Return to the Whorl

17. HE TOOK ME WITH HIM

Pretty soon after the inhuma was buried he went back to New Viron and took me with him. "I must speak to Gyrfalcon," he told me while we went down the coast in his yawl. "To do it, I'll have to get his attention some way."

Almost as soon as I had met him in Dorp, my brother told me I would have to call him Father. I said, "I've noticed, Father, that you don't have any trouble getting noticed."

He smiled. Let me say right here where I am the only one writing that he had the best smile I ever saw. It made me like him and trust him the first time I saw him in Wapen's, and I do not believe anybody was proof against it.

"I think the Vanished People might come again to help if you asked them." I said it because I had been really interested in them in Dorp, and would have liked to see some again.

Then he explained to me about the ring he had on, saying, "This was given me by a woman I called Seawrack. You don't know her, but when you read my manuscript you will learn about her." He took it off and handed it to me. It was a plain silver ring with a white jewel. There were scratches on it that could have been writing or pictures. If it was, I could not make them out. "Look through it," he told me.

I held it up to my eye. The weather was clear and cool, the wind northeast. The waves were white-capped, I would say a little bit less than two cubits. I saw all this through the round hole, but when I had been looking awhile I noticed the limb of a tree floating upright to starboard. The leaves were still silver and green, and the limb was so big it looked like a whole tree even though I would think there must have been a trunk floating the regular way since a floating tree does not stick up like that. There was somebody sitting in one of the branches, and it was one of the Vanished People.

Father took the ring back, and the Vanished Man was gone. So was the tree he had been sitting in. Only the waves were left. I asked Father to let me look again, but he would not.

"I've shown you this so that you will know how valuable it is and not bury it with me should I die," he said. "By it, the Neighbors" (it was what he called always them) "will know that you are friendly. Do you hold any malice toward them?"

I said plainly and sincerely that I do not.

"What right have they to run around on this whorl of ours, going where they please?" he asked me.

I said, "What right do I have? If someone wants to stop me, let's see him try it." He was pleased with my answer, and said that when he died I was to have the ring. I think he was afraid Gyrfalcon would kill him, and hoped that Gyrfalcon would let us claim his body afterward.

When we got to New Viron, I expected him to call up the ghosts that helped in Dorp and hoped he would ask the Vanished People to help too. But he just walked around talking to people. His bird went with him and so did I most of the time. Babbie and Cricket watched our boat.

He used to tell stories about two men trying to cheat each other. In most of the stories they both lost, but the one who first set out to cheat his friend was the only loser sometimes. He said, "If you rob someone who would help you if you needed help you only rob yourself." He said that again and again. He said stealing only made you poorer, and asked people to tell him an old thief who was rich.

"I knew the best thief in Viron," he told them. "He gave away jewels in a way that would have surprised the Rani of Trivigaunte, but he told me once that he slept in a different place each night, and his hand was always close to his needler. He made others rich; he was as poor as a beggar himself."

He also said that our cruelty stored up pain for us. "Do you imagine you can be cruel without teaching others to be cruel to you? You glory in your cruelty, because you believe it shows you are master of your victim. You are not even your own."

Uncle Calf's wife is making a collection of these sayings, and I have told her all I can remember. The first time I was in New Viron with him, while the inhuma was still alive, Uncle Calf would not believe they were brothers. Now he tells everyone.

I think it was on the second morning we were in New Viron that he told me he had been troubled in the night. We slept on the boat the first night. Next day Uncle Calf invited us to stay with him, like Hide and I and Vadsig did before. I slept in the room that had been ours, and he slept in the one that had been Vadsig's.

"I have had a great many strange dreams in my life, Hoof," he said, "as I imagine everyone my age has; but I have never had even one as strange as this. I woke in the middle of the night, as I often do. I got up and relieved myself, walked around the room, looked out the window at the stars, and returned to bed."

"What was your dream?" I asked him.

"I was lying in bed; and Scylla was somewhere in the dark, up near the ceiling. She spoke to me, and I sat up thinking that I was awake and would no longer hear her. I put my feet over the edge of the bed. It was very strange."

I asked who Scylla was, and he said that she was a goddess, and had been patroness of Viron back in the old whorl; when he said that, I remembered Mother talking about her. There was a big lake there and Scylla was the goddess of the lake. They had gods and goddesses for all sorts of things.

"Scylla possessed a woman I knew once," he told me. "She was willful and violent."

I said, "But the Scylla you dreamed wasn't the real goddess, was it?" and I asked him if there had ever been a real Scylla.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, that's the terrible part." Then he said something I did not understand at all: "I feel sorry for Beroep." Beroep was a man we used to know in Dorp.

For the next two or three days, he stayed up late walking the streets at night or sitting in taverns. I went with him the first night. After that I got Aunt Cowslip's son Cricket to watch our boat so Babbie could come with us. We took his bird too, and even if it could not fight it made a good lookout, warning us about people behind us or watching from shadows.

Sometimes he spoke to these people, asking questions. When he thought he had their friendship, he asked them about strangers and the sick. Sometimes we looked for the sick people afterward so he could talk to them and the people who took care of them. Once we found a man that no one was taking care of and spent half a day cleaning and feeding him, and finding somebody who would. Soon people began bringing their sick and asking Father to pray for them.

"If Scylla were here, I'd ask her to heal you," he told one woman. "Scylla is not here-though she may like to think she is-and is no longer a goddess in any case, not even in Old Viron." The woman asked him to pray to Scylla just the same, and he prayed to whatever gods might hear him.

Gyrfalcon sent men for us. They wanted me to go back to Uncle's and take Babbie and the bird, but Father would not go unless we came with him. They said they would make him.

"By shooting me? Gyrfalcon will be furious when he finds out you killed me."

Their leader said, "We'll pick you up and carry you, if we have to."

"You cannot," he told him. The leader grabbed for him, but Father knocked him down with his stick. Another man aimed his slug gun at him, but Babbie knocked him off his feet and opened his leg from his knee to his belt. A lot of people were watching by then.

Gyrfalcon had a big house south of town. He met us on the walk, and shook hands. "So," he said, "have you come to take New Viron from me?" Father smiled and said he had not, and we went into a garden behind the house and sat down at a little round table. The crocuses were up, the blue cup-o'-scents, and many other beautiful flowers that grow from bulbs; but the apple trees had not bloomed yet.

Father got the little knife out of his pen case and ripped the hem of his robe. There were grains of corn in there, black, red, and white. He gave them all to Gyrfalcon. "Cross these," he said, "but always keep the pure strains for the years to come. New Viron will never go hungry."

Gyrfalcon took them, tied them up in his handkerchief, and put it in a pocket inside his tunic. Father cried then for a long time.

Servants with chains brought us wine and food, both very good. I ate and gave some to Babbie, and drank more than I should have.

"Is this your father?" Gyrfalcon asked me, and I said it was. I felt really brave.

"I don't recognize him."

I said, "Well, I do."

"If this is your father, where is Calde Silk?" Gyrfalcon thought he was being very smart when he asked that.

"In a book my mother and father wrote," I told him.

"You are Horn? The same Horn I spoke to a couple of years ago when we got the invitation from Pajarocu?"

"I am," Father said.

"You live on Lizard, near the tail, and make paper?"

He nodded.

"Nettle's husband?"

