Issue #181 • Sept. 3, 2015

“Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” by Fran Wilde

“Moogh and the Great Trench Kraken,” by Suzanne Palmer

Author Interview: Fran Wilde

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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BENT THE WING, DARK THE CLOUD

by Fran Wilde

        Calli Viit unwound a green silk tether from three bundles of long bone battens and spread them on her worktable. If she picked the right ones quickly, she might avoid further angering her father.

        The wing design her father had sketched—a commission for a young boy—paired a traditional Viit pattern with fine-tuned control grips. Calli had prepared the silk the day before, adding a second row of stitching to the batten seams. Now she checked the rigging and the grips again. Without taking her eyes off the sketch, she swept her hand across the battens, selecting four that were appropriately child-sized. These, for the spars.

        The buyer, Telise Naza, stood with her back to the balcony, watching father and daughter carefully. She’d bowed upon entering the workshop, saying, “I don’t wish to disturb you, Liras Viit, but I was passing by and wished to see your fine work again.” Calli’s father had acknowledged the praise with a stiff nod, then turned back to his bench.

        Calli had been the one to return the woman’s bow. Her robes were thickly quilted, a common fashion for Naza tower, but Calli noted her frayed cuffs and hem. Looking to save a few marks by coming all the way to Viit, but still cautious.

        Few buyers lingered to watch wingmakers at their craft.

        When Telise Naza hadn’t left again immediately, Calli had followed her father’s example and returned to her work. The continued intrusion made a muscle jump on her father’s cheek.

        From where she worked, Calli couldn’t read Telise Naza’s expression. The late morning light spilled over the woman’s shoulders and green silk wings, leaving her face in shadow. The same light bathed her father’s worktable and the back of his neck.

        Calli tested the first batten the way she’d been taught as a young child: setting one end on the ground and bringing her weight to bear slowly on the tip. The pale span crackled, and she backed off quickly so the spar would not snap. The buyer hadn’t noticed the fault, but her father certainly had. His hands went still over his work.

        Setting the batten aside without comment, Calli reached for the next. She kept her expression neutral. Slowed her breathing; did not look too hard at her father.

        A bone hunter had sold them at least one bad batten. No customer should ever know that a faulty bone might get so close to a wing. Nor could this customer discover something was wrong with the wingmaker himself. Telise Naza might have heard rumors about Calli, but Calli hoped not.

        Her father needed this commission, and for more to follow.

        Calli tested three more spars against her weight. They bent but did not crackle.

        She selected several shorter and thinner battens: all pale yellow or white, each light and strong. They’d been stripped properly from the outgrowth of a living bone tower, not harvested from a broken tower and bleached white, like the first rotten batten.

        In the sky behind Telise Naza, a group of children Calli’s age swooped and dove in unison, followed by one of the tower’s magisters. Calli heard scraps of song. A lesson about wind shifts. The students’ wings cut patches of bright color in the deep blue air. Calli knew each span and spar, even from this distance. She’d tested them all.

        Many hands shaped the frames of silk and bone that allowed Calli’s neighbors to soar between the city’s towers: silkweavers, bone and tendon hunters, wingmakers. Each touch had to be true. Every wingmaker knew the risks. The clouds below the city were hungry; they swallowed fliers whole. Any doubt about a wingset, or its creator, could ruin a reputation, a life.

        A watchful customer was a bad sign.

        Calli slipped a batten into a double-seamed pocket, and the wing began to take shape. The silk rustled, then stretched as she tucked the last bit of spar beneath a lip of fabric, locking it in. The sound was as familiar as her own breath.

        “Watch what you’re doing. Don’t pierce the fabric,” grumbled her father without looking up.

        Calli chewed the inside of her cheek. She’d never pierced fabric with a batten or a spar and was not about to do so now. Her father needed something proper to scold her for, something that demonstrated a wingmaker’s caution. He couldn’t voice his actual complaints. Not with a customer in the workshop. But Calli knew her craft well—better than well—even at her age; the scolding made her skin feel dry and hot. She dropped a batten and scrambled to pick it up.

        “Why is she not with her flightmates?” the Naza woman enquired. She’d seen the other children working the wind. “Injury?”

        Her father nodded, and Calli forced her eyes to her work. The questions came more often as she grew older.

        “She has a fine hand,” the Naza woman said. She turned back to the worktables, and her cheekbone caught the light. Calli thought it very pretty the way her windburned skin stretched across the frame of her face, like silk over spars. The woman shared a brief smile as she assessed Calli’s seams. Calli’s cheeks grew warmer with pride.

        Her father grunted and kept his eyes on the customer’s second order, refurbishing a larger pair of wings. Beneath his brush, green and blue vegetable dyes formed a flock of wind-spun whipperlings on the pale yellow silk.

        The woman raised an eyebrow, waiting for a more polite response. Calli tried to fill the void without giving offense. “My father taught me,” she said. “As his father once taught him.”

        That was close to truth. The buyer nodded, satisfied. She turned to explore the skeins of bone chips hanging on the workshop walls, carved with sketches and plans. Three generations’ worth of wing designs. Each more detailed than the last.

        “Your family has much talent,” she mused.

        With Telise Naza distracted, Calli snuck a glance at her father’s hands. They held steady. That was luck. He’d been gone all night. When Calli’s mother had carried him back and dropped him to the workshop floor early this morning, he’d moaned and quaked while the night’s drinking wore off.

        Calli’s mother had sworn to the workshop walls, “I’m not retrieving him again. He can rot with the fighting birds next time.” She’d set his tea-dyed wings in a pile beside him on the floor but had left her own unfurled. Ready to fly again. As she turned back to the sky, she gestured Calli to the balcony. “I don’t want your brother to grow up like this. Bent. Afraid. He can’t be a wingmaker if he’s afraid. We’ll go to Haim and stay with your uncle.”

        Calli had lifted her brother Miran from his sleeping mat and nuzzled his dream-warm neck. Had helped her mother bind Miran tightly to her chest.

        Miran had mumbled a child’s flying song Calli had taught him the night before. “Wings straight and full, forward we go.”

        Her mother held Calli’s hand tightly. “I can send someone for you.”

        “I will stay,” Calli had refused. She was too big to be carried, and she didn’t fly. Not yet. Unheard of in the city where children flew before they ran.

        After a sour pause, her mother whispered, “The two of you deserve each other.” She’d let her breath out through her teeth. “Twelve years. Doubt spreads, Calli. Fear too. People will think you don’t trust your father’s wings. No matter how I try, you race with him to see who can destroy our reputation first.” To ease her sharp words, she placed her hand gently on Calli’s head. “Try once more for me? Just to Haim.”

        Calli had shut her eyes tight against the weight of disappointment and her mother’s long-suffering sigh. Felt cool air on her head as her mother’s hand lifted.

        “Send a bird if you need something.” She’d spread and locked her wings, blocking the sun’s warmth.

        Calli had heard wing silk fill true as a gust carried her mother and her mother’s burdens away.

        Calli blinked back tears, remembering. The distance between Viit and Haim was not far for most children. For Calli, it was the same as a flight across the city: impossible. She would remain in the tower she’d been born to, with her father, helping him until she grew old, or fell and was lost in the clouds.

        “Those are fine patterns,” Telise Naza said, suddenly close by her elbow. Calli jumped. She turned back to stuffing batten sleeves and let her father accept the compliment for her in his own way. The woman was hightower. She would not appreciate a child replying too often like an adult. Especially one who should be flying with her towermates.

        But Calli’s father grunted again, lifting his brush from the silk. He looked up at the Naza woman from beneath hooded eyes. His grim smile indicated that any further conversation would delay delivery, indefinitely.

        Calli put down her work and guided Telise Naza to the balcony. Took her as close as she could to the edge, to the blue sky and the white clouds below, then stepped back, heart pounding. She would give anything not to be afraid of the expanse.

        The customer turned and bowed to the wingmaker. Then she unfurled her wings and leapt from the balcony without another word.

* * *

        Liras Viit watched the woman go. When his father was alive, the customers had bowed with respect too. Then they’d left the wingmakers to work in peace. The family business had thrived. Countless customers, all wanting wings. None who eyed the workshop like it might be filled with broken spars and torn silk.

