On Blue's waters

- 7-
THE ISLAND

As we cast off from Strik’s boat, Seawrack said, “That was nice. I wish we saw more boats.” The clear liquor had brought spots of color to her cheeks, and a dreamy smile I found enchanting to her lips. I explained (I can never forget it) that the sea was immense, and that there were only a handful of towns along the coast from which boats might come.

“If you and I were to take this sloop out on Lake Limna on a day as fine as this,” I said, “we would rarely be out of sight of a dozen sails. Lake Limna is a very big lake, but it’s only a lake just the same. It’s the biggest thing near Viron, but it’s not the biggest thing near Palustria, because it’s not near Palustria at all. The sea is probably the biggest thing on this entire whorl. Besides, Lake Limna is close to Viron, which is a very large city. Half the towns that we talk about here would be called villages if they were near Viron. I would be astonished if we were to see anyone else before we sight land.”

I was reminded of that little speech this afternoon, when someone told me I was minor god-by which he meant that I had insight into everything. It would be easy to let myself be misled by remarks of that kind, which both the speaker and his hearers must know perfectly well are untrue. They are made out of politeness, and no one would be more shocked than the people who make them to learn that they had been accepted like propositions in logic.

Up there I nearly wrote: “when I was in the schola.” So accustomed have I become to talking in that fashion, as I must. If I were to speak of Nettle, and the building of our house and mill, or tell these good, happy, worshipful people how after failing as farmers we succeeded as papermakers, they would riot.

They would riot; and if I were not killed a second time, a good many others would die. I have so much on my conscience already; I do not believe I could bear that, too.

Nor would the people allow me to leave even if they knew who I really am. The poor people, I mean. Aside from Hari Mau and a few others, it is not the chief men who frequent my court who really need and value me, but the peasant farmers and their families, their women and their children especially. That, at least, seems the common perception.

It may not be true. The men are less noisy in their praise, less emotional, as one would expect. Still they are attached to me, as I have ample reason to believe. Women and children see me as a presiding councilor, as a chief man richer and more powerful than the chief men who oppress them, someone who will help them in time of trouble. Men see a just judge. Or if not a just judge, a judge who strives to be just. Silk (I mean the real Silk) valued love very highly. He was right, certainly. Love is a wonder, a magic potion, an act of theurgy or even a continuing theophany. No word is too strong, and in fact no word is really strong enough.

But love is the last need a group has, not the first. If it were the first, there could be no such groups. Justice is the first need, the mortar that binds together a village or a town, or even a city. Or the crew of a boat. No one would take part in any such thing if he did not believe that he would be treated fairly.

These people cheat one another at every opportunity-so it seems at times, at least. Under the Long Sun, they were ruled by force and the fear of force. Here on Blue there is no force and no fear sufficient to rule. There is nothing, really, except our book and me. In the Long Sun Whorl they believed that their rajan would take their lives for the least disobedience, and they were right. Here in their new town they must believe that every word and every action proceeds from my concern for them and for justice. And they must be right about that, too.

What will become of them when I leave? For a long time I was unable to think about it. Now that I have, the answer is obvious. Just as in New Viron, they will steal, cheat and tyrannize until one chief man rises above all the rest. Then he will not bully and cheat, but take whatever he wants and kill all who oppose him. He will be their new rajan, and their original city will have been transferred from the Whorl to this beautiful new whorl we call Blue, complete in every significant detail.

Meanwhile, here I am. They cannot help seeing that I am doing nothing that one of them could not do. Self-interest is necessary to every undertaking and to everyone-or that is how it seems to me, although I am quite sure Maytera Marble would argue passionately. They must be brought to understand that any action of theirs that makes their town worse is bound to be against their own interests.

It is better to have no cards in a town in which no one steals than to have a case of cards in a town full of thieves. I must remember that, and tell them so as soon as a suitable occasion arises. An honest person in an honest town can gain a case full of cards by honest means, and enjoy it when he has it. In a town of thieves, cards must be guarded night and day; and when the cards are gone, as they will be sooner or later, the thieves will remain.

