On Blue's waters

- 13-
BROTHERS

After writing those words, “Then I will go home,” I threw away the last of Oreb’s quills. I am writing with the gray feather of a goose now, like other men. And there is so much to write about before the great day comes-the day when I can leave this place-that I hardly know how to begin.

That small boy, the gardener’s grandson, said I was the Decider. One of the things I must decide (one of the smallest and least important) is how much I should set down before I go. Since I fully intend to carry this account away with me, you may say that it makes very little difference what I decide; but I enjoy a certain rounding out in such things, a sense of completion. Clearly I cannot set down everything, but I hope to carry it to the point at which the lander left Blue. There were many days on the lander that I would far rather forget. Surely the best way is to end before I reach those; and after that I will write no more.

Before I begin, however, I ought to write about what the three of us did last night. That, at least, will not take long. Everything went as planned-Evensong bringing the note, and so on. The head gardener was there to meet us, leading a scrawny, docile old cow. Off we splashed through the warm rain. Prying up the stone was a good deal more difficult than I had anticipated, I having seen four workmen handle those stones without much trouble. I do not think the gardener and I could have managed without Evensong’s help. With it, we scarcely got it up. He dug. He has been digging all his life, and he knows his business.

I had half expected to find no more than the corpse, a thing like a dried jellystar, of someone like Krait. It was an inhuma, and seemed more nearly the mummified remains of a child. Possibly she tried to make me think she was human, as they commonly do, even as I lifted her from her grave. If she did, she succeeded horribly.

Evensong and I tried to talk to her. (I had meant for Evensong to keep watch, but it was raining so hard that I could scarcely see the cow. She could not have seen someone coming until he bumped into her.) It was hopeless; the inhuma was too weak to speak a word. I put her on the cow’s back and pressed her mouth to the unlucky cow’s neck. I have washed my hands a dozen times since.

She fed for what seemed to us, soaked and steaming as all three of us were, a very long time. She became somewhat larger, and perhaps somewhat lighter in color, although it was not easy to tell by the light of Mehman’s sputtering lantern; but that was all.

Then…

I doubt that I can set it down in ink in any meaningful way-I wish I could make you see it as we did. Two things happened at once, but I cannot write about them both at once; one must be first and the other second. Nettle, will you ever read this? What will you think of me?

The rain stopped in an instant, the way rain often does here. At one moment it was pouring. At the next the only drops that fell were those that trickled from the roofs of the shops around the market square. At that instant the inhuma slipped off the old cow’s back, and when her feet touched stone there was no inhuma. In her place stood a woman a little taller than Evensong, an emaciated woman with burning eyes whose hairless skull somehow conveyed the impression of lank reddish hair. I put my chain around her neck and snapped the lock, and for an instant felt something quite different.

I said, “You must be wondering why we released you.”

“No.” She looked down into the grave in which she had been imprisoned. “Don’t you want to fill that up before someone sees it?”

We did, and before the work was complete Evensong and I were ready to jump out of our skins when Mehman dropped his spade. I had intended to talk to the inhuma there, but had assumed that the rain would continue; it would have been madness to do it when the rain had stopped. After a little discussion we decided to go to Mehman’s cottage, at the farther end of my garden.

The cow made everything much more difficult; she was almost too weak to stand. Mehman would have left her where she was, but I would not hear of it, wanting nothing left behind that would draw attention to the spot. Our prisoner offered to return a little of the blood she had taken; but however deceived by her appearance I may have been, her eyes told me what she intended, and I would not permit it.

Eventually we got the cow into my garden, shut the gate, and let her lie down. This morning Mehman was to take her to the stables and tell the stableman that I have decided to take her in and care for her. It is a thing that pious people here do occasionally.

He and Evensong waited outside while I explained what I had learned from Krait on Green. I tapped the window when I had finished, and they came in again. “Will you do whatever we tell you, if I release you?” I asked the inhuma. “Or shall I make good on my threat?”

She said nothing in reply, her face buried in her hands-a naked, hairless, reptilian thing in woman’s shape, stripped for the moment of all her pride. Mehman and Evensong positioned their chairs a half step behind mine and sat in silence, watching her.

“I warn you, if you will not I am going to spread my knowledge everywhere. I will be believed, because I am ruler here.”

The face she lifted was a woman’s once more, beautiful and depraved. “What do you want from me?” Her eyes were green, or if they were not, they appeared so.

“You are quick.” I sat too, drew my sword, and laid it across my lap.

“I used to be. Tolerably so.” Her bony shoulders rose and fell, much narrower shoulders than Seawrack’s, and thinner than hers had ever been. Skeletal.

Mehman stood, having remembered his duties as host. “You will honor me by drinking tea, Rajan?”

Seeing that it would please him, I nodded and asked him to bring me a bowl of warm water, soap, and a clean towel as well.

“Tea for the rani?” He bowed to Evensong; when I was newly come it never occurred to me that my wives would be awarded the title of the ruler of Trivigaunte.

Evensong nodded and smiled, and Mehman bowed again and bustled away.

“I’d ask you how long you were in the ground under that stone, if I thought you knew,” I told our prisoner, “but I don’t see how you could.”

She shook her head. “Years, I think.”

“So do I. Is your word good?”

“Freely given to you? Yes.”

“Then give me your word that you will do exactly as I order you.”

She shook her head more vigorously, so much so that the chain clanked and rattled. “It would be worth nothing at all as long as I have to wear this. Take it away, and my oath will bind me.”

I got out the key, but Evensong caught my hand.

