by Gene Wolfe
“You’ve heard o’ Cleopatra,
The serpent o’ the Nile,
An’ how she conquered Tony,
Wi’ one allurin’ smile.
She tried to conquer Ireland,
But we would not give in,
An’ we beat her off wi’ cabbage leaves,
From the town o’ Magheralin.”
After he had dropped Ann and Mercedes at the Red Stove Inn and driven back to Meadow Grass, Wrangler emptied the old trunk from which he had taken his dead brother’s revolver. He wrapped the bright sword Seth had thrown him in a horse blanket and laid it at the bottom, covering it with folded jeans and faded work shirts. When everything had been put away again, he locked the trunk and went to the kitchen to make coffee.
Sissy had been there before him. He filled a cup from the graniteware percolator and carried it into the lounge.
Sissy had built a fire as well, and sat staring at the new flames from the kindling as they licked the split logs.
“Coffee’s done,” Wrangler said.
“I’ll get some after a while.”
He sat down, choosing a chair rather too big for him, with broad wooden arms and leather cushions. “You oughta go to bed. You must be beat.”
“I’ll wait,” Sissy told him.
“Boomer was done up,” Wrangler said. “She’ll probably walk him most of the way. She won’t even try to make him trot.”
“You think they’ll let her out, really? Not try to hurt her somehow?”
He sipped his coffee, still too hot to drink. “They said they would, and they let us out. If they don’t, I’ll tell you I’m goin’ back to see about it.”
“I don’t think you could find the way back.”
“I’ve got that sword,” he told her.
For a moment, Sissy turned her attention from the fire to him. “Do you trust them, Wrangler?”
He shook his head.
“Me neither.”
Sissy was sound asleep on the sofa, under the cheerful red and yellow Indian blanket he had drawn over her an hour before, when he heard Buck neigh. He walked out into the softly falling snow, and for a time he and Lisa embraced without speaking. At last he said, “You go in. I’ll see to them.”
“I’ll help you,” Lisa told him; and when he had lifted off Boomer’s saddle, she led Boomer to his stall, saw that Wrangler had already forked down clean bedding straw, slipped the bridle from Boomer’s head, and shut the stall door. She heard the big horse lying down before she had taken a step away.
“Going to have to get some new doors before hard winter,” Wrangler told her. “That Mrs. Shields did for the old ones.”
Lisa nodded wearily, thinking of money and insurance they did not have. The telephone rang in her office in the lodge, a faint, insistent buzzing through the thermalpaned windows.
“We better get that,” Wrangler said. “Sissy’s sleepin’ in front of the fire.”
Lisa nodded again; and they went up the steps together, she holding the railing because she was so tired and the treads were slippery with snow. He opened the door for her, and she walked softly to her old wooden desk and picked up the handset, saying, “Meadow Grass.”
“‘Ello? Lisa? Eet’s me! I ’ave not get you out of the bed?”
“Sancha!”
“I am not die, you see. My nurse, she say you seet weeth me long time, always come back, no? Now I am wake up, but Lisa, I am the most terreeble dream!”
When Lisa had hung up the telephone, Wrangler said, “She’s goin’ to pull through.”
Lisa nodded, and even smiled a little.
“It’s all over now, and we’ll pull through, too, Miss Lisa. Know that big pine up on the bluff? Tomorrow I’ll take it down and slab out boards with the chain saw. I’ll open stack ’em in the barn till Christmas, and they ought to season in there pretty good. Before January I’ll make new doors—I can use the hardware off the old ones, it was only the wood got broke. Come spring, there’ll be more campers. Sissy’ll come back sure, and maybe not go home at all. Then come spring, we’ll get married. You’ll marry me, Miss Lisa, won’t you?”
She could only weep and nod and hug him. “Oh, Wrangler,” she whispered. “Oh, Artie!”
Back home in the big old house that had been Tom Howard’s, Seth awoke from an uneasy sleep and went to the kitchen for a glass of milk. As he returned to his own room, he heard soft voices from his mother’s bedroom and stopped to listen. As soon as he was certain of the other voice, he returned to bed; he too had liked the doctor, Seth reflected, as sleep crept once more across his mind. Still, he wondered what his half brothers and sisters might be like, if there were any. Should he tell Merc?
EPILOGUE
SHIELDS AWAKENED in a high, wide bed in a wide, dim room. A band of watery gray light shimmered between heavy brocade drapes, and once he saw a hammerhead shark drift past, hanging motionless in the current like some pale hawk. A pale hawk also was the silver scabbard that hung motionless above him, suspended, as it seemed, from the canopy.
A woman bent above him, her hair falling upon his still hands in floods of heavy gold. “Sleep,” she whispered. “Rest you, O my lover. Sleep, O my brother, and be well.”
By Gene Wolfe from Tom Doherty Associates
Novels
The Fifth Head of Cerberus
The Devil in a Forest
Peace
Free Live Free
The Urth of the New Sun
Soldier of the Mist
Soldier of Arete
There Are Doors
Castleview
Pandora by Holly Hollander
Novellas
The Death of Doctor Island
Seven American Nights
Collections
Endangered Species
Storeys from the Old Hotel
Castle of Days
The Book of the New Sun
Shadow and Claw
(comprising The Shadow of the Torturer and
The Claw of the Conciliator)
Sword and Citadel
(comprising The Sword of the Lictor and
The Citadel of the Autarch)
The Book of the Long Sun
Nightside the Long Sun
Lake of the Long Sun
Caldé of the Long Sun
Exodus from the Long Sun
“Wolfe has created his usual splendid cast of characters. He also builds suspense in a way that highly financed horror writers could study, to their readers’ greater profit if not their own.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Sentence by sentence, Mr. Wolfe writes as well as anyone in science fiction today.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“What makes his work special is the magical way he uses language to create scenes, relationships, and images to embroider his stories.”
—Science Fiction Chronicle
“Gene Wolfe is among the best writers working in this country … . In Wolfe’s hands, gods become human and humans godlike.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
CASTLEVIEW
Copyright © 1990 by Gene Wolfe
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
This book was originally published as a Tor hardcover in April 1990.
An Orb Edition
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor Books on the World Wide Web:
http://www.tor-forge.com
First Orb trade paperback edition: March 1997
eISBN 9781429966689
First eBook Edition : August 2011
Wolfe, Gene.
Castleview / by Gene Wolfe.
p. cm.
“A Tor book”�
��Copr. p.
I. Title.
PS3573.052C38 1990
813’.54—dc20
89-25712
CIP
First hardcover edition: April 1990