by Tanith Lee
When the dark ebbed, we were down. Wreckage lay all along Sphinx Ridge, the broken-backed ship, and Lir McCloud, also broken, yet left there still alive. Of course. It was payment, wasn’t it? Cash down. He wouldn’t cheat.
Mindscapers can be like gods, for what it’s worth. I struck a rock and water jetted, and I gave him some in little sips. Could I touch him? Yes, that had always been an option. But I hadn’t and now made slight contact. For most of his bones seemed smashed. The shadow of the whale had gone, and did not return.
Human blood is darker than a whale’s, and does not vanish.
McCloud’s ghost took sixteen hours to die. I judged that by the passage of the sun and moons. Time can keep exact in those places, where it has to. Sixteen hours, one for each day he searched for the Ballin before, and it lay dying, waiting on him. He didn’t know me, but now and then thanked me. His pain was so awesome he said he didn’t feel any, and lied. Yet sometimes he did fail to feel the pain, and then he drifted. He called me always by another name. I don’t think it was hers. Or maybe it was. But he did this without anger or sorrow. He’d forgotten everything but the blessing of the cancelled debt. Then even that. One time he asked if so-and-so was well, or if the sail had stuck again. He quoted an old song, and laughed, but left off since laughing, as in the cruel ancient joke, hurt him. He passed peacefully at the end of the sixteenth hour. Not all ghosts die in that way.
And that, then –
That was what I gave my last true lover, when I was seventy going on twenty-five, and he was dead and dying, a NAATH, with the face and body and brain and heart of a man called Lir McCloud.
I’d been gone half a century. Not quite four hours.
When I came from the cabin near midnight, I assured Apharis there should be no further trouble. It seems there has not been. Now the warriors of the IRS catch and relocate sky whales unimpeded, with caring yet efficient speed. I’ve received several bulletins, but I’m worlds away.
I’ve felt very old, more ninety than seventy. That’s inevitable. I’d been twenty-five, strong and fit and flexible, and ruby-haired, and rushed back into the now usual condition inside less than ten minutes. But it wasn’t that, was it? No.
I saw, in a store here, a piece of Ballin grey amber, about a month after I’d been home. From Z/d7, where else? I keep it on my desk. If I kill the lights, it glows as if there’s a small mercurial flame in it, and anyhow the guy in the store announced to me how wonderful it is for rheumatism, (he had noted my weight of years). I wonder if grey amber works on an aching heart? Come on, I’m old. I can be a sentimental cynic if I like.
There’s a saying in High Egypt: The sky won’t listen, so complain all you like. But the sky can’t listen, can it; why should it try to? We speak different languages, we and the sky. And the whales, of course, make no sound.
He saw me red-haired and vital. He never knew what I really was and have again become.
I gave him the death and the peace he craved. Perhaps I gave the great whale too the vengeance it required. And only I mindscaped unscathed, and now I’ve told you, I’m alone. Oh, complain all you like, Maud Ruby. All you like, old girl.
Notes:
1. IRS – Indigenous Rescue Service
2. NAATH – Non-Alive Apparency (having) Tactile Habitualness
3. Burny – burnished, that is, polished sharp
4. Zer – approx 10th of a Kilometer
5. Wel – measure for whaleskin, approx 4 metres
The Squire’s Tale
We came to a place, a barren place on the rim of the Dead Lands, where a yellowish dusk swam between the trees. The branches were black against the evening; nothing moved in the fern among tree roots. No birds sang in the red rags of withering leaves.
My lord lifted up his helm and looked about him. All the time the horses shifted beneath us, ill at ease, stirring the earth with their feet. “There is a smell here,” said my lord, “the smell of a place which has been dirtied and misused. A blight has come down with the dew, and the sun drinks it up from the ground, and the stars spit it back at night.” A big white moon was rising. My lord looked at it and said: “When the moon passes over this place, God knows what rises up. Come!” And quickly we spurred our mounts away, and they trembled with fear between our limbs.