        His daughter Calli moved quickly back from the balcony, her face ashen. Her fear was a fault within her that Liras could not shore up. A wingmaker could not be afraid, not like that.

        Karr, Calli’s mother, had had no such fear. She had once hoped to share his craft but found she had no touch for it. Did not understand the tools. Did not test each piece carefully. Her many attempts had been disastrous. Instead of trying again, she’d grown angry.

        Calli did not anger. She listened. She learned. In the workshop at least. But that was not enough.

        The tools of Liras’s craft—his father’s tools, and those of his grandmother—lay on the workbenches. Awls and bone needles. A rare pair of metal shears sharpened to thin blades. Clamps and drills. Tendons for the more expensive wings. Fiber for the everyday pairs. Spars and battens.

        There was no tool in the wingmaker’s set that would help him escape from the vortex of shame he’d created in the birdfighting ring. His debts and fears gathered around him like dark clouds.

        Liras smelled the cool sheen of good silk. The raw green and blue dyes. He loved this place, this work. He knew he was as good at it as his father had been: the best wingmaker in the quadrant, if not the city. If only he could right his business. Keep enough marks together to pay his tower tithes, his suppliers.

        And teach his daughter to fly.

        He touched the cool metal of his silk shears. The grips that had been guided by so many hands. His designs lined the workshop wall, hanging with those of his father, his grandmother, and bone carvings older than that. He would do better. He was still young. If Calli never flew, he could train his son in wingcraft, as he’d trained his daughter. If Karr would let him.

        If he could keep hold of his workshop, his tools.

        Liras shifted painfully on his stool. No more birdfighting. He could not risk it. No more gambling of any sort, he promised himself again. He would find another way to move forward. As soon as he stopped aching from his latest failure. His latest shame.

* * *

        Once the client was out of sight around the next tower, Calli took the brush from her father’s hand. “You must eat now. At least a little.” He hadn’t taken any food since the night before. Since his return from the birdfighting ring at Bissel tower.

        He rose, groaning, and followed her from the worktables to the small area behind the shop, near the tower’s central wall. They sat on rolled sleeping mats as Calli unwrapped a packet of dried goose for lunch and set it on the table between them.

        “Karr isn’t back yet,” he said, looking at the food Calli’s mother had left and knowing it for what it was. A goodbye.

        “Only for a short time,” Calli said, wanting her words to be true. “To rest.” But they both knew her mother took every opportunity to leave the workshop. She had no touch for wingmaking, her partner gambled, and her daughter was afraid of the very sky.

        Her mother had always returned before, but Calli wasn’t sure this time. Her father had never gambled away so much before. While his face and hands showed no bruising, Calli had watched him walk. His back and legs had taken a beating the night before. His hands trembled now.

        “Don’t stare!” he grumbled and reached for the water sack that hung from the table. Took a sip.

        Their store of tower marks, what they needed to buy more silk and battens, had taken a beating too, from the same men. Gamblers. Birdfighters at Bissel or Harut.

        Her father had two problems, gambling and Calli. Both stood to ruin them all.

        He put a piece of dried meat to his lips, then hid it in his hand. Calli didn’t feel like eating either. Now that her mother had left, more people would wonder why Calli hadn’t flown with her.

        More than once, her mother had held her out over the edge while flight magisters flew below with a fiber net carried between them. She’d tossed Calli high, as was the tradition for first flight, and called for her to soar. Calli had tried. But in the bright, cold air, her arms and legs had tucked tight in panic and she’d dropped right into the net. The magisters carried her back sobbing, each time. Until she’d grown too big for her mother to toss her. Too big for the nets.

        Over the years, her father had made her beautiful wingsets. Calli loved to trace their outlines with her fingers. To determine how they worked. But the moment she leaned into the wind, to follow her neighbors into the sky, she froze. She would step back, undo the wingstraps, and shake her head.

        Her father always sold those wingsets to others. Calli could watch them ride the gusts without her.

        She knew the real reason why her father gambled. Why her mother left so often. They couldn’t fix her, and it was destroying them. “Her fear could spread to Miran,” her mother often fretted.

        For once, her father had been kind. “Someday,” he promised, “she’ll find the right wind.”

        Calli folded the scrap of silk around the meat and put it in her pocket. Maybe later, they would feel like eating. Outside, the children of Viit tower swooped with their flight classes, while Calli helped her father back to his worktable.

        As they passed the balcony ledge, his eyes searched the colorful wings in the sky, looking for signs of her mother returning.

        He wasn’t able to take his seat without help. Calli braced and let him lean on her while he climbed to his stool.

        “Let me show you something,” he said. He picked a set of bone carvings hanging from the wall on a yellow silk cord. Showed her a design newly cut on one. Calli traced the strange pattern with her fingertip.

        “What is it?” she said.

        “A way for us to fly together. So I can teach you, without you being afraid.”

        The wings of this design were larger than any she’d seen in the sky. A second set of straps and controls dangled from the first harness. She closed her eyes, then opened them. Looked again. These wings might hold two fliers.

        Her father had never given up on her.

        Calli touched the carving. “Thank you.” She felt whipperlings turn circles in her belly.

        “We need it,” he said. “People won’t have confidence in my work if you don’t.”

        Calli nodded and returned to the customer’s wings, leaving the yellow cord and bone carvings on the worktable. Without enough silk and bone, that new design would never be built. A quantity few could afford, especially her family.

        She would not have to disappoint her father again.

* * *

        That afternoon, Liras tried to remain at his workbench and finish the customer’s wings, but the pain grew too much.

        He let Calli help him to a sleeping mat and put salve on his back. His shame at his failures spread as she applied the medicine.

        “When mama returns, things will be better,” she whispered.

        Liras knew she was lying. He’d watched Calli’s face as she unwrapped their lunch. He’d seen Karr’s eyes as she turned to leave with their son. Her latest departure was humiliating, but not as much as the realization that Calli was old enough now to want to protect him with lies.

        When she was young and hadn’t understood the birdfighting, they’d told many lies to protect her. That he’d dropped the marks while visiting customers. That he’d landed badly on a tower. Now Karr was done with all the lies, and Calli was old enough to see through them and craft her own.

        Liras felt sick all over again. He had to change. Food and supplies cost marks. All the family had left was a promise of a payment when they delivered Telise Naza’s wings. But that would not cover everything: Liras’s tithes to his tower, and what he still owed the birdfighters. The tower councilman would not take another excuse. He’d sell Liras’s tools, or his quarters. Send him downtower. And no one would bow to the wingmaker then, or his flightless daughter.

        Liras could feel his father’s legacy, his children’s future, slipping through his fingers like wind.

        He’d sworn to avoid the birdfighting ring on Harut before, but sometimes he did so well that the temptation was too much. Certain of the winner last night, he’d lost even more marks. Marks he didn’t have. Bissel tower’s fighting birds were smarter and trickier than the ones he’d chosen, from Naza and Densira.

        He would not make the same mistake again. He would not risk it. There were other ways to get tower marks. To begin again.

        His eyes drooped, but he could not sleep. He heard Calli’s footsteps and watched from slitted lids as she climbed up on his stool and began to finish his work. He knew there would be no stray marks, and it pained him. She put the clients’ wings in the afternoon sun to dry, then lifted the child’s wings. Tested the winggrips one last time. Then she set the smaller wings next to the larger pair. Sunlight lit the silk and traced the frame within. Beautiful.

        His daughter had talent. It should not matter if she flew. But fear spread, and doubt.

        Liras swore he would find a way to finish the new wings for her, to try again.

* * *

        Finally, her father snored on his mat.

        Calli fed their whipperling, humming to it as she cleaned its perch. Then she began organizing the worktables and putting supplies back into the ever-emptier storage baskets.

        She stopped for a moment to watch the tower guards and the magisters fly high between the towers, and the colorful children’s wings her father had made swirl on the wind.

        Her father had left the skein of carvings with the new wing design on the table. She didn’t touch it at first, but as the afternoon wore on and the workshop’s quiet began to get to her, she found a sharp knife and a spare scrap of bone. She copied her father’s design, trying to learn the choices he’d made. She admired the new angles of the wing seams, and how they supported and curved the entire architecture enough to support two fliers rather than the usual awkward rescue-carry with a wing-hook, basket, or net.