"Yes, and the father of Sinew, Hoof, and Hide. I am also the father of Krait and Jahlee, neither of whom you know or will ever know-both are dead. If you wish to continue to explore family connections, I am the father-in-law of a woman named Bala. She is Sinew's wife. I am the grandfather of their sons Shauk and Karn, as well."

Gyrfalcon smiled. "The founder of a family. I congratulate you."

The bird seemed to understand Father was being praised, and it called out, "Good Silk!" three or four times.

"Yes, I am." For a few seconds he sat scratching Babbie's ears. "My son Hide will come here soon with my wife and my daughter-inlaw to be, Vadsig. They will be married by Patera Remora. My brother Calf and his wife are making arrangements."

"Assisted by you, financially. So I've heard."

"Correct. They know the town, as Hoof and I do not."

I spoke up then even though I should not have, saying I had been learning a good deal about it recently.

"Prowling over it at night with your… Father? Sitting in bottle shops. Who are you looking for?"

I said I did not know.

"Who are you looking for, Horn? As calde of our city, I think myself entitled to ask."

"By name?" He shrugged. He had not eaten a bite till then, but he picked up a sparkle and began to peel it. "For a friend, that's all. I don't know his name. Or hers. I'll learn it when I find the person."

"You have graciously answered all my questions," Gyrfalcon said. He was making fun of Father, but you could tell he admired him too. "Will you tolerate a few more?"

"If you will tolerate one from me. Will you come-or at least consider coming-to my son's wedding? It would be a great honor for him and his wife, and for our entire family. I'm taking advantage of your hospitality, I realize."

Gyrfalcon stared, then laughed. He has a big booming laugh. "You want me at your son's wedding?"

"Yes," Father said, "I do. I want you there very much, if you will come. All of us will be delighted, I'm sure."

"Let me think now." Still grinning, Gyrfalcon sipped a little wine. "You promised to answer some more questions for me if I would answer that one. I suppose you meant if I would give you an answer you liked."

"Why no. Any answer. And I'm only asking you to consider it. I know how many demands there must be on your time, and in all honesty you are entitled to ask all the questions you wish."

Gyrfalcon leaned back and surveyed us, looked around at his garden, and came back to us, looking at Father and me like he never saw us before. "Do you think my wine's poisoned?"

"Certainly not. I would have warned my son not to drink it if I did. Does it bother you that I haven't drunk my own?" He drank half his glass and ate some bread.

"I poison people. That's what they say in town. You must have heard it."

"I heard something of the sort."

"Well, I don't. They can't prove I do, but I can't prove I don't."

"Naturally not."

"Do you still want me to come to your other son's wedding?"

"Of course. We will all be delighted."

"Then I'll come. Let me know when the date is set."

The bird said, "Bird tell!" and I noticed Father jumped a little. Later he explained to me about Scylla.

"I've got a few more questions for you. Here's the first one. Is Silk ever coming?"

"I have no idea. I failed to find him." For a minute I thought Father was going to cry again but he did not. "That was the principal thing I promised I would do. I realize that. I failed, and that is all I have to say. I reached Viron. I talked with its present calde, Calde Bison, and a number of other people-I spoke with my own father, for example. But I was unable to locate Silk, and I left. I offer no excuses."

"You don't know whether Silk's coming?"

"As I said. He may, but I very much doubt it."

I whispered, "Can't you see that if he were here Gyrfalcon would have to kill him?"

"No, I don't-because it isn't true."

Gyrfalcon told me, "You're stirring our stew with your finger, young man. Better stop before you get burned."

Father was smiling. "I've dreaded this hour. Not because of what you and the others might say to me or what New Viron might do to me, but because I knew I would have to admit that I failed, that Silk is not coming. Now I've done it and I can begin to live again."

"Good Silk," said the bird. "Good Silk!"

"Can I ask a couple more questions?"

"Before you decide on my punishment? Yes, certainly."

Gyrfalcon shook his head. "No punishment. I'm not going to give you a dressing down, either. You did your best."

"I did not," Father told him. "I did what I did. I could have remained in Viron and continued to search. I didn't."

"You said you were looking for somebody here, too, but you didn't know his name. What do you want with him?"

"I want him to go on a journey with me."

"I see." Gyrfalcon sucked his teeth at that. "Going far?"

"Yes, very far indeed," Father said.

They had put us on horses for the ride out to Gyrfalcon's house, but we had to walk back. While we walked, I asked Father if he wanted me to come when he went away. It seemed to surprise him, as if it was something he had not thought about, but I saw enough of him to know that he thought about most things way far in advance. "Would you go, if I asked you to?"

I said I would, and Hide and Vadsig could look after Mother.

"We won't be gone long," he told me. I did not understand what he meant till later. I had never gone to the Red Sun Whorl, and when Hide told me he had not made me believe it. Father could not make Juganu believe it, either. Juganu was the inhumu we found, a little old man with a bald head. We had taken him on the boat and put out to sea.

Father said, "You have no reason to worry-far less than we. If this vessel sinks, you can fly."

"Rajan!" Juganu tried to get away, climbing the rigging like two nittimonks and flattening out his arms, but I chased him and caught him and threw him down.

"You need have no fear," Father told him, "we will be your friends if you'll let us."

"I served you faithfully." Juganu moaned. "I swear by our god."

That was the first I ever heard about the inhumi having their own god, but Father paid no attention to it. "You tried to kill me when Evensong and I left Gaon, and you will call for others to kill me here as soon as I let you go."

I said we should kill him ourselves when we were finished with him, but Father shook his head. "I killed your sister. Surely that was killing enough for one lifetime. I will not call it murder-murder is something worse-but I will not kill this man, who may be her brother for all I know. After he has helped us, we will free him."

"I served you throughout the war, Rajan." (The end of Father's staff was on his neck, and Father's foot was on his chest.) "How can I serve you now?"

"By going with us to a place where you will be as human as we are." For a minute Father thought about things. "And by coming back. You will be tempted to remain, I warn you; if you do, you will die and it will be by no act of mine."

"Where I…?" The old inhumu gaped at us.

"We will sleep," Father told him, "all of us except Babbie. Hoof will rig a sea anchor for us-"

From the mizzen top, his bird cried, "I go! I come!"

"Yes," Father told it. "You will come with us, Scylla. It's for your sake we're going, after all."

After that, I furled the sails and made a sea anchor from two sweeps.

(My wife was reading over my shoulder when I wrote that last, and says that many people will not know what a sea anchor is or how to make one. The others promised to let me write this by myself, because Hide and Vadsig saw more of the man who said he was our father than I did in Dorp, and Daisy hardly saw him at all, even if she writes better. She writes better than Hide, too, even if Hide will not admit it.

(A sea anchor is the sort of anchor you use when your anchor cable will not reach bottom. A boat is meant to sail, and will sail whenever the wind blows, even under bare poles. You cannot stop it, but a good sea anchor will slow it down so much it might as well be stopped. What I did was to lash together two sweeps crosswise and tie a long line to them in the middle. The longer the line on a sea anchor, the better it holds.)

Then we went to sleep. Babbie was supposed to watch Juganu the inhumu and our boat, too, while we were gone; and Father tied a line around Juganu's neck and to his wrist. I said that if we slept and Juganu did not, he would bleed us till we were dead if we did not wake up, and the line would not help. But Father said he could not, and Juganu swore he would not.