Looking over what I wrote last night, I see I strayed from my topic, as I too often do. I meant to say (I believe) that the man who called me a minor god meant that I am always right, when he ought to have meant that I always try to do what is right. What else can the distinction between a minor god and a major devil be?

The lesser gods (as Maytera Mint taught us before Maytera Rose displaced her, and long before she became General Mint) were Pas’s friends. He invited them to board the Whorl with his family and himself. The devils came aboard by stealth and trickery, like Krait, who came aboard our sloop that night, proving yet again to me (if not to Seawrack) that quite often I do not know what I am talking about.

The near calm that had succeeded the storm had endured throughout the remainder of the day. What woke me, I think, was the rattle of Babbie’s feet on the planks, followed by a sudden still- ness. I sat up.

The sea was so calm that the sloop seemed as steady as a bed on shore. Seawrack was sleeping on her side, as she frequently did, her mouth slightly open. The mainsail, which I had double-reefed and left set, found no breath of air to flutter in; nor did the mainsail halyards tap the mast, or move at all. Beyond the shadow of the little foredeck, the sloop was bathed in the baleful light of Green, which made it seem almost an illusion, a ghost vessel that would, when day at last returned, sink into the air.

Aft, I saw a dark mass that seemed too large as well as too splayed for Babbie, rather as if someone had thrown a cloak or a blanket over him. I crawled out from under the foredeck, got to my feet, and drew Sinew’s hunting knife; and a cold, calm voice- the voice of a boy or young man-said, “You won’t need that.”

I went aft as far as the mast. To tell the truth, I was afraid that there might be more than one, and was as frightened as I have ever been in my life.

“Didn’t you hear me? I haven’t come for your blood.” The inhumu must have looked up as he spoke; I saw his eyes gleam in the ghastly green light.

Seawrack called, “What is it? Oh!”

“If you do not stay where you are,” the inhumu said, “I will kill your pet. I will have to, since I don’t intend to fight all three of you together.”

“That’s nothing to me,” I told him, lying consciously and de- liberately. “If you haven’t come for our blood, go away. I won’t try to stop you, and neither will she.” I had stowed my slug gun in one of the chests; it would not have been less available to me if it had been back on the Lizard.

“Where bound?”

I shook my head. “I won’t tell you.”

“I could find out.”

“Then you don’t have to learn it from me.”

“Tell me at once,” the inhumu demanded, “or I’ll kill your hus.”

“Go right ahead.” I took a step toward him. “You said you didn’t want to fight all three of us. The prospect of fighting you alone doesn’t bother me. If I have to fight you, I will. And I’ll kill you.”

His wings spread in less than a second and he rose like a kite, leaving poor Babbie huddled and trembling in front of the steers- man’s seat.

“I had to take a little blood to quiet him.” The inhumu had settled on our masthead, from which he grinned down at me like a very devil.

When I did not reply, he added, “You have a most attractive young woman.”

Looking up at him, it struck me that he was a devil in sober fact, that all the legends of devils found their origins in him and in the vile race he represented. “Yes,” I said, glancing at Seawrack, who had left the shelter of the foredeck. “You’re right. She certainly is.”

“A valuable possession.”

“Not mine,” I told him. “Not now and not ever.”

Seawrack herself said, “But he belongs to me.” She joined me at the foot of the mast, and linked her arm in mine. “The Mother gave him to me. What of it?”

“Nothing at all, if we’re friends. I don’t prey upon my friends, or pry into their affairs. It’s not our way. Dare I ask where you two are going?”

I said, “No.”

Seawrack’s arm tightened. “You told that other boat.”

“But I’m not going to tell him. I’m not even going to ask why he wants to know.”

As I returned Sinew’s knife to its sheath, I pointed to the chest. “There’s a slug gun in there. I’m going to get it out. If you’re still up there when I do, I’m going to kill you. You can fight or run. It’s up to you.”