        Perhaps, if it came to it, she could trade this design to the tower councilman, for food and a few months more in their quarters. She cut carefully, trying to get every line down.

        A guard swooped closer and finally landed on the balcony. Calli rose to greet him; to try to block his entry.

        “My father is resting,” she said.

        The guard looked at her and smiled. He’d come before to collect tithes, but she’d never spoken to him. “You remember me?”

        Calli shook her head.

        “Doesn’t surprise me. I caught your mother once. You were a baby. Caught you both, actually.” He held out a hand and closed it around air. “Caught you by the foot. Darn near missed too.” He grinned. “Luckily, I don’t miss.”

        Calli shook her head. She didn’t remember. The guard’s clothing—dark green hood, wings trimmed to a fighting curve—marked him as a hunter. “What happened?”

        “Wing tore. Karr’s own design, I heard. Headstrong, your mother. Temper too, right?” Calli bowed her head, hiding her fear. Her mother had flown with the baby; what if she dropped him too? No. Calli had tightened the straps herself.

        The guard looked around the workshop. Cleared his throat. “Councilman sent me to collect tithes.”

        “My father is not well and we are waiting for a customer to pay. Can you come back?” She pointed to the two pairs of drying wings. “This will more than cover the tithe,” she lied. She hated lying.

        The guard frowned. “Tomorrow or the next day. No more.” He winked at Calli and left.

        She watched him go, tense. Not enough time. From her worst nightmares, the sound of air rushing past, the sick feeling of falling towards the clouds, nearly closed over her.

        Now she knew why. She rubbed her foot where the guard might have caught her.

        A trader from Densira passed the guard in the sky, then landed on their balcony. She carried a torn wing strapped to her chest and several spans of silk in two hip panniers. Calli eyed the fabric longingly. “We have no marks to pay you for the silk,” she finally admitted. “But I can patch your wing for you. Tighten the set. Make them faster.” She made herself sound confident.

        “Of course, why not?” The trader was young, ambitious. Offered half the silk. Waited while Calli made the adjustments and re-aligned a grip. Watched her carefully. It would have to be enough.

        By the time Calli unrolled her own sleeping mat, she could barely keep her eyes open.

* * *

        When Liras woke, it was to a cold bone floor. He swallowed hard against the stale residue of drink coating his mouth: the taste of regret. His ears rang and his head ached. Rough fabric covered his eyes.

        Liras’s memory of the final game the night before was hazy. He shouldn’t have had so much to drink, but it had dulled Karr’s leaving. Softened his worries, too many to count.

        His fingers twitched. Counting. He’d left the workshop in the last of the evening light. Stepped carefully around his sleeping daughter and filled his pockets with skeins of wing designs, hoping to trade those for tower marks at Haim. He’d snuck away again, before it was too dark to fly.

        His fingers touched empty pockets. He groaned again.

        On the way to Haim, he’d heard cries and laughter coming on the wind from Bissel. The sounds of fighting birds. Before he knew it, he’d stumbled to the ring’s edge.

        “Calli,” he called, his mouth dry. But Calli was not there. The fabric across his eyes was tied tight. He was alone. A sleeping quilt wrapped tightly around him. He could not move more than his fingers.

        And the smells were not of his quarters, either. “Calli,” he called. Frightened. “Karr?” He hadn’t meant to go far. Only a couple of towers over. Was he still there? Shame bloomed in his chest.

        A face appeared above him, supported by a broad stalk of a man. Dennit Harut. Birdfighter. Very young, very savvy with games of all sorts. His red face shone in the dim light. Liras coughed, then turned to retch. His arms, he found, were bound by more than quilts. Rough fiber scratched at his bared elbows. Where were his flying robes? His wings?

        “You look like cloudfood,” Dennit said.

        Liras cursed himself. Wished the clouds would swallow him. Calli must know he’d gone. Karr would know soon. The sunrise sky outside gave him no chance to sneak back home, even if he could convince Dennit to release him.

        “Whatever I lost,” Liras said, “My family will pay back.”

        “Your family? They’ve given up on you. Moved on.” Dennit snorted.

        “Not Calli.” Liras was not a big man. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, then his left. They were unbound. Unbroken. Good. At least they’d left him that.

        Dennis saw the quilts move. Chuckled. “We’d never damage your hands, or your tools. The take is too good.”

        Liras tried to figure what they wanted most. Then he realized. Dennit rubbed his thumb across a bone carving. The sketch of Calli’s wings.

        He shook his head. A wave of nausea swept over him. “Those haven’t been tested. They aren’t for you.”

        “Says who?” Dennit laughed now, loudly. “Interesting wings. If you’re good enough to design them, they’re good enough for me.”

        Liras blushed at the praise, then hated himself for it. Dennit aimed a kick and stopped at the last minute, testing the air. Liras flinched.

        “You’re too smart to keep losing at birds,” Dennit said. “You pick the wrong wings almost every time. Why did you come back, wingmaker?”

        Liras shook his head. “I need the money.” He scanned the room. Dennit had gathered a few wingmaking tools. A pile of silk. Nothing from Liras’s collection at Viit, he realized with relief. Perhaps Calli could keep those tools, hide them. He turned his face to the floor, refusing to look at Dennit again. “I won’t make wings for you. Nor for anyone you promise them to.”

        He tried to relax his body so the kick would hurt less. When Dennit’s foot connected, jarring shoulder and spine, Liras realized there were other things that hurt more.

* * *

        Calli fed the whipperling silently. Furious. Her father had never been gone this long before. The sun had risen on his rumpled, empty sleeping mat. What if he’d fallen? Jumped? The guard would return for tithe soon. Telise Naza was due to collect her wings. They were ready, but there was no way a customer would give marks to a near-child. Calli’s mother was still gone. Calli needed a plan.

        But it wasn’t the customers who arrived first, it was a birdfighter. A man almost too big for the workspace. He blocked the morning light with his wings. Two more men landed behind him.

        Calli stepped in front of the messenger bird she’d been feeding. Untied its foot from its perch while she spoke. “The tower guard,” she said as she knocked the whipperling with a batten to set it fluttering into the sky, “will be here shortly. What do you want?”

        She kept hold of the batten, wishing it was pointier.

        “Delivering a message. Liras is staying with us.” He gestured to the other men. They all looked like him. Brothers, Calli guessed. She’d overheard her father telling her mother that the best—he had said sneakiest—Harut birdfighters were brothers. “He’s... ill. You need to pay a delivery fee to have him carried back.” Dennit Harut. Calli remembered the name now.

        “Where?” she said. “How ill?”

        “We’ll tell you when you pay the fee.”

        The whipperling returned and settled its wings noisily on the perch. Calli shook her head. “No money here. You took it all.”

        Dennit needed to leave before the buyer arrived.

        “We’ll accept your tools this time.” Dennit looked around for a stool to settle on. “I can wait.”

        No. His presence would ruin the few shreds of reputation her father, and her family, had left. Where was the guard? Calli felt very young, very small. But she would not give this man any wingmaking tools. They were her tools too.

        “You can’t be here when we’re settling up with a client. Wingmaker’s tradition.” She was lying through her teeth, but Dennit might not guess. Wingmakers were a secretive bunch.

        “I was thinking of learning your traditions,” Dennit said, smiling. His dark eyes were cold and hard.

        Calli’s voice didn’t shake this time. She would never teach someone like Dennit. “Leave here now and return my father. Then we will settle with you.” She waved the batten at him, trying to look fiercer than she felt. She wished someone would come.

        “If you’re so brave,” Dennit said, “come and get him yourself.” He laughed, and his brothers echoed him. “I’ll make you a wager: You can have him free and clear, if you can carry him home.”

        “And if not?” Calli’s relief that her father was safe faded. Carry him. Home.

        The guard glided past the wingmaker’s worshop. Once. Twice. Dennit rose. “We always need more tools.” He readied his wings. “We’ll wait for you at Bissel. Maybe.”

        Then he left still laughing, his wings catching the sunlight as he dropped from the tier. A gust buoyed him, and sent him on his way.

        The guard nodded to her and kept circling until Dennit and his brothers were out of sight.