As the pale eye of the moon came nearer, the evil lifted from the earth. It came mistily and like smoke, and through the trees strange shapes like fish and serpents seemed to slide. It was a wicked place. Beyond the wood was a stake such as men use to burn a witch upon, and the embers yet smouldered on a black corpse there. There was a stench that struck the air like fists.
My lord stretched out his hand and made the holy sign as he passed. But my hands were busy with my horse, who rippled and shied beneath me. I felt a pain in my loins then, a quick agony that was gone before I had even space to cry aloud. But it was hot and wounding as a sword thrust. My sister had told me there was such a pain when my lord’s brother took her; but it is a maid’s pain and came for no reason at a part of me I had not, being a man.
Above the place there is the road to the town, and some way on, an inn. Smoke came out of its black nostril, and the yew branch was half-dipped to show the house was almost full. But for my lord any inn will be pleased to make room, and here, we were told, the beds were without fleas, and a magic stone was hung under the lintel to ward off ill.
The landlord gave us food in a small chamber, just beyond the crowd and noise of the tavern hall, with no company save a red cat coiled before the fire. As I tended him, my lord looked up from his meat and touched the landlord on the arm.
“There was a burning, was there not, farther back along the road?”
The landlord paled and made the holy sign. “Truth,” he answered. “Today.”
“A man, was it?” asked my lord.
“A woman,” said the landlord, “and her body is not altogether burned. The flames held off a long while, so they say, and a devil danced by her.”
A pain ran round my chest like a great band then, and my lord put out his hand to steady me. They sat me in a chair, and as soon as the agony had passed, I blushed hot with shame, for this is not how a squire should conduct himself before his lord and strangers.
The landlord held the cup against my mouth, but my teeth were clenched and I could not swallow. The metal jarred on my lip.
“He will be well enough,” said my lord, “when he has slept. He is too young perhaps for such long travelling.”
He was always gentle with me and compassionate, and he had defended the honour of my house, even against his own brother, but these words made me more ashamed than ever. For was I not a man? They had told me I should not be a man till I had lain with a woman, but the village girls would not, and the women that I had seen in the dark doors of the town were often foul with disease and they made me afraid.
The inn quietened about midnight, and my lord went to his bed where I drew off the mail coat from him and set to polishing his sword, such as my duty was. In the cold iron of the sword I saw his brown body burn like copper, and his hair white flaxen. As he lay on the bed, he folded his arms behind his head, and watched the last reflection of torchlight die on the vaulted roof beyond the tiny window.
“Their remarkable stone on the door will keep us safe tonight,” he said, laughing deep and soft. And after that he slept.
My own sleep came on me like death. I felt my heart rise beneath the flesh and knock as one mad to be free from prison. And then it grew slower and, before I slept, I felt it stop.
It was an ill sleep, dark and close, clutching with the claws of eagles. Such sleeps, men say, have no awakening. A year in a tomb I lay that night above the tavern hall, and once a white face shone in on me like a moon. Pale as thin milk it was, with great black eyes. And behind, a flame burning.
An hour before I woke, I heard the red cat singing in the tavern yard.
My lord shook me awake, gentle and rough, and went to bathe in the water they had brou
ght up in seven ewers to our chamber. As I stripped away my shirt for fresh, for we had ridden long, fear came like an adder from the crevice of my thoughts and stung me, for my right side and my left above my rib bones had begun to swell. It was a soft swelling, but the male nipples had turned pink as a maid’s.
We stayed not long at the inn. There was a commotion about the porch, where the magic stone had fallen from the lintel in the night, and smashed to fragments on the cobbled yard. Beyond the tavern, the road was blown with leaves.
It is a day’s ride into the town. Without pause we journeyed it. At ebb-day we were within gates before the watch had closed them, and above the dark loom of the houses the sky blazed rosy-brazen.
The house of my lord’s lord, his uncle, is fine, of timber blood-kissed with the last sun, where we knocked and were made welcome. It was many years since I last came here, and then not as a squire but as a little page, a hand higher than the great dogs. I had forgotten all that lived within, save for memories. But the huge chase-hound was splashed with grey and blind, yet he knew me and the smell of me, and came to nose my hand. His muzzle was wet and round as a pebble from the stream thrust into my palm, and then he baulked suddenly from me, as from something ill, and his white-stone eyes flinched as if he saw with them. He followed my lord to the fire, and never came near me after, though sometimes I called to him.
