Swan Knight's Son

by John C. Wright

  Ruff hopped up and down in the tall reeds of the shore, barking, “Toss it! Toss it! I’m open!”

  Against his better judgment, Gil threw the twitching fish with both hands. Ruff leaped up into the air with an athletic bound, snapped his jaws shut on the fish, landed, and jerked his neck back and forth to worry it. The fish slipped out of his jaws and flopped energetically, but Ruff pinned it with both forepaws and bit off the head.

  Gil threw both arms overhead and uttered a war-whoop of victory, raising little waves around his knees as he jumped. He turned, hoping to see the swimming girl’s expression. But there was no expression because there was no girl.

  She was gone.

  Chapter Five: Daughter of the Deep

  1. Being Schooled

  The next day, to get to the gorge before dawn, he woke at 2:30 in the morning, took up the cot he was renting, slung it over his sore and aching back, and set out with Ruff. The pair hiked for four hours through wood and meadow, thicket and grass, following the deer trails. Once or twice when Ruff lost the way, Gil asked a morose crow or hectic squirrel for directions. Linville Gorge itself was on the lands of the National Forest, but Gil saw no sign of campers, park rangers, or any other soul. He wondered if he would be seeing the skin-diving girl again.

  Gil found a narrow cave mouth in the gorge wall that led down a steep and crooked passage to a wide and sandy floor. He managed to wrestle the cot in through the cramped opening. Gil was not sure if training with a bear counted as having an honest job. The only payment he could see coming out of this would be lacerations, bruises, and sprains, frequent plunges into mud, reeds, cattails, and murk, and a fish dinner when he could catch it.

  Gil looked around the cave with satisfaction. There on that rock he could start a campfire with a friction bow, which was something he had learned in the Boy Scouts. He had been a member of Troop Two when they lived in Tillamook, Oregon. Perhaps he could cut a likely treebranch into a trident to help catch fish. Ruff helpfully urinated outside the cave mouth to show that the cave was theirs.

  The birds were twittering in the pre-dawn gloom, praising the coming light, and talking about their territorial claims or boasting about their mates. Gil could smell the freshness in the air. He stepped out of the cave, ready to start his first day of work.

  That day, the girl reappeared on the rock at about noon. This time, he saw her appear. She swam up out of the deep part of the pool beneath the waterfall and climbed the rock nimbly. She took off the jeweled net or snood holding her hair bun at her neck and then undid her hair and shook it free with a toss of her head so that flying droplets caught the sunlight like jewels. She arranged her combs and long gold hairpins, her small silver mirror, and other toiletries on the rock before her.

  She stayed and watched all afternoon while Gil practiced roaring, fleeing, playing dead, fighting with a stick, wrestling, and fishing. She sat watching him and his exercises and antics in the hot or blistering sun and in the wet or suffocating mud.

  Unlike before, when she had watched and laughed, now she merely slept on the rock most of the day, coiled on the sunny stone surface like a graceful cat, her cheek upon her elbow. After her nap, she sang to accompany the sound of the waterfall, but Gil heard only a faint echo and could not make out the tune.

  She only became interested after the day’s practice was done, and Gil once again attempted to catch a fish with his hand. She crept to a closer rock and peered around the side impishly, showing only her eyes above the waterline. She had pushed her mirrored sunglasses back on her brow, or so Gil assumed, so he could see her roll her eyes.

  That day, Gil caught nothing except a sea lamprey, which bit him. The girl laughed until her cheeks turned pink.

  Gil asked Ruff to swim across the pool and find out who she was, but the dog gave him an odd look and pretended not to have heard him.

  On Thursday she was not there at all.

  On Friday she returned.

  2. Water Sports

  She watched carefully that day, applauding whenever the bear smote Gil to the ground, clapping her hands prettily.

  After playing dead practice and before stick fighting practice, Gil begged the bear for a lunch break, so he could go talk to the girl. “At least I want to find out her name!”

  The bear said, “Fine. I am going to go mug some bees and eat their honey. You have until I get back.”