        Calli watched them glide the air between the towers. Her shoulders tightened at the thought of so much nothing, but she couldn’t look away.

        When the woman from Naza arrived, Calli told her the truth. “My father is ill, but I can help you.”

        The woman sniffed. “I will return in a few days.” She turned and left the balcony without paying. No money for tithe. None for the birdfighters.

        Calli gave the whipperling a piece of graincake. One of few she had left. The bird had done well, even if Calli had failed. The roaring in her ears grew louder. Just like when she tried to fly.

        “There’s always risk,” she explained to the bird, trying to calm herself. “Everyone needs to do their part. A wingmaker makes wings. A wingmaker flies.” She was the only Viit wingmaker, at least right now.

        Calli wondered at her family. Scattered across three towers, all of them bent, like wing battens, but not broken, not yet.

        She knew the tensile strength of bone better than almost anyone. She knew how much pressure silk could withstand before it ripped. She knew how many hands touched a wing. All the weak points.

        She did not understand how to fix her family any more than she knew how to keep herself aloft in the air without fear.

        Calli laid out the customer’s wings again. The beautiful whipperling pattern. Strong but not strong enough. And not fit to her measurements. She eyed the extra silk from the trader.

        “If you can carry him, you can have him.”

        That was what Dennit had said.

        This was impossible. Beyond the balcony, across the wide expanse of sky, towers shone bone white: sunlit and surrounded by deep blue sky. The balcony was bright and welcoming, but Calli refused to step into the sunlight, to venture closer to the edge. Not yet.

        Calli couldn’t fly, couldn’t carry an adult like her father. If she fell trying, who would catch her? Who would tell her mother, or teach her brother how to shape a wing?

        With the last question, she realized she’d already decided.

        She understood the principals of flight, in theory. In practice? She’d bound herself to her tower and her fear. To Viit. To her father. Today, she could not be afraid.

        She pulled the chip with her father’s design from her pocket and began to strip the client’s wingset. Took apart the panels, broke up her father’s carefully painted whipperlings.

        In order to support them both, Calli needed a very different kind of wing. She began a long row of stitching down the foil edge and shaped a wider curve with the wing. Built it for lift, not speed. She used all of the trader’s silk. She might still fall, but if she could make it away from Bissel with her father, maybe they’d have a chance.

        A clatter on the balcony. The trader, returned. “Liras is still ill,” she called. The trader shook her head and placed a second batch of yellow silk on the balcony.

        “Your adjustments were excellent,” she said, then left Calli alone.

        Calli picked up the silk. Descended a ladder to find some of the bone hunters downtower.

        “We need more battens,” she said when she found them. She tried to sound as much like her father as possible, but when she told them how many battens she needed, they laughed.

        “Why should we help you? How will you pay?” Word had already spread.

        Calli realized she had nothing to lose. “I’ll pay by not telling anyone you tried to slip us dead bone,” she finally said. It was a guess, but to her amazement, they stood. Prepared to do as she asked.

        She returned to the workshop. By the time the bone hunters returned with her battens, she had finished most of the pocket seams. Some of the edging. She worked until it grew too dark to see. Filled bone lanterns with the last of their oil and lit them. Bloodied her fingers with bone needles, used silk thread like she could spin it herself.

        Early the next morning, she woke at the worktable. The light from the balcony drew a sharp shadow on the workshop floor. Her mother stood there, looking at the nearly completed, sunwarm wings. “Those are beautiful. A client will be happy. You are almost as talented as your father. Where is he?”

        Calli smiled sleepily. “Getting more bone.” She hoped this answer would satisfy. It seemed to.

        “One day, you can teach your brother,” she said.

        Calli nodded. “I like teaching him. I’ll make sure he knows the tools. He’ll be a good wingmaker.”

        Her mother smiled sadly. “You could be too.” The unspoken if only hung in the air.

        A small batten snapped in Calli’s grip. “I am trying. You didn’t bring Miran.”

        Her mother bowed her head. “So much like your father.” She looked around the workshop. “You won’t come to Haim now?” She touched Calli’s shoulder. Calli shook her head. “Soon you may not have a choice.”

        Her mother turned and left the way she’d come.

        Calli’s heart pounded as she watched her mother’s wings grow small with the distance. She’d lied again. To protect her father. The wind and her pulse made a goodbye for her mother. Always leaving. Always determined to save everyone her way. But that wasn’t Calli’s way.

        When she was finished, the wings Calli had made would not furl in the traditional way. They dragged behind her on the floor. But the grips were sized perfectly. The wings, carefully seamed. She might make it if she didn’t curl up in fear.

        The guard had described her mother’s failed flight. Her own design. Calli heard the wind in her ears again, softer now. She’d checked each seam, each span. They would need to make two successful flights. There and back.

        She knew the winds, in principle. She knew methods for working upwind, ways to hold a course. What she didn’t know was if she’d freeze again. If she’d lose her chance. To rescue her father. To earn the right to call herself a wingmaker. To fly true.

        Now or never. “Wings straight and full, forward we go.” Calli threw herself from the tier and spread her wings; the sharp sound of her fear lost in the wind, drawing down after her.

        Then the updrafts caught her and lifted. The large wings fought her each time she tried to turn, wallowing in the air. But the wind finally lifted her wings and took her in the right direction, downwind.

        Her father’s design had been true! And Bissel was nearly a straight shot, as long as she didn’t run into anyone. The return home would be upwind, and harder.

        Calli’s heart raced and bubbled sickeningly in her throat, but she breathed and focused on keeping her muscles relaxed. She could not curl up. She had to do this.

        Other fliers stayed out of her way as she wobbled between the towers. A relief. Calli didn’t want to cause a crash as she bounced on the gusts.

        She hoped her mother wouldn’t spot her. She’d be too triumphant. Calli wasn’t doing this for her mother, not anymore. Or even for her father. Plus, she was so scared that fear filled her like a batten in a silk pocket. She didn’t want anyone to see that either.

        Calli let the fear test her. Hoped she was not weak, would not break.

        She passed Densira, then Naza. Saw her neighbors’ tiers up close for the first time. She heard the wind in her ears, buoying her up.

        This is what I am. Batten and spar. Wing and wind.

        She was no longer afraid.

* * *

        Liras heard Dennit curse just before something made a clumsy landing on the balcony at Harut where the birdfighters had him tied.

        “Why are you here?” Dennit’s shock echoed loudly through the tier. “You look like a fledge in its father’s skin.”

        Liras couldn’t see anything behind the rag over his eyes, but Calli’s voice came then, ragged and shaking, loud enough to carry. “This fledge will carry her father home. You made a deal.”

        Calli’s voice. Here. Across the sky. Beyond the tower.

        Liras held his breath to test whether he was hallucinating. Coughed when he could hold it no longer. He wished he could see. He tried to imagine Calli’s hair wind-tossed, her cheeks bright with the cold air. Things he’d never dared hope to see.

        His daughter had flown. To get him.

        On what wings? With whom?

        A rough hand grabbed his elbow and jerked him upright. Jostled his frame and dragged him forward. “Yes, I made you a wager. And you have to carry him home to complete it.”

        Dennit’s voice was tight, his honor on the line. Liras knew Dennit didn’t want to let him go. But Calli stood her ground. Finally, in the waiting silence, Dennit muttered, “Fine.”

        With a push from Dennit, Liras stumbled forward. His daughter’s fingers caught his arm. His fingers brushed her cheek. Wind-cold.

        “Let me fly us both,” he begged.

        “No,” both Calli and Dennit said at the same time. Then, softer, Calli’s voice, “No.”

        Liras held his breath again. Calli was young. She’d spent all her life in his workshop and none of it in the sky. If she made one wrong calculation; one wrong move, they could both fall.

        But if his daughter was ready to take that gamble, Liras had to be as well. His shame had weighed on her; his faults, his doubts. Dennit removed the blindfold, and Calli hooked him into the double flier. Would it hold both of them?

        Liras turned his head to look at his daughter. Sweat- and wind-streaked. Smiling like he’d never seen before. “I did it,” she whispered. “It worked.”

        A familiar pattern of blue and green whipperlings crossed the wingspan between panels of undyed silk.

        She had done it in her own way, on her own time. She’d flown.

