by Gene Wolfe
Ann sighed deeply, a martyr whose sufferings were picking up. “Willie, please don’t be so dense. Whose car were you driving?”
He started to speak but fell silent, dumbfounded.
“It was Lisa’s, of course, Willie. Her old Cherokee. They—whoever they are—saw her car parked at the museum and thought that Lisa or Wrangler was inside, or maybe both of them.” Ann paused, staring hard at Wrangler. “If you ask me, it’s Wrangler they’re really interested in. You know, I’d never realized how much he looks like Bob Roberts.”
Shields studied Wrangler for a moment, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t have said so.”
“That’s because you never notice people unless you want to sell them cars, Willie. Bob must be forty years older, and I’d say an inch or two taller and a little bit heavier. But look at Wrangler’s face, the eyes and nose particularly.”
The subject of their scrutiny grinned, revealing teeth that were slightly uneven and tobacco-stained. “Reckon I’ll have to meet up with Mr. Roberts. ‘Cordin’ to Miss Lisa, he’s a mighty good man, only she never told me what a all-out handsome rascal he was. Miz Schindler, have you heard the good news? Miss Lisa told me about how you drove her and Sancha here.”
Shields asked, “What good news? It seems to me we could use some.”
Wrangler grinned still more; his face shone with pleasure. “Sancha’s alive, that’s what. Last night when Miss Lisa came to see me, she told me Sancha’d passed on, and—”
“But she hasn’t?” Ann squealed. “That’s marvelous!”
“Yes, ma‘am. No, ma’am. That was what the doctors here told Miss Lisa, and it was what they thought themselves; they wasn’t lyin’ or nothin’. They’d gave her blood and so on, but her heart flat give out. Miss Lisa says they tried everythin’ there is, but they couldn’t get it goin’ again. Then in the—this place where they keep the dead bodies, the whatchacallit—”
“The mortuary,” Ann supplied.
“Yes, ma‘am. One of the hands in there, he noticed Sancha breathin’—real late last night, this was—so he hollers for a doctor. They told Miss Lisa that don’t happen one time in a million, but it happens now and then just the same, and Sancha was the lucky one. Her bein’ so healthy didn’t hurt none, I’d guess, and she always was real strong for a girl. Anyhow, she’s still out, and the doctor told Miss Lisa she ought not to count on her pullin’ through at all. But what you did, Miz Schindler, and you, Mr. Shields, wasn’t wasted, and you ought to know it. She’s gettin’ oxygen, now, Miss Lisa said. I sure do hope she makes it. She’s a real nice girl.”
Boomer slowed at a freshet, hoping for a drink. Lucie had to fight him to make him follow the narrow track that wandered beside the wanton water instead. It was only then, while Boomer backed and sidled, that she heard the hoofbeats behind them, the regular, ground-devouring gallop that stretches back to Arabia Deserta and can match a falcon mile for mile. Lucie wished for a weapon then, for it is never certain that riders are harmless in the country she and Boomer traveled.
She had none. She urged Boomer forward instead, trotting down a steep defile where the white water muted their pursuer’s hoofbeats and small sly eyes peered from crevices between rocks.
A green twilight overlay the whole land, and though Lucie feigned to prefer it, she longed for sunshine and sharp shadows now, in place of this sickly light and the pale tendrils of fog that seemed to reach out for her. That fog, she knew, did not always leave living things quite as it had found them.
All the while the beating hooves behind her drummed louder; Lisa Solomon’s hulking jumper slackened to an uneasy walk, his ears cocked rearward. Lucie damned him aloud, kicking him with her heels and wishing for a heavy quirt and Spanish spurs with rowels the size of shuriken, until he trotted once more.
He stumbled where the fading path circled a fallen hemlock. An hour before he would have sailed over it with hardly a break in stride, but his forelegs crossed at the turning of the path; he lurched sideways and forward, so that Lucie nearly fell. She screamed—as much in fear as in anger—and only afterward, when Boomer had his feet beneath him once more, reflected that the rider behind her knew now that there was a woman ahead, if he had not known it before.
