The Kind Folk

Cover art by Erika Steiskal.

It involved a mountain so high that the clouds would nest there while they whispered to one another. At those times nobodyfrom the village in the foothills would venture near the mountain, until one day an orphan boy found a hidden path. As he made the final ascent the clouds came down to gather about him. He thought they were about to blind him so that he would lose his way or fall, but they ushered him up to their eyrie and told him secrets they’d learned in their voyages across the sky. After that he climbed the mountain whenever they were there, but failed to realise how they were changing him. If he dreamed even while he was awake he would begin to lose his shape in the manner of a cloud, and soon the villagers noticed how they couldn’t see him properly. When they drove him out he fled up the mountain, starving until the clouds returned just in time to raise him up. Once his body dissolved it was free to rove the spaces above the world. Sometimes the villagers would see him striding the mountains on legs composed of cloud and as long as the sky was tall...