After that we went into the cabin and Father told me to lay down and close my eyes. I did, but as soon as I heard him and Juganu lay down too, and the rattle when he put down his stick, I sat up. He was on his bunk, with Juganu on the floor beside him. I remembered the sword he called Azoth was probably under his tunic, and if Juganu got it he could kill us both. I had never seen him use it, but he had told me what it could do and so had Hide. I took it up on deck and hid it. It was not that I was afraid to go to the Red Sun Whorl, but I was very nervous about it. I cannot explain it more than that.

Babbie was on deck and looked at me with his little fierce eyes in a way that told me I was supposed to be in the cabin asleep. I have never been sure how much Babbie understands, but he understands a lot. I know he understood that, and you could ask him to bring you almost anything except food and he would go get it if he felt like it. He would even bring Father food, but he would not do that for Hide or me. Babbie has gone away, I think into the woods on the mainland, but Vadsig says Witches Rock.

This is going to be hard to explain, but I will try to do it better than Hide and the others have.

I did not feel asleep at all. (Hide says for him it was like going to sleep, but not for me.) It was more like looking through Father's ring than anything else I have done, but that was not it either. Everything began to change. Our boat was water, and Babbie was a hairy man with thick arms and real big shoulders, and glasses, and a couple of Babbie's eyes (the little ones). The bird was the bird asleep on the mizzen top with its head under its wing and another bird, a bird too fat to fly that was flying around just the same. I kept blinking and blinking, trying to blink them away; but they just got realer.

I felt like I had to hold on to something, and I tried to hold on to the sky. I have no idea why that was what I picked, except that it did not seem like it was changing, and I had tried to hold on to everything else, and everything else was changing anyhow except the sky and the water.

So I tried to hold on to the sky, the beautiful Blue sky with little dots of clouds all around and high thin wispy clouds way up behind them. Just when I thought I had it and Father could not take it away, it got darker and I thought, "Watch out, a big storm coming!" But it was not a storm, it was stars pulling the daylight in. Then the boat rolled under me a little, and I knew it was not our boat.

It had four masts, and it was higher, a lot higher, at the bow and stern than in the middle; but even the middle was about five or six cubits above the water. I had heard of boats with three masts, but I have never heard of one as big as that. It was so big it had a boat as big as ours upside-down forward of the mainmast. It steered with a wheel instead of a tiller, and the man at the wheel was staring at us like his eyes were going to roll right out of his head and yelling, "Captain!"

Father's bird landed at his feet about then, a fat bird that came up to his belt. The funny thing about Father-I know Hide said something about this but I want to say it too, like I did the changing. He looked more like our father there, not really like him, but more than on Blue. He was shorter and thicker, and his hair had some black in it. His face was more like father's, and his eyes were not sky-colored anymore.

There was a man with him I had never seen before, a man with yellow hair and a big hawk nose. His eyes were not sky-colored either. I have seen ice in the winter that was that color when the sunlight hit it, big chunks of ice floating in the sea. This man was looking at his hands, and then he bent down and felt his knees, and hit one, too, pretty hard with the side of his fist. He told Father, "I would never try this!"

Father said, "Yet this is what you are. Try to remember."

About then the captain came running up. He looked sly and he had a big curved sword hanging from the widest belt I ever saw; the blade must have been wider than my hand. He talked in a way I had trouble understanding.

Father told him, "I am sorry to commandeer your boat, but commandeer it I must." He held out his hand, and it was full of big round disks of gold with pictures on them.

The captain opened his mouth, and closed it again.

"Here," Father said, "take it. There will be as much again when we leave you-I hope to repay you in other ways as well."

I told the captain, "You better do what Father tells you."

Babbie said, "Huh! Huh! Huh!" and his eyes made the captain step back.

Father wanted to know who that was, so I said, "It's Babbie, Father."

Then he said, "I didn't intend to take him with us, but the boat will be all right, I'm sure, provided we're not too long."

The fat bird said, "Good boat!" and flew up on the railing to look down at the water. It was a big, thick railing with carving on it, and the place where we stood was ten cubits over the water. It could have been more.

Father had the captain hold out his hands, and put the gold in them, saying, "You must take us out to sea. We will leave you thereor at least, I hope we will."

The captain looked hard at the man at the wheel, but the man at the wheel was pretending he had not heard anything. When the captain saw the man did not look like he was listening, he turned around and ran down some steps into the middle of the boat, and I heard a door slam.

Father asked the fat bird, "Well, Scylla?"

There must be a word for the time when we see something we have seen before turn out to be something else, like when a stick is a snake without moving. My wife knows more words than most people. She knows more than anybody except Father. But she does not know a word for that.

When Father said, "Well, Scylla?" I saw the bird was really a girl old enough to take care of other sprats but not old enough to get married. I do not mean she looked like a girl dressed up like a bird. She looked like a girl that looked exactly like a fat bird but was really a big girl that would be a woman in another year.

"See, see!" the girl said. Then she hopped down onto the deck and spread her wings, and said, "Go sea!" After that the two started pulling apart. (This will not be the way it really was, but as close as I can come.)

The bird was in front, and it started getting smaller till it looked like it had on our boat and back on Lizard. When it got smaller you could see the girl behind it. Then she stood up, a skinny girl with an angry face and straight black hair. She said, "No here. No god. Go sea," and some other things. It scared the bird and it flew away, circling up above the boat.

"Scylla here possessed Oreb," Father told me. "It took me nearly a year to realize what had happened because she exercised no influence-or almost none-once she had brought him back. When I returned to Blue, he went away at once to search for a Window for her, or anything that might function as one. They found none, and she brought him back, earning my gratitude-though she already had it. I grew up in her Sacred City of Viron, after all."

Scylla snapped, "Gyoll? It is? Nessus? It is? Where is?"

Father nodded. "Ask the man at the wheel. He'll tell you, surely."

"Plain man!"

"Exactly," Father said, "and plain men know such things. They must."

The hawk-nosed man muttered, "I don't care where it is." Then he threw back his head and shouted, "I want to stay!" at the dark sky.

"You may not, Juganu," Father told him, "and in fact we're going back right now, all of us." He took my arm and Juganu's, and told Juganu to take Babbie's and me to take Scylla's. She tried to hit me and I caught her wrist. Then we fell, not up or down but to one side, faster and faster, rolling over.

I woke up on deck with Babbie licking my face. I thought at first he had hurt me because it stung, but what really happened was that I had fallen and hit it. I got in my sea anchor then and put out sail.

When Father came up out of the cabin, I said I saw now that we just fell down like that wherever we happened to be, and if he had told me he would have saved me a pretty good bruise.

"I would not," he said. "You would have disobeyed me in any case."

I had a lot of questions, and I knew he was angry, so I thought I would volunteer to cook and made a fire in the sandbox. It was too early, but he knew I did not like to cook (he had done all the cooking) and I wanted to show I would try to help without being told. While I got the fire going, I was planning what I thought we ought to have, keeping in mind what I could cook and get right and make taste good, because I knew I was not as good at it as he was. I knew what we had, and we had not done any fishing, so I decided potatoes, bacon, and onions; and when the fire was going pretty well I went below to fetch them.

Juganu was sitting on my bunk with his head in his hands. I told him to get off and stay out of my way.

He said, "Now that you know, you hate me."

I said, "I knew all along, and I don't." The first part was a lie, because I had not known he was an inhumu until we got him on the boat and Father told me. But it is what I said.

"That place…"

"It's where we real people come from." I thumped my chest. "I guess that's why you're one of us there, and Babbie too."