The inhuma began, “You were surprised that I didn’t want to know why you had-had…”

Her emotion may have been feigned, although I doubt it.

“I wasn’t free. You had locked this thing around my neck. Take it away.”

Motioning for Evensong to remain where she was, I did.

“I will obey you in all things, Rajan,” the inhuma declared. She rubbed her neck as if the chain had chafed it, and although they were faint I could see scales where pores should have been. I glanced at the window, and found that it was gray now instead of black.

I said, “You give me your word for that?”

“Yes.” Even knowing that her empty jade eyes and hollow cheeks were more than half illusion, I pitied the face I saw. “You have my word, unless you command me to go back into that place of living death.”

“I won’t. And when you have completed the task I’ll give you, I’m going to let you go.”

Evensong made a little sound of displeasure. “I don’t like it either,” I said, “but what else can I do? Kill her after she’s fought for us?”

The inhuma made me a seated bow that may or may not have been mockery.

Because I thought it would be better to wait for Mehman to return, I said, “It’s just occurred to me that you inhumi are rather like a kind of lizard I’ve noticed in my garden. It can change colors, and because of its size and shape, and because it remains so still, it is easy to take one for a piece of brown bark, or a green leaf, or even the flesh-colored petal of a rose. While I acknowledge that you inhumi are a much higher form of life, it seems to me that the principle is about the same.”

I expected her to say that we three were merely large monkeys without tails (as Krait would have), which would have been at least as just; but she only nodded. “You are correct, Rajan.”

Evensong said, “Pehla showed me one of those. They catch insects with their tongues.”

The inhuma nodded as before. “We do the same, rani. You haven’t asked my name, or given me yours.”

Evensong introduced herself. I explained to her that I had not inquired about the inhuma’s name because I knew that any name she gave us would be false, at which the inhuma said, “Then my name in this town of yours shall be False. Is that how you say it?” Mehman came in just then with my water, soap, and towel. “I have no tray, Rajan. I am shamed.”

“I am shamed, not you,” I told him. “I ought to have paid you better, and I will. I’ll give you a tray, too. This inhuma would like us to call her by a name that means false or lying. Something like that. What would it be?”

“Jahlee.”

“Thank you. Jahlee, this man is Mehman. Mehman, we will call this evil woman Jahlee, as you suggest.”

He bowed to her.

“Jahlee,” I said, “you are not to harm Mehman or any of his people.”

“I am your slave.”

“Look at him carefully. Neither Evensong nor I are typical of the mass of people here, but he is. He is a typical citizen of our town, tall and dark, with a nose, eyes, mouth, and so on quite a bit like mine.”

“I have seen others, Rajan.”

“Good. These are my people. Under no circumstances whatsoever are you to harm any of them. If you do, you know what I will do.”

“I do, Rajan. But I must live.”

“You must do more, as we both understand. I’m about to get to that.”

Evensong said, “Suppose another inhuma comes here and hurts someone. We might think it was her.”

“We might indeed. Because we might she will warn the other inhumi to keep away, if she is wise. Jahlee, Evensong is from a different town, a foreign town called Han, with which our own town is at war. She is a young woman of Han, more attractive than most.”

The starved and empty eyes fastened upon Evensong’s face. “I understand, Rajan.”

“You are not to attack the common people of Han, or of any other town. You may attack any and all of the troopers fighting against us, however. They are fair game for you.”

Jahlee started to object, but fell silent.

“There are more than enough for you. You may also attack their animals, if you wish.”

She shook her head. “That is most gracious, Rajan. But I will not.”

“Sarcasm will win you no friends here.”

“Is it possible for me to win friends, Rajan?”

“Not like that. Will you attack the troopers from Han, as I have suggested?”

“I am your slave. But it would be better if I had clothes.” With both hands, she smoothed her starved body, a body that appeared wholly human. “A wig or headdress of some sort, too. Powder, rouge, and scent.”

I glanced at Evensong, who nodded and hurried out.

“A few gauds, Rajan, if it’s not asking too much.”

“She will think of that, I’m sure. She’s an intelligent young woman.”

Mehman re-entered with a steaming teapot and two cups, and I assured him that Evensong would be back soon.

“There is more,” I told Jahlee. Rinsing my fingers for the third time, I sipped tea and nodded my appreciation to Mehman.

“More duties, Rajan? For me?” Her voice had become breathlessly feminine.

“You might say so. Are you aware that there are other inhumi entombed here as you were?”

“No.” For a moment the empty eyes flashed fire. “You torture us as we never torture you.”

“There are, and I know where they are buried. Han’s our enemy, but only Han’s troops. You understand that.”

Mehman brought in a fragrant cup for himself and another for Jahlee, and I motioned for him to sit down.

Jahlee asked, “Do you intend to dig them up to fight for us, Most Merciful Rajan?”

“I may. In addition to preying upon those troops, I want you to do whatever may occur to you to weaken and discomfort them. Knowing the cunning of your race, I leave the nature of those things entirely to you. You may do whatever seems good to you, as long as it doesn’t harm us.”

“I understand, Rajan.”

“When you have done something sufficiently impressive that you feel that word of it is bound to reach me, return here. My palace is in the same garden as this cottage. If it’s a court day, come to court. If it isn’t, ask for Evensong, who is also called Chota.”

“Your servants may detect me, Rajan.”

“See that they do not. If what you have done really is a major stroke, you and I, with Mehman here and Evensong, will rescue a second member of your race just as the three of us rescued you, and on the same conditions. He or she will be sent against the Horde of Han exactly as you are being sent. When either of you achieves a major success, a third will be rescued. And so on.”

