Otherwise: Three Novels by John Crowley

by John Crowley

  Again I said nothing, afraid of what would show in my speech. Seven Hands was my best friend, though I saw little enough of him; and when in the middle of some game or story he would fall silent, and sigh, and talk about how big the world is, a fear would take hold of me. The fear was that the world—outside Little Belaire—was big; it was vast, and unknown; and I wanted not to lose Seven Hands in it.

  “Why does he want to go?” I asked.

  “Perhaps for the untying of a knot.” She rose up, her joints cracking, and took from the long box another thin square of glass. She put this before the mirror in the box with the first and drew out the tube a little to make the picture clear. And suddenly it was all changed. The fine-lined pattern was altered, colored, darkened, obscured.

  She looked at it in her dreamy, attentive way. “Rush,” she said, “lives come in many shapes, did you know that? There are lives that are like stairs, and lives that are like circles. There are lives that start Here and end There, and lives that start Here and end the same. There are lives full of stuff, and lives that will hold nothing.”

  “What shape is mine?”

  “Don’t know,” she said simply. “But not the same as the man Seven Hands’s. That’s certain. Tell me: when you are grown up, and a truthful speaker, what will you do?”

  I lowered my head, because it seemed presumptuous; as it wouldn’t if I were to say that I wanted to make glass, or keep bees, or even gossip. “I’d like to find things,” I said. “I’d like to find all our things that are lost, and bring them back.”

  “Well,” she said. “Well. There are some things that are lost, you know, that may be better unfound.” But I heard her say too: don’t lose your thought, Rush, it’s a good one. “Did you tell Seven Hands about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that things that get lost—get lost for good—all end up in the City in the Sky.”

  She laughed at that; or perhaps not at that but at something she saw in the tangled figure on the wall. “Palm cord,” she said, and was absorbed for a long time. “Do this, Rush that Speaks,” she said then. “Ask Seven Hands if he will take you with him when he leaves.”

  My heart leaped. “Will he?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. But we’ll see what happens. Yes. It’s best.” And she pointed to the figure on the board. “There’s a path out of that. Its name is Little Knot, and the path isn’t so long …”

  She had seen enough; she seemed to rouse herself from a kind of sleep. She rose, picked out the two squares of glass and wiped them clean; then she took out the little mirror and wiped that clean too, and put them all away. As she did so, I saw that drawn on the end of the long box was the palm sign that signifies my cord. So the entire box was my cord. I hadn’t seen my cord at all, but only a fraction of a part of the ways it can be. “How,” I said, pointing to the box, “how does it …”

  “It would take you till you are as old as me,” she said, “to know how does it do it, if that’s what you mean.” She stowed it all, without haste, and returned to me. “But think,” she said. “They are all of glass, like the two you saw, thin and clear.”

  “So you could put three at once in the tube,” I said, “and the light would shine through all three, and you could see how it changes, how it …”

  Painted Red clapped her hands, smiling at me. “Or seven, or ten, however many you’re clever enough to read at once.” She knelt down near me and looked at me closely. “They all have names, Rush, and each has its knowledge to add about you as you are Palm. Each added to the rest changes the whole and makes a difference. The Filing System is very wise, Rush, far wiser than I am.”

  “What are the names?” I asked, knowing I would not be told.

  “Well,” she said, “there will be time to learn that, if you want to learn it. Listen, Rush: How would you like to come see me, often? There are a few other children who come often. I tell stories, and we talk, and I show them things. Does that sound like fun?”

  Fun! She had just seen that I was Palm cord, and that in this room I” was in the presence of knowledge far beyond me. “Yes,” I managed to say, hoping the little truthful speaking I had would let her know how I felt.

  Her spectacled face was crinkled in smiles. “Good,” she said. “When you’ve spoken to Seven Hands, and done—listen to me now—done exactly as he asks you or tells you, and when you are done with it, come and see me. I don’t think it will be long.” She ran her hand through my hair. “Go now, Rush that Speaks. Untangle yourself. Then come back.” She could see my wonder and confusion and excitement, and her laugh rolled out into the room, saying a thousand things and distilling a thousand years of holiness.

  When I went out, Mbaba was gone. That was all right; Painted Red’s rooms were near Path, and though there were places in Little Belaire I have never been, there was nowhere there that I was lost, because Path was drawn on my feet.