        Now he and Calli pushed off the tower’s edge, and together they fell from the balcony.

        And fell and fell. Calli couldn’t compensate for the added weight. She over-trimmed the wings and spilled more air. She couldn’t figure out how to cross the wind. How to turn and fly the back-and-forth pattern that would get them home.

        Liras clutched at the secondary grips, trying to help steer. “We can stop on Naza,” he suggested.

        “I can do it,” Calli said, fighting for calm. He felt the wingset’s edges slowly curve as she worked the cams, the finger controls. The wings filled, and they righted. Flew true.

        Liras forced himself still. He would not be the one to throw his daughter off course. Never again. He would not be the weak point.

        Soon she had the hang of it. When they neared the cloud top, Calli finally found a gust strong enough to allow her to turn.

        “No more birdfighting,” Liras promised. If Calli could fly, they would find more customers. Get more supplies. Change was possible.

        “I believe you,” she said. Karr had never said that.

        The wind picked up enough to lift them both. Slowly, they rose.

        “You take great risks,” he shouted into the rushing air.

        She didn’t answer at first. He felt the entire rig shake with her laughter.

        Her voice carried on the wind. “I’m a wingmaker,” she said. “And I learned from a master.”

Copyright © 2015 Fran Wilde

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Fran Wilde writes science fiction and fantasy. She can also tie a bunch of sailing knots, set gemstones, and program digital minions. Her short fiction has appeared or will appear in venues including Asimov’s, Nature, and on Tor.com. Her interview series Cooking the Books, about the intersection between food and fiction, has appeared at Strange Horizons, Tor.com, and on her blog, franwilde.wordpress.com. Her first novel, Updraft, set in the same world as “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” is out from Tor in September 2015. Find her on Twitter @fran_wilde and Facebook @franwildewrites.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

MOOGH AND THE GREAT TRENCH KRAKEN

by Suzanne Palmer

        And so it was that Moogh, son of Moogh, found himself standing at the very edge of the ocean watching the water churn and tumble without cease upon the beaten sands. Having never seen or heard or dreamt of such a thing, he did not know what it was but assumed it to be an enormous river under sorcerous cast or some other dire and unnatural influence. For one thing, instead of moving in harmony alongside the land, the water was flinging itself upon the bank in frank opposition. For another, the far shore was completely hidden from view, and no river could be that wide without draining the world of its water in very short order.

        He stepped forward into the waves, fully expecting that a simple disruption would dispel the illusion, but it remained, and the sand moved treacherously beneath his feet. He was forced to retreat back to land or risk tumbling in.

        Moogh considered, then set his pack down and drew out the carefully packed kit his sister Oome had sent along. He untied the string that held the leather bundle closed and unrolled it under the burning sun. From its pockets he drew out a small blue stone and the dried flowers of the night herb, and he placed them gently in a small depression he pressed into the dry sand. If Oome had been there, she would have had smart and proper words to say, words she had tried and failed to teach him. In defeat, she had impressed on him the idea that intent was what mattered most anyway, so he knelt beside the tiny offering and bowed his head to the cursed river. “Be free!” he said, and waited with optimistic patience.

        After some hours, he realized that the water had not changed, but did seem to be creeping steadily closer to him in a way he was not at all certain he should take as an encouraging sign. Also, he was getting hungry, his knees were sore from kneeling, and there was sand in places that might not work free until his annual birthday bath.

        The sun had begun its decline from the sky, and the water still showed no signs of becoming less of an obstacle. He decided, with regret, that he would have to temporarily abandon his trek due west and instead walk alongside the water for a bit until either he outlasted or outpaced whatever curse made it seem to go on forever. He declared its true name to be the Tricksy River, and decided if he ever found the trickster responsible for it he might justifiably commit some minor violence upon their person, probably involving a stout stick and no small amount of invective.

        By nightfall, the Tricksy River had still not given up its trick, so Moogh built a small campfire from gathered deadwood, roasted some scuttling things he caught near the water’s edge, and resolved to think of something clever to defeat the river if it had not exhausted itself back to normality by daylight.

        He sat wearily upon the sand, slipping off his boots before laying his sword Grawk beside him. Using his pack as a pillow, he stared up at the sky and furrowed his brow the same way he’d observed in others as they tried to conjure serious thoughts. And so he fell soundly asleep.

        Morning brought him awake with the raucous call of birds wheeling overhead. The pile of shell-shards he’d discarded from his night’s dinner had been picked through and largely scattered. He sat up, stretched, checked his sword and his pack and the dead embers of his campfire, then stood to survey his surroundings.

        The Tricksy River remained as it was, still adamantly endless along the edge of the sky. The sand stretched away along it, curving in and out in gentle arcs and bows, broken only by a profusion of boulders marching down into the waves from the shore in a scattered line, not far ahead in the direction he’d been walking. On one of these boulders, a woman with shining blue hair was perched. She was watching him. She was also, he was further surprised to note, lacking in any and all apparent clothing.

        It had been some time since he’d encountered any other people on his journey, especially on the long, lonely walk across the Hurtlands that had brought him here. Half of him was glad for the potential of brief company; however, the second half was unsettled by the obvious strangeness at hand. A third half was deeply peeved at not having even modest cover behind which to take a desperately wanted, first-of-the-morning piss.

        There was, he figured, no dishonor in subterfuge in such a needful cause. So he threw his hands up, as if in great surprise and alarm, and shouted, “By the Fire and the Hammer that first forged the Moons, what is THAT BIG SCARY THING BEHIND YOU?!”

        When she turned to look behind her, he spun around and dropped his pants, emptying his bladder as quickly as he was able. To his regret, it was not quite fast enough, and when he’d tied back together his pantlaces and turned to face the lady, she had her hand to her forehead in a too-familiar gesture of disappointment.

        There was nothing for it but to pretend as if nothing had happened, and perhaps even as if she was not there at all. So he shouldered his pack more squarely, rolled his shoulders a couple of times, and continued his trek along the shore, trying not to meet her eyes, or in fact notice her at all.

        Indeed, so diligent were his efforts to keep his focus on the distant horizon that he tripped over a rock and fell, earning himself a mouth full of salty, wet sand. This only furthered his resolve to believe himself alone, with no one at all to witness his clumsiness.

        Soon he reached the line of rocks and began to clamber up and over, doing his best to remain oblivious to all but the shore stretching away ahead of him. “Man,” the woman said, startling him. He pretended he had not heard, but she leaned over from her rocky seat and stuck her face right in front of his. “Man!” she said again.

        There was, of course, no polite way now to continue ignoring her. He stopped and again feigned surprise, as if he had not earlier seen her or ever spoken to her. “My lady!” he said. “Take care, this place is cursed!”

        She peered at him, as if he was a puzzling thing. “Man,” she said, and held out her slender hand. In it, among the sodden remains of flowers, was the blue stone he had left a half-day behind him. He could not help but be aware that she too was wet, from her seaweed-laced hair down along her iridescent body, which was fine indeed and not something he should be gazing quite so rapturously upon as he feared he was. He lowered his eyes, and he noticed that her feet were oddly flat, her toes long and thin and connected by a fine webbed membrane.

        “Did you leave these for me?” she asked.

        That was a difficult question. Had he? “I left them to appease the anger of the river spirits.”

        “...river?” the water woman asked. “Man, look at me!”

        She said it with such command that he raised his face to meet her eyes, which were as black as the bottom of nightmares. “My lady?”

        “This is the sea,” she said, and it was clear this was a point of some importance to her.

        “See what?” he asked.

        “The sea,” she repeated, and then spelled it out for him, which would have been more useful had he been schooled in letters, which he was not. “Not a mere, mortal river. This is the Sea of Tears, and were it not for your curious pebble, I would have sung you sweetly to your death in it already.”

        “Hurmmm,” he said, thinking very hard about this. “Then yes, I definitely left it for you.”

        “Did you come here, for that purpose?”

        “No. I am on a quest, but I do not know how to cross. The water may be deep.”

        “It is deep. Would you like to see what lies at the bottom?” she asked. Her eyes did not leave his, but there was a hint of a cold smile upon her ice-blue lips.

        She began to hum, awaiting his reply.

