Fran Wilde: Updraft

“I wish I could change it all,” I said. I wanted him to remember what we’d been. Who I was before I moved uptower. To know that I was still the same person, still his friend. His almost-sister.

I tried hard not to care where I was, or about the wingtest and whether we’d miss it. Tried hard not to think of my mother, who’d left me behind. Elna was angry, sure. But with Elna, that didn’t matter. She held me close and I breathed in the scent of her skin, the onions she’d cooked. I relaxed, until she murmured, “Our Kirit, skyblessed.”

I groaned. So did Nat.

“You two.”

“You heard the Singer. I’m not skyblessed.”

Elna dipped her head in agreement. But over dinner and until she went to bed, I caught her looking at me with the same blend of reverence and horror that she’d given to the Singer.

Later, I wished she would wrap me up and tell me things would get better, as she had when I’d come in from flight with a bug in my eye or a scrape from the rough sinew nets.

I touched the Laws chip Councilman Vant tied to my wrist. One side was marked “Broke Fortify, endangered tower.” The other held my sentence, “Lowtower labor.” Nat’s bore the more general “Lawsbreaker.” We would wear them until the councilman cut them off.

Shivering, I pulled my quilt tight around me and curled up on my mat. It smelled of Ezarit’s spices and tea.

I was censured. I hoped for forgiveness. For a miracle.

In the morning, Nat banged thick baskets and buckets together to wake me. Woven vine rasped against age-dark bone. Elna gave us her cleaning rags. We tied everything on a hemp line and used ladders to descend eight tiers below Elna’s, into the no-man’s-zone of Densira. The smell of rot and refuse clung to my nostrils.

I kept my eyes on the empty tiers we passed, not on the sky with its tempting breezes and diving whipperlings.

“Whoo,” Nat said after a sniff at the stench. He jumped from the ladder onto the tier and stunt-rolled into the darkness beyond, howling like a banshee.

The clouds were so close here. They flowed and parted to reveal even more clouds, always waiting. An occasional dark flicker within them might have been a large bird, or something worse.

I disengaged from the ladder, feeling the sky tug at me. Stepped back from the edge, wingless and disgraced. The inner wall had grown much more down here. Barely enough room to sleep out of the weather and the fall of refuse from above. That, at least, was a blessing. Less space left to clean.

I didn’t watch where I walked. One foot landed in a pile of muck.

“Birdcrap!” I yelled. I heard Nat cackle. Then he yelped, backing up fast.

A creature swung out of the depths of the tier, dressed in rags. It charged at us, hooting. A thin hand clutched Nat’s robe. Greasy hair dangled, and exposed parts of its body sagged like old courier bags, stretching from arms and buttocks. I looked away.

“Begone. Not yours!” it yelled at us.

Elna descended the ladder, pale as always, though the downtower shadows were easier on her eyes. “Tobiat.” Her voice rang firm across the empty tier. “My son, Nat, and his friend, Kirit. They’re going to clean the low tiers as a punishment.”

Tobiat. Invalids like him, as well as the very skyblind and the mad, were sometimes left behind as the tiers rose. They lived far downtower, on the edges of old quarters, scrounging for scraps. Many fell or starved, especially if they had no family to care for them. Or if their family abandoned them for being bad luck.

Elna handed Tobiat a packet of dried fruit and graincakes. He released Nat’s cloak to clutch at it, nodding thanks. “Elna’s good people.”

“He’s chosen this tier to make his nest,” she said to us. “This will be a foul mess to start with.”

Nat looked from his mother to the hermit, then deep into the tier. His nose wrinkled, and I joined him to see what he saw. Piles of stinking rags, shreds of ladders, broken wings. Too many to count. Tobiat had gathered parts of the tower that no one else wanted. We’d never get it clean enough.

“Why does he keep these things?” I whispered. “He’d be much better off letting them fall away with the rest of the garbage.”

Nat shrugged. “Dunno. Not like I knew Ma was keeping him.”

Elna secured herself to the ladder again, her wings unclasped just in case. She gripped hard, and she began the climb. “Vant said the guard will check on your progress by afternoon.” Her words were as much a promise to us as a warning to Tobiat to make himself scarce.

Tobiat, his mouth full of dried apple, cackled and wandered away, trailing a frayed cloth that had once wrapped his body against the cold. I heard him mutter, “Cleaning, clean, cleaners.” He receded into the gloom.

Nat passed me a rag and a bucket. “I wish we could use scourweed.” The tough fibers were reserved for Singers, for raising towers.

“Not much grows on the lowtowers,” I said. “If we find some, I say we use it.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” Nat said. For now, we were a team again, trying to work as fast as possible.

Instead of scourweed, we found an old rain catcher, too broken to be worth lifting higher, and used it as a scoop. Then we started as far from Tobiat’s piles as we could, swiping at the mold and bird shit that had accumulated everywhere. I felt sick. Nat looked pretty green too.

“Tobiat,” he called, “we need to move your things.”

Tobiat had piled wing battens and bits of broken carvings around what was probably his bed. Kept them a safe distance from the small fire pit. He had nothing that looked like metal. If he’d found anything that valuable, it would have been sold or stolen before now. I caught myself looking anyway, like a glitter-smitten kavik.

Other piles had been pushed against the inner wall. One leaked dank vegetable liquid from the bottom.

I kicked at it. “All trash.”

With two fingers, I lifted a fetid pile of grayish cloth from the heap. The fabric was crusted with age-browned blood and gristle. I walked to the edge with it and had cranked back my arm to give it a good heave when Tobiat came out of nowhere, howling, “Mine, mine!” He grabbed, the fabric crackling at his touch, bits falling off. Stink rose, though whether from the cloth or Tobiat, I couldn’t tell.

“Disgusting,” I said and pulled, while trying to keep myself back from the edge. Tobiat shrieked and yanked at the fabric, leaning way out. The thought of him falling, at my hand, nearly choked me. The clouds were too close here. As were the shadows that prowled the clouds.

“Nat!” I yelled. Nothing. “Nat! Help!” and Nat came running, finally. He coaxed Tobiat off the edge of the balcony and calmed him with a piece of goose. When I released the rags, the hermit bundled them into a ball and held them close.

“We are never going to finish,” I said. We’d miss the wingtest. I’d lose my best opportunity to avoid another confrontation with Singer Wik. And even if we were to finish in time, we’d have no chance to study. One look at Nat’s creased brow showed he was worried too.

“What if we toss everything?” Nat raised an eyebrow. “It would be faster. He’s mad, right? He won’t miss any of it.”

I looked more closely at Tobiat. He wasn’t mad. His skull was dented on one side, as if he’d hit something at great speed and lived to forget the fall. His skin was frost-marked where he’d left it bare in the wind. Scars rippled across his face and back, and several bones looked to have been broken and rehealed as they lay. He was more crooked than straight. It must have been very painful. Still, he was aware of us. He’d covered himself a bit better with his rags than before. He gripped the cloth tightly. He was in there, somewhere. We couldn’t throw his things down like he wasn’t.