by Gene Wolfe
“Two of you, six of us. And Leaves-you-can-eat won’t fight if I fight him.”
For a moment Bloodyfingers looked angry, and Sandwalker remembering those big fists, readied himself to dodge and kick. Then Bloodyfinger grinned his gap-toothed grin—“Just you and I, huh, boy? Bruising each other while the rest watch and yell. If you win, your friends eat, and if I do—why they come for me after dark. No. In a few days you’ll be hungry—if any of us are alive. I’ll talk to you again then.”
Sandwalker shook his head, but smiled. He had been driven all night by his captors and had spent the morning struggling with the slipping walls, so when Bloodyfinger turned away he scooped a place in the sand near the Shadow children and lay down. After a time the girl Sweetmouth came and lay beside him.
* * *
At sunset, as Bloodyfinger had said, the stems of plants were thrown down to them. The Shadow children were beginning to stir, and brought two for Sweetmouth and Sandwalker, Sweetmouth took hers, but she was frightened by the Shadow children’s gleaming eyes. She went to the other side of the pit to sit with Cedar Branches Waving.
The Old Wise One came to sit beside Sandwalker, who noticed that he had no water stalk. Sandwalker said, “Well, what do we do now?”
Talk,” said the Old Wise One.
“Why?”
“Because there is no opportunity to act. It is always wise to talk a great deal, discussjng what has been done and what may be done, when nothing can be done. All the great political movements of history were born in prisons.”
“What are political movements, and history?”
“Your forehead is high and your eyes are far apart,” the Old Wise One said. “Unfortunately like all your species you have your brain in your thorax—” (he tapped Sandwalker’s hard, flat belly, or at least made the gesture of doing so, though his finger had no substance) ’so neither of those indications of mental capacity is valid.”
Sandwalker said tactfully, “All of us have our brains in our stomachs when we are hungry.”
“You mean minds,” the Old Wise One told him, “It is possible for the mind to float fourteen thousand feet or more above the head.”
“The starwalkers of these wetlanders say their minds—perhaps they mean their souls—leave the ground, tumble through space, kick off from sisterworld, and, drawn by the tractive universe, glide, soar, sweep, and whirl among the constellations until dawn, reading everything and tending the whole. So they told me in my captivity.”
The Old Wise One made a spitting sound and asked Sandwalker, “Do you know what a starcrosser is?”
Sandwalker shook his head.
“Have you ever seen a log floating in the river? I mean high in the hills, where the water rushes between stones and the log with it.”
“I rode the river myself that way. That’s how I came to the meadowmeres so quickly.”
“Better yet.” The Old Wise One lifted his head to stare at the night sky. “There,” he said, pointing. “There. What do you call that?”
Sandwalker was trying to follow the direction of his shadowy finger. “Where?” he said. Burning Hair Woman watched with calm, unseeing eyes through the Old Wise One’s hand.
“There, spread across all the heavens from end to end.”
“Oh, that,” Sandwalker said. “That’s the Waterfall.”
“Exactly. Now think of a hollow log big enough for men to get into. That would be a starcrosser.”
“I see.”
“Now humans—my race—actually traveled in those, cruising among the stars before the long dreaming days. We came here that way.”
“I thought you were always here,” Sandwalker said.
The Old Wise One shook his head. “We either came recently or a long, long time ago. I’m not sure which.”
“Don’t your songs tell?”
“We had no songs when we came here—that was one of the reasons we stayed, and why we lost the starcrosser.”
“You couldn’t have gone back in it anyway,” Sandwalker said. He was thinking of going upstream on a river.
“We know. We’ve changed too much. Do you think we look like you, Sandwalker?”
“Not very much. You’re too small and you don’t look healthy, and your ears are too round and you don’t have enough hair.”
“True,” said the Old Wise One, and fell silent. In the quiet that followed, Sandwalker could hear softly a sound he had never heard before, a sound rising and falling: it was Ocean smoothing the beach a quarter-mile away with his wet hands, but Sandwalker did not know this.
