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Thunderer

Gilman, Felix

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Thunderer

Chapter One

He came to the city at the end of summer, over the sea; leaning out over the boat's plain prow, scanning the horizon, nervously telling beads of scale and bone through his thin fingers. He'd crossed half the world to come there.

The sky over the Bay glittered with white gulls, diving and threading between blue air and sea, scavenging on the harbor's busy life. Those birds were the city's first sign, and they were a bright and lively one, lifting his spirits.

"Into the city soon, Mr. Roon." The captain clapped him on the back, giving him a gappy brown grin.

"Already are, you could say. The birds' city, too, isn't it? Scared, a little?"

In fact his name was Arjun, but he was quite well used to being mispronounced, and not too proud to let the error stand. He smiled mildly back and said, "Hopeful," but the captain had turned away, and was calling out orders in a rhythmic sailor's cant to his tiny crew of dark-skinned brothers and sons. And the city sketched itself in distantly on the horizon: a smudge of rooftops, a gauzy tobacco-brown cross-hatching of bridges and spires. Shifting and shaping in slowly, distorted by heat-haze, by its own density. A great mountain rising behind it all, a daub of distant blue. The fetish of scale and bone rustled over his knuckles. In his mind he was composing a letter to his Mothers and Fathers: Here we begin at last. The city is a puzzle box to be cracked open. Let me describe it to you. . . . But he wasn't sure how, yet.

In every place he'd passed through on his journey, he'd heard stories of Ararat. He thought of them as the city's echoes; that was how he'd been raised. In some places, they said the city was blessed. In others, they said haunted. In one such village, in the hills, in the pines, he'd stayed for a season with Ama, the doctor's daughter; she had begged him to stay, or turn back. When the snows lifted, and he had had to move on, she'd given him that charm, softly pressing his fingers over it. It would protect him, she promised. Her father had made it.

Perhaps it had some power. But he had come to search among the city's gods, not to hide from them. He let it slip from his fingers. It floated for a moment on the bright foam, then the hull forced it under.

The boat creaked and clanked as the crew worked.

A shimmer of spray rose from the water. The crew's rhythm faltered. The captain cried out. Arjun turned, to see one of the squat sea-brothers point to the sky with a yelp of delight, and another tilt his head back and moan deep in his throat. Look up.

Out of the Bay's high sun, curving steeply down over the water, opening out ample wings: in the first instant of perception, it could be a cloud unfolding from the cloudless sky, streaming across the firmament like a white pennant. At once, it becomes a great bird, driving forward. Its wings are wide white planes, beating slowly. Nothing so huge should be able to fly, but it seems weightless. The sunlight shivers ecstatically in its wake.

As it soars across the water, the Bay's birds gather around it, circling it with boundless fluttering adoration. It turns in a loose, free arc, and beneath it, fish leap from the water, hanging for a second amazed by the air. The Bird-God brings the gifts of flight and freedom with it. It casts no shadow.

The Bird drives over the Bay and in toward the ancient city

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Title of ebook: Thunderer
ISBN: 9780553904499
Publisher: Bantam Books
Internet download file size: 2243 kb
Released online for download: 12-26-2007
Author of eBook: Gilman, Felix