“If you win your war, you will release me from my promise?”; Her expression was guarded.

“Exactly.”

“Will you rescue the rest of us who are still in the living graves then?”

“No.” I shook my head. “But I will tell you-and the others who have been freed-where they are. You may free them yourselves, if you wish.”

Slowly, she nodded.

Soon after that, Evensong returned. She had a crimson silk gown over one arm and was carrying two elaborately inlaid boxes. “There are shoes in here,” she told Jahlee, handing her one, “and a good ivory bracelet and my second-best ivory ring. Women in Han don’t wear a lot of brass bangles the way women do here.”

“Scent,” Jahlee whispered. “I must have scent.” She opened the box and took out a fanciful bottle.

“That’s not the good perfume you gave me,” Evensong told me. “It’s what they gave me in Han when they sent me here.” As she spoke, a heavy, spicy fragrance filled the room. “You don’t need that much,” she cautioned Jahlee.

Jahlee laughed then, laughter so dark and exulting that I wondered whether I had not made a serious mistake when I had decided to undertake this experiment after weeks of worry and indecision.

“Here’s a woman’s traveling hat.” Evensong opened the other box and took it out. It was wide and flat, rather like an oversized saucer or a wide soup bowl of tightly plaited white straw turned upside down.

There was a knock at the door; Mehman looked to me for guidance, and I asked whether he was expecting company.

“My daughter and her little boy.”

“Put on that gown and go,” I told Jahlee. “You know what you are to do.”

Stepping swiftly into the shoes, she pulled it over her head. “Night would be better.”

“Most people are still asleep.” I turned to Evensong. “Will you give her that box to keep the cosmetics in?”

She nodded.

Mehman’s daughter knocked again, and I told Mehman to admit them, adding to Jahlee, “When they come in, you are to leave immediately.”

She did, favoring the humble woman and her little son with a flashing smile in which no actual teeth were to be seen, and running across the soft green grass with one hand clapped to the traveling hat and Evensong’s gown flowing and floating around her.

Mehman made obeisance. “My daughter Zeehra, Rajan. My grandson Lal.”

His daughter looked askance at Evensong and me, plainly dressed and soaked to the skin, before bowing almost to the ground.

“The rani and I were discussing an expansion of the herb beds with your father when we were caught in the rain,” I explained.

Little Lal started to speak, but was hushed at once by his mother.

“We are about to return to the palace,” I continued, “but there is something of importance I must tell you first. Your father will confirm what I say after I leave, I feel certain. The woman whom I dismissed as you came in is not to be trusted. I would not wish you to think, because you saw her with my wife and me, that she is someone I trust, someone to whom you ought to defer.”

Evensong surprised me by saying, “She is a thief and worse than a thief.”

“Exactly.” I stood. “The two-hands spider kills our rats, but it remains a spider.”

“You’re the Decider,” little Lal burst out. “The other people talk and talk, then you decide.”

“I am,” I told him, “but I can’t decide everything. You must decide whether to obey your mother, for example-and accept the consequences if you don’t. What would you do, Lal, if that woman in the red gown came to your door?”

“I wouldn’t let her in,” he declared stoutly.

“Very good,” I said. “In time you may be an important and respected man like your grandfather.”

That was four days ago. Jahlee may have been active. I hope so, but I have heard nothing.

My wound seems worse, Evensong says from the rain but I think it is actually from the strain of lifting that big flagstone in the market. Maybe it is for the best that we have no news about Jahlee.

This rain makes my ankle ache.

If I were to give every detail of the painfully slow voyage that Seawrack, Krait, Babbie, and I made up the river, I would use up as much again of this thin rice paper as I have consumed already.

Which is too much. Paper is dear here, and I have several times come close to proposing that we build our own mill. The Cataracts (upper or lower) would supply far more water power than our little stream on Lizard Island. But it is out of the question as long as the fighting continues, and as soon as it ends I will go.

A lot of paper, and to confess the truth it would have a good deal of interest written on it. On the lower reaches around Wichote, the lack of winds was the chief problem. The river was very wide there; even so, the center of its stream offered few such winds as one hopes for, and often gets, at sea; and when we tried to tack, whatever wind there was generally died away altogether as we appreached the thickly wooded banks. The current was slow, however, and what progress we made was often made with Babbie and me at the sweeps. Earlier I recorded my dismay when Krait said we might be in Pajarocu in ten days. I need not have worried, and after a good long session with the sweeps I would gladly have arrived that very instant if it had been possible. There were many days on which we could see the point at which we had dropped anchor the day before when we stopped for the evening meal.

Somewhere I should say that we were attacked only once. Half a dozen men, perhaps, swam out to our boat while Krait was away and Seawrack and I were sleeping. Babbie and a couple of shots from the slug gun routed them, and one left behind a long knife that became Seawrack’s tool and weapon thereafter. Basically, no harm was done; but it taught me to anchor well away from shore on those rivers, as I invariably did from that time forward. As an added precaution, I made it a set rule to travel some little distance after we had finished our evening meal and put out the fire in the sandbox, and not to drop anchor until full darkness had arrived and the place could not easily be observed.

Having found Pajarocu, Krait visited it almost every night; and I assumed that he was feeding there as well. He asked for and received my permission to leave us if it appeared that the lander was about to fly. In return, he assured me repeatedly that he would continue to guide us, faithful to the promise he had made when he rescued me from the pit, so long as it did not mean that he himself would miss the lander.

