The wind howled over those plains like something dying, whipped against the raft and the dusty hanging hair of the travelling woman and the dry brown scorngrass-wreathed barrel-body of her guide and sent the twisting vines and crawling grey ivy and dried leaves carpeting the ground rustling. The trees were rigid, stony, unmoving, things between plant and gravestone. They drew the travelling woman’s eye and she did not know why. Doves rested on them, silent and thoughtful, and flitted away as the raft approached, and lizards with thin flat heads and slick bodies shimmied away into the litter. The raft was an old and tired creature, and its body creaked in the breeze and its great wood legs, veined up and down with roots hardened and scratched and shell-like from age and effort, thumped and smacked against the ragged earth. Its water-mouth sloshed and gulped, and the guide, more from boredom than necessity, reached, with a milky-white appendage – something between a tendril and plated armour – for a thin stone jug in one of the racks to the side of the raft, filled the mouth, replaced the jug, their other tendrils tight on the control lines.
‘Lots of dead stuff here, maam,’ said the guide, in that low, watery voice the candle-eaters spoke with. They were a southern candle-eater, the travelling woman had gathered, their thick and tall egg-shaped body draped in one of those long sheets of intertwining scorngrass from top to bottom that was classic to the candle-eaters that lived in the plains, revealing only the multitudinous appendages at the bottom. They were thin, youthful – moreso than most candle-eaters, only born a few years ago, maybe. Their wax was still smooth, soft-looking.
‘Nothing but dead things, here, maam, nothing at all.’
The guide was not alone, because the candle-eaters feared loneliness like death and this candle-eater youth probably feared it most of all: from the back of the raft floated the gentle watery snores of an elderly candle-eater, two eerily humanoid arms jutting out of their mass of tendrils, tendrils and body cracked and dusty and old, scorngrass sheet torn at the edges, lazily leaning against the railings of the raft and stoically wobbling at every bump.
The travelling woman, who had been gazing around and hadn’t spotted a single dead thing, turned to the guide. ‘Buried?’
‘No, maam, all over the place, all over.’ The guide did give it a bit of thought, rubbing a tendril against their body, and added: ‘I’m sure there’s at least one buried, though, maam. I haven’t paid too much attention to that, though, maam, if I’ll be honest.’
The travelling woman gazed over the trees, squinting. The trees were tall and thick and strangely segmented, strangely standing, the midday sunlight playing over them and their rough bumpy skin, and she could not help but look over them, try and figure them out. They were so grave, stoic – standing there, rigid as rock, not even shaking as the wind screeched and whipped, the leaves and vines dancing and swinging on them, yet still, sitting utterly still.
‘What are those trees?’ the travelling woman finally found it in herself to ask.
‘The dead things, maam,’ explained the guide, nodding with their whole body. ‘Can you see their beaks, maam?’
Beaks, thought the travelling woman, turning and gazing over the trees, ragged eyebrows rising. Beaks, thought the travelling woman. The bones, stony and grey, of huge dead birds, standing on long thin legs and great necks stretching into the air and gazing into the sky, beaks leant back and turning upwards, all swaddled in vines and leaves and the claws of doves or sudden rushing hands of fleeing lizards. And they stretched off, into the distance, vanishing all the way down into that blue wide sky, a great sea of dead birds, a graveyard forest.
‘The Giants,’ the travelling woman swore.
‘Never heard of this place, maam?’ asked the guide, uninterested in their surroundings as any regular traveller eventually grows to be.
‘I thought they were just being – poetic.’
The guide barked a watery chuckle. ‘No poets down here, maam. We aren’t the artistic sorts. Just a bunch of nomads and gravekeepers, we are. But, then, who isn’t?’
‘Who isn’t,’ agreed the travelling woman, as they travelled through that great field of straight-standing corpses.
‘I hear – from my an’ster, who heard it from their an’ster who heard it from their an’ster, and, uh, back way back – they came here to die, when they got old. This is where the Giants made them.’ A tendril extended and gesticulated at the birds as the raft stomped by. ‘They’re all looking up, cos they’re trying to find the Giants. “Giantsfinder Birds,” is what they called them.’
The travelling woman looked up, with them, and so did the guide, and so did the elderly candle-eater (but only because they happened to be sleeping like that), and the only thing any of them saw was a wide blue sky stretching endlessly and ominously into the distance where it was eaten away by far-off mountainous dark clouds. And there were stars, behind them, and empty blackness. And the Giants were nowhere to be seen.