I had not thought it would bother him, but it did. He said it was what he was in his heart, that the blond man on the deck of the big boat was the real Juganu, the man he was in dreams.

I asked, "Do you really dream you're a human man like me?"

"Yes!"

"I don't believe you." I pushed him out of the way so I could open up the little cupboard where we kept most of the food. I got out potatoes, enough for father and me with some left over for Babbie, and a slab of bacon, onions, lard, and stuff.

I turned around and Juganu said, "Sometimes I do. Sometimes I really do." He followed me up on deck.

Father said I had brought too much, but I explained I had wanted to give some to Babbie and the bird, and Babbie would eat a lot. That was the first time I really thought about the bird and the girl; I was not even sure that they had come back with us. Then the bird flew down out of the rigging somewhere and perched on his shoulder. I looked around for the girl because I thought she would want to eat, too.

"We will not have to feed Scylla," he told me, "though she is surely here. Will you speak with us, Scylla?"

He had turned his head so as to look at his bird, and it said, "Bird talk?"

"Certainly, if you wish to."

"Good bird!"

"She is possessing Oreb, you see. She is in his mind-what there is of it. More accurately, there is an image of her there which she herself placed there; that image was the Scylla we saw on the Red Sun Whorl. You won't have forgotten what your mother and I told you concerning Scylla and Echidna-how they tried to destroy Great Pas, and the vengeance he took. Are you going to boil those potatoes you're peeling?"

I said I had not planned to.

"Do it. Fill a pan with seawater and bring it to a boil. Drop them in for ten minutes before you fry them. They're old-the new crop's not in yet-and that will help." In all the time I knew him, he never looked less like our real father or sounded more like him.

Juganu began to explain the same things to Father that he had to me; but Father cut him off, saying he already knew.

I said, "My sister was an inhuma, Juganu. Her name was Jahlee, and she and Father did that a lot."

He said, "She was a young woman there, you see. Quite an attractive young woman."

Then Juganu thanked Father for taking him there. "It was the high point of my life," he said. He looked just like a little old man with gray skin and no teeth; and I wondered how old he really was, because the blond man with the big hook nose had not looked as old as Father.

Father said, "You mustn't think that it will never happen again. Would you like to go back tonight?"

I used to watch Sinew play tricks on Mother, and Hide and I played some good ones too, but I had never seen anyone look that surprised. "Will you? Oh, Rajan! Rajan, I-I…"

Father put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll go after Hoof and I eat."

"No sea!" the bird objected.

"No, the boat will not have reached the sea yet; but it will be well for me to get a better feel for its speed. It is sailing with the current, of course, so it should make good time."

After that we were all quiet, thinking, except that he told me to use a little celery salt instead of the yellow sea-salt I brought with the pepper. "But only a little. And you should be starting your bacon, and browning the onions. Cut up the onions now. Cubes, not rings."

Then he said, "I should explain to you both why we cannot go to the sea directly, as I did to Scylla several days ago. In order to go to a place we must have with us someone who has been there, or at least been in the area. I don't know why that is so, but that is how it seems to be. I can go to Green-as I have at times-because I have been there in the flesh. I can go to the Red Sun Whorl, too, as we did a few minutes ago, because Jahlee and I went there in the company of Duko Rigoglio of Soldo. He had been a Sleeper on the Whorl, and so had been there in the flesh. I cannot take us to the sea there, because I have never been on it. Scylla has, to be sure; but ultimately Scylla is not among us."

His bird croaked. But it was only bird noise, not a word.

"There is another factor. When we go, we often seem to arrive in a place resembling the one we left. That was why I lured you onto this boat, Juganu. I had promised Scylla that I would take her to the sea of her native whorl if I could. Once I walked along a road that runs beside Gyoll and looked at the boats plying its water, so I hoped that if we left Blue from a boat we would arrive aboard a boat there. So it proved. That it was going downstream was sheer good fortune. Slice your potatoes. Be careful, though. They'll still be hot."

While they were frying I asked him whether we were here or there when we were there, because I had been thinking about the way he had said that the girl had not been with us, not really.

"We are in both places. The philosophers-I am none-tell us that it is impossible for a single object to be in two places at once. We are not indivisible wholes, however."

I said, "Part of us was here, and part there?"

He nodded. "And now that we've been on that boat on the river we should be able to return, though the boat itself will be in a new location. We'll test that supposition tonight."

While we were eating he explained that he had brought us back fast because he had been worried about the boat, especially because Babbie had come and would not be around to take care of things here. "That was a surprise, and a rather unpleasant one," Father told me, "though it was interesting to discover just how human Babbie is." He stopped speaking to study the western horizon.

Juganu said, "What about me?"

Father shook his head. "I knew you were human in spirit. Remember that I had an adopted daughter-one I mourn. I had an adopted son once, too." He sighed, and I saw then how hard it was for him to keep a cheerful face, as he generally did.

His bird dropped onto his shoulder. "Have bird!"

"Yes. A great blessing." He gave the bird a bit of bacon, then put his plate down in front of Babbie. He had eaten two or three mouthfuls. "I hate to disturb your meal, son, but I believe we'd better take in the jigger and reef the main."

We did, and the wind came as I was tying the last knot. I have been in worse blows, and in fact I was in a couple when we sailed with Captain Wijzer; but it would have been foolish to go back to the Red Sun Whorl until things had quieted down, three or four hours after daylight.

Down in the cabin, Father and Juganu and I took off our clothes and dried ourselves as well as we could. It felt very good to lie on my bunk then and shut my eyes, so I did not see things change the way I had before.

After a while somebody shook my shoulder. I opened them, and it was dark again.

"Get up," he said. "You don't want to sleep through this."

That was exactly what I did want, but after a minute or so it sort of soaked through to me that I was lying on wood instead of my bunk, and the boat was not rocking the way I remembered.

Some people that read this may not know about boats, so I am going to say here that they're all different. Two that are about the same size and look about the same will act about the same sometimes, but they are never exactly the same. The Samru, which was the big river boat we were on, was a roller, and when you were up on the high parts, it really rolled a lot, just like you had climbed up the mast of a regular boat.

Our boat was more of a rocker. Rocking is not the same as rolling. Rolling is smoother, but to me it always feels like it is just going to keep on till the boat turns over. Our boat was more of a pitcher, too, because it was only about a quarter as long.

Anyway, I sat up then but it was so dark I could not see much. I asked the man who had my shoulder who he was, and he said, "Juganu," which made me jump.

Just then there was a white light that lit up everything, and I saw Father out on the bowsprit holding it up. His bird was on his shoulder, and the girl he said was Scylla was out on the bowsprit too, farther out even than he was.

Then he shut his hand and the light was gone, and everything was as black as inside a cave. I heard the watch asking each other questions. Afterward I found out they had been sleeping on the deck, mostly. I heard boots, too, but I did not pay much attention to them.

I was trying to get forward, and afraid of bumping into a mast or something worse. I was not even sure this boat had a railing all the way around, because ours did not have any railing at all, and I was afraid of falling off. So while I was worrying about all that, I bumped somebody short and hairy and as hard as rock. I knew who that was right away, and how dangerous he was, too, so I said, "It's me, Babbie. It's Hoof," very quick.

Something happened then that surprised me as much as just about anything I saw on the Red Sun Whorl, except for the part right at the last. Because Babbie threw his arms around me and gave me a great big hug, saying "Huh! Huh! Huh!" and lifted me off my feet. Babbie's arms were shorter than mine, but thicker than my legs, and he was the strongest person I ever met.