A long, level meadow went well enough. There was little hope of losing their pursuer while he remained in earshot, but Lucie turned Boomer from the path there, letting him trot across the lush grass and between mossy-trunked oaks that wept at the memory of fog.
It’s the country of the clouds, she thought. It seemed strange that she had not realized that sooner—never realized she rode the flying islands of the night, with the day land ten thousand feet below her horse’s belly. Would the sun rise at last?
Through the bare limbs of the oaks she glimpsed the summits of the tallest towers before the other rider overtook her; and she recognized Buck, Wrangler’s roping horse, before the haggard girl astride him.
“Lucie! Lucie, pode ajudar-me? Estou com fome, com sede, cansando. Wait, Lucie. I am so hungry.” Sancha attempted to smile, but it was the smile of a wolf, a sneer of gleaming teeth and famished eyes.
29
THE CASTLE BY THE SEA
“WAS THERE a god for cooks, Willie? Or a saint?”
“Martha, I suppose,” Shields said absently. “She’s always shown with a ladle in her hand. I don’t think there was a god—more likely a goddess. Hestia was goddess of the hearth, which was where they cooked in those days.”
Then please, please both of you watch over my daughter, and don’t let anything really bad happen to her. Think of all I’ve done for you: all day, sometimes, in the kitchen. Remember my sauces and desserts.
Ann tried to imagine what Hestia looked like. Younger than Martha, because if you were a goddess you could be as young as you wanted. Older than Martha, because Martha was New Testament and Hestia went back a whole lot farther than that. Both bent over the stove, Martha skimming her soup and Hestia tending the fire, adding wood from the old olive tree Lazarus had cut down the year before, the old apple. Feeding the harvesters.
A secretary or something walked quickly through the office pretending not to see them.
Mix the crumbs with sugar and butter, and press the mixture into a spring-form cake pan. Chill the whipping cream and fruit.
“Mr. Shields?”
He nodded.
“Mr. Shields, we admitted you last night although you were without hospitalization insurance.”
Ann said, “He was hurt. You couldn’t have turned him away.”
The secretary nodded primly. “This hospital operates at a loss because of such things; every year our deficit has to be made up by fund drives and grants from the state. If you could pay—now—we’d be most grateful.”
Ann snapped, “You admitted our daughter, too. Where is she?”
“If she chose to leave, we could not have restrained her.”
“Then if Willie wants to leave, you can’t stop him either.”
Shields said, “How much is it?”
The secretary smoothed her skirt before favoring him with a brief, frosty smile. “Under the circumstances, there will be no charge for the emergency treatment given your daughter.”
“How much?”
“Three hundred and seventy-five dollars. The sheriff’s looking for her, you know. And the Howard boy.”
“We haven’t got it,” Shields said.
“Williel”
Shields shook his head. “I’m not going to lie about this, Ann. There isn’t that much in the account.” He recalled that Roberts had sold the blue Lincoln, also that Roberts had given the buyer a big trade-in allowance; no doubt that allowance had covered the down payment—perhaps more than covered it.
To the secretary he said, “We’ve bought Castleview Motors. We only signed last week, and it took a big loan from the bank and just about every cent we had. If you’ll give us a month, I should be able to pay you in full. We’re selling our house in Arlington Heights, but we haven’t
got the money yet.”
The secretary studied him, and he studied her in return, trying to decide whether she was as inhuman as she looked; he decided she was.
“From what you say you’re operating on credit, Mr. Shields. If this hospital reports to the credit bureau that you wouldn’t pay your bill, it will hurt your credit rating severely.”
He nodded. “But if I write you a bad check, that will hurt it a lot more. I’m not going to do it.”
Another pause. “Could you pay us one hundred dollars down? With a firm promise to pay the balance at the end of the month?”
“Yes,” Shields said. “We could swing that.”
“All right, then.”