I opened the chest without taking my eyes off him, and he flew as I reached into it. For a few seconds a great, silent bat fluttered against the stars before disappearing into the blackness between them.

“That was a…” Seawrack hesitated. “I don’t remember the names, but you told me about them and I wasn’t sure they were real.”

“An inhumu. He was male, I believe, so inhumu. Females are inhuma. Their race is the inhumi. Those words come from another town, because we didn’t know they existed in Viron and had no name for them but ’devil.’ Anyway ’the inhumi’ is what everybody here calls them.”

She had dropped to her knees next to Babbie. “He’s sick, isn’t he?”

“He’s lost blood. He needs rest and a great deal of water. That’s a shame because we haven’t got much, but if he doesn’t get it he’s likely to die. He may die anyway.”

“They drink blood. You said that. We have-we had worms that did, too. But you could pull them off, and some fish liked them.”

“We call those leeches.” I was collecting Babbie’s pan and a bottle of water.

“He wasn’t like that.”

“No,” I agreed, “they’re not. Do you know of anything they are like?”

She shook her head.

I knelt beside her and poured water into the pan, then held it so Babbie could drink from it, which he did slowly but thirstily, drinking and drinking, and snuffling into the water as if he would never stop.

“He’s very strong,” Seawrack said. “He was. I’ve-you know. Played with him. He was strong, and he has those big teeth. The inhumi must be strong too.”

“I suppose they are. Certainly they’d have to be strong, very strong indeed, to fly. But they are light, too, and soft, which lets them reshape themselves the way they do. People say that a strong man can throw one to the ground and kill it in most cases. I’d guess that this one clung to Babbie’s back where he couldn’t reach it until it had weakened him-but I’ve never fought one myself.”

“Will it come back?”

I shrugged, and went forward to fetch an old sail with which I hoped to keep Babbie warm. While I was tucking it around him, Seawrack said, “Couldn’t another one come, too?”

“It’s possible,” I told her. “I’ve heard that they almost always return to houses where they have fed. I’m not sure it’s true, however. Even if it is, an animal on a boat may not count. They generally leave animals alone.”

“Your slug gun. Aren’t you going to get it?”

I did, and loaded it. At home, I had grown accustomed to locking my needier away when the twins were small; plainly, I was not at home anymore. “We built our house on Lizard Island very solidly for fear of the inhumi,” I told Seawrack. “Double-log walls and heavy, solid doors. Very small shuttered windows with iron bars across them. It’s not possible for you and me to protect this sloop like that, but the better prepared we are for them, the less likely it will be that we’ll have to put our preparations to use.”

She nodded solemnly. “Show me how to use your gun.”

“You can’t. It takes two hands to control the recoil and cycle the action. A needier is what you need, but I gave mine to Sinew, so we haven’t got one. I can give you his knife if you want it.”

“Your son’s?” She backed away. “I won’t take it. You love it too much.”

“Then get some sleep,” I told her. “I’ll stand guard, and in a couple of hours you can relieve me.”

She edged past me to stroke Babbie’s massive head. “He’s still cold. He’s shaking.”

“There are a few other things,” I said; I meant the blanket and another old sail with which we sometimes covered ourselves. “I can get them, but I don’t know how much good they’ll do.”

“We could put him between us.”

If Babbie had been even a trifle heavier, I doubt that the two of us could have moved him at all. As it was, we rolled him onto the cloth with which I had covered him and half lifted and half dragged him, after bailing the bilge until scarcely a drop remained.

When he lay feet-first under the foredeck, with Seawrack on his left and me on his right (and my slug gun between me and the sloop’s side) and all of us almost too cramped to move, she said, “I’ve been trying to remember about the inhumi. You said they lived in the sky? In that green light? It doesn’t seem like anyone could live in those things.”

“Most people would tell you that everybody knows that people live in or on the lights in the sky, but that no human being could live in the sea. The inhumi are native to Green. That’s what everyone says. Green is the big green light I showed you when we talked about them before. It’s much larger and brighter than any of the stars.”