  So at noon, Gil took off his one remaining shirt and swam out to the cluster of rocks near the middle of the pool. The wind was blowing across the top of the gorge, so a little fine spray from the waterfall was raining down onto the rocks every now and then. However, when he got to the big rock in the middle and climbed up to the top, he found it empty. She was gone.

  Ruff, from the shore, said, “Hey! Hey! She’s behind you! Look!”

  Gil turned. There she was, seated on a second rock a little ways across the water behind him, tucking her hair into her jeweled cap, facing the other direction, paying him no attention. He called out to her, but either the noise of the waterfall drowned his voice, or, more likely, she was ignoring him.

  He ran across the flat upper surface of the tall rock and dove like an arrow, hitting the water cleanly with little splash, and swam rapidly toward this second rock with his best overarm stroke. His head broke the water, and he clung to this second rock and shook the drops from his eyes.

  He looked up. No one was here. This rock was now empty.

  Ruff was barking. Gil looked back at the first rock. There she was, draped across the high, stony surface, resting on one elbow, holding up a mirror in her hand, the two smaller mirrors of her sunglasses hiding her eyes. Over the sound of the fall, he could hear her humming to herself, a serene, strange, tuneless melody of trills and drifting, dreamlike notes.

  Gil wondered if there were a trick involved. How had she gotten over there so quickly?

  So he dove and tried again. This time, when he reached where she had been lounging, he looked up and found her standing among the reeds of the shore, doing what looked like ballerina practice. She held her arms in the air, stood on one toe on the marshy ground, and lifted one leg so high her naked foot was over her head. It was incredibly graceful, but with her eyes hidden and expressionless, Gil could not tell if she were mocking him or fleeing because she was shy or simply crazy or what.

  So he swam toward shore. This time, he saw her move. She made an astonishing leap, like something an Olympic athlete would make, from the shore into the pool, and then he saw her legs kick high above the surface as she dove under.

  So with his best breaststroke he splashed toward that spot, only to find she was below him, swimming upside down, paralleling his course, peering up at him curiously. Gil wondered how she kept her glasses on her face when she dove and swam.

  He drew a deep breath, kicked his legs in the air, and dove down toward her. Her face was expressionless as she drifted in a leisurely fashion into the deeper part of the pool, near the column of the waterfall. Gil could hear a throbbing in his ears. He did not know whether it was his heartbeat or the falling water.

  The water grew darker as the two sank away from the sun. Gil was swimming forward with the whole of his considerable strength, and the girl was always just a little ways out of reach below him. She swam backward, waving her arms slowly in the water with her stroke, almost as if beckoning him. She could swim backward using only gentle, casual motions of her hands faster that he could swim forward with all four limbs and furious effort.

  Then, she drew out her small silver mirror and looked at herself critically, pouting and pushing a hair strand neatly back into her gem-studded snood. And, somehow, she could still swim faster than he could, and deeper, using only her bare feet.

  Gil was surprised at how deep the pool was in this spot. In the gloom, he could see a wall of rock to his left and his right. He saw the columns and pyramids of stone that rose to form the rocks of the surface. But he saw no bottom.

  His lungs were aching, and his vision
pulsing with a creeping darkness around the edge. So he turned, and, clawing with his hands and feet, he made for the surface. A streamlined shape darted up from underfoot, swift as a dolphin, and torpedoed past him. It was the girl, of course. He saw her silhouette above him, outlined against the wavering and wobbling image of the sun seen through the rippling water. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes hidden in her glasses, but she wiggled her fingers at him in a playful salute, kicked her legs once, and was gone in a spray of bubbles.

  He broke the surface and stroked wearily toward shallower water. He heard Ruff bark. “There! There! There he is!– Say, Gil, I was sure you were drowned!”

  Gil’s feet found the muddy bottom, and he raised his head. The girl was nowhere in sight. The one-eyed bear was waiting in the reeds, honey stains on his chest, but a grumpy look on his muzzle. “Are you going to play all day like an otter, or are you going to get to work? Look sharp!”