The lonely stars glared above in the inky blackness and the pilgrim whistled at them. The pilgrim whistled at the fire, at its orange shuddering glow, at the strange shadows it made dance off the dusty pebbles and dry jutting blades of grass, at its crackling and quiet smoking. He whistled at the dented and stained pot suspended over the fire, and its bubbles and sudden spitting and popping, its warm smell of bognut and cashew and home. He whistled to keep the King of Empty Places away, as all lone travellers like him did, for whom loneliness came like the oppressive stomping of hollow metal boots or like a hard breeze or the glaring of stars on your back so heavy it feels like stone slabs. The insects whistled back at him, clicked from the shadows in the rustling scorngrass, buzzed from the wobbling leaves of the twisting tree above him, or hovered by the fire, tiny dancing motes of light, briefly visible then vanishing once more into darkness. But the loneliness was there, for the pilgrim, and the lonely stars glared down and pressed on him as heavy as stone slabs and he kept whistling, kept watching the pot.
The pilgrim felt the wind on him and he knew immediately that he was not alone. It was thick with thoughts; they echoed and whispered and his studied mind gazed at them, ran them over, felt them. They were old thoughts. He could hear the centuries. He looked up and saw the figure in the distance, outlined against the stars, trundling heavily beneath a huge bag hanging with pouches and long thin jutting objects and jangling metal things. The mutters arrived, again, with the wind, and the pilgrim was struck by the breadth, the depth of them. They flew, thick and flowing like dandruff from a scalp, and the pilgrim was certain that this figure had thought of everything at least once.
The figure trudged into the light, bag tinkling, and the pilgrim felt like he was watching an ancient carving come to life and step out of the wall towards him. The graver walked on legs made of twisted stone, running up to a torso and arms and head made of the same, looking more like he had been dug out of a cliff face rather than sculpted. He towered above, and the bag bulged awkwardly off his spindly figure. The breeze whistled through the dark holes that were the graver’s eyes and mouth, flapped the graver’s raggedy, dust-stained cloak. The pilgrim knew all about the gravers, and so did everyone else, offhandedly out of youth, assumed knowledge, from old stories or cited as sources for this or for that. But they were old things, far away, as far away as home, itself, and the pilgrim was so stunned by coming face to them that he could not help but gasping, just a little.
‘Hello…’ spoke the graver in a voice dusty with years. The graver spoke from a carved mouth on the side of his mouth-hole, because the gravers were created before voices were invented.
The pilgrim nodded awkwardly. ‘Hello.’
‘You are a… mutter-librarian, aren’t you?’ asked the graver. He bent down, began crouching and then – the pilgrim gasped just a little, again – sat, by the fire. ‘Listening to… the breeze, catching the mutters?’
‘I’m a mutter-librarian pilgrim,’ said the pilgrim, looking into the fire, not at the graver.
‘Such an old… institution,’ pondered the graver. ‘Always good, I say… always good to see the youth… involved in such things.’ The graver began chuckling, when he said ‘youth’. He chuckled to himself, chuckled and chuckled at his own joke, and it sounded like a cavern collapsing. The joke was that everyone was youthful, to the gravers, even the wind.
‘Catch anything… interesting, off me?’
‘No. Uh, no. Um. No,’ sputtered the pilgrim, who was wondering if he was meant to kneel or perform some sort of bow, by now.
The graver chuckled his cavern-chuckle again. ‘I never was very… adventurous, no.’
The pilgrim watched his soup bubble and grumble, and he knew that it would be done soon. He did not dare touch or even look at the ladle, for fear of offending the graver. So he watched it bubble and grumble, and the insects chirped far away and the stars glared and the graver relaxed, leaned back and released his bag off his back, thumping and tinkling to the ground.
‘Lovely smelling… stew, friend,’ said the graver, at which point the pilgrim immediately recalled his etiquette. He nearly stumbled, somehow, though he was sitting on the ground. He began opening his pack, for a second bowl.
‘It will nearly be ready. Take some.’ He caught himself. ‘If you please.’
‘But how… I would love to!’ exclaimed the graver, taking the bowl in a hand worn and twisted and dusted with years. The air was thick with mutters. Insects chirped.
‘Graver,’ said the pilgrim.
‘Graver! Yes… yes, graver,’ replied the graver, nodding. ‘That is… what we are called, now… did you know that they used to call us “Flutefolk”?’
The pilgrim did not know that.
‘I was never a… graver, myself. Morbid business… only Flutefolk – oho! – Gravers, now, I suppose, ever did it.’ the graver sat back and he smiled faintly. ‘But how old we are… and all we are known for now is… carving the graves! Building their flute holes! Carrying them, placing them… I can think of little more suited for us, can you?’
The pilgrim blinked.
The graver chuckled cavernously, slowly. ‘Walking graves for the giants. And so old. Graver… Nothing more… suits us, no.’ He chuckled and chuckled.
‘Graver,’ said the pilgrim, once more.
The graver looked back at the pilgrim, and gently nodded for him to continue.
‘Why are you – what is it you need?’ the pilgrim asked, as respectfully as he could.
The cavern chuckle came. ‘What do I need… why, stew, friend. And… stories, perhaps.’