Food was a continuing difficulty. Much of the meat Seawrack had smoked had spoiled, either because it had not been dried enough, or because it had gotten wet. We had brought a little food from Wichote as well, most notably the famous pudding I have already mentioned and a sack of cornmeal; but after the first week on the river the cornmeal was gone and the pudding (which had once seemed as permanent as a stone) showed signs of unwelcome shrinkage. Seawrack took fish in the river for Babbie and me, fish which she caught with her hands and at first refused to eat. She also went in search of wild berries-these were very welcome indeed when they could be found-while Babbie and I hunted with the slug gun.

To the very few of you who read this who may venture upon the western sea, I say this. Hunger and cold will be the chief dangers you face, and they will be far worse than the hostility of the people of Shadelow, and a thousand times worse than its most dangerous beasts.

(It was not so on Green; perhaps someday I will write about that after all, even though Green’s monstrous beasts would never be credited. If I do it I will have to represent them as slower, as well as smaller, than they actually are.)

Hunger and cold tormented us, as I have said, and each made the other far worse. In cold weather a starved person is scarcely ever warm, even with a blanket and a fire; and a healthy person exposed to cold soon becomes ravenously hungry. When I sailed from Lizard Island, I took a few changes of clothing, a warm wool blanket, and bales of paper to trade for more supplies at New Viron-paper that was stolen from me almost at once. For my needier Sinew threw me his knife, and Marrow very generously provided me with food, the slug gun and ammunition, and the silver jewelry I have occasionally mentioned. I bought more food (with vinegar, cooking oil, black and red pepper, and dried basil), the sweeps, a new harpoon, and a few other odds and ends, after which I considered myself adequately equipped.

I-we-were not. I am tempted here to write at great length about gloves, stockings, and boots. There were times when I would have traded the sloop for a warm wool cap and a stout pair of warm leather gloves; but to dwell on this item or that would be to obscure the real point.

One cannot stock a boat with sufficient food for such a voyage as I so lightly undertook. If its entire cargo consisted of food, that would not be sufficient. All that one can do is to load up with as much as the boat can reasonably carry, choosing foods (vegetable foods, particularly) that will keep for weeks or months. We fished and hunted, as I have indicated; but an exclusive diet of fish and meat is not healthy and quickly becomes maddeningly monotonous. The best gift that Marrow gave me was not my slug gun, but the barrel of apples. Before we reached Pajarocu, I wished heartily that it had been a half dozen. I must add that each day spent hunting and gathering wild fruits or nuts was a day lost, and that we often got little or nothing.

Possibly I should also say here that when the barrel was empty I broke it up and used its staves for firewood. If I had kept it and stored Seawrack’s smoked breakbull in it, much that was spoiled by wetting would have been saved.

There was little cloth in the market at Wichote, although furs and hides were plentiful. Seawrack and I got fur caps that came down well past our necks and ears, butter-soft leather tunics of greenbuck hide (I wore mine under the stiffer garment that He-pen-sheep had made for me), big fur robes, and clumsy fur mittens, as well as blankets much thicker and warmer than the one I brought from Lizard. These purchases will show the sort of clothing that will be essential on the voyage. Add to them sturdy trousers-several pairs-at least two pairs of seaboots, and a dozen pairs of wool stockings.

One should also bring needles and thread with which to repair one’s clothing. I was fortunate in that I had several of the large needles I used to sew sails and a big ball of coarse linen thread. Finer needles and finer thread would be advisable, to-as well as a pair of scissors.

With boat’s stores I was tolerably well provided. The second anchor I had bought in New Viron, particularly, proved invaluable. I had also laid in a bolt of sailcloth, tar, varnish, and paint, and came to regret that there was not more of all four. There cannot be too much rope on a boat bound on a trip of great duration.

After the first fork, the current became our chief obstacle, and one about which we could do very little. Even on the lower reaches, where it was almost undetectable, it would slowly bear the sloop backward toward Wichote, although the water appeared quite motionless. After the first fork, we had to creep along very near one bank or the other, which meant we could not tack. We had to wait for a good, strong wind not worse than quartering, or crawl forward with the sweeps. On more than one occasion, and more than two, we thus waited and crawled and waited again for days at a time. There were even times when I walked three hundred strides upriver (that being the greatest distance that we had rope for) and hitched a block to a tree, after which we hauled the sloop forward-”we” being Babbie and I, very largely. I do not recall a good, strong, favoring wind that lasted a full day during the entire trip.

In the long hours of idleness Seawrack and I became more intimate than we had ever been before, more intimate even than we had been during those first idyllic days when her poor stump of arm had not yet healed and she used to confide to me that the fingers she no longer possessed touched something hard or soft, smooth or rough.

There was none of that now; if those soft and graceful phantom fingers groped or stroked anything, I was not apprised of it; but she talked about her life beneath the sea, of people she had known and liked or known and feared there (not all or even most of them actual, I believe), the freshwater springs on the seafloor at which she had drunk, the pranks she had played upon unsuspecting men in boats, and the pets she had adopted but eventually discarded, lost, or eaten.

“It seemed completely normal to me then,” she said, and I knew in my heart that it still did-that it was her life aboard the sloop with me that seemed the aberration. “I knew most people lived on the land, and I think I knew, somewhere behind my ears, that I had too, a long time ago. It wasn’t something I thought a lot about.”

She was silent for a moment, staring out at the last gleams of sunshine on the water.

“There were certain places around Mother where I slept, and I would go into them when it got dark. The sea is more dangerous after dark. So often you don’t see hungry things until you bump into them, or they bump into you, and a lot of those hungry things have ways of seeing in the dark with noises that I can’t do.”