  3. Tool-Using Creature

  On Saturday Gil found himself unable to rise from his cot, overcome by the wounds and sprains of his rough training at the hands, or, rather, paws, of Bruno the Bear. For his lunch, he relied on what Ruff brought him. They ate a rabbit. Gil said, “I hope this is not the one I talked to. Maybe I should become a vegetarian.”

  Ruff shivered from nose to tail. “Brr! Don’t joke like that. You give me the creeps. Besides, if we don’t eat the lunchmeat animals, soon there will be too many of them. You should see what happened in Australia.”

  Gil spent the time writing a letter to his mother. Ruff wagged his tail and eagerly agreed to make the long trek back to deliver it. Gil wrapped the letter in some tinfoil he carried in his knapsack so that the dog could carry it in his mouth without wetting it.

  The one-eyed bear looked him over and sniffed his various wounds. “I have some business to see to today anyway. Rest up. In the afternoon, do a hundred laps around the pond, alternating walking and running, forty push-ups, twenty squat-thrusts, twenty battlecries, and twenty play-deads. Your claws are too small. See what you can do about growing them bigger.”

  Gil stared at his fingernails doubtfully. “Men use knives. Speaking of which, may I today use that fishspear I made?” For, earlier this week, Bruno had strictly forbidden him to use it on the theory that barehanded fishing was good for developing his hand-eye coordination.

  The bear said, “You Sons of Adam with your tricks and tools do not understand that strong tools make you weak.”

  “We need tools to conquer nature.”

  “Nature would have served you unconquered had your fathers not rebelled and eaten the food of angels before it was ripe, inviting death into the world before they were granted the authority to banish it. The mother of your race sought a crown above her station in the Night World, and the Night Lords answered and came. Too late now! Men have misplaced their names and do not know whose sons they are!”

  Gil said, “Whose son am I?”

  The one-eyed bear said, “You are not a bear cub, so how should I know? You must have the iron claw and iron hide called sword and hauberk to be attired as a knight. What I can teach is not fit for you. Another teacher would be better.”

  “I am not a quitter, Master Bear!”

  “You cannot get the honey if you are too thin-skinned and bee-fearing to pry open the hive, but if it is a wasp’s nest, there is no honey to get. I will tell you my verdict when I return after I talk with a wiser heart than mine. So, in the meanwhile, use your fish spear, Son of Adam!”

  The one-eyed bear climbed out of the cave, turned, and thrust his head back in the cave mouth. “There is watercress downstream and honey in the hive by the old oak stump. Mind the bees. Try to grow your fur thicker to fend them off. That little bit you have on your head and chest is pathetic.”

  Bruno lumbered off.

  4. The Mermaid

  Later that afternoon, Gil was sitting on the one comfortable spot on the shore that was free of reeds and pebbles. A small stretch of golden sand, less than two yards across, formed a comfortable place to sit or nap, and he could put his elbows on the shore and lower his bruised body in the water and let the cool sensations soothe his many aches and sprains.

  He took off his shirt, folded his arms behind his head as a pillow, closed his eyes, and rested.

  When he opened his eyes again, the sun was in the western half of the sky so that the shadow of the cliff cut the vale neatly in half. The part of the pool near him was in shadow and looked as opaque as a gray mirror, in which the high blue sky was caught, and the far side of the pool was in sunlight and shined and moved like a restless living thing. Concentric ripples washed endlessly out from the pillar of the waterfall, going both into the light and shadow.

  He saw the girl in the black wetsuit under the water a few yards away, looking up at him with her mirrored spectacles. She hung motionless in a deep part of the pool, almost touching the sand of the lakebed. Gil wondered why her body did not bob to the surface because she was not making any motion with her hands or feet to counteract her buoyancy. As he watched, and a minute went by, and then five, and then ten, he wondered how long she could hold her breath.

  He knew it was good manners to stand up when a lady entered the room but did not know what the rule was when she entered a pool. He decided that a polite wave of the hand would have to do.