About then the mate came up, and Babbie put me down. The mate had a lantern, and he kept holding it up in my face, and then in Babbie's and then in Juganu's. Neither of them liked it. I did not like it much myself. After a while I decided that he was looking for Father but he had probably been down in the middle of the boat when Father held up his light, so he had not seen him.

I was afraid that if I told the mate where Father was, he would make him fall off. So I said, "What's the trouble? If you need help, we'll lend a hand."

All those people were hard to understand because of the way they talked, and he was one of the hardest. He said something and I had to get him to say it over two or three times before I understood it. "Taught y'as gun." He talked like that all the time, but I am not going to write it like that, or not much.

"We're back," Juganu told him.

"Where'd y'go?" he wanted to know.

I pretended I had not understood that either and said, "You're looking for Father, aren't you? Wasn't that why you were shining your light in our faces?"

He agreed.

"Father has hired this boat. He'll want a full report. Where are we?"

"Half day from the delta. Where's he?"

"What time is it? How long till morning?"

"Not long."

By that time I had seen his face well enough to realize that he was not the man Father had given the gold to. I said "You're not the captain. Where is he?"

"Sleepin'."

"Bring him here. Father will want to see him."

The mate started to argue, and I said, "Bring him at once!"

He swung at me then. I ducked, and Babbie grabbed his arm and threw him down so fast and hard that he might as well have been a girl's doll. The lantern fell down and went out.

Father must have heard the noise, and he was there like he had flown. He opened his hand to let some light get out, and Babbie was sitting on the mate and had both his arms together in one of his hands. His hands were a lot bigger than his real ones back home, but he still had the really thick nails he walked on, and only two big fingers on each hand. Father made him get off and told the mate to sit up. He was a big, strong-looking man with one of those faces that are all cheeks and chin.

"I'm sorry you were hurt, if you were," Father told him. "Babbie can be too quick to take offense. I realize that."

Babbie was pointing to his mouth. "Huh-huh-huh." I thought he wanted Father to change him so he could talk, and I did not think Father could do that. But Father knew right away what he wanted. He gave Babbie a big curved knife with a double-edged blade, and then another one just like it, telling him he had to be careful how he used them.

The mate tried to say something, what he was going to do to Babbie someday, but Scylla told him to fetch the captain or we would make him jump overboard. Father's hand was almost closed then so she was hard to see, but she took hold of the mate like she was going to turn him around, and her hands and arms did not even come close to being as much like ours as Babbie's were. They were like snakes, with sucking mouths all along them. The mate kept backing away from her, and they got longer, till finally he ran away. Juganu said, "Blood," and it sounded like he was praying.

Father's light went out, I think because he did not want me to see Scylla.

She said, "No do? You do?" and Juganu said, "No. Never."

I was thinking that it was probably a lot easier to change your shape like she had if you were not really here. I tried to touch her, but I could not find her in the dark.

Father asked if we knew what we were doing, why we wanted to find the sea, and Juganu and I both said no.

"I'm tired," he told us. "I need to rest my back. Shall we go home? It will be safer, as I must tell you."

Juganu begged then. I will not write what he said or what happened. I could not see much of it, but I still heard it even when I looked the other way. Finally Father said all right, we would stay till daylight.

We went over to the railing and sat down. It was pretty dark, but not really completely dark. There was a red lantern at the top of one mainmast, and two hanging over the high deck aft. Those were white, but that was a good long way away at night, and that deck was higher than the one we were on, even though our deck was higher than the middle of the boat. I asked Father why we came back to this deck when we had been on the other one, but he said he did not know, he was just thankful we had ended up in the boat and not in the water.

Scylla was sitting on one side of me, which I did not like, but there was nothing I could do about it. She wanted to know when we would get to the sea, and that was when it came to me that what I smelled when I first got there was the sea, not ours but Ocean, the sea of the Red Sun Whorl. It smelled different, maybe because it was bigger or had more salt in it, or just because it was older. I got so interested in thinking about that I never heard what Father told Scylla. Probably it was that nobody could say because it depended on the wind.

His bird did not like her and would not come to me because I was next to her. I tried to find out whether it knew she was the one who had been in it, but it would only say "Bad girl!" and "No eat." It said, "No, no!" and "Good bird!" a lot too, no matter what I wanted to know.

"In the Whorl I was told that the inferior gods had turned themselves into animals to escape Pas," Father told me. "It embarrasses me now, but I must admit I thought it a mere legend. It was in fact a myth, that is to say a story containing an important element of truth. His Cognizance Patera Incus honored me by asking me to assist him when he sacrificed at the Grand Manteion, which of course I did. Scylla-as she has told me-seized the opportunity to possess Oreb, having overheard my conversation with His Cognizance through his glass."

I thought he meant a glass like you drink out of, but then I remembered the reading about the things you can see and talk through in my real father's book.

He told Scylla, "I still don't understand how you managed to escape Pas for so long."

She said, "Good place. No find."

She had sounded as if she was about to cry, and he said, "It's been twenty years and more. He will forgive you, surely."

"No, no. Never."

After that nobody said anything. Green came up, bigger and brighter than we ever see it on Blue. Or want to, either. The captain saw us and came running. He did not have his sword this time, but the mate was behind him and he had a long stick that smelled like smoke. From the way he held it, I knew it was some kind of weapon; and I kept my eye on it the whole time.

"Welcome," the captain said. "Welcome! We thought you deserted us."

Father explained that we had other affairs to attend to and would be leaving from time to time. The captain asked if we were hungry and invited us to join him at breakfast. Father thanked him but said we would stay where we were, and the captain and the mate went away.

"He was a long time fetching him," Juganu said, "and I wouldn't mind trying some of your human food."

I said I would have thought that just blood every time would get boring, but he said it did not, that there were hundreds of different kinds.

Father said, "Go ahead, if you wish. I'm sure he'll be happy to feed you. Just remember that if we are forced to leave without you, you won't be able to return on your own. We'll do our best to safeguard your physical self."

Juganu trotted away, and I told Father I thought he would stay here all the time if he could.

Scylla said, "No me."

"Even if you could do that with your arms?" I asked her.

She looked so bad I was sorry I said it. The bird said, "Poor girl! Poor girl!" and I tried to touch her, to pat her back or something, but she did not feel right and I jerked my hand away.

Father said, "She is less even than we. If Oreb were to die she would not be here at all."

His bird kicked up a fuss when it heard him say that, and he had to quiet it down.

We talked awhile, and I said, "This is the Red Sun Whorl. When are we going to see the red sun?"

He pointed astern, and I stood up and looked, and then I climbed up the ratlines to see it better. The Red Sun was rising behind us, and the old falling-down city was between us and it. It was so big and so dark, like a great big coal buried in ashes. You could look right at it, and the whole city was black against it, thin towers and thicker ones, and there were some you could see through and see the little thin lines of the beams holding them up.

You could see how big that city was, and it was bigger than I had ever imagined when we first went on the boat in the river and were in the middle of it. It went on forever to the north and the south, and down the river, too, almost to where we were, walls falling down and broken towers and so many little ruined houses nobody could ever live in anymore that my brother and I could have spent our whole lives trying to count them all, and when we died we would only have just started.