She seemed to catch her breath, scanning the forest shadows. “So when it got dark I would go into one of my sleeping places. The water was always warm and still in them, with Mother’s smell in it. I’d curl up and go to sleep, knowing that Mother was so big that nothing frightened her, and that most of the dangerous things and people were afraid of her. You probably think it was awful. But it wasn’t awful, not then. It was really very, very nice.”

Babbie stretched out beside her, resting his chin on her thigh and looking up at her with eyes like two dark red beads that tried terribly hard to melt, although they had been made for maniacal ferocity.

“The land was like that for me, when I thought about it at all. Like the dark, I mean. I felt that it was always dark up there, and the people there weren’t really people at all, that they weren’t really people. Mother wasn’t human, though. Isn’t that what you say?” Feeling very much like Babbie, I nodded.

“She always seemed human to me. She still does, and I think it’s because in the sea being people means something different. In the sea, it’s talking. If you talk, you are a person, so she was and so was I, because in the sea there’s a lot of noise but not very many talking voices. In a place like that town where we stayed waiting for market day, there are so many people talking all the time that nobody wants to hear any more talk. After that, being human becomes something else, like walking on your hind feet.”

I smiled. “Human chickens?”

“And having two arms and two hands instead of wings. So I’m almost human. Isn’t that right?” She began to comb her long, golden hair, holding the comb in her mouth when she needed her hand for other matters.

“Your hair changes color,” I told her.

“When it’s wet. It looks black then.”

“No, it doesn’t. When it’s wet it’s a tawny gold, like the beautiful old gold you wore for me when you first came on board.”

She laughed, pleased. “But when I go down deep, it’s black.”

“If you go down deep enough, I suppose it must be. But now it’s changing color, and every color is more beautiful than the last, and makes me forget the last and wish that it would stay the new color always.”

I watched the comb, and the shimmering highlights it left behind. “There’s gold so pale that it’s almost like silver, like this ring you gave me, and pure yellow gold, and red gold, and even the tawny color your hair has when it’s wet-the color I thought it was for the first few days.”

“I was still spending a lot of time in the water then,” she said pensively.

“I know. And now you’re afraid of it, even when you catch fish for us. I see you nerving yourself to go in, to take the plunge as people say.”

“I’m not afraid I’ll drown, Horn. I never, ever will. Sometimes I wish I could.”

Obtuse though I was, I knew what she meant. “You’d die.” I tried to make my voice gentle. “Isn’t that worse than going back to your old life in the sea?”

We watched Krait haul on the painter to bring the sloop nearer shore, then walk out onto the bowsprit, jump down, and vanish among the crowding trees. The sun was sinking behind the mountains already, wrapping the river that had become our whorl in silent purple shadows.

“He’s one, isn’t he?” Seawrack sighed, put away her comb.

“One what?”

“One of the things that hunt through the night, the things I was so frightened of when I slept in Mother.”

Not knowing what to say, I did not reply.

“There was a cave in the rocks that I used to play in. I’ve probably told you.”

I nodded.

“I used to say I was going to sleep in there.” She laughed again, softly. “I was always really brave in the daytime. But when the dark started coming up out of the deep places, I would swim back to Mother as fast as I could and sleep in one of the places where I’d been sleeping ever since I was little. I knew what a lot of the things out there in the dark were, even if I didn’t have names for them, and just this moment it came into my head that Krait is one of those, even if I don’t have any name except Krait.”

I said, “I see,” although I was not sure I did.

“He sleeps all day, more than Babbie, even, and he hardly ever eats anything. Then at night he hunts, and he must eat everything he catches, because he never brings us back anything.”

“Sometimes he does,” I objected.

“That little crabbit.” Contemptuously, she waved the crabbit aside. “He seems like a human person to me, but he doesn’t to you.”

It caught me completely off guard. I did not know what to say.

“He has two hands and two arms, and he walks standing up. He talks more than both of us together when he’s awake. So why don’t you think he’s people?”

I tried to say that I considered Krait fully human, and that he was in fact a human being just as we were-but tried to do it without telling a direct lie, stuttering and stammering and backing away from assertions I had just made.

“No, you don’t,” Seawrack told me.

“Perhaps it’s only that he’s so young. He’s actually quite a bit younger than my son Sinew, and quite frankly, Seawrack, my son Sinew and I have been at each other’s throats more often than I like to remember.” I swallowed, steeling myself to force out all the lies the situation might require. “He looks like Sinew, too-”

A new voice-Sinew’s own-inquired, “Like me? Who does?”

I turned my head so fast that I nearly broke my neck. Sinew was almost alongside, standing perilously erect in one of the little boats made by hollowing out logs that the local people used.

“Krait does,” Seawrack told him. It was as though she had known him all her life.

Sinew looked at her, gulped helplessly, and looked at me, plainly not yet up to speaking to a woman whose eyes, lips, and chin had rocked him like a gale.

I asked whether he wanted to come on board.

“She’s-is it all right?”

“Certainly,” I told him; and I caught the rope of braided hide he threw me and made it fast.

If you had asked me an hour earlier, I would have said that I would be delighted to see any face or hear any voice from Lizard, even his. Now I had both seen and heard him, and my heart sank. Here in this strange and wondrous town of Gaon, I tell myself (and I believe that it is true) that I would be overjoyed to see Sinew again as I saw him that evening on the great cold river that rushes through the hills of the eastern face of Shadelow; but I know that if my feelings were to take me off guard here as they did there, I would call my guards and tell them to take him into the garden and cut off his head in any spot they liked, as long as it was out of sight of my window. If, somehow, he had appeared when Seawrack was ashore looking for the seedy orange fruits she had twice found growing in the clearings left by old fires, I really believe that I might simply have shot him and let the torpid waters carry his corpse out of my sight. What might have happened subsequently on Green, I can scarcely imagine.

