When the Year is not Kept
And the Rainbow Climbs Color by Color
Finally the marmoset Ellapock came of use to the travelers, after it became apparent that Hygenis's general knowledge of the layout of the land would not be sufficient to find Staircase. Both humans had pictured a towering city, with Loric imagining all the more aggressively thanks to images from the bottomless book of places with names like Dubai, New York, and Tokyo.
Instead they were met with forests taller than anticipated, and uneven rocky paths that often dropped into pits, which did little to stop the trees from taking root but much to stop their feet from finding comfortable traction. Hygenis's mental map had kept everything flattened in two dimensions, and she grimly revised their time of arrival by several days once they encountered the hazards, meaning the Babeloons, or the Sig-neagle, or even the Scion, whose fate remained unknown, might catch up with them.
"Hah!" the little monkey blurted, three days recovered from his partial drowning. As he rested on Loric's shoulder, wearing a shawl woven from the humans' shaved hair stored in the pack, which had also found use as his bedding, he was able to slap the man's earlobe back and forth a few times to ensure he had their attention. "I happen to know the way."
"And how is that?" the dentist asked, suspicious of being led straight into an ambush from the trees that already seemed to be leaning in to listen. The creak of their tall thin trunks got louder in her ears.
"Because I've participated in the Trek Across the West!" He assumed this would explain everything, but it was a wild overestimation of the prevalence of popular Weaviranch culture in the surrounding areas. "What? Why are you looking at me like that? It's true, and it wasn't secondhand either. It was by the firsthand of Dinny Chamberhand herself, assisted by her mate Running Chamberhand. There were a few others there as well, but they just handled the distant landmarks."
"Ellapock we have no idea what the 'Trek Across the West' is," Loric informed him. Affronted enough to assert dominance, the primate clambered up the side of Loric's head and sat in his hairline before he bothered to enlighten them, which he did enthusiastically in recollection.
"Of course Compassleaf was uncultured, sat on by a bear that apparently hadn't even heard a story until this season, but I should think a Shelvtale should know about it regardless, given that elements of your art are used for immersive entertainment where I come from."
"Where you come from you throw rags over our heads and drive us, so we assume the worst," Hygenis noted.
"Oh to have ear-reins in my hands again," the marmoset lamented, taking up two bristles of Loric's hair and pulling them back and forth to no effect but irritation. "But I assure you, even as you ignore the subtleties of the art of mounting and riding a human, you will not be able to miss the appeal of the trek.
You know the typical task of the Chamberhand is to create rooms on a flat surface by laying down their arms and hands neatly, so that we may populate and rearrange them as we see fit. The curl of fingers makes for an excellent door, and a good Chamberhand knows to watch our paths and make their opening and closing all but automatic, as if triggered by our very thoughts. Really, you are such wondrous creatures once you acknowledge your place within a craft and not atop a throne.
Dinny Chamberhand understands this, and in her devotion to her craft she came up with the trek: a journey from Walrutter of Tuncrad down and westward into Namstamp, past Plunderoe into Flatrock Easter's Staircase and Rhadiospir, into the seasonal deserts of Wudulpes the fox. Normally this journey, upon the cloven hooves of a Tuncrad moose, would take a season or more, but thanks to the Chamberhand art we can do it over the course of a dinner party.
She realized if a hand could be a door it could be so much more, like a hill, a tree, a passing beity with a thumb for a bottom jaw, and a hundred other things. As it goes the trekkers, any marmoset lucky enough to receive an invitation from Dinny's owner, or to have her lent out, start the journey on a long empty table.
For my part I did secure an invite to the most prestigious tree in the grove, somehow kept wreathed in flowers all year long, but I digress. I, along with several of my peers, watched in awe as the western half of the continent was constructed before our very eyes. It was all arms and hands, but each was painted the primary colors of that region and its structures.
Then we proceeded to walk and explore. We stood shoulder to shoulder with passing moose lords, though their antlers were just the upturned and curled fingers of a diligent Chamberhand with an eye painted on the knuckle.
At any point we were free to deviate, to take little shortcuts and see places we'd never even heard about, and the humans kept up flawlessly, having memorized numerous accounts of the lands and built representative models they then mimicked upon the tables.