“I know which one. We’ve got fish that shine like that down where it’s always dark.”

“They may look like Green,” I said, “but they don’t shine like Green. Not really. Green shines because the light from the Short Sun strikes it.”

“It’s a place, like this boat?”

“It’s a whole whorl. When I was a boy, people talked about ‘the whorl,’ as though it were the only whorl there was-as if nothing could come in or go out. It wasn’t true, even if it had been once. There are three whorls here, really, and I suppose you could say that as whorls go they’re pretty close together. There’s at least one other, too, now that I come to think of it-the old Short Sun Whorl, where my friend Maytera Marble was born.”

“You have to tell me about the inhumi,” Seawrack said urgently. Babbie’s head and shoulders blocked my view of her face.

“I’m trying to. I don’t think there were any where Maytera Marble came from, because she didn’t know about them. So the three whorls that we have to talk about when we consider the inhumi are the Whorl, which I’ll call the Long Sun Whorl to keep things straight, Blue, which is where we are, and Green, the whorl that brewed the big storm.”

“Go on.”

“I’ll try to point out the Long Sun Whorl to you as well sometime, because you’ll never find it for yourself. All that you can see is a faint point of white light among the stars. I’m guessing now, but my guess is that it’s a good deal farther from both Blue and Green than Green is from us-certainly it’s much farther away than Green is from us right now.”

“It’s where you were born?”

“Yes.” It rose like a ghost in my mind, and I added, “In Old Viron, the city I’ve sworn to go back to if I can,” but I cannot be certain that I spoke aloud.

“Were there inhumus up there?”

“We didn’t think so, but there was at least one. We thought that he was one of us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, because the inhumu you just saw didn’t look like a human being. But he did, and I would guess that the one we saw could have looked like that too, if he chose. I surprised him when I woke up, and he didn’t have time to disguise himself. If he’d had time and had wanted to deceive us, he’d have had a pretty good chance of succeeding. They frequently do.”

Seawrack lay silent for a time. At length she said, “Babbie’s more like people.”

I suppose I was resenting Babbie’s bristling back; in any event I said, “I’m the only person that you’ve ever seen. Me, and the sailors on Captain Strik’s boat.”

She said nothing.

“So you can’t know how different people can be. I’m about the same age as-”

“Me. Since I’ve been up here I’ve seen me. My face, my legs and my arm, all in the water.”

“Your reflection, you mean.”

“And I’m like you and the ones on the boat. The inhumi wasn’t. Babbie’s really more like us. I told you that, and he is.”

“The inhumi’s bodies aren’t like ours.” I tried to think of an enlightening comparison. “We think of a crab as rigid-it’s like a trooper in armor. A trooper in armor can move his arms and legs, and turn his head. But he can’t change the shape of his body.”

“I can’t change the shape of mine either.” Seawrack sounded puzzled.

“Yes, you can, a little. You can stand up straight or slump, draw in your stomach, throw out your chest, and so on. The inhumi can do much more. They can shape their faces, for instance, much more than we can by smiling or sucking in our cheeks. But I believe that a better comparison might be with the Mother, who-”

“I don’t want to talk about Mother,” Seawrack told me, and after enlarging upon that with some emphasis she slept, or at least pretended to sleep.

Whether she actually slept or not, I lay awake. I had been very tired when we had gone to bed that evening, and had dropped off to sleep almost at once. Now I had enjoyed three or four hours’ sleep, and had been thoroughly awakened. I was still tired, but I was no longer sleepy. Perhaps I was afraid that the inhumu would return, although I did not admit that to myself. Whatever the reason, I relaxed, pillowed my head on my hands by dint of driving an elbow beneath Babbie’s thick neck, and thought about all the things I would have told Seawrack if she had been willing to talk longer.