        Words failed him. The haunting notes, barely beginning to rise, were like water surging around him. The melody pulled at him, threatening to topple him off his feet and pull him down, as irresistible as fate itself. It was the warmth of Grawk, seeping through its scabbard across his shoulder, that brought him back to his sense of self.

        “The bottom?” he asked, mightily confused. “Would you turn the river upside down, just so that I may see lost shoes and dead fish parts?”

        She broke off her lovely tune and blinked at him in some surprise. “Do you talk to people much?” she asked, at last.

        “None so lovely,” he said, and then considered that he should be careful in his answers. It would be most unkind of him to let this strange maiden be swept away by affection. Surely that was the warning Grawk meant to give him?

        “I fear the sun has shone a bit too hard on you,” she said.

        “No, I have a hat,” he replied, and drew out the red cloth his youngest sister Maon had hand-dyed for him as a gift of luck on his journey. He laid it across his hands proudly, to show her.

        “May I?” she asked, and before he could answer she reached out and plucked it from his hands. She must have noted the immediate anxiousness on his face, because she leapt nimbly down from her rock and held it out to him. “Apologies, Man. I did not realize it was dear to you, to take it so casually.”

        He reached out to take it back, and she firmly wrapped her fingers around his hand. Her touch was a pebble tossed in the calm lake of his soul, sending ripples through him, and he stared at her uncomprehendingly as she opened her lips and began to sing again, of storms and lost ships and dead men tangled in the weeds, their unseeing faces turned up towards the distant light. And all of it was, inexplicably, beautiful to him in that moment, his hand in her hand.

        “Come with me,” she said, and he truly had no choice—nor wanted for one—as he dropped his pack and his beloved sword without thought on the beach and let her pull him into the cursed surf and down.

        They walked until the water closed over them, and he found his head suddenly entrapped in a large bubble. When the sand dropped sharply away, she led him, swimming, and he saw that her feet moved together with practiced and powerful ease, seeming almost to have become one. He could still hear her singing, amplified and accompanied by the water around them, and could not think beyond how good his fortune was, to have found someone who knew the trick of the Tricksy River after all.

        He kept expecting to reach a far shore, or at least the beginnings of its slope, but the water only grew deeper and darker, drawing ever tighter around him. The mysterious lady continued to lead him downward with her song, so full of comfort and confidence he could not help but be entirely trusting of her care.

        “Surely, now you see,” she said, her voice clear inside his bubble. His feet dragged along the bottom, stirring up small forlorn clouds of sand that settled quickly.

        “See what?” he asked.

        “Look up, Man,” she said.

        “Moogh,” he said. “I am Moogh, son of Moogh.”

        “Then look up, Moogh!”

        And so Moogh did. The water was like the twilight sky, stretching up and up through the dimness to where flickers of light penetrated. A multitude of fish dodged and darted in flashing clouds, like birds wheeling overhead, and ominous sharp-shadowed things slid along the floor around them in lazy circles beyond the reach of the lady’s voice. It was more water than ever should be in one place, something so vast he scarcely could find the words. She waited patiently for him to speak, to utter something profound in this moment. “Oh,” he said. “This is a very large river indeed.”

        “It’s the sea,” she said, gesturing around them. “The sea.”

        “As you say, so it must be,” he conceded. He hoped she would start to sing again, because he was beginning to feel cold and hungry, and only just realizing the foolishness of having left his sword behind on the beach.

        “Are you just saying that to be polite?”

        “Um. Yes?”

        “Right. Where are you from?” she asked.

        “The Village of Fah, in the Hills of Bairudoon.”

        “Is that not in the Barbarian Lands?” she asked.

        “It is!”

        “You are very polite for a barbarian,” she noted.

        “It is the duty of every man to embrace his nature but also live in harmony with the nature of others.”

        Her thin blue eyebrows shot up. “That is surprisingly wise.”

        “So I am assured, as our village Wise Man beat us with a stout stick until we could recite it back to him without error. I have not yet entirely learned what he meant by it.”

        “I believe some small wisdom will come to you sooner than you think, and be a disappointment,” she said. She began to hum again, a tune that instantly reassured him that all was still well.

        “Seesa!” someone called.

        The water woman turned. Two more blue-haired people—a man and a woman—swam towards them in the dusky light of the deep. “You have brought a Man!” the new woman said.

        “And he’s still aware?” the water man asked. He was fit and muscular despite his pearl-white skin, although not as large or fit or as muscular as Moogh himself was.

        “I was just about to deal with that,” his water woman said, clearly peeved. “Moogh, come closer. I—”

        “You know his name, Seesa?” the man asked. “Were you thinking to make a pet of him?”

        The other water woman nodded her head. “He is quite handsome, even for a land-dweller. I can see why you might want to keep him a bit.”

        “Aaf! I don’t—” Seesa began to object. Even in the dim light, the pink blush was unmistakable across her pale cheeks. Her words were lost, though, beneath the low, sonorous bellow of a horn that rang through the water around them. Moogh was certain it did not portend well, and the dire sound seemed to penetrate and dispel some of the happy malaise that had enveloped him since the shore.

        “And that,” the water man said, “is the end of this nonsense. Sing him out quickly, so that we can drag him to the edge of the Great Trench. The kraken wakes.”

        Seesa extended her hand towards his bubble of air. Moogh managed to muster enough willpower to push himself back from her. “Um...” he said. “Before you do that, what’s a kraken?”

        “It is an ancient and terrible monster,” the other water woman, Aaf, said. “It sleeps in the deepest trenches of the sea, warmed by the fires of the earth, and stirs itself only to come up and feed. If we cannot find someone else to give it, it takes its victim from among our people.”

        “It is our good fortune that Seesa found you, though not your own,” the water man said. “We will take your worries away from you, until your final moments. Your death will be quick and certain, and you will not suffer long. Understand, we are not a cruel people, merely desperately needful.”

        Seesa began to sing again, and he recognized it as his own death-song, for surely that was what they meant for him? “Wait,” he said, barely able to resist the calm that threatened to drown him again, “why don’t you fight this monster?”

        “Fight the kraken?” the water man asked. “It cannot be fought. It is deaf to our voices and compels such abject terror that all who see it are paralyzed and blinded with fear, their very souls crushed in an icy grip. We are utterly helpless before it. We can no more fight it than run from it, once it has set itself upon us.”

        “Still,” Moogh said, “if my fate is to be eaten by this monster, I choose to face it and fight.”

        “You really don’t want to,” Seesa said.

        “I do.”

        “What will you fight it with? Fists and teeth?”

        “I had a good sword, until you bid me leave it on the beach.”

        “Oooh, he has spirit, too,” Aaf said.

        Seesa let out an audible breath. “You can’t have him, but you have a point. Laan, fetch him your trident and be quick about it.”

        The water man made a shocked face. “No! How would I retrieve it, after he dies? The Great Trench is too deep! Aaf can give him hers.”

        “I don’t have one!” Aaf said.

        “Fine!” Seesa said. She put her hands together and closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she outstretched her hands and a gleaming silver trident flew through the water to her, long and sturdy, ending in three wickedly sharp tines. She caught it with ease, swung it around, and then held it out to Moogh.

        The sonorous horn sounded again, two long blasts, and the water folk all jumped at the sound. “Two notes,” Laan said. “The kraken is rising from the Great Trench. The Man must go now.”

        “Where is this trench?” Moogh asked.

        “That way,” Laan said, and pointed. “You really can’t miss it. Nor it you.”

        Seesa put her hands out and Moogh’s bubble of air grew larger again, the air inside refreshed. “That should keep you for a little while,” she said. “Longer than that... well, I doubt air will be your biggest concern. Good luck to you, Moogh, son of Moogh, of the Village of Fah, and may you fight well and suffer little. Now go.”

        He turned his back on them and began to march as best he could across the ocean floor, using his arms to help propel himself through the water. At first he wished he had the familiar heft of Grawk in his hands instead of the trident, and felt some justified irritation at how he had been compelled by supernatural means to abandon it, but as he twirled and thrust with the lightweight trident, it became clear that the sharp fork was a weapon well-suited to the depths. It had a cone-shaped guard on its haft that he had at first mistaken for useless frippery but now perceived that, in a direct lunge, it allowed for a smoother and faster motion through the waters. Any sort of slashing motion of his arm, such as Grawk was best intended for, was painfully slow.