As it was, he sprang over the gunwale as I never could and sat down with us, looking at Seawrack with embarrassed admiration.

“This young man is Sinew, my oldest son,” I told her. “He followed me from Lizard Island, apparently, and now he has caught up with me. With us, I ought to have said.”

She smiled at him and nodded; and I added, “Sinew, this is Seawrack.”

Shier than ever, he nodded in return.

“You did follow me, didn’t you? I had asked you-in fact, I had begged you-to stay there and look after your mother.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Gently, Seawrack asked, “How was she when you left, and how were your brothers?”

“It wasn’t that long after you,” he told me. For a few seconds he paused to gawk at the mossy leather stretched tight by Seawrack’s breasts. “Mother was fine then, and the sprats were fine too.”

Seawrack smiled. “Did you take good care of her while you were there, Sinew?”

“No.” He had summoned up the courage to speak to her directly. “She took care of me, like she always does. See, my father-hey! What are you doing?”

I was taking his hunting knife from the belt of my hide over-tunic, sheath and all. “Returning this to you.” I held it out; and when he did not accept it, I tossed it into his lap.

“I can’t give your needier back.” He eyed me, clearly expecting me to explode.

“That’s all right.”

“I had it. I should have left it at home with Mother, only I didn’t. I took it with me in the old boat, and it was a really good thing to have, too. I used it a lot before I lost it.”

He turned to Seawrack. “Father wanted me to take care of the family, and for a couple of days I tried, only there wasn’t anything to do. He thought I’d take the paper to town in the little boat, our old one that wasn’t much bigger than my old skin boat. Only it leaked and wouldn’t hold near enough, and as soon as everybody found out he’d gone away and left my mother there, Daisy’s mother came over and said they’d take Mother and our paper in their fishing boat anytime she wanted to go. This new boat here is like a fishing boat, that’s what we copied it from when me and Father built it, only we put in these big boxes, too, to keep the paper dry. He keeps rope and stuff in one, though.”

“I know,” Seawrack said.

“Real fishermen keep theirs up front under that little deck that they stand on when they’ve got to fool with the forestay or the jib.”

“That’s where we sleep now, Sinew, your father and I.” Seawrack’s tone thrilled me as much as it must have pained him; even tonight I thrill to the memory of it.

He stared, his mouth gaping. His hands fumbled with his knife, and for a moment I believed that he might actually try to stab me with it.

As if she spoke to a child, she asked, “Do you want to come with us? Where will you sleep tonight?”

“Yeah. In my boat, I guess. That’s where I’ve been sleeping. I’ll get in it and tie it on in back.” He looked to me. “Is that all right?”

I nodded.

“Only if you’ve got a blanket or anything that would be great. I brought some, but I lost them.”

I was about to say that we had brought only one, and had slept for most of the voyage under sailcloth and our clothing, but Seawrack explained that we had bought blankets in Wichote and rose to get him one. I suggested that he might want some sailcloth as well, in case of rain.

“All right.” For a second or two he fingered his reclaimed hunting knife. “We could trade for some furs with people around here, if you’ve got anything to trade.”

I nodded and said that I should have thought of that when we put in at Wichote.

“They’d skin you there.”

(My irony had been wasted.)

“Only out here and farther west you can get good furs cheap because they don’t want to have to load them in their boats and take them down the river to sell.”

He accepted the blanket that would be his from that moment forward. “After we bring back Silk I’m going to build a real big boat and just go back and forth trading. I’ll buy slug guns and stuff like that back home and sell them for furs all up and down the river, and then go back for more.”

It recalled what the traveler had said, and I asked him whether he had been farther west than we were now.

“Oh, sure. I’ve been to Pajarocu. I hung around there about a week waiting for you, then I started back down looking for you.”

Seawrack said admiringly, “You’re very brave to travel alone here in that little boat.”

“Thanks.” He smiled, and for a moment I actually liked him. “See, a little boat like mine is what you need out here, so you can get way over to one side and paddle. My father’s probably hanging on to this big one ’cause we’re going to have to have it to bring Silk back to New Viron in. We’ll have to have something that can make it across. That’s right, isn’t it, Father?”

Back to Seawrack before I had a chance to reply. “This one will do it. It’ll be fast, too, when we’re going back down, bringing Silk back. We’ll need it because the lander’s coming right straight back to Pajarocu, when it comes back.” He waited for one of us to challenge him.

“You bet it is. They’re not going to let a thing like that get away from them. Would you? There’s quite a few towns over on the other side that’ve got landers that work. That’s what I heard. Only they won’t let anybody but their own people get anywhere around them. Just try it and you’ll get shot. Some won’t even own up that they’ve got them.”

I cleared my throat. “I’ve been thinking. I want to propose a plan to both of you.”

Sinew held up his knife, inspecting its blade by the last light of the day that was now past. “You nicked the edge,” he said, and inspected the place with a thumbnail.

“I know. I’ve been cutting wood with it. I had to.” I expected him to enlarge upon his complaint; but he did not.

Seawrack had been studying his face. “You don’t look very much like your father.”

“Everybody says I do.”

She shook her head, and he smiled.

I asked them, “May I tell you what I propose? The plan I mentioned?”

“Sure.” Sinew sheathed his knife.

“As you said, we’ll need this boat when the lander returns. As you also said, it’s not well suited to river travel. Seawrack and I have seen that for ourselves. So has Krait.”