If I wanted to climb a hill I would go from wood to knuckle, and the transition back would be seamless, exactly as rock again became dirt in the true version. None of us ever noticed that when we transitioned to a second table the first one was silently moved to the other side of it, and curved a little, so that we could walk in an endless circle if we so chose.
And off to the side, on what was to me the horizon, painters stood by. When we were finished touring an area the Chamberhands would pull away, rapidly wash the paints off in buckets of water, and have a fresh more relevant coat applied before we reached its need. So that is how the blues and whites and boggy browns of Tuncrad became the rich greens and yellows of Namstamp, and then the oranges and reds of the desert. Wudulpes's desert becomes meadows in the spring and summer, or when he wills it, and when one of my party requested it the orange desert vanished and was replaced with flowering meadows in the time it takes to swish one's tail.
It is truly the ultimate entertainment! And if my climbing of the social branches had not borne fruit we would be utterly lost out here! Several cheers for Ellapock! As many as you've got!" The marmoset took the deepest of breaths to kick off the cheering, but one of his steed's fingers appeared, despite receiving no order from his tugged hair, and jammed itself into the tiny monkey's mouth.
"Let's not shout with so many sharp ears perked for any sign of us," Loric reminded, glancing to see Hygenis's slight nod that approved of his newfound situational awareness. "Why not be helpful at a reasonable volume and then acknowledge our appreciative silence?" The marmoset crossed his arms and refused to speak, but only briefly. All it took to get him squeaking again was several steps in the wrong direction.
"No no! This way!" He tugged Loric's hair to redirect him, but his vehicle's response was sluggish. Perhaps it needed a checkup with a Healthfarm. No such human was present, so the monkey made do with an explanation. "Look at that tall tree there, with those six symmetrical branches cast so wide to the sides.
It's called the Powermocker. Purposefully it grew into that shape, much like the artificial poles humans used to string up electricity canals. With its height it mocks the old incompetent masters of the Tame, and claims more power than they ever transferred through its like! I have seen it before, rendered in fingers and forearm as I passed by its left side from this very angle!
After we pass it we will descend into the lowlands by a slope of root-locked boulders, like clams dredged in a net. Then we turn at the vegetation so flesh-dense it cannot be passed through. That's when we reach the thin rainbow fields, colors only revealed up close, which entirely encircle..."
"Staircase," Loric finished.
"Yes!" Ellapock yipped. "Now onward human!" He nearly pulled his two fistfuls of hair from their roots, but the storyteller wasn't coming unglued.
"And just why should we trust you to steer us in the right direction? The last time you were atop me you were hidden, your slaves luring us in and bashing us with the best bashing sticks in the land." The tip of a vassal stick rose, mighty as a tree from Ellapock's perspective, and then leaned close enough for him to smell distant mountains. What little neck the creature had recoiled.
"Because I also want to get to Staircase!" the lesser beity insisted. "Their position is under Phobopan, and they wouldn't be so foolish as to risk a diplomatic incident by killing me. Once you are there you will no longer be under threat from the Weaviranch hunt, which means I can charter a less dull creature as steed and finally head home!"
"To face the shame of your failure," Hygenis pointed out. Her silver hook glinted nearby, drifting closer until it stood in judgment over his head same as the vassal stick. He'd been surrounded. "What will they say when you tell them you were a prisoner of their prey, from the Shedlands to Staircase, and never managed to break free or capture them?"
"Obviously I will tell it far more charitably than that. My experience has been... harrowing. Thrilling. Enlightening. And when they hear I made the Trek Across the West in person, and can confirm the accuracy of our dear Dinny Chamberhand, I will be welcomed back with the most skilled of open arms."
The hook and stick hovered, circling slowly, but eventually they backed down. They had to, the marmoset reasoned, for if they struck they'd bludgeon and puncture that precious storyteller brain that was the cause of all this.
"We've no better option," Hygenis admitted with a sigh. "If only we had more time or less focus on us. To the Powermocker." Both humans began trekking again, their weapons turned to walking sticks. Though the storyteller had learned much about commanding a situation, the fatigue was too deep in his ligaments for him to bother dethroning Ellapock. The marmoset was allowed to ride and direct him with hair tugs, gleefully humming to himself.
If ever he was about to lose their way he placed giant imaginary fingernails on everything in sight, and that always revealed the proper path, with Loric's tolerance never wearing too thin once he realized it was the skill of Dinny Chamberhand guiding them, not Ellapock. Once again he was saved by a human deciding there was no upper limit on their imagination and resolve.