        So, then: stabbing it was.

        The sand beneath his feet began to slope down again, gently at first, then more sharply. Then, suddenly, it disappeared, and he was left at the edge of an inky blackness that defied all attempts to peer into, and so thereby comprehend, its depths. What Moogh could tell was that there was a rush of bone-chill water swelling up from below, as if fleeing the path of something larger than his imagination could encompass.

        Moogh shifted his footing back from the edge and tightened his grip on the trident.

        It came out of the trench first as a wave of tentacles, swarming up and over the edge like snakes that grew and grew in size until they were as big around as Moogh himself and then bigger still. He stood his ground as they flowed past him and became so thick on the ground he was nearly lost among them.

        Already he could feel the giant mind, bearing up on him, its thoughts reaching out around it like a nightmare on the verge of stepping into the daylight. Never before had he encountered such magicks, that the very mind of a predator should be unleashed upon him, but he understood now what Laan had meant when he said the water folk were paralyzed and helpless before it. The kraken’s fell thoughts swirled around him, as if it was tasting the mettle of his soul upon the currents. Behind him in the distance he could hear the tiny mental echoes of the water folk—men, women, children—overcome wherever they hid, their fear feeding and drawing the kraken towards them.

        He could see, as well, the advantage that Seesa and Laan had tried to press upon him, that of being blissfully unaware of approaching doom until it was so strong and so near as to overcome the charms placed on him. In that moment his confusion and terror would have become a sudden beacon to it. But he was not charmed and could full feel its approach, and as well feel his own self dwindling under its awful fire.

        And so, when a single great eye appeared before him, unblinking and ancient and awesome, he kicked off from the edge of the cliff and dove at it, trident held like a spear before him. The kraken reared up and back, but it was too late, and he plunged the silver trident deep into the center of its eye.

        The scream—half sound, half thought—ripped him from the kraken’s head and flung him, stunned, towards the trench. Tentacles writhed around him in every direction. It was only as one slammed him against the trench wall that he realized that the terrible pressure in his mind had vanished with that one agonizing blast. He tried to swim up from the trench as another tentacle flailed into the wall, knocking rocks loose just below him. On inspiration, he grabbed for the tentacle as it passed, sinking his fingers as tightly as he could into the bluish, slimy flesh.

        The tentacle reared up, back out of the trench. The kraken was thrashing, trying to find and crush whatever had blinded it. The silver trident still protruded from its eye, encrusted now in a seeping green ichor.

        Moogh wrapped his legs around the tentacle and began to shimmy down it towards the kraken’s body, trying to stay clear of the thick line of pulsating suckers. Even in its distress it sensed the danger. Other tentacles whacked at him as the one he rode tried to batter him against the rocks. He twisted and turned along it, avoiding the worst of the blows and moving ever closer. At last, bruised and exhausted, he was near enough to grab the haft of the trident, tearing it free in an explosion of dark, viscous fluids.

        He hit the sand at the edge of the trench and managed to scrabble his way up onto it without losing the trident. Pushing himself up, he tried to crawl far enough away from the kraken to look for another opening. If he had Grawk in his fist, he might have patiently hacked away the tentacles one by one, but he did not; further, his bubble of air was growing small and stale, and he did not doubt that if his next blow did not kill the kraken, he would not get another.

        The only remaining kill point he could see was the creature’s great maw. It swung its blind head side to side, the mandibles on its mouth opening and closing in fury as its tentacles sought out its attacker on the sloping sands.

        His only regret was not having been able to fulfill the quest that had drawn him to leave his village and the hills of home.

        Bracing against a rock, he drew in what little air his bubble had left and sprang forward towards the enormous crushing jaws. As he flew into its mouth he heard behind him the horn of the water people, blowing madly in the distance. It was cut off by the jaws slamming closed behind him, trapping him in the pitch dark. Something giant and squishy slammed into him, trying to propel him towards the back of the kraken’s throat, and it was all he could do to slide around it to one side. He jumped on top of it and, as it thrust him backwards, used the kraken’s own force to jam the trident up to its guard through the soft roof of its mouth and tissue beyond, into the creature’s brain.

        The reaction was immediate and unequivocal; Moogh was vomited back out of the kraken’s mouth with so much force that the trident was torn from his grasp, and he was nearly crushed by the awful velocity of his exit. He was already short of breath, growing dizzy within his depleted bubble of air, as, lost within the sticky mass of ejecta and blood, he was flung across the sea floor to an ignominious and painful landing in the sand.

        In his last moments of consciousness, he considered that he had killed the kraken, even without Grawk at his side, and that it was not at all a bad legacy to leave behind, if not the one he had sought. He raised his fist through the vile muck in a final gesture of triumph and defiance.

        Someone grabbed his hand and pulled.

        Seesa and Laan were there. Hundreds of other water folk swarmed around them, making short work of the twitching corpse of the kraken as its body slowly slid back down the trench walls to the final depths. Seesa’s hand flew out towards his face, and in an instant his air bubble was renewed. “We came as soon as the kraken’s spell broke and released us,” she said.

        “I fear I have lost your trident, my Lady,” Moogh said.

        “You gave me a beautiful blue stone,” she said, “and saved my people from a centuries-old torment and death. I suppose we could consider us even.”

        Laan swam forward. “It is to my shame that I did not lend you my trident, when asked. Please, I give it to you now, that it may serve you well.” He held out his own silver trident, and Moogh took it and bowed his head as best he could. It was a fine trident, the equal of Seesa’s, and although he did not foresee future occasions where a giant water fork might come in useful, it was no small gesture for a man to gift his weapon to another.

        “You honor me,” he said.

        “Please, though, if you will—I don’t understand,” Laan continued. “I mean, how did you overcome such terrible, unnatural dread, and not be held fast and helpless by its grasping mind? Surely it was not that you out-thought it?!”

        “As strong as the kraken was, it could not overcome our natures.”

        “Your natures?”

        “I am a Barbarian of the Village of Fah, and my nature is to fight instead of to fear,” Moogh said. “It was a monster, and as such, its nature is to be defeated. For that is how it happens, in all the good stories told around the fire, so it must be so.”

        “What if only the good stories are told because no one lived to tell the bad ones?” Seesa asked.

        “Then I do not know.” Moogh said. He frowned.

        “Do not think too hard upon it,” Seesa said. “You defeated the monster. It will make a good story to tell, and many will tell it, longer than either of us should be lucky to live. The far shore is beyond our reach and knowledge, but we can take you to the Middle Islands, where other Men of land live. They have boats. Perhaps they can take you where you wish to go.”

        “Alas! Even for that, I would not willingly abandon my sword. It has been in my family for many generations, and is bound to my quest.”

        “Then we will take you back to it, and wish you luck on your journeys,” she said. “There are other villages of Man on this shore, though they are some days’ walk away, and I warn you they may regard you with suspicion for carrying a weapon of the water folk. Is there anything else we can provide you for your journey, in gratitude?”

        “Perhaps,” Moogh said. “The truth is, I may have to take my yearly bath sooner than planned. Do you suppose there is a part of this river calm and shallow enough that I might clean myself?”

        “It’s the sea,” she said, then threw up her hands in defeat. “Never mind. Follow me.”

        And she led him out of the deep and back to the beach, and best yet, to a small spring of fresh water that he might cleanse himself in. Grawk was where he had dropped it, and they were happy to see each other again, and when he had finished rinsing out all his clothing and hanging it carefully on the tines of the trident to dry beside the campfire, he told Grawk the story of his adventure under the water.

        In the night, half lost in dream, he was sure he heard someone out among the waves, singing it back to him.

Copyright © 2015 Suzanne Palmer

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Suzanne Palmer is a senior Linux system administrator who lives and works in the beautiful hills of western Massachusetts, where she has too few writer and gamer friends but plenty of moose and bugs. She is a graduate and former staff member of the Viable Paradise writers workshop and was a finalist for the 2015 Sturgeon Memorial award.