I waited for his agreement, and got it.

“Seawrack and I haven’t talked very much about the hazards involved in flying back to the Whorl on a lander jury-rigged by somebody in Pajarocu. Neither did you and I before I left, and I don’t like to talk about it even now. I don’t enjoy sounding as if I were boasting about the dangers I’ll face. I don’t even like to think about them, and I’d gladly make them less-if I could.”

“It looks pretty good, that lander,” Sinew assured me. “I’ve seen it.”

I nodded. “I’m very glad to hear that. But before I continue, I ought to ask you something. What happened to our old boat, the one you set out in?”

He shrugged. “I traded it for the one I’ve got now and some other stuff.”

“May I ask what the other stuff was?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s gone now.”

“What was it?”

“I said it doesn’t matter!”

“He’s hungry,” Seawrack interposed. “Would you like a piece of smoked meat, Sinew?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

This time I waited until he was chewing it. “I have to go on that lander. I promised I would, and I intend to. Krait wants to go, too. He’s told me why, and he has an excellent reason; but he made me promise not to reveal it. Neither of you have any reason at all.”

They objected, but I silenced them. “As I said, it will be very dangerous. It’s quite possible that the lander will explode, or catch fire, or crash when it tries to take off. Even if it flies away safely and crosses the abyss between the whorls, landing in the Whorl is liable to be very difficult. Krait’s been concerned about you, Seawrack. I doubt that he’s told you, but he has been.”

She shook her head.

“He’d been assuming that you’d come with us if there was a place for you on it. He mentioned it to me not long ago, and I said just what I’m saying now, that it’s too dangerous to subject you to. I told him that I intended to leave you in Pajarocu until I came back.”

Seawrack shook her head again, this time violently, and Sinew said, “Me, too? I won’t.”

“Krait had objections as well. He pointed out that she would be an attractive young woman alone and friendless in a strange town. I had to admit that he was right.” I rilled my lungs with air, conscious of what failure to persuade them now would mean.

“So here’s the new plan I would like to propose. When Krait returns in the morning, we’ll go back to Wichote. We’ll be sailing with the current then, and it shouldn’t take more than two or three days.”

Sinew’s nod was guarded.

“When we get there, Krait and I will trade for another little boat like the one you have. He and I will take those two boats to Pajarocu. You and Seawrack will wait for us in Wichote, on this one.”

“No.” Seawrack sounded as firm as I was ever to hear her, and that was very firm indeed.

“You won’t be alone there, either of you. Furthermore, you’ll have this boat to live on, together. And if I’m not back within a month or so…” I shrugged.

In so low a tone that I scarcely heard him, Sinew said, “I knew you didn’t want me as soon as I saw you. Only I didn’t think you’d give her up to get rid of me.”

“I’m not trying to get rid of you. Can’t you get it through your head that I may never come back? That I may die? I’d like to arrange things so that neither of you dies with me.” It was so dark by that time that it was difficult for me to see their faces; I looked from one to the other, hoping for support.

Seawrack said, “Sinew’s been to Pajarocu. He can take us to it.”

Sinew nodded.

I said, “If you found it, so can Krait and I.”

There was a long silence after that. Sinew took advantage of it to get himself another strip of smoked meat, and I am going to take advantage of it now to get a little sleep before Jahlee and Evensong come.

Heavy rain from midnight on, which gave us good cover. I did not go out or even get up this morning, although my wound seems better-breakfast in bed from a tray, and so forth. Hari Mau talked with me as I lay in bed, stamping up and down the room and more than ready to fall upon the Hannese that very moment. He had ridden half the morning with a rain-soaked, bloodstained bandage where his white headcloth ought to be, and is planning a major attack as soon as the rainy season ends. Our enemies are weaker than they look, he says, and I pray to the Outsider and any other god who may read this that he is correct. He swears diat if I could talk with his new prisoners I would agree.

He has gone now, and I have gotten up to write this in my nightclothes, more than half ashamed.

We could have built a fire in the box or lit the lantern that night on the sloop, but we did not. The darkness and the overpowering presences of the forest and the swiftly sinister river created an atmosphere that I cannot possibly convey with ink on paper. The people of Shadelow believe that each of their rivers has a minor god of its own who lives in and under it and governs it, a god whose essence it is. Also that the forests hold minor gods and goddesses as numerous as their animals, gods and goddesses for the most part malign and unappeasable. When Seawrack spoke to Sinew and me that night in the dark, it almost seemed to me that we had one with us on the sloop. What it must have seemed to Sinew, who did not know her as I did, is far beyond my ability to express.

“You said it was good that I can’t drown,” she began. “Do you remember that?”

I did.

“I said I wished I could.” There was an odd, rough sound, loud in the silence; after a moment I realized that she was scratching Babbie’s ears. “You thought it was foolish of me, wanting to drown. But I don’t want to drown. I’ve seen a lot more drowned people than you have, probably. I’ve seen what die sea does to them, and watched Mother eat them, and eaten them myself.”

For the space of a score of breaths no voices were heard but die wind’s and the river’s.

“What I’d like is to be able to, because you can. You think I can wait for you in that town where the river comes to the sea. Do you think Babbie will wait, too? Do you think he can live in the forest until you come back, and then come back to you?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, “although Babbie has surprised me before.”

“You don’t think he’s a real person. To you he’s just like Krait, and Krait’s not a real person either.”

I tried to say that I did not think Babbie a person at all, that Babbie was not a human being like Krait and the three of us. I cannot be certain now precisely how I may have put it, although I am quite sure I put it badly. Whatever lies I may have told, and however I phrased diem, I made Seawrack angry.

