The slanting afternoon sun stretches golden over the city, reflected light sparkling along its mica-flecked walls and laser-faceted embossings. He has made his fellow citizens happier, and there is no finer virtue by the customs of this gentle, rich land. But there is only kindness and genuine pleasure in the smiles, and gradually the reedy man stands a little taller, walks with a wider stride.
She points, and others see it, too, which makes the reedy man blush terribly. (Um-Helat is a city of polyglots.) She reaches the front of the crowd and immediately spies the reedy man’s ladybug, whereupon with delighted eyes and smile, she makes much of it. She encourages their cheers and their delight, speaking to this person in one language and that person in another. See how she moves through the crowd, grinning with them, helping up a child who has fallen. They do!Īnd here! This woman, tall and strong and bare of arm, her sleek brown scalp dotted with implanted silver studs, wearing a fine uniform of stormcloud damask. He has made it himself, and hopes others will think it fine.
There is a reedy man in a coverall, nervously plucking at the brooch he bears, carved and lacquered to look like a ladybug. Here is a portly woman, waving a hat of chicken feathers that someone has gifted her. The parade wends through the city, farmers ducking their gazes or laughing as their fellow citizens offer salute. And so farmers are particularly celebrated on the Day of Good Birds. Here in Um-Helat there is no hunger: not among the people, and not for the migrating birds and butterflies when they dip down for a taste of savory nectar. The management of soil and water and chemistry are intricate arts, as you know, but here they have been perfected. By all three groups’ efforts does the city prosper-but when aquifers and rivers dip too low, the farmers move to other lands and farm there, or change from corn-husking to rice-paddying and fishery-feeding. As the afternoon of the Day grows long, Um-Helat’s farmers arrive, invited as always to be honored alongside the city’s merchants and technologers. Artisans offer cleverly mechanized paper hummingbirds for passersby to throw the best ones blur as they glide.
Street vendors sell tiny custard-filled cakes shaped like jewel beetles, and people who’ve waited all year wolf them down while sucking air to cool their tongues. They are all honored for this choice, as much as the soarers and flutterers themselves-for without contrasts, how does one appreciate the different forms that joy can take? (Some are invisible.) And those who follow faiths which forbid the emulation of beasts, or those who simply do not want wings, need not wear them. Adults who refuse to give up their childhood joys wear wings, too, though theirs tend to be more abstractly constructed. It’s only a few feet, though it feels like the height of the sky.īut this is no awkward dystopia, where all are forced to conform. Those who cannot run instead ride special drones, belted and barred and double-checked for safety, which gently bounce them into the air. Thus adorned, children who can run through the streets do so, leaping off curbs and making whooshing sounds as they pretend to fly. Some few have been carefully glued together from dozens of butterflies’ discarded wings-but only those butterflies that died naturally, of course. This is a city where numberless aspirations can be fulfilled.) Some wings are organza stitched onto school backpacks some are quilted cotton stuffed with dried flowers and clipped to jacket shoulders. (Not all aunties are actually aunties, but in Um-Helat, anyone can earn auntie-hood. At the Day’s dawning, the children of the city come forth, most wearing wings made for them by parents and kind old aunties. This places it within the migratory path of several species of butterfly and hummingbird as they travel north to south and back again. Um-Helat sits at the confluence of three rivers and an ocean.
Even the monorail cars trail stylized flamingo feathers from their rooftops, although these are made of featherglass, too, since real flamingos do not fly at the speed of sound. It is a day of fluttering and flight regardless, where pennants of brightly dyed silk plume forth from every window, and delicate drones of copperwire and featherglass-made for this day, and flown on no other!-waft and buzz on the wind. It has little to do with birds-a fact about which locals cheerfully laugh, because that, too, is how local customs work. It’s the Day of Good Birds in the city of Um-Helat! The Day is a local custom, silly and random as so many local customs can be, and yet beautiful by the same token.
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