The pilgrim gazed into the fire and still did not believe the graver, or understand him. ‘Is that all?’
‘Tell me, friend…’ said the graver, checking on his fish. ‘Have you any stories?’
The pilgrim had plenty of stories, and he knew that none of them compared to the stories floating on the mutters from the graver on the wind, or the stories still in the graver’s head and in his past. ‘None. None good.’
But the pilgrim looked up and he looked at the stars glaring at him and at the heavy darkness shrouding the far off path and the blackened silhouettes of shivering trees and the long scorngrass. ‘Why are you here?’ asked the pilgrim, once more.
‘Don’t you believe… me?’ asked the graver. He looked right at the pilgrim and the pilgrim looked back – through those eye-holes, at the darkness behind. The graver chuckled.
‘Maybe I was being… somewhat facetious. Why am I here?’ the graver looked over the pilgrim, and looked up at the stars and over the shivering twisted trees that looked like shuddering broken arms in all the blackness. ‘What I seek is… rest, because I am so tired and have been so tired for so long. And this food… because I have not eaten for so long, either. And company, because I have had… none, for so long, too.’
The pilgrim nodded, slowly. The stew was nearly ready. He glanced at the ladle.
‘And I have felt, or, ah… should I say not felt the presence… what do you call it, now?’ The graver looked so puzzled, and so old. He looked almost familiar, in that sense, and the pilgrim tried to put a finger on it. ‘The sound of metal boots… in the darkness? When the stars… glare and it feels as heavy as stone slabs?’
‘Do you fear the King of Empty Places, too?’ asked the pilgrim, looking at the stew.
‘Who doesn’t… friend? Who doesn’t?’ The pilgrim looked at the graver, once more, up and down, and he realised where he recognised him – the graver looked just like the pilgrim’s grandfather, back when he was still alive, and the pilgrim was too young and too short and wearing boots too high and thick for his little legs to be a pilgrim. The graver had a look on his twisted and stony face just like the pilgrim’s grandfather when he had forgotten or lost something, when he came to the pilgrim for help – assistance for an old man. The pilgrim realised that the graver looked a lot like a lost, lonely, old man.
The pilgrim reached for the ladle, and began spooning stew into his bowl. It squelched in, gleaming. ‘But not tonight,’ he said, blowing on his bowl, and passing the ladle to the graver, who smiled.
‘Not… tonight! No, not tonight,’ exclaimed the graver, spooning stew into his bowl by the fire which, though the stars were so lonely and far away and glared down on them, danced and flickered with warm vitality.
They ate, then, and the graver told stories, and so did the pilgrim.
The elderly birder gazed out his window all slurried with dust and oil and dead bugs at the darkened brick wall right behind it. Tiny arms of steam waved from his tea in its wobbly clay cup. The porridge stared at him, white-brown and odiously bubbly, untouched, like it was invincible, spoon lying motionless next to it, dull as the table it was lying on, as dull as the dark brown woodwork and the frayed brown carpet and all the shadowy cabinets and shelves and corners and edges to bump against. The lamplight was brownish orange and raggedy, like it was old, had been used up and was rotting away. Through the walls, the birder could hear the tinkling and muttering and clop clop clop stepping of his neighbours, and far off bells tinkling, and the yelling of vendors and the hefty clomping of the rafts, and the echoing nonsense-voices of endless distance-dulled conversations. He had woken up to find his flat inside an alley. The air felt heavy and damp, and the corners were shrouded in thick blackness. When the lamp flickered, he was plunged into a thin blackness, where it was like pinholes over his eyes, could see things but only in gooey greyscale.
‘Mercy, Claire,’ he muttered, sipping his tea. ‘Mercy for an old bugger.’
The bin needed taking out, the birder remembered, gazing into the untouched porridge. Take out the bin, before the birds got there – they worshipped bins, they did. Gather around them like it’s a totempole, stand on its sides, guard it, all gaze up at you at once with their dark little eyes. The flutebirds scuttled out of the dark places under the city where wide caverns and dead streets laid covered in filth and shattered houses and where people who fell in found bricks with eyes drawn on them and intricate and rusted machines with lenses that glowed in the moonlight, and they narrowed in on the bins. Every invasion started at a bin, they always said. The birders and the streetsmen worshipped the bins, too, in a sense, then, and their eyes were kept as tightly focussed on them as the birds had.
He took the birding clickbow from its place atop the cutlery cabinet, feeling its smooth wooden body, its dull coldness, that weight it had that ran down his hand, his arm, into his shoulder. He rattled it, felt the bolts in it rumble a hello! to him. His son had once said ‘I’ll take the bins out and do the birding, pa.’
