Steph Swainston - No Present Like Time

When I first visited Awia I was just as wild; I swept through the country like a swarm. In Peregrine and Tambrine I partied till four of the morning. I frequented the theater each night in Micawater and strayed from pavement cafés to bars, meeting artists and dollymops in the narrow streets of that pristine town. In Rachiswater I took advantage of the local girls and long walks by the lakeside. In Sheldrake I stayed, finding the sea air analeptic, and at Sarcelle’s palace they set fifteen tables of feast for us each night.

From there I rode the Black Coach to Tanager, and dropped meringue and absinthe on the patched bedspreads of the Corogon School Whorehouse. Enclosed by bowers and founded by schoolgirls, its roof garden was rampant if the weather was fine. It slouched across the adjoining roofs of a whole street, warmed by the hot, stale shops below. I fucked the girls and drank their homebrew while cries drifted out from the inmates in the lunatic asylum; the girls knew them all by name.

I never believed that love existed. I wanted to smash it all up into shards and cut myself with the sharpest. But Shira Dellin changed me. Then came Tern, who transformed me a little more. I loved her, the color of her skin, shapely legs and plumage; I wanted to fill my senses with her.

Tern’s unattainable demeanor was an aphrodisiac and a barrier. I didn’t want to join her noble class but I dreaded that her chocolate voice would laugh and reject me. Her suitors sensed my insecurity and uttered barbed comments to convince me; she wouldn’t want to marry a freak. When I met Shira Dellin I had been surprised to discover that I found Rhydanne girls captivating, but she had turned me down spectacularly. I flew to see Lightning, who instantly understood the cause of my haggard, insomniac appearance. I desperately begged him for advice. After all, he was the expert and I was so bewildered I was prepared to follow any instruction. He suggested, “Lady Wrought would love to receive gifts.”

I gave her a live kestrel that I caught in the air, its wings bound to its body with embroidery thread. “Comet,” she said, “what am I going to do with this?”

Next day I stole in, offering her edelweiss from a mountain that no one can climb. “Get out!” she said. “I’ll only see you at dinner with the rest of the suitors!” I backed off, stepped up to the velvet window seat and, horrendously, found that my boots were still filthy from the stables. She pointed sternly at the casement through which she had released the kestrel. “Your turn to fly away!”

In despair and fatigue, I started to use scolopendium. One night, because I was unaccustomed to it, I overdosed and discovered the Shift. I slowly had a palace built there, Sliverkey, in order to give me confidence to court Tern, but in my homeland I owned nothing, no lineage, barely a pot to piss in.

“No, no!” Lightning admonished, amused. “She’s not a hungry Rhydanne. It’s important to give her beautiful presents, ones that will last, to remind her of you when you’re absent. You must make her feel wanted and special-I suppose you could always offer her stories. Ladies love tales and you seem to have an inexhaustible supply.”

I flew from the Castle to see Tern when my duties were done. I perched by the bedroom window and told her stories. She was very eager to know about the Castle; she urged me to tell the things I took for granted-what’s behind the Throne Room screen? What does the Emperor look like? How does one talk with him? Few of my exploits genuinely held Tern’s wandering attention, but she liked me to describe a ruined ancient Awian citadel far north in the Paperlands.

The unreachable château had interested me since the first time I saw it, from the sickle summit of Bhachnadich. The Paperlands surrounded northern Darkling like an ocean, an unbroken surface of gray Insect constructions that lapped into points and fell away into shallow valleys. In perfect conditions, a ruin was seen on the horizon, rising through the paper crust. It appeared to be a massive square edifice topped by a stone dome. Sunlight flickered on its peeling leaves of gilt as they fluttered in the wind.

Tern’s interest spurred me to the idea that if I dared travel to the ruins I might touch down on the dome and return alive. I trialed a distance flight without landing once, I then climbed Bhachnadich and launched myself from its thousand-meter rock face. I picked up the katabatic Ressond gale and sped over the Insects’ territory.

A long lion-gold winter light lay across the Paperlands. Far below among the rigid cells I saw Insects scurrying, going about their instinctive lives. If I crashed, thousands would dart out of their tunnels and tear me apart. If I don’t crash, Tern will love this story.

I glided to rest and then flew on. After hours of alternately gliding and flapping I became exhausted. Burning and stiffening in my wings and back distracted me from Tern and punished me for being so stupid as to fall in love. When it became too much to bear I took tiny sips of the wonderful panacea painkiller I had bought; the agony melted away.

As evening advanced the Ressond wind declined in strength. I shed all unnecessary weight in midair; unlaced and dropped my boots and bits of clothing until I was just wearing a shirt and shorts. After sunset I flew by a hunter’s moon and as I drew closer to the derelict building I realized how truly gigantic it was. The Paperlands broke around it. Ridges of paper adhered to it like buttresses and thinner web-strands reached up and anchored to the base of the dome.

The tops of adjoining walls were still visible, kept upright by Insect cells, but the roofs had fallen away. Insects had eaten the timber rafters and the entire structure was unstable.

The broken dome loomed beneath me, rounded and silvered with moonlight. I landed on its cold stone apex and looked back toward the jagged Darkling peaks, while I ate some honey sandwiches and glugged the last drop of water, then threw my pack away. I was utterly exhausted and my wings ached so much I couldn’t close them. The landscape was dead; no birdsong, the silence pressed me like deep water. For hundreds of kilometers, nothing was alive but Insects. I was the alien here.

I dozed until I felt some energy returning, but all the time I listened for Insects. I lay on the dome and looked through the lightless hole. I couldn’t hear any beneath me so I dropped through, landing awkwardly on a slope of rubble and roof blocks that had collapsed onto a travertine-tiled floor. I only had seconds before the Insects smelled me-some new food in the Paperlands they had chewed bare-and they would amass around the building, race up the echoing steps.

Moonlight lit the angular corners of fallen masonry blue-gray. I could see just a small part of the circular room but it was empty. Insect mandibles had scoured the fabric off the walls leaving grooves like chisel marks.

Perhaps it was a municipal building rather than a royal residence after all. I curled my toes around a carved cornice block. I dared not leave the circle of moonlight directly under the hole; the room was in shadow. As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I saw a dull shine among the farthest blocks. I picked my way over them and reached down. It was a bronze castor from a table leg, and three more were scattered nearby. Presumably they were left by the Insects when they ate a wooden table. Anything inorganic left on the table would still be buried. I hefted a couple of the smaller bricks aside-and uncovered the lair of a spider as big as my hand.

I fled to the top of the cone of debris, glanced back. The spider did not move. Its ovoid abdomen glittered darkly. I approached with great caution and prodded it; it skidded over the stone dust with a tinkling sound. I lifted it carefully. It was a brooch made from two flawless emeralds fixed in peculiar curlicues of silver wire, a reticulate casing ingeniously twisted into eight jointed legs. I pinned the spider to my shirt and was about to dig around between the blocks in the hope of uncovering more jewels when there was a clattering noise outside.