  She must have taken his hand-wave as an invitation, for she darted with the grace of a seal to the shallower depth and stood up, the water sluicing from her black outfit. She wore her jeweled hairnet with its glinting scales of gold and pearl.

  She pushed her glasses up onto the top of her head. Her eyes were very pretty, but he was not sure he liked the mirth he saw there. Was she laughing at him?

  She said nothing, just looked at him a moment. He continued to sit with his body in the water and his head propped up on the sand of the beach, his brawny arms folded behind him, his silver hair shining.

  He said, “I would offer you welcome, miss, but I think you were here before me.”

  She shook her head, bit her lip, and looked uncertain. “Where is the pooka?”

  Gil raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Pardon me, miss, but did you just ask me where the poker is? I don’t play cards. But, um, I can show you how to play mumbly-peg.”

  She scanned the shore, as if seeking something. Then, she turned back toward him and said, “I have an ointment.”

  Gil said, “Yes? I am sure it is nice to have an ointment.” He suddenly found himself flummoxed. He had no idea what to say or how to say it without sounding like an idiot.

  She took a few steps toward him so that the water was at her thighs, then her calves, and then her ankles. She wore a flat and narrow purse of folded leather on her leg, held in place by straps circling her upper thigh and knee. This was no doubt where she carried her mirror of silver and combs of gold and her other dainty gear. She was undoing the mother-of-pearl buckles as she walked toward him.

  Her head for a moment blocked out the sun. Then, she stepped over him and knelt behind him on the sand. Gil was startled by this, wondering why she was getting so close, and he did not like having her behind him where he could not see. He sat up and would have stood up, except she put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Sit!” she said, “This will mend your wounds, and it will not sting.” In her hand was what looked like a silver clamshell about the size of a lady’s compact.

  Gil was not sure he trusted the look he saw in her eyes. She seemed to be having rather too much fun. “Is this medicine?”

  She said, “I am the daughter of Glaucon and Narissa. Of course it is medicine, most virtuous and potent.”

  Gil turned around and showed her his back. “Go ahead. If you say it won’t sting, then I– YEEOOOW!” He gritted his teeth and splashed water on his face to hide the tears of pain gathering in his eyes. It felt like someone had taken a lit match and run it down the scratches and lacerations on his back. “I thought you said it would not sting!”

  She said, “What
you feel is a bracing tingle. I have admixtures more potent that cause convulsions, hairloss, vomiting, and paroxysms. They sting. This is nothing. Hold still and stop whimpering. Let me spread this.”

  He could feel her fingers and palms running up and down the wounds on his back, and the painful sensation of heat spread and grew calm and sank into his skin. Her hands were incredibly soft.

  While she spread the gel over his back, she began to sing. It was a strange, wordless song, lilting and warbling, with loon-like moans and high arpeggios. It did not seem to be on a diatonic scale but sounded more like something from ancient Japan, or perhaps from India.

  The warmth and the calm were very relaxing, even mesmeric, but he resisted the temptation to fall asleep. He said, “Miss, we have not been introduced.”

  She said, “I have, but not you.”

  That strange sensation he often had of neither understanding nor being understood, as if ordinary words had gone on strike, now overcame him again. “You have what?”

  “Have been introduced. I did it myself. Were you not paying attention? I have seen the bear many a time smite you for this fault, and it makes me laugh. Your eyes bug out wonderfully when you fall on your face or on your behind, and your arms and legs jerk this way and that!”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am the daughter of Narissa, who is the daughter of Nausithöe, and she in turn is the sister of Danae of Arcadia, who married Pelenore of Listenoise and bore him Dandrenor the Grail Maiden; and she is the sister of Elyezer of the Broken Sword and also of Elaine of the Sea (who married Garis le Gros son of Nichodemas the Fisher King), and, of course, Dandrenor is also the sister of….”

  This all came out in one long, happy rush of unknown names and strange titles. “Miss, hold up. You did not actually introduce yourself.”

  Her voice was suddenly flat. “Ha! Well, I like that! You interrupted!”