His son, who was the largest man in Claire (as the birder always claimed), whose huge back loomed over like a running hillside, whose arms spread over like arches of a boat and whose hands were wide and wrinkled and running with scars like cliff faces, who’d grin a crooked-toothed grin between cracked lips on a face dusted with growth and years, but eyes still bright and honest with youth like they had been when his tiny finger would wrap around the birder’s thumb, and he would burp and giggle. His son, who would take the birding clickbow in his gargantuan hands and hold it up, for the birder to smile and shake his head and take his son’s arms and move them into the ideal position: ‘You’ll knock your nose holding it like that, boy!’
The birder did not want his son to do everything, did not want to grow complacent, lord over the boy like some tyrant. But do everything the birder’s son did. The birder’s son contained twice the men the birder had within him, and a cracked grin would grow over the birder’s rugged face, when he thought of that.
The birder pulled the door open and felt the dusty and hefty air groan in from outside. There was the bin, down the road, shrouded in shadow, by a darkened brick wall that stretched endlessly upwards, into a faraway white, bright sky. And the calls of the flutebirds: fwooooo, fwooooo. Ghostly. Like an ancient breeze over ancient cliffs, bent gnarled trees, Gravers trundling over it, gravestones slung over their stony backs. One was outlined in darkness on top of the bin – it flapped its huge shadowy wings, haggard jutting feathers. It turned its head, its great beak, towards the birder, and they gazed at each other. The light from the birder’s house oozed out from the open door, lazy and orange, and it glinted in the flutebird’s eyes, turned them bright gleaming white. It recognised him, of course, it recognised his clickbow, his hands wrapped around it.
Fwooooooo. More of them appeared, melting out of the shadows, hanging on the bin’s edges, or stalking around it. They all watched him, as one, silent, thinking.
‘Off,’ said the birder, pointing away with his clickbow. They seemed to suddenly vanish and then disappear, in that inky darkness, slinking here, there. No creatures were more suited to Claire, more understanding of its workings or ways, than the flutebirds. They moved through the alleys and over the flat roofs and under the hanging fabrics with a fluidity as water, where the birders, where the droughtsmen who had built the shell of Claire with their own hands and sweat plodded awkwardly through, getting lost, ringing bells for help. The birder learnt this, had taught his son that, too: Claire was owned by no one, no one at all, but the flutebirds.
The flutebirds looked amongst each other, fluted. And then one turned to the birder: fwooo-ooo. Its tiny, intelligent, malevolent eyes glinted, again. It saw the birder’s clickbow – how old it was. It saw the birder’s skin, dry as parchment. It saw the way his back bent, his shuffling steps, his eyes squinting to see anything. It saw that there was nobody with him, nothing around but the dampness, the loneliness, the light running over his greying features.
The birder clutched the bow, aimed it at the flutebirds, who stood, silent, staring. ‘Off,’ said he, pointing. The birds did not move. The birder wanted his son to be a birder, too, but his son went with his uncle, instead. The birder’s son joined a boat, and they fished along the coast, far east over that sunken continent where strange dark canoes were spotted in the blackness and where children would vanish in the night and never appear again, far west to the other side of the continent where clicking creatures lived in salt pillars, out to those islands where strange lights appear and ancient corpses of old things wash up, and even further out, by the dead Giant, where the sea was burningly salty, and men came back with salt on their brows and brine for spit and never went near flowing water again for fear of suddenly vanishing. The boy came back with strange fishbones, things of all odd shapes and sizes and colours, and the birder would struggle to even imagine the creatures they came out of. He would try and show the birder how to carve them into charms that would do this, protect you from that, but the birder was old and slow and never got the hang of it. The birder’s son’s room still smelled like salt, to that day.
Clickclickclick. The bolts buzzed in the air like insects, suddenly appeared out of nowhere, jutting from the walls and quivering. The bin slowly tilted back and forth, a dent in its middle. The flutebirds were scattering, shuffling in the air, dancing away, folding into shadows. They fluttered in the darkness, appearing occasionally – a feather, a talon, a glinting eye. The birder was old and rusted, with bones like chalk and flesh dark and gnarled, but he had been birding for an entire lifetime and his mind worked fast as a whip, and he spun around immediately and click shot the bird out of the air in a corpse-silent puff of feathers. The other flutebirds paused, skittering on the ground, all looking at their comrade, bleeding out somewhere in all those shadows. One – the nearest – looked to the birder, something in its glinting eyes. The birder knew how smart the flutebirds were and he knew what that look was, knew it was a look he had worn for weeks and weeks and put on again when he padded by his son’s room, silent in all the ringing bells and chatter like something buried beneath it all. The birder’s heart was made of cold stone and it smelled like the salt-breeze from a lost son and he raised the clickbow once more.
The flutebirds scattered. Two flitted into the nearby blackness, flew off with a dark shape – their comrade – in their talons.
The birder hung the clickbow on his belt like a broken limb and carried the bin out to the street, alone.
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