The Knight

Chapter 21. Seeing Them

That night Gylf and I talked things over in our cabin. He did not say much, not then and not ever, but he was a good listener and when he did say something it was a real good idea to listen close and think about it afterward. The thing was, I was afraid my wound was not getting any better, and I thought it might be getting worse. It felt as hot as fire, and when I pressed it blood came out, mixed with other stuff.

I was scared. I know I have not said a lot about being scared, but I was scared pretty often the whole time I was in Mythgarthr. I am not going to go back now and tell you about all the times, there would be no point in it. And besides, some of the worst times were times I have not told anything about, like when I was out hunting just after Bold Berthold took me in and I shot the bear and it chased me up a tree. I had not thought a big bear like that could climb trees, and it was brown anyway and not black. I guess the bears in the Forest of Celidon are different from the bears we have at home, because it could climb quicker than I could. When it got really close I stuck an arrow down its throat and it fell out of the tree and went away. I was so scared I could not climb down. I just held on and shook for a long time. I had dropped my bow when I ran, and the bear had just about bitten my hand off when it snapped down on the shaft.

Anyway, I was scared and Gylf and I talked about my being wounded and what might happen. He said those deep wounds were the worst because you could not lick them clean. I laughed because I could not have licked there. I would have washed it. Only I thought about the kind of water we had on the ship, and he was right. Licking would have been better.

After a while I remembered Bold Berthold’s telling me that the Bodachan would fix up sick animals sometimes, and they had helped him as much as they could. Then too, Disiri was an Aelf, and I was sure she would help me if she knew I was hurt. So I said what we needed to do was get in touch with some Aelf that might help us, and were there some on this boat?

Gylf put his head down between his paws, and I could see he was holding something back. So I said, “Well, if you know where some are, how about if you try to get them to help me? If they won’t I won’t be any worse off than I am right now.”

He just looked at me for a while, then he went to the door and scratched it so I would let him out. I did. It was dark by then, and the moon and the stars were out, and we had just enough wind to fill the sails; that was my favorite time on the ship, every time I was on it.

Then Gylf pushed past me, because the door was pretty small, and ran across the deck and jumped over the rail. When he came back and we had talked, I went out on deck again and asked Kerl if he was afraid of the Aelf.

He scratched his head the way I do sometimes. “I dunno, Sir Able. I never seen one.”

“You will,” I said. I pointed to the sailors who were on that watch. They were asleep on deck except for the helmsman and the lookout. I told Kerl to wake them up and send them below, and said he could give them any reason he wanted to.

He looked kind of surprised. “Do I have to give them a reason, Sir Able?”

I said no, and he started yelling at them to wake them up. I told one to find Pouk when he went below and send him to me. We had him steer and sent the helmsman below. The way that wind and that sea were, I could have steered the ship myself, or we could have tied the wheel. Pouk had no idea what was going on then, and neither did Kerl.

Once the watch had gone below, Gylf jumped over the side again. After that there was nothing to do but wait, so I sat down in one of the crenels. Kerl was scared. He came up to me, very quiet. “He’s no ordinary dog, is he, sir?”

I said no.

“He’s comin’ up to breathe, mebbe, where we don’t see him, sir?”

I said yes, and pretty soon he went away. The moon was a narrow crescent, just beautiful. After a while I could see it was really a bow, and see the Lady holding it. I did not know a thing about her then, but I saw her anyway; she is the Valfather’s daughter, the most important one. Bold Berthold had always said Skai was the third world, and the people up there were the Overcyns. Seeing her like that I wondered about Number Two and Number One. I had asked him about those one time, but he only said nobody knew very much.

I blinked and the Lady was gone. I remembered then that Bold Berthold had told me they went a lot faster up there and what we saw was years to them. They get killed sometimes (I found that out later) but they never get old and die the way we do.

Then I thought about the highest world, Number One. It seemed to me for that living way up there and looking down on the rest of us would make him proud. After a while I saw where that was wrong, and under my breath I said, “No, it wouldn’t. It would make you kind instead, if there was any good in you at all.” As soon as I had said it, I knew Pouk had heard me, but I do not know what he made of it.

What I had thought was what if it was me and I was all alone up there, with just rabbits and squirrels? Or the only grownup, and the rest were little kids? Sure, I could strut around and show off for them, but would I want to? If one was bad, I could smack him and make him cry. But I was a knight. What kind of victory would that be for a knight?

I decided I would just take care of the kids as well as I could, and I would hope that someday they would get older and be people I could really talk to.

Maybe I nodded off then, or maybe I had already. Anyway I dreamed I was a kid again myself asleep on a hillside. In my dream, the flying castle crossed the sky over my head and made me remember how I used to live in a place where there were swords and no cars.

I woke up because I had been about to fall and went to stand by Pouk. There was a dark cloud way in the west, and I saw a man riding down it. He looked really small because he was so far away, but I saw him as clearly as I have ever seen anything, a man in black armor on a big white horse—the horse’s neck stretched out, and its open mouth and wild eyes. Its hooves just flying. Down the cloud and across the sea, lower and lower until it seemed like it was running over the crests of the waves.

“Look!” I yelled. “A man on horseback, there in the lowest stars. See him?”