“That’s not what I said! That’s not what I said at all! You’re twisting all the words around. You do it once or twice every day, and I’d do anything, if only I could make you stop it.”

“I apologize,” I told her. “I didn’t intend to. If that isn’t what you meant, what did you mean?”

Sinew began, “Did she really-?”

She cut him off. “What I’m trying to say is, there are two people on this boat you don’t think are people at all, Babbie and Krait. You don’t think they are, but you’re wrong. You’re wrong about both of them.”

Sinew muttered, “He doesn’t think I’m anybody either.”

“Yes, he does!” In the chill starlight, I could see her turn to face him. “You’ve got it exacdy backwards. No wonder you’re his son.”

While Sinew was wrestiing with that, she added, “It’s the other part he doesn’t like, the thingness. You try to be less of a person and more of a thing because you think that’s what he wants, but it’s really the other way.” Her voice softened. “Horn?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“Tell me. Tell us both. What does it take to make a person for you?”

I shrugged, although she may not have seen it. “I’m not sure; maybe I’ve never thought enough about it. Maytera Marble is a person, even if she’s a machine. An infant is a person, even if it can’t talk.”

I waited for Seawrack to reply, but she did not.

“A while ago you said that it was talking for you. The sea goddess spoke to you. So she was a person no matter how large she was or how she looked, and I have to agree. Then you said that Babbie is a person. But Babbie can’t talk. I don’t know what to tell you.”

Sinew asked, “Babbie’s the hus?”

“Yes. Mucor gave him to me. I don’t believe you’ve ever seen Mucor, but you must have heard your mother and me mention her many times.”

“She could just sort of be there. Look out of mirrors and things.”

“That’s correct.”

Seawrack said, “She sounds like me. Is she very much like me, Horn?”

“No.”

Sinew asked, “Can she do that stuff?”

I was not quite certain that he was addressing me, but I said, “Do you mean Seawrack? I’m no expert on what Seawrack can do. If she says she can, she can.”

“I can’t,” Seawrack told me, “but Mucor reminds me of me, just the same.”

“In one way, I agree. Both of you have been very good friends to me.”

Again almost whispering, Sinew said, “I’ve been hearing about Mucor ever since I was a sprat, only I thought she was just a story. You know? Way out here, she’s real. When I was in town,” (he meant New Viron) “somebody said you’d been to see the witch. That was her, wasn’t it? You went to see her like you’d go to see Tamarind.”

“Yes.”

“Babbie can talk,” Seawrack insisted. “He talks to me and to you all the time, it’s just that you hardly ever pay attention.”

Babbie stood and shook himself, then lay down again with his broad, bristle-covered back against my legs and his head in my lap. I said, “Can you really speak, Babbie?” and felt his head move in reply.

“You think Krait is a-a monster, like an inhumi. I don’t like him either, he’s not nice, but he’s a person.”

Sinew asked her, “Is Krait the boy that looks like me?”

“Yes, our son.”

I should have made some attempt to straighten that out, but I did not. The hisses and whisperings of water and wind closed around us once more while I sat silent and tense, waiting for Sinew to fly into one of his rages. The back of my neck prickled, and the left side of my face cringed under the regard of his unseen eyes.

“Father?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“About Mucor. Is she listening to us now?”

“I have no way of knowing. I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt it.”

“In your book-”

Confident that he had never read it, I remained silent; and eventually he began to explain what we had been talking about to Seawrack. “In the book, every so often Patera Silk would wonder if Mucor was around, so he’d call her. He’d say her name, and if she was there she’d answer some way. Ask him to do it now.”

I was stroking Babbie’s head; Seawrack’s hand found mine there, and its lightest touch thrilled me. “Will you Horn? Do you want to?”

“No,” I said. “If Sinew wants Mucor called, let him call for her himself.”

Sinew was silent.

Seawrack told me, “Babbie’s a person. Whether you know it or not, he is. So am I.”

“I never doubted it.”

“When you go away and leave us, Babbie will go into the trees looking for things to eat.” Her fingers left mine as she pointed. “He talks now, and he picks up things to look at. You said ‘hind legs,’ and he does. He stands up when you tell him to, like to row.”

I nodded. He had been invaluable at the sweeps.

“And he does anyway sometimes when he thinks we’re not paying attention, so he can use his hands. When he goes into the trees, it will be a real person going in there. But he won’t be a real person in there for very long.”

I muttered, “If you and Sinew will wait for me in Wichote as I suggested, he could stay there with you. That would solve everything.”

“With the sea singing down at the end of the water? I never have told you how it was for me when you died.”

I heard Sinew’s indrawn breath.

“I thought he was dead,” she told him. “I was absolutely sure he was, so sure that I didn’t dare to go near his body. I watched for a long, long time, and he lay so still and never moved once. When it got dark I went down to the beach and took off my clothes and threw them into the water, and talked to the little waves. And they came up the beach, up and up, washing my feet and legs. My knees. Pretty soon they were laughing over my head, and I couldn’t drown.”

Sinew choked and coughed.

“Do you like that meat?”

“It’s good,” he assured her politely, “but it takes a lot of chewing.”

“Just bite it off and swallow. That’s the best way.”

None of us spoke much after that, or if we did, I have forgotten what was said.

When we had gone a little farther up the river and anchored in midstream for the night, Sinew called softly, “Mucor? Mucor?” I had never realized until then how much his voice resembled Krait’s. (Perhaps I should have written, how very near Krait’s it came in certain moods.)

Seawrack touched my knee and whispered, “He sounds just like you.”