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The Mountain and the Vulture

by Nick Douglas

 

“High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed.”

 

― Hendrik Willem Van Loon, The Story of Mankind

 

 

At the edge of the world stands a mountain, a mile high and a mile wide, black against the white sky, like one was carved out of the other. Wind whistles against the knife point of the stone. There is nothing for the wind to blow. Nothing grows here. There is no snow or rain. The mountain is alone.

And then in the distance, in the white sky, is a dot. The dot grows into a line. The line grows into a shape. It’s the shape of a vulture in flight. Wings out ramrod, feathers like rays of the sun. Below the wings, the body, in the same dappled gold. Below the body, the head, red and fuzzy and bobbing. The vulture is sailing toward the mountain, and now it is close, and now it is circling.

“May I land?” asks the vulture.

“Wow,” says the mountain.

“I’m sorry,” says the vulture. “Shall l go?”

“No! Wait!” says the mountain. “I’m sorry! Yes. Land.”

So the vulture tightens its circles, slows, and with an undignified flapping it lands on the mountain peak. Its claws grasp the rock, prickly but tolerable.

“Thank you,” it says. “I was very tired.”

“You were higher than me,” says the mountain.

“Yes. My apologies.”

“No, it’s fine, I’m sorry, I don’t say these things to . . . I’ve never seen something higher than me.”

“Oh I see,” says the vulture. “I hope that is all right.”

“It is,” says the mountain. “It is. It’s nice.”

“Well then, you’re welcome.” The vulture chuckles to let the mountain know it’s joking. The mountain chuckles to let the vulture know it knows.

“Where did you come from?” asks the mountain.

“A flat place,” says the vulture. “A green place, a wet place. Usually a hot place. I’m sick of it. This is nice, here.”

“Your place sounds interesting,” says the mountain, “but I know things sound more interesting when they’re new to you. I don’t mean to contradict you, is what I mean.”

“Of course,” says the vulture. “No, you’re correct. It is interesting. But at my age, sometimes you want things to stop being so interesting.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” says the mountain. “For me too.”

The vulture rests.

“And you look young to me,” adds the mountain.

“Thank you,” says the vulture. “I have not felt young. The molting is not so graceful. Eyes are dim. Beak’s dull.”

“You could sharpen it on me!” blurts the mountain. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, is that . . .”

“That is actually a very kind offer. And an honor, truly.”

So the vulture bends. And if a landing vulture is undignified, a bending vulture is embarrassing, and the mountain would look away if it could, from the jutting joints and the knobby bones and the twisting of the neck. The vulture scrapes its beak against the strong rock of the mountain. Tiny bits of keratin sand off the beak. Much tinier bits of rock, too tiny for even the vulture to see, chip off the mountain. Five scrapes on one side of the beak, five scrapes on the other.

The vulture rises up, its head once again mercifully above its body. It thanks the mountain, and it continues to talk, and the mountain continues to talk, and neither wants the other to stop. But the vulture is hungry, and when it names the things it wants to eat, things with soft parts to pry open, the mountain doesn’t recognize them.

“It was lovely meeting you,” says the vulture.

“Me too, I mean, it was lovely meeting you too,” says the mountain. “Will I see you again?”

“Soon,” says the vulture, “I hope.”

And it flaps its wings, and it rises, and its head hangs low. And the wind catches it up. And the vulture circles, and it shrinks, and the shape becomes a line, and the line becomes a dot, and the mountain is alone.

---

The mountain is alone for a thousand years. There is nothing above, there is nothing below. There is the wind, but the wind only says move.

But now there is a dot again, and a line again, and a shape again. And the mountain is so happy when the shape is the vulture. And the vulture is happy too.

“I meant to return sooner,” it says. “I’m sorry. I was far away.”

“In the flat place, the green and wet and hot place!” says the mountain. “Tell me!”

“I’m honored you remember. I meant to go to that place. But on my way, I was captured. I was held in a wooden cage. I was taken to a crowded, stinking place. I was kept in a roving menagerie, and I was displayed to strangers as a strange thing.”

“How did you get out?” says the mountain.

“I scraped away at my cage. Not all at once. I have no teeth, only my beak. This is why my captors could hold me with wood. But wood is not forever.