But up against the Red Sun like that, you saw how little the city was, too. This is hard to explain. The city was immense. Just immense. Huge. Nobody will believe this, but if you had taken all the towns on Blue and bunched them together, and then added all the cities that Father used to talk about up in the old whorl, you could have taken all that and set it down in this city; and then if you had gone away for a year and come back, you would not have been able to find it.

There was a wall around it. Just off at the edges you could see that, way far away to the east and so far to the north and south you could not be sure you were seeing it at all; but it must have been about as tall as the tallest towers, and it was a wall. It was probably the biggest thing that people had ever made, but it was dead and rotting like the rest.

So it was all so big that when I looked at it, it was hard to breathe. But the sun kept on rising and rising, and Nessus was little. Finally I shut my eyes and would not look at it anymore. I had seen the way things really are, and I knew it. I knew that I was going to have to forget it as much as I could if I wanted to go on living. After Father left I was still curious about the Vanished People, and I asked a man I met one time about them because he seemed like somebody who might know something. He said there were things that we are not supposed to know. I think he was wrong, but right, too. I do not think that there is anything about the Vanished People that we should not know, just a whole lot that we do not. But the way things really are is something that we cannot deal with. I had to shut my eyes, and if you had been there you would have had to shut yours too.

When I looked back down at the foredeck, Father and Babbie were still there, right where I had left them, but I could not see Scylla at all. I climbed down the ratlines and there she was again, then when we went back to our boat she was gone.

We could have used her, because there was another boat, and it was full of men with slug guns. I shook out the mainsail fast and set the big jib we had not used before. Father stood up at the tiller and tried to talk to them, but they shot at him. I went and got his sword, Azoth, and gave it to him. He did not want to use it at first, but when I was shot he cut off the whole front of their boat.

"I did my best not to kill them," he told me, "but I killed two. Their bodies are back there in the water." I said it did not make any difference since the others would drown, and he said he hoped not. Later while Father was resting, Juganu flew back to get some of them. It was nearly dark then where we were.

Here I want to tell you about how Scylla went out to talk to the Great Scylla, but there are a couple other things I ought to tell about first, about the knives Father gave Babbie and what Scylla told Father at night in the dark.

So I am just going to put all that in here. Some of it he told me while we were waiting for daylight on the river boat, and some was while Juganu and Babbie were holding me down and he was straightening out my wound and bandaging it. (I was wiggling around quite a bit and he kept talking to me, I think mostly to try to keep me still.) Some was after that, too, while he was making potato soup with the fish.

To tell the truth, I am not exactly sure what he said where, so I am putting it all here.

About the knives. I wanted to know where he got them. I had been watching as good as I could in the dark and did not see him take them from anyplace. So he told me we could make things there that were not really real but were like real for as long as we wanted them. He said he had made the gold like that, but the captain probably did not know it was not there when he was not around because he had locked it in a strongbox. Naturally I wanted to know if I could do that, too; and he said I could but I would have to be careful or they would know it was a trick. I said I would be.

Scylla was Pas's daughter. Father talked like there were a lot of them, but he said she was the oldest one and the most important. She and her mother and some of Pas's other sprats had tried to kill him because they did not want people leaving the old whorl to come to Blue where they would not be the gods. So they tried to kill Pas, and for a long while they thought they had done it, and nobody would ever get to come. But Pas came back, and they had to hide.

There were two ways to hide, Father said. One was to hide in Mainframe. Scylla had talked about that, and he said she would know a lot more about all that than he did, but Mainframe was like the tunnels under the old whorl. There were branches and side tunnels and rooms and caves nobody knew about. So Scylla and the others that had tried to kill Pas hid in them, but not the way we would have. It was like I could hide my finger over here and my thumb over there. They had hidden little pieces of themselves all over, and Pas was still hunting for them and killing every little piece when he found it.

The other way was for them to hide in people. I had read about Patera Jerboa in the book, so I told him about it, and he said I was right. (This was while we were eating the soup. I remember now.) A god could hide in anybody who looked at a Sacred Window or even a glass, and once he was in there he did not have to do anything. If he just went in and kept quiet, it was just impossible for anybody to find out he was there.

But Scylla and the others found a new place. They found out that if they did it right they could go into animals. What usually happened, Father said, was that someone would bring an animal to sacrifice, for instance a goat. When they were getting ready to kill it, it would naturally be in front of the Window. Scylla or whatever god it was would get into it and break loose from whoever was holding it and run away.

"Pas soon realized what was happening," Father said, "and warned his worshippers. Thus when an animal went wild, they knew it had been possessed and hunted it down and killed it."

I said, "So it didn't work."

"Let us say it often failed. Some of the animals made good their escape, horses and birds particularly. There were other difficulties however. No doubt that was why the technique was almost never used until Scylla, Echidna, Hierax, and the rest were desperate to escape Pas. For one thing, most animals are not long-lived. You mentioned Patera Jerboa."

I nodded and said yes, I had.

"He was middle-aged when Pas possessed him, yet he yielded up his fragment of the god thirty years later. A horse may live for fifteen or twenty years, if it's well cared for; but that's extraordinary."

I said, "They can't talk either, except for Oreb."

"You are right." Father put down his soup. "But that is part of a larger and more serious problem. No horse or bull or bird has anything like the brain of a human being. If we think of the gods pouring themselves into us as wine is poured from a great cask into bottles, animals are small bottles indeed. If Scylla had possessed me instead of Oreb, the Scylla we would see on the Red Sun Whorl would still be far short of the Scylla who once existed in Mainframe. As it is, the Scylla we see is no more than a sketch of the original Scylla-of the daughter of the tyrant who assumed the name Typhon, the daughter who had pledged herself in secret to one of the sea gods of the Short Sun Whorl that would in time become our Red Sun Whorl."

I told him I had not known anything about that.

"She did," Father said. "It was a form of treason, of rebellion against her father. Abaia, Erebus, Scylla and the rest had taken posses sion of the waters, and were plotting to gain the land as well. According to what I was told on one occasion, they still are."

Juganu said, "Are you saying that our Scylla, the girl who comes out of Oreb, wants to ask this Red Sun goddess for help?"

"Yes. I thought you knew. She possessed Oreb, as I told you, because she knew he would soon be brought here. She felt sure-she told me this one night-that Pas would not have peopled Blue unless he had some way to go there himself to rule them. `Lord it' was the phrase she used. She was wrong, as I could have told her. In Oreb she searched this whorl for nearly a year, finding nothing better one or two landers with their glasses half intact. They would not or could not accept her-'Upload' was the word she employed. She'd been to the Red Sun Whorl with Jahlee and me, but hadn't let us know she was present. A few nights ago she spoke to me through Oreb, and from the way he talked and what he said, I knew the speaker was not he. She revealed her presence, and implored me to take her there again."

"Did she say Pas would kill her if he could?"

Father nodded and sipped from the wine bottle; sometimes it seemed like he was just pretending to eat and drink, and this was one of them. "That is indeed what she said, but I am not certain it's true and I'm not Pas."

Juganu had been listening to us, and had even swallowed some soup. He was a little and old again, about half the size he had been. "Pas will be angry with you. Isn't he your chief god?"

Father shook his head. "The Outsider is my chief god."

I said, "The only god you trust," because I was pretty sure from things like that he had said that I knew who he really was.

"Whom I don't trust half as much as I ought to, my son."

The bird lit on Father's shoulder about then. "Bird eat?"

"Of course. You brought the fish, so you are entitled to some of the soup."

I said it had already had the head and guts.