“I didn’t mean to be insulting,” Sandwalker said at last. “I was just pointing these things out.”
“It is thought,” the Old Wise One said, “that makes things so. We do not conceive of ourselves as you have described us, and so we are not actually that way. However, it’s sobering to hear how another thinks of us.”
“I’m sorry.”
“In any event, we once looked just as you do now.”
“Ah,” said Sandwalker. When he was younger, Cedar Branches Waving had often told him stories with names like “How the Mule-Cat Got His Tail” (stole it from the lack-lizard, who had it for a tongue) and “Why the Neagle Never Flies’ (doesn’t want the other animals to see his ugly feet, so he hides them in the grass unless he’s using them to kill something). He thought the Old Wise One’s story was going to be something like these, and since he hadn’t heard it before he was quite willing to listen.
“We came either recently or a long, long time ago, as I said. Sometimes we try to recall the name of our home as we sit staring at each other’s faces in the dawn, before we raise the Day-sleep Song. But we hear also the mind-singing of our brothers—who do not sing—as they pass up and down between the stars; we bend their thinking then, making them go back, but these thoughts come into our songs. It is possible that our home was named Atlantis or Mu—Gondwanaland, Africa, Poictesme, or The Country Of Friends. I, for five, remember all these names.”
“Yes,” said Sandwalker. He had enjoyed the names, but the Old Wise One’s referring to himself as five had reminded him of the other Shadow children. They all seemed to be awake and listening, but sitting far off in various places around the pit. Two, so it appeared, had attempted to climb the shifting walls, and now waited where they had abandoned the effort—one a quarter way, one almost halfway up. All the humans except himself slept. The blue radiance of sisterworld was sifting over the rim.
“When we came we looked as you do now—” began the Old Wise One.
“But you took off your appearance to bathe,” Sandwalker continued for him, thinking of the feathers and flowers his own people sometimes thrust into their hair, “and we stole it from you and have worn it ever since.” Cedar Branches Waving had once told him some similar story.
“No. It was not necessary for us to lose our appearance for you to gain it. You come of a race of shape-changers—like those we called werewolves in our old home. When we came some of you looked like every beast, and some were of fantastic forms inspired by the clouds—or by lava flows, or water. But we walked among you in power and majesty and might, hissing like a thousand serpents as we splashed down in your sea, stepping like conquerors when we strode ashore with burning lights in our fists, and flame.”
“Ah!” said Sandwalker, who was enjoying the story.
“Of flame and light,” repeated the Old Wise One, rocking back and forth. His eyes were half-shut, and his jaws moved vigorously as though he were eating.
“Then what happened?” asked Sandwalker.
“That is the end. We so impressed your kind that you became like us, and have so remained ever since. That is, as we were.”
“That can’t be the end,” said Sandwalker. “You told how we becam›e the same, but you haven’t told yet how we became different. I am taller already than any of you, and my legs are straight.”
“We are taller than you, and stronger,” said the Old Wise One. “And wrapped in terrible glo
ry. It is true that we no longer have the things of flame and light, but our glance withers, and we sing death to our enemies. Yes, and the bushes drop fruit into our hands, and the earth yields the sons of flying mothers do we but turn a stone.”
“Ah,” said Sandwalker again. He wanted to say, Your bones are bent and weak and your faces ill; you run from men and the light, but he did not. He had called himself a shadowfriend—besides, there was no point in quarreling now. So he said, “But we’re still not the same, since my own people do not have those powers; neither do our songs come on the night wind to disturb sleep.”
The Old Wise One nodded and said, “I will show you.” Then looking down he coughed into his hands and held them out to Sandwalker.
Sandwalker tried to see what it was he held, but sisterworld was shining brightly now and the Old Wise One’s hands were cobweb. There was something—a dark mass—but though he bent close Sandwalker could see nothing more, and when he tried to touch what the Old Wise One held, his fingers passed through the hands as well as what they contained, making him feel suddenly foolish and alone, a boy who sat muttering to empty air when he might have slept.