The inhumi can fly, as everybody knows. They can even fly through the airless vastness of the abyss, passing from Green to Blue, and back to Green, when they are at or near conjunction. I had never understood how that was possible, but as I lay under the foredeck that night with my head where my feet ought to have been, I recalled the batfish. Its wide fins had been a lot like wings, and I have no doubt that it swam with them in the same way that a bird flies. As a matter of fact, there are fishing birds that ‘fly’ through the water, swimming with the same wings they fly with, and moving them in pretty much the same way.

From that it would seem possible for an ordinary fish to swim through the air like the glowing fish that accompanied us almost to Wichote, although it is not. If such a fish could, I decided, we could fly ourselves. We can swim, after all. Not as well as fish, certainly (here I found myself echoing Patera Quetzal, who had in sober fact been an inhumu); and I could not swim half as well as Seawrack, who shot through the water like an arrow. But although ordinary fish cannot swim in air, they can jump into the air, and sometimes jump quite far. I had seen fish jump many times, and had watched a fish jump from the water onto a flat stone when I was on the rock upon which Maytera Marble had built a hut for Mucor.

This, coupled with little need for breath, might explain how the inhumi could go from one whorl to another, or so it seemed to me. By an extreme effort, they could “jump” out of the great sea of air surrounding the whorl they wished to leave, taking aim at the whorl to which they wished to go. Their aim would not have to be precise, since they would begin to fall toward the whorl they were trying to reach as soon as they neared it. Landers, as I knew even then, must be built so that they will not overheat when they arrive at a new whorl. But landers are much larger than the largest boats, and being constructed almost entirely of metals, they must be much heavier. The inhumi are no bigger than small men, although they appear so large when their wings are spread; and even though they are strong, they are by no means heavy. Light objects fall much more slowly than heavy ones, something that anyone may see by dropping a feather as I have just dropped Oreb’s here at my desk. The heat that troubles the landers must present no great problem to the inhumi.

The need to survive for some time without air, as a man does while swimming underwater, and the need to approach the target whorl closely enough to be drawn to it explained the observation that everyone who has looked into the matter has made, namely that the inhumi cross only when the whorls are at or near conjunction.

All this-as I would have told Seawrack that night-was not at all complex, and demanded only that we not think of the inhumi as men who could stretch their arms into wings. As soon as we accepted the fact that they differ from us at least as much as snakes do, it fell into place quite readily. The difficulty was explaining the presence of the inhumu I had known as Patera Quetzal in the Whorl. The Whorl is (or at least seems) far more remote from Blue and Green than they are from each other. As with so many other riddles, it is easy to speculate but impossible to know which speculation is correct-if any are.

My first, which I then believed the most probable, was that the Whorl conjoins with either Blue or Green, or both, but only at very infrequent intervals. We know that conjunctions with Green occur every sixth year. That interval is determined by the motion of both about the Short Sun. A third body, the Whorl, having a different motion, presumably conjoins with one or both at a different interval. Since we have observed no such conjunction during the twenty years or so that we have been here on Blue, the interval is presumably long. For convenience, I assumed an interval ten times as great, which is to say one of sixty years. We had been on Blue for about a third of that, and I was quite confident that Patera Quetzal had been Prolocutor of Viron for thirty-three years prior to his death, giving a total of fifty-three years and (under our assumption of sixty years between conjunctions) allowing him seven in which to reach the Whorl, become an augur, and rise to the highest office in the Chapter.

That seemed rather short to me-I would have imagined that such a rise would require fifteen years if not more. If the speculation I am recalling tonight had been correct, in other words if Patera Quetzal had in fact crossed the abyss to the Whorl in the same way that other inhumi go from Green to Blue, it followed that it had been at least sixty-eight years since the last conjunction. It appeared then, as it still does, that no conjunction is imminent; from which I concluded that the period between conjunctions had to be considerably longer, say one hundred years.

Even then, I realized that other explanations were possible and might be correct. The landers were intended to return to the Whorl for more colonists. Patera Quetzal could have boarded a much earlier lander that did so, a lander whose departure was unknown to the Crew, and perhaps even to Pas, as well as to us in Old Viron.