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AUTHOR INTERVIEW: FRAN WILDE

In a special author interview with BCS, Fran Wilde discusses her new story in BCS #183, “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” (also podcast BCS 157), her previous BCS story “The Topaz Marquise” (also podcast BCS 131), and her brand new novel Updraft, set in the same world as “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” which released from Tor Books two days ago; writing epic fantasy at short fiction and novel lengths, the qualities of secondary-world settings, and more.

(See this giveaway post to enter to win a free copy of Updraft!)

BCS: Some people say that epic fantasy can’t be done at the short fiction length, but you’ve written epic fantasy short stories, like “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” and your previous BCS story “The Topaz Marquise,” and you’ve written epic fantasy novels, like your new novel Updraft, set in the same high-altitude world as “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud.” What similarities do you see between writing epic fantasy in those two formats of very different length? What differences?

Fran Wilde: Whoops. No one told me that! [kidding] Hmm.

        In all seriousness, I think short stories taking place within a larger, epic world are not only entirely possible, they’re important to think about and play with when writing the longer work. Deciding whether a story is big or small is sometimes a matter of scope—for me, a problem arc that characters can work through in a matter of days can be a short story, a novelette, or a novella (it can also be a novel, don’t get me wrong); a problem that takes longer to solve and more people to solve it is often a novel.

        I don’t think the world beyond a novel’s main focus should cease its workings just because it’s not the focus. Many stories gain some ground in my notebooks as I develop the bigger story for that reason. Some of those, I incorporate; some inform deeper layers of the story; some become short stories on their own.

        So, now I’m curious. What do you think about the differences, Scott?

BCS: Hey, now you’re interviewing me! :)

Wilde: HEE. YES I AM… come in, the water’s fine…

BCS: That’s a question I love talking about, and have been on several convention panels about. I really like your defining of it by the scope of the problem the characters are facing. Frodo could not have walked all the way to Mordor in a short story, but he could have climbed Mount Doom in a short story. Both of those would feature the same root problem for him as a character—gotta throw The Ring into the fire—but you can feel how doing it in either of those length formats would give a very different reading experience.

        I also define it, especially given the current fashion in epic fantasy novels for having lots of major point-of-view characters, by the scope of how many recurring point-of-view characters the work has. If a work has more than one or two, I think it may have trouble being condensed into a short story or novelette. Of course, “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud” has two recurring point-of-view characters, which is unusual for a BCS story, but its problem arc does feel like one that the characters can work through in a matter of days. Both the point-of-view characters are arguably working through the same problem arc, just different facets of it. Then at the end, they— Oops; no spoilers! :)

        Another facet of epic fantasy that is different in short fiction vs. novels is establishing the world-building of the fantasy world is. In novels, you have more room to show details of the world and societies and the backstory of how they became that way. In short stories, you have to keep the focus tight and the pace moving. What challenges did you face writing “Bent the Wing,” in showing this rich fantasy world at the short fiction length, the same world you have also shown in greater detail at the novel length in Updraft?

Wilde: That’s a hard one for all of my short stories. I love detail and I get wrapped up in it. I could only hint at a few world details in “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” that are much more front-and-center in Updraft. It helps that “Bent the Wing” is set earlier than Updraft, though.

BCS: There must be a few details of the world that you would have loved to slip into “Bent the Wing” if it’d had the extra room of a longer piece. Tell us a couple!

Wilde: I did hint at a fear of the clouds and the unseen, but didn’t specify why. As well, at least one important character from Updraft makes an unnamed cameo in “Bent the Wing.” Similarly, in Updraft, Liras Viit is a relatively minor character, for now (and he’s much changed), and Calli Viit as well.

BCS: “Bent the Wing” features two point-of-view characters in the story, alternating between them in different scenes, which is a narrative technique often done in fantasy novels but usually avoided in short stories. What challenges did you face in using that narrative format in a short story?

Wilde: Not a challenge at all! More like a pleasure. Two point-of-view characters let me explore the issues from different perspectives and ages. Both characters have flaws and regrets, and both characters are important to the other. I wanted to hear what each had to say. Making sure each voice and the scene’s perceptions were appropriate to the characters was important.

BCS: Both “Bent the Wing” and your previous BCS story “The Topaz Marquise” feature a strong setting element of a handcrafting vocation. In “The Topaz Marquise,” it’s the jewelry crafting of gemstones and settings. In “Bent the Wing,” it’s the building of the bone-sparred wings that the characters use to fly themselves across their world, which feels not just a craft but also a societal custom or institution. Is there a reason why an element of craftsmanship features so prominently in your fantasy worlds?

Wilde: I make things, so it’s not a surprise that my characters often do too. I was a jeweler’s assistant in college, primarily for access to the oxygen-acetylene torch. I sail, which requires an understanding of how to put a boat back together if it comes undone—and a boat is a foil/aerofoil, similar to, albeit much less complicated than the wings in the story.

        I like knowing how things work—and I think that hands-on approach to work in a world I’m building helps me understand the world better.

BCS: Both the vocations in those stories feel deeply connected to the protagonist characters; do you view a character’s vocation or craft as a key part of who they are?

Wilde: I think that depends on whether they love what they’re doing or not. Work often feels like it becomes who you are whether you want it to or not, but when you step out of that work (or run from it), you realize it was an illusion… For characters who truly love their craft, or their vocation, I think there’s no stepping out of that role. Who they are is intrinsically tied to what they do, and their actions and work speak louder about who they are than their words do. For other characters, I think they choose their work in order to gain something for themselves—and that’s a different aspect of character.

BCS: You also write Cooking the Books, a popular blog about F/SF authors and food. What do you think about food and cuisine as elements of a fantasy world?

Wilde: I don’t write Cooking the Books as much as herd it along—the authors and editors (BCS) who visit are the ones who make it go.

        I do think food and cuisine are very important elements of a fantasy world—or a science fiction world, or any world really. What a character eats, and how, can tell you many things quickly about economics, environment, and society.

BCS: Is there an example of an interesting food in the world of “Bent the Wing” and Updraft that for you says a lot about the world itself and the characters who live there?

Wilde: Food in “Bent the Wing” and Updraft is edge food—it’s scarce and hard-won, though most characters have no experience of plenty to compare their situation to. Much of what they eat has to be caught in the air or grown on the towers. It’s high-altitude food, which limits things as well. And much of it is winged. There are superstitions around how to eat the wings of various birds. No one eats the spiders, though, because bleah. :)

BCS: You love lush epic fantasy worlds and short fiction. What are some of your favorite authors and short stories of epic fantasy at the short fiction length?

Wilde: Oh hrmph. Just epic fantasy? Ok. Recently, I’ve loved N.K. Jemisin (“Stone Hunger,” in Clarkesworld), Siobhan Carroll (“The Year of Silent Birds“ in BCS), E. Catherine Tobler’s Circus stories in BCS, Margaret Ronald’s “A Family For Drakes,” Saladin Ahmed’s short stories (collected in Engraved Upon the Eye), anything by Yoon Ha Lee, Aliette de Bodard’s “The Breath of War.” I really like M. Bennardo’s stories as well, and... And—OK you see? I can keep going for as long as you let me.

BCS: The novel Updraft is your current project in the high-altitude world of “Bent the Wing.” What are your future plans in that world? Both novels and short fiction?

Wilde: Cloudbound is the next novel in that world, out next year from Tor, and I’m working on the novel after that, with the catchy moniker of [title to come]. And yes, more short stories as well.

BCS: Do you also have further plans for the gemstone world of “The Topaz Marquise”?

Wilde: I do! There are more short stories to come from the Jeweled Valley, both short and long. Tor.com will be publishing the novella “The Jewel and Her Lapidary” in spring/summer 2016. That’s a secret history story and if you look close, you’ll see the topaz of “The Topaz Marquise” hidden in the weave. I’m working on several others, and it’s important to find the right settings for each of them—which takes time.

        Thanks so much for having me to visit, Scott!

BCS: Thank you for talking with us!

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COVER ART

“Kodran Migrant Fleet,” by Tyler Edlin

Tyler Edlin is a freelance illustrator and concept artist for the entertainment industry, creating epic fantasy and science fiction worlds. He gives back to the community providing regular classes and tutorials on such popular subjects as the fundamentals of character and environment design. View more of his work online at tyleredlinart.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2015 Firkin Press

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