Pouk looked at me as if I had gone crazy.

Kerl sighted along my arm. “The Moonrider, Sir Able? You seen him?”

“I see him now.”

“I never have.” Kerl squinted and peered. “Some do, they say.”

“Right there, two fingers above the water, where the bright star is.”

Kerl peered again, then shook his head. “I can’t, sir. I’ve had Nur point like you and say he seen him plain as day, but I’m not one that has the second sight.”

“I’m not, either.”

From the wheel, Pouk said really soft, “You are, Sir Able, sir.”

I started to say how plain he was and anybody could see him, but all of a sudden I could not see him myself. After that I kept looking and looking. The moon was still like a shining bow, but it was only like it. It was not one, not really. The stars were still there, reflected in the sea, and there were a few clouds and it was really beautiful. I sort of thought I would say here that there was nobody there, that it was all just empty. That would not be true. I knew there was somebody there, maybe a lot of somebodies. Only I could not see them.

I must have looked for about an hour, and then the Aelf came. They were as solid and real as anybody there in the night, some with fishes’ scales and some with fishes’ tails. They were blue, dark blue, but it was not like a certain sky or anything. It was not navy blue or midnight blue or blue black, or anything like that. It was more like the color of deep, deep water than anything else, but that was not it either. It was their own color, and their eyes were like the yellow fire of the sun reflected in ice. They had lonely, lovely, piping voices, and they called out to each other, and to the sea and the ship. I knew most of the words they used, but I could not understand what they were saying and I cannot write it down, either.

I stood up, balancing on a merlon, and waved to them, yelling, “Over here! I’m Able!”

They called to one another, pointing, and swam over to the ship, diving in and out of the water and leaping free of it, sometimes as high as the mainmast. Spreading fins like wings. I told Kerl to hang a rope over the side or something and he did, but not many of them used it. They just climbed up the sides, or else jumped up on the deck until there was a crowd of them there.

I pulled off my shirt and the bandage so they could see my wound, and they came up on the sterncastle deck to look at it, asking questions without waiting for answers.

I had to guess at what to say; so I said I wanted to be cured and I would do anything for them if only they would do it. And if they could not, I would still do anything they wanted me to.

“No,” they said. And, “No, no!” And, “No, no, no, brave sir knight. We could not ask you to fight Kulili for us until you were well and strong. Ill and weak you would surely die.”

Another was almost like an echo. “Will surely die ...”

Then an old Aelf came; he looked like a man of thin blue glass, with wild white hair and a tangled blue beard to his knees. All the others stood aside—you could tell he was somebody. He took my face between his hands and looked way down into my eyes. I could not help looking into his when he did that, and it was like looking into a storm at midnight.

When he finally let my face go, it seemed like it had been a long, long time. Hours. “Come with us to Aelfrice” was what he said. “The sea shall heal your wound and teach you to be the strongest of your kind, a knight against whom no knight can stand. Will you come?”

I could not talk, but I nodded.

As soon as I did, there were eight or ten Aelfmaidens tearing at my clothes. They took off my sword belt and Sword Breaker, and everything else, too, and as soon as they got down to bare skin they kissed it, giggling and elbowing each other and having a fine time. One grabbed my right hand and another one got my left, and one jumped up onto my shoulders. It seemed like she weighed no more than a few drops of water, and the long, thin legs she wrapped around my neck were as cold as dew.

All four of us jumped into the sea then. I did not mean to, but I did anyway. It was all really strange. There had been this greasy swell up where the ship was, but before we hit the sea was tossing waves, and they looked as clear as crystal—chimerical, like ghosts in sheets of snow-white foam, ghosts spangled all over with moonlight and reflected stars. There was a shock as if we were jumping into a cold shower, and a roar like a big wave hitting another head-on, and then we were down under all those waves.

“You will not drown,” the one on my left told me, and giggled. I had not even been worrying, but I should have been.

“Not as long as we are with you, Sir Knight.” That was the right-hand Aelf-maiden; she laughed, and the sound of it was like little naked kids playing in some pool the tide had left.

“But we will leave you!” It was the one on my shoulders who said that, and she pulled my hair a little bit to get me to pay attention. “It is what we do!”

All three of them laughed and laughed at that. There was nothing cruel about the way they laughed, but there was nothing kind about it either.

“Garsecg will make us!” they said.

Strange fish swam all around us. Some of them looked dangerous and some looked very dangerous. I did not know who they belonged to then. Deeper down we lost the moon and the starlight, and the whole world of suns and moons and winds seemed really, really far away. I guess it was the way an astronaut must feel; he was so used to those things that he never thought they could be taken away, and when they are he must wonder how he got into this.

I know I did.

Some of the fish down there had teeth like big needles, and a lot had spots or stripes on their sides that glowed red, yellow, or green. I saw an eel that looked like a rope on fire, and some other scary things, and finally I asked the Aelfmaidens if this was where they lived, because it did not seem to me that anybody would if they could live anywhere else.

“We live wherever we are,” they said, “and Kelpie is our name.” They lit up for me then, slender, pretty girls that seemed like they were made of blue light. They made me look at their gills and tails, and they had long curved claws that looked as sharp as the fishes’ teeth.