The Flying Sorcerers

and trading for the material was fast and furious. Several men, head weavers in their own villages, took to clothing their wives in aircloth to show their own importance. But we put a stop to that soon enough.

It was not that they had not the right to parade their wealth, but they should not use their women for the purpose. The women were proud enough as it was — just with names. We didn’t need our wives complaining that so-and-so’s wife was wearing aircloth and why couldn’t they wear aircloth too?

Hurriedly, we stifled that trend.

Chastened, the weavers wore the clothes themselves — as many as they could. For a while it was the fad to wear one’s fortune on one’s back, but it stopped after a few days. This was still the wading season — the season of sweat.

There was another incident too. We had our first theft.

They were two of the lesser weavers — boys really — they had coveted Purple’s huge store of aircloth. They were from one of the other villages on the island and did not truly comprehend the importance of the flying machine project. They were only here for the weaving — and for the marvelous new aircloth.

But, being only apprentices, they weren’t paid in cloth, only in extra spell tokens, and they were bitter about it.

Most of the weavers, not needing airtight cloth, took it as it came from the looms. The threads of the linens were highly polished due to the dipping in housetree blood. The cloth had a luxuriously smooth, starchy feel to it.

Purple’s share of the cloth was set aside for its later treatment. It would have to be dipped again, this time m housetree-binding solution. It was this stockpile of waiting cloth that had tempted the boys.

They had been caught, of course. Although it was past midnight and most people were asleep, still the red sun was high in the west. Purple, whose sleeping habits were not like the rest of us, had accosted them — indeed had bundled into them, their arms laden with his stolen cloth.

The boys made the mistake of running for the weaving fields, Purple in hot pursuit, yelling, “Stop, thief! Stop!”

The midnight weavers did not know the word. But they saw two boys running and a screaming magician following, and they knew something was up. They headed off the boys, and held them for Purple.

At blue dawn we held a council: the magicians, the head weavers of the villages, and five Speakers including myself and Gortik.

“I don’t know how they expected to escape,” Purple confided in me. “Is there a standard punishment for —” He seemed to search for a word, “— this crime ?”

“How could there be? Such a thing has never happened before. I don’t know what we will decide.”

Purple looked astonished. He seemed about to speak; but then the proceedings began.

I said little. This was not a matter for me to decide. It was for the Speaker of the boys’ village. The boys stood trembling, off to one side. They were much the same age as my Wilville and Orbur.

The Speakers argued for most of the morning. There was no precedent, no basis for a decision.

At last it was Shoogar who decided it. Grumpily he stepped to the center of the ring. These boys have committed a theft,” he said. The word is Purple’s. Purple tells us that a theft is an offense where he comes from.

“Personally, speaking for myself, I consider it an act of foolishness — taking something from a magician is downright dangerous!”

There was a murmur of agreement.

Shoogar continued, “Obviously, because the property taken was a magician’s, this is not a matter for Speakers. It is a matter for magicians.”

This time the Speakers agreed heartily. Shoogar was taking them off the hook.

“It was aircloth that these two thieves wanted,” said Shoogar, advancing on the boys. They shrank away from him. Therefore, I propose that the punishment match the offense — I say we give them aircloth!”

And with that he unfurled the huge bolts of cloth the boys had taken from Purple. They were long strips, the first ones sewn together for the airbags. “Wrap them in it!” commanded Shoogar.

“Now, wait a minute —” began Purple.

Shoogar ignored him. The head weavers shoved the boys forward and forced them onto the ground, flat on the strips of cloth. “Roll them up!” said Shoogar. Tight! Roll them tight!” The weavers did so.

“But — Shoogar,” Purple protested, “they’ll suffocate.”

“I do not know the word,” said Shoogar, not taking his eyes from the struggling bulks in the cloth.

“It means to — to run out of oxygen.”

Shoogar threw him a glance. He may have remembered the word, but what of it? Oxygen was the gas Purple threw away when he made hydrogen from water. Throw-away gas.

“Fine,” he said. “They will suffocate.”

“You mustn’t,” said Purple. He was quite pale.

Shoogar turned away with a grimace.

Purple made a sound in his throat. I thought he would go after the other magician; but he did not.

The boys were completely bound up now, the weavers were tying the cloth firmly about them. They looked like giant sting thing larvae, long and brown and shapeless.

“We will leave them here until the next rising of the blue sun,” said Shoogar. “You will post men to see that no one comes near.”

When the boys were unrolled, they were stiff and dead.

Even Shoogar was shaken. “I had not expected —”

He shook his head slowly. “So that’s what suffocate means.” He circled the bodies. “A strong spell it must be. Look, not a mark on them.”

We looked. Their faces were dark and cold. Their tongues protruded, and their eyes bulged in amazement; but of wounds there were none.

When we told Purple, he made a sound of pain — but as if he had expected it, I thought. He went down to the clearing himself to see. “I shouldn’t have let him,” he said. “I should have stopped him.”

When he saw their stiff forms, he recoiled. He sank down upon a log and buried his head in his hands and sobbed. Even Wilville and Orbur edged away from him.

The fathers of the boys arrived then. They had been summoned from the other side of the island, and it had taken them almost a day to make the journey. When they learned what had happened, they began to wail. They had come to participate in a punishment ceremony, not a funeral.

I myself felt strange, empty, taken with a terrible sense of loss.

Gortik gathered up the thefted cloth, handling it with new respect, and presented it to Purple. Purple raised his head, looked at the offering. He shook his head vehemently, shrinking back. “Take it away. Take it away.”

In the end, we buried the boys in it.

* * *

Afterward I found Purple alone. He was sitting morosely on the unfinished airboat frame.

He looked at me, “I told Shoogar. They’ll suffocate. They won’t get enough oxygen.”

“Curse your throw-away gas anyway! They didn’t get any air, Purple! Your aircloth holds air out as well as gas in!”

“Yes, of course.” He looked puzzled.

“You knew? You knew!” I cried wildly. “You knew they would die! If you’d sat on Shoogar and made him listen — or told me! The boys had done nothing so very wrong —”

“Stop it!” he moaned.