The Tame. Was this feeling the lost force? Was his blood thickening again to its primordial state? No, he reasoned. It didn't happen to individuals. The Tame was floodwaters, and it moved all at once to transform. If he felt it lapping at his feet he was merely standing at its edge. That did not imply the whole of it was moving. He would never be able to make it do so, not as a lone creature, not as part of a Bloody Mouth. All the hope he had would have to stop at the end of his own years.
To Ellapock's and Dinny's credit, they did know the way forward. As predicted they soon came upon the root-wrapped rocks and had to carefully descend them. So treacherous was the terrain that Ellapock did not even pretend at the expertise needed to navigate them, and kept a loose grip on Loric's hair until they reached the bottom with every stick and bone intact.
Eventually the difference in scope between their perilous quest and a marmoset dinner party became clear, as they were not able to travel far past the rocks before they lost daylight and had to make camp, difficult to do given they carried no tent with them and any attempt to hack off useful sheltering branches could convince the trees to rise from their slumber enough to communicate their location to the nearest beity.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Instead they climbed one of the smaller trees, which was still plenty large enough to accommodate two humans and a recovering fur ball. Its branches were quite straight, but angled away from their nearest neighbors, suggesting it had perhaps tried to grow like the Powermocker and make something of itself but given up to save face after it couldn't master the concept of parallel lines. Either way, the groove where two branches met at the trunk made an ideal space for the fugitives to curl up on.
Faith in Weaviranch dinner theater wavered, for in the next two day-marches they did not come across any vegetation 'dense as flesh', which Ellapock insisted was their next best trail marker, one that he refused to revise even after two nights of sleeping on the idea.
Provisions ran low, and worse flavor had disappeared from their diet since Plunderoe, as some of their pepper-leathers had been lost and turned small portions of the river to stock, the rehydration costing those that remained most of their taste. For days now they'd eaten wet gritty mush, entering that horrible phase of the monoculture diet where their blood felt it was composed of that same wet gritty mush.
Ellapock promised them that the flowers of the rainbow meadows would be edible, but Hygenis was doubtful given that he could only provide the color of the petals and not their names. That was the difference between a peppery snack and converting all of one's intestines into vomitus.
Vines snapped as Hygenis swung her hook through them, fresh water flowing out of their woody tissues. Both humans took one up quickly, guzzling it down. These vines were parasites on the trees, so not only had the trees filtered the water when initially soaking it up, but the picky vines had filtered it a second time. The taste was cleaner than moonlight, so pure that their tongues sensed a chill that wasn't there.
In holding his slashed vine over his head and shaking it Loric gave himself something of a shower, with the marmoset happily participating, catching the flow on his tongue to have his own fill. Clogs of mush were forced through their veins by the sudden infusion, granting energy, but that did not translate into progress through the vines which quickly went from boon to obstruction.
"Oh," Hygenis panted when she stopped mid-hack, web of vines holding her back like a jealous lover. "This must be it. I hope it is, because we can go no further without wasting all of our strength."
"Then we go," Ellapock said, putting up his own arms as stand-ins for giant human ones, "this way to the rainbow meadows. I'd stake another shave on it."
"Good, something to hold you to," Hygenis teased, bouncing the blunt side of her hook in her hand as she pulled away and changed course. Loric chuckled, but allowed the marmoset to silence him with a twist of a left-side lock.
Forced to camp yet again, this time able to use cut vines as a camouflaging cloak since that was a favor to the burdened trees, it wasn't until early in their following day-march, dregs of mist and dew still clinging to the canopy, that they came upon the rainbow meadows said to encircle Staircase.
Supposedly they were tended by humans, though the fields fell outside of their Phobopan-sanctioned territory. It was easy to believe, as the myriad blooms did not grow interspersed into a muddle of specks; they were a clear spectrum moving from one color to the next in rows, starting cooler and getting warmer as they, hopefully, neared the city.
Each color had a scent, and they too came in waves as the fugitives slowly waded through them, each more calming and reassuring than the last. Sweet. Rich. Like fruit. Like sweet onion. Like the bundle of herbs thrown into the pot when a Flameguide was holding the ladle. Petals kissed Loric's bare legs, leaving pollen on his hairs and slowly turning his lower half into the muddle of color he'd been expecting to see.