A third possibility (I thought) was that a group of inhumi had built a lander of their own, in which they had traveled to the Whorl, and that after arriving they had separated to hunt.

The fact of the matter, as I would have had to explain to Seawrack, was that we knew frighteningly little about them. They did not appear to make weapons for themselves, or to build houses or boats, or any such thing-but appearances may be deceiving. General Saba’s pterotroopers had refused to fly wearing their packs, and in fact carried nothing beyond their slug guns and twenty rounds of ammunition. In the same way, the Fliers carried only their PMs (which actually helped them fly, rather than burdening them) and their instruments. It might be, as I thought that night, that the inhumi were even less willing to weight themselves with equipment. They flew much faster and much farther than Rani’s pterotroopers had, after all.

Farther even than the fliers had.

When I wrote last night I lacked the energy to say all that I had intended, which was a good deal. Regarding what I set down with detachment this morning, I can see that most of it was not worth the labor. My readers-should persons so singular ever exist-can speculate for themselves, and their speculations may be better than mine. What I came near to saying, and should have said because it is important and true, was that we on Blue had very little knowledge of the nature and abilities of the inhumi. Raided, we could not retaliate, and although they clearly knew a great deal about us, we knew next to nothing about them. They came from Green. They could fly, could speak as we did, and could counterfeit us. They were strong, swam well, drank our blood, and usually (but not always) fought without weapons, although they preferred stealth and deception to fighting. Few people on Blue knew more than that, and many did not know that much.

Even then I knew a bit more, having talked with Quetzal, and with Silk and the present Prolocutor, who had known Quetzal much better than I ever did. I knew that the inhumi were able to counterfeit the whole array of human emotions, and possibly even felt them just as we did; and that their deceptions were based on a comprehensive understanding of the myriad ways in which men and women think and act. I suspected that they were capable of deceiving the very gods, since Echidna knew the Prolocutor was present at her theophany, but did not appear to realize that he was an inhumi. (Of course, she may simply not have cared, or not seen any significant difference between them and ourselves.)

On the other hand, I felt quite certain that when Mucor had described Patera Remora as speaking to “the one who isn’t there” when he was coadjutor, she did not mean that he prayed but rather that to her roving spirit Patera Quetzal did not exist.

Seawrack and I were soon to become much more familiar with the inhumi; but I am writing here of what I knew and guessed at the time, errors and all.

My advisors, who are all good, well-intentioned men, are forever suggesting that I get down to business, although they never phrase it quite so baldly. If action must be taken, they want it taken now, immediately. Sinew was like that, too. When I decided that we ought to build a new boat, he wanted to lay the keel that very day, and would have been happy, I am sure, if he could have finished it that day as well. In Sinew this impatience was the effect of youth; it was something that he would get over, and indeed I believe that he has largely gotten over it already.

In Rajya Mantri, Hari Mau, and the rest, I think it must come from a tradition of warfare. Immediate action is the soul of war, as I learned many years ago by observing General Mint. It is not the soul of peace.

Last night Alubukhara (who is as round and sweet as the fruit of that name, and almost as dark) said, “If you wish to do a thing again, you must do it slowly.” I do not believe that is a proverb here; if it were, I would have heard it before this. No doubt it was a saying of her mother’s. But it ought to be a proverb for courts and for governments of every stripe, for sailors such as I once was, and for writers. Hard decisions, I have found, become easy ones when the judge understands the entire case. When a new burden must be laid upon the people, we should remove two, and look very carefully, first, at those we have chosen to remove. Those who sail fast do not sail for long, while what is written with great rapidity is rarely read-or worth reading.

I would like this read, and not by one woman or man alone (although I am very glad that you are reading it) but by so many that it reaches the eyes of the men and the woman for whom it is especially meant. My sons, I loved you so much! Am I really speaking to you now? Nettle, my heart’s delight, do you recall our first night together in the Caldé’s Palace? There has never been another night like that, and there can never be. I hope, and in my whole life I have never been more serious and sincere, that you have been unfaithful to me. That you have found a good and honest man to cast his lot with yours and help you bring up our sons. Nettle, can you hear my voice in this?