There was a girl too I had forgotten. Had I recalled her, it must have been as small and fey and thin, running and laughing and in favour with my lord’s lord, though only the daughter of one of his wife’s women.
And now I saw her beckon me, and remembered – though she had changed utterly and was a woman, with the face of a flower that smiled. It was her eyes made me unquiet, for there is a look a woman will get when another thing is gone. She laughed at me and took my hand.
“See how red my lord’s squire is grown at the sight of me. But he is a fine man, and I am the one should blush.” She led me away along the stairs, my lord left below before the fire with his family. “But I have ceased blushing,” said she, “and there is the cause of it.” She pointed her finger at my lord’s uncle, deep in talk and unknowing. “It is a danger to be fair, is it not? There, the red sea is at high tide again.” And she drew me in at the shadowy bend of the stair above the hall, where none could see, and gave me her mouth to kiss. But such a kiss as she gave me had never been mine before, and when it was done she laughed again and was gone.
Faithful my heart, but I should have been mad afire for her, finding her so willing. But I was not. Rather, I was afraid of her and, as she sat that night at dinner, kept my eyes from those of hers, so fair and knowing woman’s eyes they were. I was in discomfort too, for my clothes seemed all awry and would not fit me. I thought my sweat and the rain and the dry days had shrunk them.
When the house had gone to bed, I heard her, my lord’s uncle’s mistress; she came scratching at the door like a cat. I had just set down the candle, and I was alone. She scratched at the door until I opened it.
“Love,” she said, “I hear you sing to my lord sweetly. Sing sweetly to me.”
“You will have me wake the whole house,” I answered her, but she had come into the room with me, and the door swung softly to.
“Your clothes are all misshapen on you,” said she. “Shame to my lord that they are.”
And she thrust her hand within the lip of my doublet, as if to see how fast my heart might beat for her, which had grown dead and still.
Then the smile was gone from her face, the speech from her mouth, her hand leaped away from me as though there were poison on my flesh.
She said nothing. But something spoke in her throat, saying nothing. Her eyes were wide. Turning her head, she spat and fled from the chamber.
A shield hung on the wall. I looked in it, and now I saw the pale girl’s face, the white smooth throat, and there, below the open neck of cloth, the milky roundness, and I tore wide my doublet with my hands.
The breath of life had gone from me, and still I lived, and there she lived, in the shield before me on the wall. A woman with her hair lopped short as a boy’s, and the three white moons of breasts and face gleaming in the candle-shade.
My lord was gone to mass that dawn, and left me sleeping, out of kindness, that should have been beside him,
From the great stair I saw the hall, and the women at breakfast. And there the girl sat, who was my lord’s uncle’s harlot, wan and silent, the other maids laughing and trying to tempt her with a bowl of honey and milk. She would not eat and, as her eyes lifted, she saw me, and she shrank away. Beneath the board, I saw her hand move in the holy sign.
Like a leaf blowing, the thought came and led me, and I turned my back on them and went from the house. The streets were bright with frost.
My cloak was about me. I hid in its muffle from the crowds. I came to the market-place, and a gypsy called to me.
“Here, see, fair one – these will win your lord’s favour.”
She was a huge woman, rust red, dangling two golden coils such as maids wear in their ears. I would have pulled back, but she gripped my arm.
“Lovesick, you are. I see it in your face. Give me a coin for the earrings and I will tell you how it will go for you.”
I struggled, but she had me fast as fate. She pushed back the hood from my head and round my cheeks I felt the hair fall, long and soft, a woman’s hair, never shorn.,
“Fine hair,” she said, “summer hair. These earrings will love such hair.”
After a minute her face grew darker, a cloud on fire. “Listen, young mistress, there are some will ask why a maid has on man’s clothes.” Her fingers bit my arm, and they taught me how it should be, for I sunk my teeth in her hand and she let me go, cursing. But there was blood in my mouth before she did.
