The cloudman arrived on the driest day of a dry year. Folk lifted their feet carefully as they walked, for the slightest scuffing sent tawny dust billowing into the air. They scarved their mouths against the floating grit and squinted their eyes against the seething sun, which hung in a vast baked-blue sky clear in all directions—save one.
A solitary shred of cloud had appeared, drifting far overhead of a trudging traveler. He wore a grimy yellow cloak, but no hood or cap. His hairless brown scalp looked soft and smooth as a baby’s. Perhaps that was because he walked in the shade, a cool sliver of shadow placed perpetually between himself and the sun.
When the man stopped on the edge of town, so too did the cloud. When he lowered himself to the ground to rest, the cloud lowered in the sky. This tethering could not be coincidence, nor a trick of the sweat-stung eye. The mothers held tightly to their children, but one escaped: a little girl who had never seen a stranger and only rarely saw clouds.
She ran up to him and collapsed in the cooling sand, peering first at his hairless face and then at the gray vapor swirling above him.
“Welcome to Lachryma,” she said.
* * *
The cloudman called himself Tso. He said he had come from far, and sought farther, but would stay and rest for a season if permitted. He asked for wood to build and seed to till. They hospitably gave him both, though they told him it was still far too hot to plant.
He set to work in the shade, which grew darker as the cloud above him thickened. Some folk would not place foot in this unnatural shadow; others helped him build his small hut just to pass time in the coolness. They did not help him seed the garden, as it was not the season, but their eyes flickered from the parched soil to the dark cloud swirling above.
When all was finished, the cloudman drew a bone needle from his pocket. He pricked his thumb and let fall a single vermillion drop. The instant his blood pocked the sand, the gray cloud overhead buckled and split. Cool rain showered the thatched roof of his bower, drenched the soil of his garden, pattered against his bare scalp. No mothers could keep their children from dancing through the sudden downpour; some mothers joined in.
Folk rubbed their chins and murmured: witchstuff or no, this Tso, this cloudman, might be a very good person to have in town.
* * *
In exchange for small kindnesses, Tso would bring his shade to where it was most needed. In exchange for greater kindnesses—tools, food, furnishings—he would puncture his skin and his cloud. Months passed. The gardens of Lachryma flourished early, and in such abundance that the excess was sold to their less fortunate neighbors.
As they planted their seeds in rich dark soil, new ambitions took root as well. Word had spread of the town where it rained once per week, by the letting of blood, and this brought new settlers and new mouths to feed. When an old engineer from the coast spoke of irrigation and reservoirs, folk listened. When rumors spread of invasion from the north, by the roving tribes jealous of Lachryma’s sudden wealth, folk shuddered.
They went to visit the cloudman, whose house was now closer to the town’s heart than at its fingertips, and petitioned him. He had brought them great prosperity, which they appreciated, but he had also brought them hungry masses and dangerous enemies.
It was his responsibility, then, to keep all fed and safe.
* * *
They presented him with a beautiful bone knife, honed sharp as the needle, and asked for only a little more blood: enough rainwater to mix clay for a reservoir and to fill it, enough to fashion Lachryma a protective moat like those of the southern fortresses.
The cloudman refused. He said a season had passed, and he had bled enough, and would soon continue on his journey. So, for the good of the city—for Lachryma was sprawling in all directions, growing without pause, and would not long be a town—the cloudman was captured.
They were not cruel, at first. He was allowed to stay in the house they had helped him build, though under guard. They took him from site to site in a comfortable wagon. They sliced shallowly, and a physician from the coast treated and bandaged each cut. They assured him that once the moat and reservoir were full, he would be permitted to leave.
But plans were made for a second reservoir, and then for an aqueduct that could capture Tso’s downpour and carry it all across the dry land. The blood-letting became more frequent. The cloudman grew paler, sickly. Lachryma became a mighty city, mills and factories powered by churning water, towering stone walls swathed in verdant vines.
The storm came without warning.
* * *
Today, Lachryma stands empty beneath a soft rain. It has been a decade since lashing lightning and high wind chewed its buildings to rubble, since the floodwaters turned its streets to corpse-crammed canals. All the drowned bodies are long dissolved, save one.
One, somehow preserved, remains chained to the wall in a flooded house. Yellow cloak billowing around his scrawny body. Bone knife clenched in rigor mortis fist. A look of exhaustion on his face, and a wide smile slashed beneath his jaw.
Far from derelict Lachryma—past the bloated ghosts of its inhabitants drifting through the air, past the neighbors who dare not step foot beneath its crown of dark clouds, past the southern fortress-cities who reveled in its destruction but now shudder at its name—a baby is born beneath a ray of perpetual sun.
They will grow, and they will wander. They will stay and rest where permitted. They will hope that maybe, maybe, this season will be different.
* * *
Ⓒ Rich Larson
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