“The task required care and planning. It took many days. If I scraped away at a bar or two, just enough to open a space for myself, my captors would notice my work long before I broke through, and they would put me in a stronger cage. So I scraped equally at every part. The end came one day when my captor lifted my cage, and it fell apart in his hands. I flew, and I was free.

“But I was free in an unknown place. Through the travels of the menagerie I had lost all sense of direction. It took me years to find my home. I saw many dangers. I escaped those dangers.” The vulture laughs. “I thought I was an old bird before.

“When I did find home, I stayed for many years. I flew very little. I lost my appetite for new sights. But when I last left you, I said I hoped to see you again soon. And that was true. I didn’t like to think of you here, believing I was a liar.”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” says the mountain, “if self-important.” The vulture knows the mountain is joking, and the mountain knows the vulture knows.

“What has happened to you,” says the vulture, “these past thousand years?”

“Absolutely nothing. I’m a mountain, nothing above but sky, nothing below but earth, nothing between but wind. Tell me more stories.”

And the vulture tells every story of its last thousand years, adventures and tragedies and comedies. And the mountain shares some ideas it’s had, because despite the self-deprecation, the mountain has plenty going on. It has thought about its height and its breadth. It has thought about the vulture. It has listened to the wind saying move. The mountain has grown to think of the wind as part of itself, and of itself as part of the wind.

And after the vulture and the mountain have caught up, the vulture asks if it can sharpen its beak, which has dulled since its last visit, as the vulture has found nothing as hard as the mountain on which to sharpen it. And the mountain says yes. And the vulture sharpens its beak, five scrapes on one side, and five on the other.

The vulture must leave again. “Is it important to you, being alone?” it asks.

“Sorry?” says the mountain.

“I don’t know how to broach this, but . . . I believe there are others coming.”

“Oh.”

“I hope that is all right. I can’t do anything about it either way, or I’d offer, of course. But you might like to know ahead of time. So.”

“Thank you,” says the mountain. “I hope they’re half as good company as you.”

“They won’t be,” says the vulture. They both chuckle.

“Well,” says the mountain. “At least I’ll have stories.”

“Shall we do this again soon?” asks the vulture.

“Let’s, please,” says the mountain.

And again the vulture is a shape, and a line, and a dot, and nothing. And the mountain is alone.

---

The mountain is not alone.

One day, the wind brings rain. One day, the rain brings life. The life begets more life. The life attracts other life. The mountain is teeming with life of all forms, microscopic to gargantuan, all rooted on the mountain or swimming in its crevices or scaling its sides, eating, mating, birthing, dying. It is beautiful, and it hurts.

The forms of life chew away at the mountain, and they accrete upon the mountain. Down one side the mountain is covered in green, it is green and wet, and near the bottom it is even hot. The forms of life remake the mountain — the parts they can reach, which is never the whole thing. The peak is for the vulture alone. Though there’s a little less peak than there used to be.

The vulture has visited the mountain every thousand years. By now there are plenty of things on the mountain for the vulture to eat, shelter to stay if it liked. But the two have built a rhythm, and besides, some thousands of years ago, the mountain talked about the life crawling and swimming and walking on it, and how the slimy little shits were constantly devouring each other, and the vulture got self-conscious.

But the mountain has thought about the life. The mountain has grown to think of the life as part of itself, and of itself as part of the life.

“There are parts of me,” says the mountain, “that are shaped like the whole of me. And parts of those parts that are shaped like those parts. And so on, all the way down. Do you see what I mean?”

“I think so,” says the vulture, who lately gets dizzy up here.

“And the life is shaped this way too.”

“Shaped like a part of you?” It would not admit it, but since the life came, the vulture has missed something, felt less special maybe, and it feels selfish for feeling this.

“Parts of the life are shaped like the whole of the life. The green life especially, and the smallest life even more. All the life is made of parts shaped like other parts.”

So much discussion of life and its parts makes the vulture hungry. So after some polite conversation, it sharpens its beak and takes its leave.

---

The mountain has not been alone for millions of years.

The life on the mountain changes shape all the time, and the life on the mountain changes the shape of the mountain, and the mountain is no longer a mile high and a mile wide.