I wanted to write that the rest of the night on which Seawrack and I first encountered Krait passed uneventfully, and that I sat up for most of it stroking poor Babbie’s head. There. It is written.

But I should have said first that Seawrack was quite right in thinking that I wanted to question her about the sea goddess she called the Mother. Having found Seawrack exceedingly reluctant to say much of anything about her, I had been trying to get at the truth indirectly. At some fraction of the truth, I ought to have written, and would have if I had not been hurrying ahead. (If Sinew’s impatience was the result of youth, what is mine?)

A fraction of the truth, since even Seawrack, who had been cared for by the goddess since before she could swim, cannot have known everything.

Who, for that matter, could know the whole truth about Sea- wrack? Not Seawrack herself, and that is completely certain even if nothing else is. At the time about which I have been writing, the time before Krait, I had not yet grasped the real riddle; but I will give it here so that you who read may weigh things for yourself. I am not, after all, writing merely to entertain you.

The real riddle concerning Seawrack is this: If the Mother took care of Seawrack in order that Seawrack might lure others, as fowlers use a captive bird, did the Mother send her back among her own kind-among us-so that she might lure more or lure them better? To put it simply, did the Mother suffer a change of heart, or is she pursuing some deep plan that will culminate in our destruction? It is very important that we know this.

The wind picked up before noon, and we cracked along in a way that had me plotting to spread more sail. I was ever a careful, cautious sailor, as I have implied. But the cautious sailor must avoid the sunken rock of overcaution, and it was apparent that additional sail would speed us on our way without endangering us.

After a great deal of squinting at the western horizon, spitting, and pulling my beard (all of which amused Seawrack in a way that gladdened my heart, although I did not say so), I contrived an extension to our mainsail from a stick that I lashed to the boom and a long, triangular strip of canvas whose top I tied to the gaff. It worked so well that I contrived another triangular sail, like a jib, that we set on the forestay in imitation of Gyrfalcon’s boat, reassuring myself by assuring Seawrack that we would take both in the moment the breeze strengthened.

As a result of all this, we sighted the island before sundown. Or at any rate we sighted an island we assumed was the one at which Strik and his crew had watered. I have never been entirely confident that it was in fact the same, although it may have been. Certainly it fit their description, and we found it by following their directions, that is, by sailing close-hauled almost due west. Later I saw that there were many other islands of the same type all along that coast, mountains covered with lush greenery rising out of the sea. By favor of the southwest wind, we quickly discovered a small, sheltered bay on the north side of the island, and a swift, rocky stream at the end of it.

We anchored there and refilled our water bottles, and I sent Babbie ashore and let him trot around and explore the steep green wood. To tell the truth, I was feeling very guilty about having made him stay on the sloop so often when we were going up the coast, and was half minded to leave him there to recover his health as well as his freedom; I felt sure it would be a happier as well as a healthier place for him than my cramped little boat, and I recalled that Silk had tried more than once to free Oreb. Throughout my life I have done my best to imitate Silk (as I am doing here in Gaon), at times with some success.

Perhaps I am getting better at it. They seem to think so, at least. But I had better sleep.

I should not have stopped last night before mentioning that we lay at anchor in the bay that night. Seawrack and I slept side by side under the foredeck, thankfully without Babbie; and that soon after we lay down she asked whether we would put out again in the morning. From her tone it was clear that she did not want to.

Neither did I; and so I said that I planned to stay another day to hunt, and that with luck we would have fresh meat for supper the next night. To the best of my memory, we had no meat left on board at that time except the shank of the very salty ham that Marrow had given me; and I was thoroughly tired of that, and still more tired of fish.

The following day began bright and clear, and presented me with what I then considered a serious problem, I having not the least presentiment of what the island held in store for me. Seawrack was anxious to go with me, and Babbie was even more anxious, if that were possible-it would have been sheer cruelty to leave him behind. Nonetheless, I was very conscious that if anything happened to the sloop all hope of bringing Silk to New Viron would be gone.