Sally knelt alone in the small room that the undertaker had called the chapel; von Madadh had slipped discreetly away. She looked up, studying the face of the man in the casket, then rose so that she could see it better. Tom’s newest suit was freshly cleaned and eerily unwrinkled. His hands reposed at his sides.
He always had so many things in his pockets, Sally thought. Keys and his jackknife and that little steel ruler, his notebook and three or four pens. He always had something in his hands, a screwdriver or a cup of coffee or a fishing rod. This couldn’t be Tom. If we are but mortal, Tom had been destroyed and was no more; if immortal, he was somewhere else. Those truths were clear to her now as they had never been before.
She touched the cold lips that had been his with hers, and turned away. Outside in the reception room, Dr. von Madadh was seated beside a small man wracked by silent sobs. The doctor rose when she came in. “Shall we go now, Sally?”
She nodded; and it was not until they were in the street, with von Madadh whistling a doleful waltz, that she realized that the small man had been Mr. Fee.
Judy had wanted to carry G. Gordon Kitty in one arm as she climbed down the ivy, but G. Gordon Kitty had raised strenuous objections to the proposal, and Judy had deferred to him. G. Gordon Kitty was inclined to scratch and bite when things were not going his way, and he had given unmistakable signs that he was fully prepared to do so in this instance. Now he climbed with her, sometimes behind her—when there was this or that in the ivy worthy of his investigation—sometimes before her, half falling and catching himself in the tangled stems.
Never wholly sheer, the tower wall sloped increasingly as they neared the ground, making their climb easier. Not so long ago the narrow little window had been far below and off to one side. A step down, a handhold and a second step, and Judy was right beside it. She leaned over to look in, and saw a big girl in jeans and an old king who stared into a smoldering fire.
Neither of them were paying any attention to her, so after a moment or two she said, “Hi?”
The big girl looked around, then came to the window and helped her in. “What in the world were you doing out there?”
“Getting down. I tore my dress.”
The big girl examined it and shook her head. “It’s ruined, sweetie. Don’t you have any shoes?”
“They made it harder to climb,” Judy explained, “so I let them drop down. I’ll find them again when I get to the bottom.” Belatedly she remembered her manners. “My name’s Judy. What’s yours?”
“Sissy,” Sissy told her. “Sissy Stevenson. And this is King Geimhreadh.”
Judy said, “I knew he was a king because of the crown. That’s how you can tell them.”
“I suppose. Do you know where we are?”
Judy shook her head.
Without looking up from the fire, the old king muttered, “This is the Isle of Glass, child.”
Sissy asked, “Can you tell where that is, sir?”
“West of Ireland.”
Judy said, “I studied about that in school—Dublin, and it’s on the River Liffey.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t much help, sir. Everything’s west of Ireland.”
The old king answered nothing. Judy crossed the room to stand beside him, mostly because she was cold. “You’re older than my grandpa is. A lot older.”
The old king still did not speak, but very slowly laid his arm upon her shoulders, drawing her to him. He wore a long fur cloak, and Judy caught the edge of it with one hand (it was not as soft as she expected) and pulled it around her.
Sissy whispered, “He’s got Alzheimer’s, I think. Where do you live?”
“One eleven Chestnut Street.”
“In Castleview?”
Judy nodded. “We used to live in Davenport, but we moved. We’re staying with my grandpa and grandma now.”
Sissy looked thoughtful. “How did you get here?”
“A bad man chased me, so I climbed out the window at Aunt Sally’s.”
“And you were here?”
“Uh huh.” Judy pointed. “Only way, way upstairs, and the door was locked so I couldn’t get out, so I climbed down outside on the bushes. Can you get down from here?”
“Yeah, sure.” Sissy gestured toward a wide door. “That’s how I came up. But King Geimhreadh’s the only person I’ve been able to find here who’ll talk to me.”
Kitty leaped from the windowsill, clearing half the distance to the fire in a single bound. “My cat,” Judy announced. As if to prove it, he rubbed her leg, purring loudly, his arched back higher than her knees.