The mountain has more stories than the vulture now. Each story has stories, and each of those stories have stories. Even as they talk, the mountain feels more stories occur on and in itself than it has time to tell.

“There is a form of life, a man, on one of my lower ridges,” the mountain tells the vulture. “He’s very old, for what he is. He’s very wise, for what he is. Not as wise as you, of course.”

“I know only one who is,” says the vulture, and it may be joking. It doesn’t know these days. It’s a very old vulture.

“Others climb me for days to find him and ask for the things he knows,” says the mountain.

“What does he know?”

“Nothing. At least that’s what he tells the ones who find him. That’s why he lives so high on my ridge. To stay far from those who seek his wisdom.”

“Then he should live higher. Out of reach.”

“He could. But he doesn’t.”

“Why not?”

“So they’ll keep trying.”

The mountain tells stories of the man, and of the ones who find the man, and of the ones who do not find the man. The vulture listens, and it asks the mountain, “This man who lives on your ridge, does he know you?”

“He knows a part of me.”

The vulture looks up to the sky. There is a cloud here that looks like a vulture, to the vulture. “Does he talk to you?”

“No. No one talks to me. No one but you.”

The vulture breathes again. “To be fair, none of them have seen you from up here. To them you’re the whole world.”

“You always find the kindest way of putting things.”

---

There is a city in all directions. To see the end of it, you would have to be very high up. There is nothing that high up, in this city on a plain. Nothing but a dot.

The vulture circles the city from above. The city was not here the last time it visited. There were villages last time, and before that only encampments, and long before that only valleys, and long before that only passes between the peaks. The vulture looks closer. It sees, in the city, the shapes of the villages. In the villages, the shapes of the encampments, and so on. From up here, the vulture sees the old shape of the mountain.

This is not the biggest city the vulture has seen, or the grandest. The vulture has seen many things. But it’s still a lot to take in, and the vulture turns its fuzzy bobbing head to get its bearings. Here, here is the place. If the city weren’t in the way, it would have been obvious.

The vulture is not a diving bird. It doesn’t need to catch its prey suddenly. Its kind are famous for tracing lazy circles, waiting for their food to die. They don’t take life. They make good use of what’s left after it is taken.

So the vulture slowly spirals down, keeping an eye out for captors, as it has so many times — not always successfully, not even after the time of the wooden cage. But it’s never had trouble here. Maybe the life here knows. Maybe the life here senses that the vulture belongs here most of all.

In the center of the city is a circle. The bird winds above it: a ringed wall of stones, all shapes and sizes, gathered by men, though later histories will credit its construction to one-eyed giants. Boulders taller than a man, and pebbles the size of his thumb, are all fused with a crude mortar that will one day crumble under the feet of invaders.

Men are building the tower as the vulture circles low. They have a respect for the vulture, a healthy respect. They know it is not a predator, but they know it is not an omen of long life. They decide to break for lunch.

So the vulture has the space to itself as it swoops inside the ring. It lands in the center, on a rock buried in the dirt. The rock is sharp, and black, and hardly taller than the vulture, hardly wider. It might extend miles beneath the dirt, or it might be easily pried out by hand and used to build.

“Why do they surround you with your own stone?” asks the vulture. “To honor you, or to punish you?”

“I think to them I’m beside the point.”

“Where I live, there is a bird,” says the vulture, “that is born in the morning, mates at midday, lays its eggs in the afternoon, and dies in the evening. Its young hatch the morning after. They never see the nighttime; they don’t know it exists.”

“You always have the best stories,” says the mountain.

And the vulture tells its stories, and the mountain tells its stories. The mountain has listened to the builders. The ring will become a great tower, and the tower will reach the sky. And the tower will bring the world under their heel. That is what the builders say. But that is another story, and not the mountain’s story, and not the vulture’s story.

They talk through the afternoon, and the evening, and the night, and for the first time the vulture stays until the sun rises, because it knows, they both know. But the vulture doesn’t want to know.

“Well,” it says, the same as it has said for the lifetime of a world, “shall we do this again soon?”

The mountain does not reply.

“Ah,” says the vulture. “I had hoped . . .”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry.”