  THIRD FACET

  There are places in Little Belaire where you’re likely to find people of a certain cord. By the stream and out by the willows on the Morning side you’ll find Water cord, that’s easy; but Water cord is an easy cord, they always do what you expect they will. Palm cord isn’t as predictable, but of course I knew where to look, and I found Seven Hands among friends in one of the old arched rooms with dirt floors that were built toward the Afternoon side for meeting rooms hundreds of years ago when we still had meetings, light fell from great slabs of glass that faced the afternoon sun, and smoke arose into the sun like thunderclouds from the noisy little group that sat in the warmth talking.

  They were all Palm. It wasn’t that people of other cords weren’t allowed among them, but other cords get tired quickly of Palm cord’s endless talk, which is full of qualifications and snake’s-hands and complicated jokes other people don’t find very funny. They go on: like I go on.

  I was shy to speak up before all of them, and I asked Seven Hands if I could talk to him alone. He looked at me and grinned, but I guess I spoke so seriously that he got up with a grunt and went off with me around one of the big beams that supported the glass of the roof. He was still grinning; nothing embarrasses Palm cord more than intrigue, and secrets, and being asked about themselves and not about the world in general. So I asked him flatly:

  “When you leave Belaire,” I said, with a lump in my throat and all the little truthful speaking I knew in my words, “will you take me with you?”

  “Well, big man,” he said. He called me big man, which I knew was a joke, but I enjoyed it anyway. He pulled his skirts around him and sat down with his back against a pillar. He had a way of hanging his long arms over his knees when he sat, and holding the thumb of one hand in his other hand; and I did it too, in imitation of him.

  He looked at me, nodding thoughtfully, waiting I think for me to ask again so that he could determine a little more of why I asked this of him; but I said nothing more. It had seemed important to Painted Red that I ask, even though she thought he wouldn’t take me; so I only waited.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said at last. “It’ll probably be a long time till I go. Really go. There are—well, a lot of preparations to make. So. Maybe, when I’m ready to go, you’ll be ready too.”

  There was something in what he said beyond what he said. I was truthful speaker enough to hear it, but not enough to know what it was. He reached over and slapped my thigh lightly. “I’ll tell you what, though,” he said. “If you’re ever to go, you’ve got to make preparations too. Listen: we’ll start by taking a little trip together.”

  “A trip?”

  “Yes. A little hike. In preparation, sort of. Have you ever seen Road?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to?”

  I said nothing, made a few shruggings that could mean I would like to if that was what was required of me.

  “You ask Mbaba,” said Seven Hands, “and if she says it’s all right, and she will, we’ll go tomorrow if i
t doesn’t rain or something. I’ll come find you early.”

  Painted Red had said I must do exactly as Seven Hands asked me; she’d said she didn’t suppose he’d take me with him, but he hadn’t said he wouldn’t. I should have been pleased at that, and pleased he’d invited me to make his preparations with him; but still I felt troubled and uneasy. That’s what it’s like having a knot with someone. Nothing—not even the simplest feelings—seem to cross between you without somehow getting tangled.

  Anyway, that’s how it came to be that the next day I was in the middle of a bridge that goes across the river called That River, the bridge made of red rusted iron bars only, the only bridge there is since the one with the road that could be walked on fell down before I was born. There had been a frost the night before, and the cold wind was bitter over That River.

  We went carefully from bar to bar across the bridge, looking down—or trying not to look down—through the gaps between the bars at the black, angry water. The ancient metal creaked and whined in a wind that was picking up. I followed Seven Hands, my hands taking hold where his did; our hands and clothes were covered with red rust, thick and grimy, and mine were dead cold from the iron.

  Then there was a break. Seven Hands stopped ahead of me and looked. Soon the bridge would be no use: here, a beam had fallen out at last, and soon the whole bridge must follow. The wind whipped Seven Hands’s long hair into his face and waved his long knotted sleeves as he looked up and down, thinking, and all the time the bridge was swaying and creaking and the black water was rushing by below. Seven Hands looked at me, grinning, rubbed his hands together and blew on them, poised himself and jumped.

  I think I cried out. But Seven Hands had thrown his arms around the upright, and clung; he moved his hand to a better place slap on the cold metal, and pulled himself around to face me, his chest heaving and his face smeared with rust.