“He’s beautiful,” Sissy said. “I love cats.” She stroked his scarred black head.
“His name’s G. Gordon Kitty, and he’s half Siamese and half alley cat. The lady we got him from said that half Siamese cats are always black like that, except one kitten was gray.”
The old king nodded. “At night all cats are gray.” Kitty sprang into his lap and kneaded his chest. “That’s a fine omen you bring us, friend: good planting, and a harvest. See, child, how he plants the corn.”
Judy grinned. “Mom says he’s a good-luck cat. Only when she’s mad at him, she says a witch’s cat. Is it always so cold in here?”
The old king shook his head and touched something at the edge of the fireplace; flames leaped into the chimney.
Skillfully, Judy ducked from beneath his cloak. “I better go home—my mom will get worried. Here, Kitty.”
Sissy helped her open the heavy door. Judy had expected an inside stairway, probably one that turned around. Instead there was an open ramp, very steep, with ivy and briers growing from the crevices between its wide stones. “I must have been climbing down the other side,” she said. “I didn’t see this.”
“It’s the way I came up,” Sissy repeated.
“How did you get here?”
Sissy sighed. “I’m staying at Meadow Grass. Do you know where that is?”
Judy shook her head.
“Outside Castleview a little way. It’s a riding camp, and lots of girls get dumped there—this’s my second year. Where’s your dad?”
Judy shrugged, her eyes upon the sharply slanting surface. Some of the stones were glass, as the old king had said, and all of them were wet with fog and very slick; but she was afraid of stepping on the briers with her bare feet.
“Okay, suppose when you’re a little older your mother gets a new boyfriend. She might send you to Meadow Grass, except she probably wouldn’t if you were still living in Castleview because it’s too close. But if you went back to Davenport, she might. Do you like horses?”
“I’m kind of scared of them,” Judy admitted.
“Well, I think horses are about the greatest thing in the world, and Meadow Grass has lots of them, and some are really good. Mostly I ride Lady, but sometimes I ride Popsicle, and once Lisa let me ride Boomer—he’s her prize jumper.”
“I wish I had a pony right now,” Judy told her. “I’d ride right down this old thing.”
Faintly, as though far out over the sea on the other side of the tower, a gull mewed. Or perhaps a voice called.
Sissy grunted. “Yeah, that would be okay. Want to see if I can carry you?”
“Huh-uh. I’m scared you’d fall.”
“So’m I. Well, anyway, they’ve been
having lots of trouble at Meadow Grass; people riding horses at night and leaving gates open and so forth. I like Lisa and Wrangler—they’re the ones that run it—so I tried to keep an eye out, but for a long time I couldn’t spot anything. Pretty soon it got to be September, and all the girls went home except Lucie, Sancha, and me, and it got worse.
Judy looked sympathetic.
“Lisa was calling the sheriff or the state troopers almost every week, but nobody could catch them. Not even Wrangler, and he was only getting two or three hours sleep. So I figured that there had to be somebody—Did you hear something?”
“Over on the other side, I think. The side I was climbing down.”
By now they were nearly at the bottom of the ramp, and the proximity of the courtyard urged them forward. After a few more steps, Judy ran, leaping the worst of the briers, and waited for Sissy at the bottom. The courtyard seemed deserted, though there was corroding machinery here and there, and in one of its myriad corners a cart with a missing wheel. Towers like, yet unlike, that from which they had come rose around them, their tops lost in the churning mist, some leaning so that it appeared they must fall. But no banners flew, and the only voices now were those of gulls.
When Sissy had joined her, Judy asked, “Did he mean these stones when he called this the Isle of Glass?”
“Maybe. You know how old people are.”
Judy said, “Somebody must take care of him.”
“I suppose, but I didn’t see anybody. What happened to your cat?”
“He said he wanted to stay with the old king awhile.”
They began to walk around the wide base of the tower, Judy stopping here and there to poke among the bedraggled weeds for her shoes. “You never did finish telling how you got here,” she said.