Hygenis dropped to her knees, out of hunger instead of injury. With careful and sure eye she identified one blossom, then another, then another. It appeared every last variety was safe to eat, which helped explain why the residents of Staircase would risk their lives to curate and arrange these meadows so meticulously: crops.
She told Loric all the petals and buds were safe to consume, as long as he checked them for pollinating bees first, before attacking them herself. If their journey was more leisurely it would've been simple, even enjoyable, to arrange the petals into piles and eat them one at a time, letting the flavors mimic the natural flow of an artisanal feast: light and sweet first, then spicy, then hearty, then sweet and hearty, and finally the zip of a minty palate cleanser.
But with many day-marches behind her that felt like many more thanks to a half-mechanical subterranean tentacle demon, the vexing Shedlands and their biting vassals, the swooping Sig-neagle, the showdown with the Scion of the Salmon Run, and their brush with darkness, Hygenis went ahead and forced clashing handfuls of the flowers into her mouth and chewed vigorously.
It tasted a mess; it tasted a wonder. And in the back of her throat was the iron flavor of the Bloody Mouth. They were oh so close, close enough that she could take a moment with soft plants under her knees to consider what might come next.
Technically, should they succeed, there would be an after whether she wanted one or not. Many Bloody Mouths ended in death, and even among those successful the chance for their record to make it all the way back to dental students was thin, even skeletal. She knew of only four such victors from what her dental instructors whispered to her over the gaping chasm of a tranquilized beity's open maw.
None of the accounts came with names, as names made such threads easier to trace, and one successful trace could wipe out an entire dental college, possibly even getting its members thrown into deep dark pools to be fed on by hagfish: ironically toothless creatures that would nonetheless bore through their flesh and tie themselves in knots to tear off chunks.
As she ate she remembered those heroes, and not the hags they could've been fed to. One successful Bloody Mouth saw a dentist wielding nothing but a tongue depressor successfully destroy the internal power structure of the region's largest beaver dam. There was a bucktoothed coup, and in the end the humans involved successfully scattered the beavers' slaves to further and hopefully kinder corners.
Another guarded a pregnant woman who fled her stork master, the bird a high-ranking member of a social club that delivered infant slaves across great distances. With the sky full of watchful eyes the child was successfully delivered, and never seen by beity eyes again, though the dentist was dropped from a cloud and killed for the infraction. Still, the Bloody Mouth itself had succeeded.
The other two were even murkier on the details. Something about a dentist retreating into a giant termite mound and never coming out, presumably living out the rest of their days in insect company feeding on the mushrooms growing from their stockpiled sawdust thanks to no beity wishing to challenge the bugs' sovereignty. And something about a dentist getting swallowed whole, but ripping their way free, with which instrument and from what sort of stomach was never mentioned.
At best she fought for one of these results, though in the moment she was sure she'd fought for nothing but those handfuls of flowers turning gummy and slowly sliding down her throat. A vine to wash them down would've been perfect, but those were already far behind, cut back into cowardice by the same humans that laid out the rainbow buffet. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied one as she gorged.
Or she thought she did. Head and hook and body all rose together, and faced a human silhouette, but the shape may have just been borrowed from them. The figure standing there, so close that Hygenis would have said it was impossible for an actual human to sneak that near without her hearing them, was composed entirely of butterflies.
The fluttering insects also came in a rainbow of colors, from iridescent purple to fiery orange to soft pale green. Their wings were not still, but it was impossible to say whether or not they were in flight, so tight was their formation in the man-shape. Even fingers could be discerned, as could the tilt of the head that mimed looking from her to Loric.
"Loric," Hygenis said as she swallowed the last of her flowers. The storyteller had not yet noticed the figure, and rose at his guardian's word to see not one, but three of the things surrounding them, but still too distant to reach out and touch: primarily purple, primarily green, and primarily white. Inside the one nearest him, the white, a voice coalesced from many tiny glimmers and flashes of sound.
"These flowers are not for you," it said. It was one. It was many. All were more curious than disapproving. "No man not of Staircase may partake. No beity shall ever." Ellapock blew away a pink petal stuck to his bristled cheek.