“Here,” the Old Wise One said, and motioned. A second Shadow child came and squatted beside him, solid and real. “Is it you I’m talking to, really?” Sandwalker asked, but the other did not answer or meet his eyes. After a moment he coughed into his hands as the Old Wise One had done and held them out.
“You talk to all of us when you talk to me,” the Old Wise One said. “Mostly to us five here; but also to all Shadow children. Though weak, their songs come from far away to help shape what I am. But look at what this one is showing you.”
For a moment Sandwalker looked instead at the Shadow child. He might have been young, but the dark face was silent and closed. The eyes were nearly shut, yet through the lids Sandwalker sensed his stare, friendly, embarrassed, and afraid.
“Take some,” invited the Old Wise One. Sandwalker prodded the chewed stuff with a finger and sniffed—vile.
“For this we have given up everything, because this is more than anything, though it is only a herb of this world. The leaves are wide, warty, and gray; the flowers yellow, the seed pink prickled eggs.”
“I have seen it,” Sandwalker said. “Leaves-you-can-eat warned me of it when I was young. It is poisoned.”
“So your kind believes, and so it is if swallowed—though to die in that way might be better than lifd But once, between the full face of sisterworld and her next, a man may take the fresh leaves, and folding them tightly carry them in his cheek. Then there is no woman for him, nor any meat; he is sacred then, for God walks in him.”
“I met such a one,” Sandwalker said softly. “I would have killed him save that I pitied him.”
He had not meant to speak aloud and he expected the Old Wise One to be angry, but he only nodded. “We too pity such a one,” he said, “and envy him. He is God. Understand that he pitied you as well.”
“He would have killed me.”
“Because he saw you for what you are, and seeing felt your shame. But only once, until sisterworld appears again as she did, may a man search out the plant and pluck new leaves, spitting away then that which he has carried and chewed until it comforts him no longer. If he takes the fresh leaves more often, he will die.”
“But the plant is harmless as you use it?”
“All of us have been warmed by it since we were very young, and we are healthy as you see us. Didn’t we fight well? We live to a great age.”
“How long?” Sandwalker was curious.
“What does it matter? It is great in terms of experience—we feel many things. When we die at last we have been greater than God and less than the beasts. But when we are not great, that which we carry in our mouths comforts us. It is flesh when we hunger and there is no fish, milk when we thirst and there is no water. A young man seeks a woman and finds her and is great and dies to the world. Afterward he is never as great again, but the woman is a comfort to him, reminding him of the time that was, and he is a little again with her what once he was wholly. Just so with us until our wives that were are white when we spit them into our palms, and without comfort. Then we watch sister-world’s face to see how great the time has been, and when the phase comes again we find new wives, and are young, and God.”
Sandwalker said, “But you no longer look as we look now.”
“We were that, and have exchanged for this. Long ago in our home, before a fool struck fire, we were so—roaming without whatever may be named save the sun, the night, and each other. Now we are so again, for are gods, and things made by hands do not concern us. And as we are, so are you—because you walk only as you see us walk, doing as we do.”
The thought of his own people imitating the Shadow children whom they by day despised amused Sandwalker; but he only said, “Now it is late, and I must rest. I thank you for all your kindness.”
“You will not taste?”
“Not now.”
The silent Shadow child, who seemed less real than the gossamer figure he crouched beside, returned the chewed fiber to his mouth and wandered away. Sandwalker stretched himself and wished Sweetmouth would come again to lie with him. The Old Wise One, without having left, was gone; and there were evil dreams: every part of him had vanished, so that he saw without eyes and felt without sJtin, hanging, a naked worm of consciousness amid blazing glories. Someone screamed.
They screamed again, and he came up fighting nothing, his arms flailing but his legs bound, his mouth full of grit. Cedar Branches Waving was screaming, and Leaves-you-can-eat and old Bloodyfinger seized his arms and pulled until he thought he must break. Around him in a circle the Shadow children watched, and Sweetmouth was crying.
