripping firmly to the railing with my hips as best as I could. I tipped uneasily as it yanked this way and that.
Well, it was probably better.
A wrench, a yank, and my grip started to slip. I didn’t want to think what would happen if the Trellmador got ahold of my rod. I wasn’t about to head down that ladder with it lurking, and the thought of replicating my little overnighter of so many years ago gave me the chills in my chills.
The line shook, I jerked another half inch towards a thousand feet of air, and then it slumped with a crunch, slackening in a flash. I was so surprised, I nearly threw myself off the edge.
Something rumbled out there in the darkness, effortlessly overwriting the pained squawk of the Trellmador. Bones crunched, and the line twitched and soared this way and that, entirely independent of my muscles. The Trellmador went quiet, and the only sound was the tearing now, like someone tearing apart wet chunks of wood.
Then a quiet nudge, a deliberate yank on the line, experiment, cautious, intrigued.
I dropped the rod. It was a good one, used for fifteen years, made by my oldest son, and I was sure he’d be happier to have a living father than an intact skyfishing rod, which he wouldn’t have in any case if I chose to hang on to it. Whatever was out there, it wasn’t something I would go after along, or with rod and line at all. We’d need the harpoons we took down Moaners and Great Green Rumblebacks with, the summer hunting tools for when the updrafts were warm and the sun shone bright. All tucked away safely in the sheds around the ladder’s base, damn it.
Whatever it was grunted, and the sounds of busy consumption drifted away on the breeze, quieter by the second.
All right. Escape next. Hopefully it’ll move on fast. Hopefully. If not, if it finds me down that ladder, I’m dead. Probably.
I looked at the basket, and the winch for the basket drop.
“This is a very, very, stupid idea,” I told myself aloud, whispering.
Still, what were the alternatives?
So it was, after a few worrying minutes of preparation and starting at night sounds, that I finished rigging the basket together with the Trellmador corpse. I had one foot on the ladder and one hand on the trigger switch and my heart in my mouth.
“Stupid idea,” I reminded myself, and I flipped the switch.
The cargo dropped what seemed almost instantly, like a rock. So hypnotizingly speedy was its descent that I very nearly forgot to start climbing, muscles locking up like children’s hands on candies.
Over the whir of the moving dropline, something rumbled again. That got me moving.
It was the fastest I’d ever gone down the ladder, and in the worst state. I was too jumpy to think or move, and my body was too numb and stiff to bend. Yet somehow, I managed, skipping steps, releasing grips almost as soon as they were found, keeping one eye on the darkness and another on my hands, neither of which were in any state to notice anything smaller than a house. Still, I paid close attention to them, so much that I neglected my ears, which is why it took me so long to realize that the cargo line had stopped its descending hum.
I paused, and in the sudden, extreme moment of focus I found myself in, I heard a rumble from below.
You don’t want to move too fast in a situation like that. It can get you in trouble. So I spun around so quickly that I nearly twirled off the ladder.
Right there, right beneath my feet, cargo basket in its claws, half of the Highbacked Trellmador vanishing into its maw, was a flying reptile, streaked in grey and flecked in black and shadowed everywhere with blurred markings. Its eyes were small and bright orange, its claws were as long as my hand, and its wings seemed to be blotting out half the sky from my view. I hadn’t ever seen one in person, and it was only because I was too shocked to actually think that the little voice in my head promptly and politely coughed up its name from my grandfather’s ancient old book of wildlife: a Mokie Highdrake. They were northern predators, they had no natural enemies, fed mostly on whatever was too slow to outrun them, and weren’t much studied because things that couldn’t outrun them included humans. This one was probably migrating extremely late, and had wandered a little far south.
It blinked up at me, eyelids flicking in irritation as the slackened cargo rope dripped across its face.
I let go of the ladder. I had something that wasn’t quite a plan in my head, and if I stopped to think about it I was sure it would be ruined. The back of my head explained to me that this was completely insane approximately five times over in the two seconds it took for me to land on the basket as it dangled from the Highdrake’s claws.
There was a snap, a thump, and a bump, and I was freefalling again, cushioned against the feathers and fur of a half dozen or more corpses. That big rumbling roar came from above me as I fell, and my scattered vision caught a blur of orange eyes as it came streaking down after me in full dive, claws glittering in and out of view. The rope jerked against my back, tangled in its wings, and I began to slow practically before I started.
This is very stupid, I reminded myself, in case I forgot. The Highdrake hauled upwards, yanking the tether in its teeth, slack looping about itself as I drew closer and closer.
Something else was in its teeth, something twitching back and forth with each heave and pull – the handle of my skyfishing rod. It was practically close enough to touch, so I reached out and grabbed it. It slid out remarkably easily. Except for the hooks.
The Highdrake’s first instinct was to pull back. That did its job as far as getting out the hooks went. It also removed a good part of its tongue. That triggered its next instinct, which was to open its mouth and hiss. That released the rope, which promptly shot taunt under my weight plus the entire combined mass of my cargo.
This wouldn’t have been an issue for the Highdrake if the rope hadn’t looped around its neck as it pulled. That wouldn’t have been an issue for the Highdrake if the slight weight change hadn’t caused its right wingtip to brush the framework of the ladder.
A falter turned into a lurch turned into a splintering snap, and down came everything, extremely quickly but just fast enough to watch.
The landing was odd. I blacked out on the crash, then woke up from the sheer, ear-shattering noise it made. The hollow bones of the Highdrake seemed to pop as loud as fireworks, and the chorus of yells from around the town as people woke up at what sounded like the end of the world didn’t make things any quieter.
That was quite a fall. The farthest I’ve heard of. Maybe I’d even survived it.
I decided I’d find out later, and passed out.
Vedna was the first thing I saw when I woke up, somehow in my bed at home. For a horrible moment she looked worried, then angry, then she hugged me and told me I was awful. That was reassuring.
“How’s the ladder?” I asked.
“Shush,” she said.
“How’s the ladder?” I asked Davro.
He shook his head. “Standing. But not by much.”
“Sorry. Unavoidable.”
“With what you just brought down, I don’t think we’ll need the extra food. We’ll have all winter to work out how to rebuild it.”
“Good,” I said, vaguely. My head felt like it was full of feathers. “Good.”
A thought popped up, slowly but surely. “No, not quite.”
“Sorry, Uncle?”
“No ‘we.’ I think it’s time I stopped climbing that ladder. You’ll have to build it without me.”
Davro gave me a sympathetic look. “Age catches us all, Uncle.”
I shook my head, wincing as my back ached. “No, not that. I just don’t think I can ever top that catch.”