A man of the Land witnessed the Cloud-Folk, yet none believed him and thought him to be an oddity of little wits and fewer teeth. Even he did not believe the wondrous sight of the thousands of minuscule people falling, like iridescent hummingbirds in one instant, or glistening dragonflies in yet another. Obsession gripped him, and he forsook his meager life of taxes and obeisance in pursuit of the Cloud-Folk. For, the man reasoned, if he could only enter their unseen kingdom, he would rule them as God-King. But he had no way of knowing that minute by minute, second by second, the exquisite ice-palaces of each cloud-city melted and dripped and coalesced into a great River that would one day fall down, and all the Cloud-Folk with it.
The hermit-man learned to distinguish the Cloud-People’s cities from those of mere vapor. He climbed hills and higher hills. He devised plans to reach these cloud-cities. First, he simply leapt down from a tall hill toward a nearby cloud, but halfway down he fell and shattered the bones of his feet, forcing him to worm his way back into the trees. The hermit spent countless weeks befriending the Wind, and one evening, he summoned it. And behold! the warm summer breeze carried him across the open sky. Yet he only made it halfway to the cloud-city before sailing downward, the amiable Wind cushioning him gently unto the earth. A long, cold walk up the mountain followed, but the spark of hope did not flee him.
So deep into the wilderness did the man travel, that years passed since he glimpsed another face except infrequently for his own in some lake or pond or puddle. A thick mossy beard grew cobwebs upon his cheeks, and his skin sagged with wrinkles and spots like bruised fruit. Yet still the hermit tracked the Cloud-Folk across forests and rivers and fields and rollicking hills. He made camp in craggy caves and wore the grin of a man with honey on his tongue; he lay his head upon hard earth while his nose became an icicle; yet he dreamed sweet dreams. His heart knew that he would become Cloud-King with more certainty than he had known anything in his life. When he encountered a lonely traveler upon the road he would bid them good-morrow! good-day! good-night! in the highest of spirits. And his feet would bounce as of a man one-quarter his age.
The hermit settled on a dry, barren peak, taking fewer meals; pounds fell from his flesh and his skin hung looser on his frame; his hair and beard thinned to wisps, so that he began to resemble more a ghoul or a skeleton than a man. All his energy he poured into his pursuit of the Cloud-Folk. He had long abandoned the cities of the Land, but whispered words turned him into a figure of legend: the madman, the hermit, the Daredevil of the Mountain.
Soon the legend ventured into town for supplies, drawing curious glances, and high upon his mountain-peak, he fashioned a device of wooden rods and canvas which he strapped to his arms. Oh! how the electric excitement filled his chest, yet he did not first fly toward the cloud-city; instead, he flew low upon the mountain, round and round, testing his manmade wings. Satisfied, the hermit-man ascended to the highest peak and eyed his desired cloud-city and took flight, fearless! The sunset transformed his machine into living flames, his irises into glistening coals, and the hermit into a phoenix reborn. With aid from the Wind, his lightweight frame was borne straight across the sky and catapulted headlong through the shimmering, gossamer walls of the cloud-city.
The hermit said to himself, “My eyes, my eyes, a wonder for my eyes! Here is a thing of stupendous beauty!” And he beheld the rainbow-ice glittering all around him in every color until tears formed. Yet the small cloud-folk were crying out, “Who are you? You cannot be here! You are much too big!” But the rich sight of the cloud-city so enthralled the hermit-who-would-be-king, and the Cloud-Folk were so beetle-small, that he could not perceive their alarm.
The hermit overfilled the city, and his emaciated arms began to thrash and destroy the ice-palaces, so that they melted prematurely and began to surge and form the River of the Descent. The rushing water further drowned the screams of the Cloud-Folk, but the hermit paid them no mind, not even when his giant’s feet stampeded and crushed hundreds to death before they could reach the River. And so the Cloud-Folk embraced one another and summoned the hallowed awe of their kind as they filled the water and prepared to Descend.
“Where are you going?” the hermit-man demanded. “I am meant to rule you! I am your king!”
“We are gathering. We must Descend now,” said the Cloud-Folk as they proudly faced death.
But the hermit did not want the Cloud-Folk to perish. For not only were they a small and deferential people, but their city, destroyed by his hand, had been one of rapturous beauty. Sorrow filled his heart, and he bade them cling to the wings of the machine still strapped onto his arms. Many of the Cloud-Folk remained by tradition in the icy waters, but many did grasp the canvas just as the great River poured out of the city toward the Land below.
The wooden rods of the gliding machine splintered and ripped away, but the hermit-man gripped the ropes holding the wide canvas to which the Cloud-Folk clung. And the Wind filled the sheet so that it ballooned like a bubble, and he drifted, landing upon the mountain. The Cloud-Folk made their homes within caves and ponds, awakening bursts of green upon the barren soil. The hermit-man became their neighbor, and on some nights when the Wind danced through, the shimmering rainbows of the Cloud-Folk’s ice-palaces sparkled upon every surface of this mountain, a realm of no kings.