Then I ran. Houses loomed and faded like ghosts in a nightmare, and once there was a bridge over green water where a white-faced girl looked up at me. Now the true terror came. A doorway and the spice of incense. I stood at the porch of a church, and saw far off the soft light of candles and lovely windows with the cold sky behind. How I longed then to run into that echoing gentle womb, and fall down before the altar, and call out loud to the angels and the Saviour to give me peace. But the sweet good smell drove me back, and I slunk away and vomited like a dog at the guttering.
Night fell soon after. There was no time in that place. Lamps were behind the shutters of windows as I passed. A lean dog howled dismally from some hidden yard.
As I walked, I heard the ash wind rustle at my feet and smelled the almond smell of burning. All around, from shapeless walls, faces of imagination peered at me. I sensed the beat of a great heart thundering through the town, which only I could hear, and through the doors and solid timbered houses I saw with a third eye. Families at a meal, children and dogs sprawling in firelight, a cream jug overturned, an old man dying, and once, two lovers moaning on a bed.
On the ground too I saw, and above my head, small things, little creatures moving and living, specks fluttering between the rooftops and the stars. I was both man and woman as I walked. Man below the scar of birth, hard and stirring, and woman above, milk-white and swan-soft, and, at the join, the ripple of snake’s skin, fish’s scale. My fear had been vomited forth. A new sensation had come on me, jealous of its place, denying all others.
It was the mid of night that I came to the door of my lord’s uncle’s house. The bolt was drawn and the porter asleep, but within I heard the old blind hound stir in his ease and whine. I tapped with my fingers lightly on the shutters and they flew wide, and softly I called in to them that my lord’s squire was returned, and I smiled at my words. A wretched servant in bedclothes came then to let me in, my hood pulled close about my head, and shivered as I passed for the cold wind came in at my back from the street.
I was deaf to her scolding and made my way above stairs. Soon I came to the harlot’s door, and through it I saw her lying in her white sleep. I lifted the door latch then, and
went in and, as I came near her, she tossed and whimpered without waking. I drew back the covers to look at her, a thing carved out of marble, like myself, but she had the loins of a woman.
She woke when the air struck cold on her body, and she lay before me dumb with fear, her eyes wide and fixed as glass. And then she shut her eyes and began to pray, and so I left her.
I crept to the door of my chamber, looking for the dark. But in the grate a fire blazed, and before the fire stood my lord. As I entered, he lifted his head and, seeing only a shadow, called to me as his squire.
Then the fire caught me, and he stilled. All the woman’s hair was about my face, and in the shield I saw for a moment how womanly the face had grown, dark eyed and small jawed. The man and the snake and the fish were hidden.
“Who are you?” he said, quiet almost as silence.
I made him no answer but pointed to the fire. And when he looked, his face grew white and he seized me and, dragging the silver cross from within his shirt, he pressed it on my throat. Such a fear came on me then as I had never known. The silver burned like ice and from its four arms a numbing chill rushed into my body. But, with the four strengths in me, I beat it away, and heard it fall, and turning, fled from the house through the closed door into the night.
The dawn came pale, with the dripping of the dew, and the watch made haste to open the gates for me, for I made my voice deep, and the badge of my lord’s house was yet on my doublet.
It is a steep climb at first, and a day’s journey for a mounted man, so I thought it would take me far longer. But about afternoon, a dull yellow light came down from the sky, and I heard the creaking of the twisted trees as they swung in the wind. The inn was locked against the dim dusk, but from an upper window I thought I saw a white face look out and vanish at a glimpse of me.
The black trees stretched away, bare and leaden, their sodden leaves rotting underfoot. A small ragged child came wandering by, with an armful of brittle twigs. I called to him, for he did not seem to see me, and he looked up with an idiot’s face. The wind blew back my hood then, and washed through my hair. The child opened his mouth and gave a thin high scream and, dropping all the wood he had so carefully gathered, tumbled away.