"Yes." Father smiled and shrugged. "Oreb's diet can't have been pleasant for Scylla, though she's never complained about it. Perhaps she is accustomed to it now; and since such things taste good to him, they may taste good to her, I hope so." He held up his spoon so the bird could get some in its beak. I had finished mine, and I do not think his could have been very hot.

I asked him about Pas. "You said she said she didn't think Pas would let anybody come here unless he could come, too. She must have known him for a long time."

Father agreed she had. "For three hundred years."

"Then why wasn't she right about that?"

He shrugged. "Are you so certain she was wrong?"

"You said she and the bird couldn't find anyplace."

"Correct. Pas has not yet come, perhaps. Or perhaps he has, and Oreb simply failed to find the place that Pas found or created. You pointed out that she had long years in which to learn the nature of her father."

He grinned at me then, and I laughed too.

"Yet she believed that she and her mother-with Hierax and Molpe, though Molpe cannot have been of much help-would prove strong enough to destroy him. She was clearly wrong about that; she underestimated him, and badly."

He stopped to think and give the bird more soup. It would pick flakes of fish and cut-up potato out with its beak. "Would you like my opinion?"

I nodded, and Juganu said, "Very much, Rajan."

"Then I believe Pas knows that as the years pass we will come to realize how much we need him, and bring him. New Viron sent me for Silk. That was foolish, because no mere man could repair all the evil there. Silk did his best for Viron itself, but left it scarcely better than he found it. The same impulse will be applied to Pas in another generation, surely."

I asked if he thought a god could do it, and he said that the people themselves would have to, even if a god helped them.

We both wanted to know why Scylla wanted to talk to that other Scylla in the Red Sun Whorl, and he said, "She wants to describe her efforts in the Long Sun Whorl, and to obtain the Greater Scylla's advice. No doubt she is hoping for help as well, though she will not say so. If she were to leave Oreb and return to Mainframe-we would have to visit the Long Sun Whorl, of course-she would be destroyed. At least she believes she would be, and that's deterrent enough. If she simply remains where she is, she will perish when Oreb dies."

"No cut!" the bird said, which made me and Juganu laugh.

Father also said, "I am by no means eager to overhear their conversation, if it takes place; but I would like a word with that Greater Scylla myself."

He got his second wish, but not the first one, when we went back to the boat on the river.

We sailed through the delta. The river breaks into five big streams there, the captain told us, and so many little ones that nobody could count them. They were always changing anyway, he said, so we had to pick our way along.

Scylla went out on the bowsprit. It was long and she went almost to the end. I sat on the big carved railing and let my feet hang over. I had left my wound behind on Blue, mostly. There were no bandages anymore and I was not bleeding, but it sort of hurt and I did not feel strong. Father had said I could make things, but he had worried about me making cards or anything like that. So I did a couple little things I did not think would bother him or anybody, a nail was one, and a seashell. The way you did it was to hold your hands together and think about what you wanted, them pull them apart slowly getting whatever it was right. When I had each thing the way I wanted it, I tossed it in the water.

Then I looked around to see if anybody was watching, and I made Hide. That was a lot harder. It was nice to have him with me and be able to sit and talk to him about everything; but it was hard, too, to keep him there, and after a while I let him go. Now he says he cannot remember being there or anything we said.

What it was, was like I remembered him better than I have really remembered anything in my life. As long as I did, he was there with me. But the delta was interesting, everything very green and wrecked ships up on the islands, some mostly buried in the mud and little shacks that did not even seem to know they were just little shacks made out of driftwood where it had been palaces and forts. You saw walls leaning so far it seemed like they couldn't stand another day. And one time I got to looking at an old statue there that seemed to me like if only I could have talked to her it would have been the most wonderful thing in my life, and then I looked around to say something to my brother, and he was nearly gone. He came back fast and said, "Sorry!" Right after that I let him go.

The delta was all swampy, and the water was black. Before I guess I thought it was only black because it was night, but now the Red Sun was up and it was still black. Looking at the delta, that bright green everywhere, I got the feeling that I was looking at a body so old moss was growing on the bones and the hard dead meat of it. About then I saw there was nobody around anywhere, that the little driftwood shacks had nobody in them, and what had happened was the stone forts and palaces had lasted because they had been built the best, and the shacks because there had been people in them not so long ago and they had not had time to fall down. But they were empty now, and the houses and buildings that had been between the palaces and the little shacks had rotted away or maybe burned, and there would never be anybody there again, but people like us.

When we got out of the delta, that was the open sea that they call Ocean. It was like our sea and it was not. If you wanted to look for what was the same, there was a lot. But if you wanted to look for what was different, there was a lot too. The smell was different. The color was not the same, either, but it was hard to say just what was changed. That may have been the dark sky, mostly, and the stars. This sea knew night was coming, when everything would die. There was more foam, and I think this Red Sun Sea had more salt in it.

Out on the bowsprit, the girl started calling. She did not say a name or anything. She did not say any words. It was like people sitting on the sand clicking shells together and sometimes blowing through them. It did not sound bad, it was almost like music. Only you knew she was calling something, and when it came it was going to be bigger than anything and you were not going to like it.

That went on for a long time, so long that I got worried about us back in our boat. I think Babbie did, too, because a couple times he came up to Father and pulled on his sleeve. Babbie never could talk but you generally knew what he wanted. He had tied a piece of rope around him and put the knives Father gave him through it.

Here I want to say something else about them. This may not be the best place, but I want to make sure I say it so everybody who reads this understands and this is where I am writing. After I got shot, when Juganu and Babbie were holding me down, Babbie was trying to smile at me. He is not very good at it and does not try much. This time he did, I think because he knew how much it hurt and he wanted me to see that he was not holding me out of meanness, but he liked me and was trying to help. People hunt huses and shoot them and eat them. Sinew used to a lot, and I have done it myself. But after getting to know Babbie the way I did on the boat I could never do it again.

Anyway, his mouth was sort of open, not just the ends of the lips turned up, and looking in it I saw those knives. They were the big ripping tusks in his bottom jaw. The curve was the same and the shape was almost the same except the knives were longer. The tusks he had here were the knives in the Red Sun Whorl.

If I had been the girl, I would have given up after an hour or so. Maybe not even that long. She did not, and after a while I just wanted to get away from there. I went down in the waist, which was what you call the middle of a boat, and watched Juganu wrestle a sailor.

When I went back up on the foredeck, she was still singing. The bird was on her shoulder, and Father was out on the bowsprit too, maybe four cubits behind her. He called me over, and when I had come as far as the grating, he told me to tell the captain to strike all sail. I took Babbie with me, and the captain did it. After that we just drifted, rolling a little. We were on the open sea, out of sight of land.

People started coming up out of the water up ahead. I borrowed the second mate's telescope to look at them, and they were all women. The ones closest to us were smaller, and the ones farther away were bigger, so they all seemed like they were about the same size. Some of the farthest-back ones were as tall as Father, Juganu, and. me put together. A lot had on black robes and cowls, but some were naked, especially the big ones farther back. The closest ones talked and sang, and called to us. I have never seen or even heard about anything else that was like that.

The girl kept singing to them, and they got quieter and started to come toward us. It was like they were standing on something under the water that moved. The sailors were scared, and I saw them charging the swivel gun and told Babbie not to let them use it, and went forward again. By that time they were all around our boat. Two sort of rose up and talked to the girl and Father then, their robes getting longer and longer as they came up out of the water until they would have dragged behind them clear across the deck if they had been walking on the boat. There was something under them that the women were standing on, if those women had any feet.