“This dirt at the bottom goes down,” Bloodyfinger said when they had pulled him free, “and sometimes it goes down fast.”
Cedar Branches Waving said, “When you were still small but thought you were grown, you wouldn’t sleep beside me any longer, and I used to get up in the night and go over and see if you were all right. I woke and thought of that tonight.”
“Thank you.” He was still gagging and spitting sand.
From the shadows a voice told him, “We did not know. In the future, unsleeping eyes will watch you.”
“Thank you all,” Sandwalker said. “I have many friends.”
There was more talk until, one by one, the humans returned to their resting places and lay down again. Sandwalker moved for a time around the floor of the pit, testing the footing and listening for the crawling of the sand. He heard only Ocean, and at last tried to sleep again. “This cannot be true, Lastvoice was saying. “Look again!” “I cannot… a cloud—” Ahead the oily surface of the river stretched away beneath the night sky; black, glistening, broadening, it showed no stars, nothing but its own water and bits of floating weed. “Look again!” Long hands, soft yet bony, gripped his shoulders.
Someone shook him, and it was not yet light. For a moment he felt that he was sinking into the sand once more, but it was not so. Bloodyfinger and Sweetmouth were beside him, and behind them other, unfamiliar, figures. He sat up and saw that these were marshmen with scarred shoulders and knotted hair. Sweetmouth said, “We have to go.” Her large, foolish eyes looked everywhere at no one.
There was a liana to help them climb, and with the marshmen behind they floundered up, Sandwalker and Bloodyfinger first, then Leaves-you-can-eat, then the two women and the Shadow children. “Who?” Sandwalker asked Bloodyfinger, but the older man only shrugged.
At the river Lastvoice stood with his feet in the shallows and the dawnlight behind him. There was a chaplet of white flowers on his head, hiding the scars where his hair had been burned away; and another garland, of red blossoms that looked black in the pale light, upon his shoulders. Eastwind stood near him, watching, and on the bank several hundred people waited—silent figures light-stained early morning colors of yellow and red, their features growing clearer, individuals,
a man here, a child there, standing suddenly contrasted from the mass with mask-like, immobile faces. Sandwalker ignored them and stared at Lastvoice; it was the first time he had seen the starwalker beyond the dreamworld.
Their guards drove them into the water until it reached their knees. Then Lastvoice lifted his arms and, facing the fading stars, began to chant. The chant was blasphemy, and after a few moments Sandwalker closed his ears to it, begging God that he might dive, swim deep, and so escape; but then the others would be left behind, and there were so many marshmen on the bank, and he had always heard that they were good swimmers. He asked the priest to help him, but the priest was not there. Then Lastvoice had finished, long before he expected it.
There was a silence, and Lastvoice stabbed the air with both hands. A sound, a moan that might have been of pleasure, came from the watchers. Men surged forward and seized old Bloody-finger and Leaves-you-can-eat, forcing them into deeper water. Sandwalker sprang to help them, but was at once struck down from behind; he floundered, fighting, expecting that they would try to hold him under, but no one molested him further. He got his feet beneath him and stood, coughing and wiping his long hair from his eyes. Men were still clustered around Leaves-you-can-eat and old Bloodyfinger, but the water was still, the ripples gold-tipped by the rising sun.
“Two today,” someone said behind Sandwalker. “The people are delighted.” He turned and saw Eastwind, who pushed past him and stalked away with the high-kneed hair-heron gait. “Back to the pit,” one of the guards announced, and with Cedar Branches Waving and Sweetmouth, Sandwalker turned and splashed back toward shore, the Shadow children following. He had just left the water when he heard the snap of breaking bone, and turning saw that two of the Shadow children were dead, their heads lolling as marshmen carried them away. He stopped, angry in a way he had not been at the other deaths. A guard pushed him.