"We wish to be of Staircase," Loric said, bowing. "I am Loric Shelvtale of Compassleaf, formerly owned by Krakodosus the thundercoat, Scion of the Salmon Run, formerly owned by Crimarus the welcome smuggler. This is my... dentist: Hygenis Fixtooth. Our mouths are bloody, and we beg for the asylum of the city. Will you help us creature?"
In response the white one burst into a flurry of individuals that washed over Loric and Ellapock. The human allowed every tap of their feathery feet, wondering what they were trying to detect before considering where the voice had come from. Insects were beities, but often with barely a double-thick drop in each body, so to be heard they sometimes had to pool their voices and could only speak when completely united.
Yet the voice had sounded very human to him. Were they mimicking his kind's affect? Such a thing might be possible, even elementary for any high-name parrot, but any human voice older than an adolescent's, channeled through throat rather than mind, would be impregnated with scarring experience. If their lives meant anything no swarm of butterflies, save one the size of a hurricane, could imitate it convincingly.
The white man-shape reformed behind him, but it was the green one that spoke next.
"Can you offer evidence of your identity, Loric Shelvtale?"
"We carry forged metal," Hygenis interjected, twirling her hook to make her point, careful not to cut flowers from their stems, "so there is little else we could be." The green one sank into the meadow and vanished, but she knew where it went, for she felt them gliding past her ankles. The purple one walked toward them, and it was most disturbing to see the insects trudge with all the weight of a man. It spoke.
"Yes, the tools are the evidence of the trade. Now the storyteller must give evidence of his. Tell us a tale, and not one performed for beities countless times. Give us one of human victory: a story that could climb all our stairs on its own two feet."
Challenge issued, Loric took longer to respond than Hygenis expected. She knew that he had the power to start speaking before he knew what he was going to say, that he trusted undercurrents of creativity in his spirit to guide him to a proper ending. It was not a lack of ideas stalling him, but how much of the truth should be committed at the outset.
The delay was due to the bottomless book. It transformed him from Loric the slave into Loric the free. Its effluence was so much richer, a sort of double-thick, than being orally passed story crumbs from old masters who lost entire arcs when there was an age-related earthquake in their minds. Twice the man he was, now that he'd read of it, and ten times could he be if he was allowed to drink from an unceasing supply until his death. Perhaps a hundred if he ever found its bottom. The man of all men. The intellect that properly cultivated the Tame and felt no shame in mastery of it.
He would not give up the book, which stairclimbers might demand of him for passage into the city, or for lasting refuge there. Living much as free men do did not make them free, as they technically remained slaves of Phobopan. Not all Forbidden Thumbs were lifted by their polydactyllic hands.
Loric would not live as he did in Compassleaf, only sneaking glances at his font of endless knowledge inside a burrow of pillows. It would be his openly, which meant those granting him sanctuary would eventually see. The only question was whether to have that argument occur in the rainbow fields or safely behind their stairs, and in the case of the latter they might feel they had been taken advantage of.
Adding to the duration of his uncomfortable silence was the possibility that they already knew about the book in some capacity. Winged rumors of their escape had certainly made it that far, whether or not Staircase maintained good relations with messenger birds or clandestine spying bats. A deduction that Loric carried books or literacy materials would not be far behind such wings.
And he had just been subject to an inspection by countless limbs. As the butterflies washed over him he might've had invaders in his pack fully capable of identifying the touch of cleverwood underfoot and the cold glow of artificial light. Their request for evidence may have been a test of his honesty, and if he did not divulge the bottomless book and its contents the stairs may never unfold and allow his ascension.
Rather than speak his first action was to reach behind his shoulder and draw out the device, holding it up for every butterfly to see. Hygenis gave no reaction aside from a deep breath; he hoped she understood his decision.
"I have many such stories on the tip of my tongue. My mind swims in them leisurely everyday, but there are countless more, not subject to the corruption of failing memory, inside this item. This machine is my bottomless book, and I seek refuge for it as well. Where I go it goes, for it is now as much a part of my soul as my thumbs are of my hands.
Here is one of its stories, tailored to your specifications." Loric's fingers moved nimbly about the book's screen as he tapped in key words and phrases that produced a list of entries, his digits navigating it more deftly than the butterflies did his skin in their inspection. "Once, in days long past, days so different we would say they belong to another world entirely, there was a building filled with garments. Just outside, people strolling by saw a most peculiar creature perched on its doorstep..."