I went out on the grating deck again to look at the women, and one looked at me and smiled, and she had little sharp pointed teeth like tacks. Her eyes were all one color and sort of glowed or gleamed under the cowl. I went back as far as the foremast then, which is why I did not really hear anything they said or that Father and the girl said. I wanted to make myself a sword like Azoth, and I did, but it would not work for me, so I put a regular steel blade on it.

After a while the women went back into the water, and Father and the girl came to tell me to tell the captain he could sail again and we would be leaving him for good. He gave me a ruby, too, that I had seen one of the big naked women give him. He said it was real, and the captain would still have it when we had gone. I told him about the woman who had looked at me and smiled and said, "Was that Scylla?" The girl was mad about it.

After that we went home to our boat on Blue.

It was night went we got back, and I said I would take the first watch, because I knew that with all I had to think about I would not sleep for a while. I told Juganu he could have my bunk if he wanted it, but pretty soon he came up and flew away. I knew he was going to look for blood to eat, and I wondered who he would find.

Babbie was the only one on deck with me, but Babbie was asleep. So after that I just sat at the tiller the way you do with my slug gun across my lap and looked at the sea and the sky. It was calm and you could see a lot of stars. Green was up above the mainmast, and it seemed like if we put up the main top it would touch it. Our Green is not as big as theirs, but ours was plenty bright. The nicest thing was to see the reflections of all the stars dancing on the water.

I thought about a lot then. You can imagine. Most of it was things I have already written down. I thought about shooting Juganu when he came back, too; I really wanted to. But I knew the shot would wake up Father and he would know. Even if it did not, he would ask me, and I would not be able to lie to him about it very long.

Then the bird came and talked to me. That was not as nice as it sounds. For one thing, it was afraid. It would not come near enough for me to touch it. For another, I was talking to the girl too. She was not there to see, but she was there. The bird was up forward on the cabin deck, which is what we call the roof of the little cabin (it is planked and tarred like a regular deck and plenty strong enough to stand on) about halfway between me and Babbie. I could see it hopping around. I could not see the girl, but I knew she was in there. This is hard to explain.

Out on the water there were the stars and quite a bit of light from Green; for nighttime it was really pretty bright, but there was sort of a shadow between the side and the water. Green was halfway up over to starboard. So to port there was this shadow, and I felt like she was down there, watching and listening, and she could make the bird talk for her when she wanted to.

I had whistled to it, and it had whistled back. I could whistle better than it could, but it could whistle louder than I could, so for a little while we had fun like that. I would whistle "Tomcod's Boat," and the bird would whistle back the first three or four notes.

"Like bird?"

"Sure," I said. "But I'd like you better if you liked me better." I knew it would not understand, but it was somebody to talk to.

"Good bird!"

I said, "Sometimes, maybe."

That made it mad and it said, "Good bird!" and "Bad boy!"

"If you're such a good bird, what were you doing out on the bowsprit with Scylla?"

That was the first time. The bird said, "I bad?" but I knew it was not really the bird talking.

I admit I had to think about it. In the first place I did not like her. Then too, I felt like Father and Juganu and I, and even Babbie and the bird, had been real on the big river boat, but she had not been. I had not liked that. Then on our boat I felt like we were really real but she was not real at all. She could not make us see her or talk without Father's bird. Maybe none of it had to do with her being bad, but I felt like it did. So I said, "Well, you're sure not good, Scylla."

"Good girl!"

"Sure you are," I said. To tell the truth I was hoping she would leave the bird in charge and never come back.

"You good? Good Hoof? Like Silk?"

I figured there was no use fooling around with who is Silk? I knew shaggy well who Silk was. "No. He's a better man than I'll ever be."

"Your pa? Tell lie!"

"If he told them who he is, they'd want to make him calde and Gyrfalcon would kill him."

"Good Silk!" She laughed, sort of bubbling and giggling.

"Bad Scylla," I told her. "Why don't you go fishing?"

"He kill? Kill pa."

I said, "I don't think so."

"Good girl! Not kill!"

"Oh, sure. Well, you wanted Auk to kill that old fisherman for you once. I read all about it."

"My man!"

I said, "Maybe. But you don't own me."

She laughed some more and got me real mad. I said, "Nobody ought to own other people, and if they do they shouldn't kill them unless they've done something terrible. Besides, you tried to kill your father. That's why you've got to hide. You wanted to and if you had you'd be a murderer. I think you are anyway."

The bird whistled, and I thought she had gone away. We whistled back and forth, then it said, "We slaves. Pas own."

I said, "That's the way Sinew used to talk."

"Who?" I think it had surprised her.

"Our other brother. He's older than Hide and me. Father says he's still alive on Green and has two sprats, but he used to talk like that a lot. Our real father would try to get him to help in the mill, and there would be big fights. Or he would start some kind of work and go away, so our father would have finish it, or Hide and me would."

"Like slave!" That had gotten to her. "Pas say. I do."

I said, "He was your father. He fed you and gave you a place to live, and clothes."

"I fed! Eat sheep. Eat boy."

"Like Juganu."

She let the bird talk a while after that, and I tried to get it to come to me, but it would not. "Bad boy! No, no!"

Pretty I stopped trying. I let out a reef in the mainsail, and trimmed it a little.

"Kill bird?"

I said, "You think I'd wring your bird's neck if I could catch it?"

"Yes!"

I spat.

"You would!"

I showed the bird my slug gun. "See this? If I wanted to kill you, I could just shoot your shaggy bird and throw it over the side. It would take about ten seconds. Only I'm not going to do it. Or wring its neck, either. In the first place you stole it. It's Father's bird. Besides, just because I don't like somebody doesn't mean I want to kill them. That's what you gods used to do, from what I hear. But I'm not like you."

"No need," she said. "I die."

"Sure, when the bird does."

Juganu said, "Tomorrow. Didn't the Rajan tell you?"

I had not known he was back, but he was right at my elbow.

"We're going back tomorrow. I wanted to go back at once, but he wouldn't agree. We'll have to find the grave of Typhon's daughter Cilinia. It's in a place called the Necropolis."

I said, "What for?"

"That will be the last time. The Rajan said after that I might as well leave you, and I probably will."

I wanted to know if he knew why Father wanted to go to Cilinia's grave, and the bird said, "Why ask?"

"He made an agreement with Scylla," Juganu told me.

"What was it?"

Juganu shrugged and sat down on the gunwale. His arms had gotten short and round again, and his legs and his feet were not big and flat anymore like they are when they fly. He was just a little old man, naked, with blood on his breath; and I thought how if it had been Jahlee she would have made big tits to tease me. He said, "I thought you might know."

I said I did not.

"Would you tell me if you did?"

"Unless he said not to."

The bird laughed. I had heard it laugh before, but I did not like it.

"He made an agreement with that monster in the water," Juganu said again. "Favor for favor. He told me that much. He promised to take Scylla to the grave. That was his part of their bargain, but I don't know hers."

I was thinking about finding the grave. "It's been three hundred years. That's what they say."

Father was coming up out of the cabin, and he said, "It's been much longer than that, but I have a friend who knows the place like the back of his hand."

I am stopping here so that the others can write for a while. It has been a lot of work, a lot more than I expected. So I will let them tell about what Juganu did and all that. I will just help. I will get Daisy to go over this and fix it up, too. Or Hide and Vadsig would.