“I can’t offer you anything to eat.”

The vulture laughs, an uproarious caw that echoes up the ring of stone and resounds across the city.

“The builders are coming back,” says the mountain. “I feel it in the dirt. I think they’ll insist on starting work again.”

“I’ll insist they don’t.” The vulture has no firsthand experience in combat with a living thing, but it does have several million years of experience in aiming for the eyes.

“We can’t stop this,” says the mountain.

“I don’t care. I’m a very old bird.”

“Then you’d better sharpen your beak.”

And so, for the last time, it does.

 

 

 

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Host Commentary

Before we get into it, here’s something exciting: statistics! Our wunderteam of accounting types, Sam and M-Jo, have been running the numbers since we became the EA Foundation at the start of 2023. As a non-profit these figures are a matter of public record, so let’s talk numbers; these are across all five of our EA shows, so us, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Cast of Wonders and CatsCast:

· In 2023 we made payments over $84,000 to 336 different people in 23 countries in every region of the world except Antarctica and Russia; our creators came from 21 different countries and our crew from 11.

· 10.8% of our spend was on fundraising costs, like Patreon fees and PayPal fees; that’s the money we gotta spend to get the rest of the money. Only 7.9% went on all other overheads like hosting, services, tools etc. that make all this work. The rest—81% of everything donated to us, and over 90% of what’s left after fundraising costs are paid—went to people doing creative work, either authors, narrators, or crew.

When we said that becoming a non-profit would allow us to make your donations work harder than ever, this is what we meant. We’ve always believed that people deserve to be paid for their work, and this shows how we devote more of our resources to making that happen than anything else. It is huge to us, too, that we get to pay all of our crew: publishing has got long-standing historical problems with who is represented in the industry, and particularly in our segment of the industry—the teetering-on-a-knife-edge world of short speculative fiction—who can afford to give up their time for what’s usually volunteer work is an intersectional issue that only calcifies those imbalances. Being able to pay crew—not enough, not what they’re worth, but something—changes that calculus for folk and makes getting involved a more realistic option, when it doesn’t need to be set against a second or third job to make ends meet in a world that presses down harder on queer, disabled and non-white folk. You’re helping to make that happen, helping us redress those balances in this corner of publishing, so thank you. As always, the best way to support us is through Patreon at

, but there’s loads more ways to donate listed on the mothership at

And now pay attention, for our tale is about to begin, and it’s been told since the dawn of all things…

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “The Mountain and the Vulture” by Nick Douglas, and if you enjoyed that then check out his website at

for more.

Progress is inevitable, an intrinsic part of what makes us human. For all the talk of love being the primary motivator in human behaviour, or greed being what drives civilizations to become empires, I think that main motivator behind the majority of our history is laziness. We don’t want to walk to gather food, so let’s find a way to make it grow where we live. We don’t want to have to pump water out of the mines manually, so let’s invent steam engines to do it for us. We don’t want to run the numbers on everything slowly and laboriously, so let’s trick complicated sand into doing it for us. We can’t not strive for progress; it’s as innate to us as telling stories. The combination of the two is what elevated us from the animals.

But still: it always seems to come at a cost, at least so far as history has ever shown us. The industrial revolution was built on slavery and imperial suffering. The information revolution is built on environmental disaster and climate collapse. I sometimes look up at the moon and think that we, now, are the last humans, after millennia of stories and mythology, who will ever look up and see it unscarred by industry.

But if stories and progress are what made us human, I think there’s a third aspect too: the ability not to be ruled by our nature. We can understand delayed gratification. We can appreciate that the hard way is sometimes the better way, and worth the effort, and worth fighting that inbuilt laziness. We can fight our worst urges with moral understanding, and not steal and bully and act with only selfishness. We’re long overdue a reckoning with the cost we’re making the world pay for our progress: we’re operating at such a scale now that we are doing irreversible damage to our animal brethren, who are not separate, who are not resources, but are us, nature in all its kaleidoscopic glory. We are losing so much to progress, now, the mountain and the vulture and the oceans and the reefs and the forests and the glaciers and the future. We need to grow up, as a species, and accept our responsibility, and stop acting so selfishly no matter the cost.