I considered leaving Babbie on board, as I had there; but how much protection could a young hus provide? A young hus, I should have said, who had by no means recovered all his strength? Against a sudden gale, very little. Against the crew of some other boat that put in to water as we had, just enough to get him killed.

I also considered asking Seawrack to stay. But if bad weather struck, the best thing she could possibly do would be to furl the sails (and they were furled already) and remain at anchor in the little cove we had found, which the sloop would do by herself. As for protecting it from the crew of another boat, how much could one young woman do, without a weapon or a right arm? Against honest men, the sloop would require no protection. By the other kind she would be raped, killed, or both.

For a second or two, I even considered remaining behind myself; but Seawrack could not use the slug gun, and might easily find herself in danger. In the end, we all went. No doubt it was inevitable.

It was a silent, peaceful, lonesome place whose thickly forested slopes seemed to be inhabited only by a few birds. Mighty trees clung to rocks upon which it seemed that no tree could live, or plunged deep roots into the black soil of little hidden dales. On Green one finds trees without number, monstrous cannibals ten times the height of the tallest trees I saw on the island; but they are forever at war with their own kind, and are troubled all the while by the trailing, coiling, murderous lianas that have seemed to me the living embodiment of evil ever since I first beheld them.

There was nothing of Green here save the huge trunks, and bluffs and rocky outcrops resembling Green’s distant, towering escarpments in about the same way that a housecat resembles a baletiger. In one, we discovered a deep cave with its feet in clear cold water, a dry cave with a ceiling high enough for a man to have ridden a tall horse into it without bowing his head or taking off his hat; and we spoke, Seawrack and I, of returning there after we had brought Silk to New Viron. We would build a wall of stout logs to close the entrance, and live there in peace and privacy all our days, plant a garden, trap birds and small animals, and fish. Was it really criminal of us to talk in that fashion? I knew that it could never be, that Nettle and my sons and the mill would be waiting when I came back to the Lizard.

And that even if I did not return, it could never be. Seawrack, I feel sure, did not. So it was wrong of me, was cruel and cowardly, to share her snug dream and encourage her in it. I must be honest here. It was, as Silk would say, seriously evil. It was a crime, and I was (and am) a monster of cruelty. All that is true, but give me this-I have done worse, and for half an hour we were as happy as it is possible for two people to be. The Outsider may condemn me for it, but I cannot regret that half hour.

If it is true that in some sense Silk and Hyacinth remain forever beside the goldfish pond at Ermine’s where I sought them, may not Seawrack and I live in the same sense in a certain dry cave among towering, moss-draped trees on the island that will always be “The Island” to me? I have said that I can be cruel because I know it for the truth; and I know too that the universe, the whorl of all whorls, can be much crueler. I hope it is not cruel enough to deprive even the smallest and most ghostly fragment of my being of the happiness that Seawrack and I know there.

There came a moment when I wanted to return to the sloop. We had seen no game and no sign of any; we were all tired, and Babbie, who had ranged ahead at first sniffing and snuffling here and there, lagged behind. What was worse (although I did not say it) was that I was not sure of the way back to the sloop; and I was afraid that we would have to strike the shore of the island wherever we could reach it, and try to follow it until we found the little bay to the north in which we had anchored. We were tired already, as I have said, and had not yet begun what might be a very long walk. It seemed more than possible that we would not be able to locate the sloop before shadelow.

Seawrack pointed to a ridge, not very distant but only just visible through the trees. “You wait here,” she said, “and let me go up there and see what’s on the other side. You and Babbie rest, and I’ll come right back.”

I told her that I would go with her, naturally, and took pains to lead the way.

“There’s so much sunshine,” she said as we climbed that final slope. “There can’t be any trees there. Not big ones like these.”

I told her it was probably a good-sized cliff, that we would see trees below it, and that we might have a fine view of the island and the sea around it. What we really saw when we topped the ridge was less dramatic but a great deal stranger.