  “Come on, Rush, come on,” he said between pants, but I just stood there looking at him. He straddled the beam then, and hooked his feet under it. “Sit down,” he said, so I did. I was shorter, so my feet couldn’t get a grip. Seven Hands reached out his long arms toward me, his big hands motioning me to lean to him. I grabbed his wrists, hard with bone and tendon, and when he gave me the signal, pushed off. I kept my eyes on the beam and not on the water, and swung out over air, and felt a snap in my shoulders, and then up; one leg reached and slipped off the beam, and then I was struggling on and felt my balance return, and with my face pressed against Seven Hands’s chest I held on tight till I knew for sure I was there, and even then I kept my hold on his wrists. I heard him laughing. His big face was close to my face, exulting, and I was laughing too between pants, and at last slowly let go of his wrists and sat there on my own.

  “Preparations,” he said. “You see? If you’re going to go somewhere, you have to believe you can get there. Somehow, some way.”

  We got to the end of the bridge and let ourselves down its struts, and sat for a while not speaking but looking back up at the bridge we had beaten; and suddenly I wanted more than anything to go with him when he truly left, and share all his adventures.

  “You will take me,” I said, “if I’m grown up enough? When will it be?”

  “Well, big man, well.” Again I heard the shadow behind his speech, almost a regret; but I knew now that it wasn’t for me. He stood up. “We have to get to Road while it’s still day, if we want to see it,” he said.

  We were some time climbing upward, through woods filled with fallen leaves frosted and aged-looking, till the woods thinned and we climbed gray-lichened foreheads of stone onto stony uplands. The sky hung low, solid and gray above us; as we climbed, we seemed to come closer to it. When we had come out onto the crest of the hill, we could see that above the gray, spiky distant hills, a thin crack of blue sky lit the hem of the clouds with silver. Seven Hands pointed to a line of evergreens ahead. “Beyond there,” he said, “we’ll see Road.”

  The wind was boring an icy spot in my windward cheek and beginning to tear the solid fabric overhead as we broke through the line of evergreens and came out onto a rocky height that overlooked a valley. Above the hills across the valley, the sky was all pink and blue as the clouds moved fast away; as they rushed over our heads they left the sky high, infinitely high and deeply blue—what winds must be there! Soon the late sun reached where we stood, lighting the valley before us; and lighting, too, Road.

  For there was Road. It followed the Valley, but curtly; it dug itself through the valley’s gentle folds with an imperious, impossible straight sweep away that was the hugest thing I had ever seen. There were so many wonders about it: how can I tell you I saw them all at once?

  First of all it wasn’t one road, but two. Two roads, each wide enough for twenty men to stand easily across it. And matched to race away like two racing gray squirrels, and as gray as that. They ran together as far as you could follow, not varying their width or the distance between them, eye to eye to—where?

  Miles down the valley it turned a somersault, curling in and out of itself, running up and down bridges and ramps, making of itself what looked, from where we stood, like an immense leaf of clover, just, it seemed for the fun of it, like a vast child doing a thundering, earth-shaking cartwheel.

  As far off as I could see, it ran smack into a high hill where it must stop; and here was the last wonder—it didn’t stop. Its two parts each found a perfect, high-arched cave or cleft to run into. And then no doubt out the other side and on and on, leaping and curling in bows and straightening the lumpy, bumpy earth with its angel-made straight lines.

  “Where does it go?” I asked.

  “Everywhere,” Seven Hands said simply, letting himself down to a squat. “From This Coast to the Other Coast, and when it reaches the Other Coast it turns and comes back again to This Coast by a different way, and back again. And crosses and recrosses a thousand times, and doubles back and radiates out like a spider’s web in a thousand ways.”

  “Is it all like this?”

  “Like this or bigger.”

  “More than two?”

  “No. Always two. One to go this way on, one to go that way on. Bigger across, and curling around like you see there, but in huge flowers. And mixing it up in Cities, with bridges on its back and tunnels under its belly. So I’ve heard. One day I’ll see.”

  “What was it … for?”

  “To kill people with,” Seven Hands said, simply as before. “That’s what the saints said. The cars used to go on it, you see. At night you could have seen them from here, all lit; I know they were all lit, with white lights in front and red in back, so that the road to go this way on would be white, and the road to go that way on would be all red.”

  “And how did Road kill them?”

  “Oh, Road didn’t kill them. The cars killed them. People were inside them, and there was only room in them to sit with arms and legs just so, so they were easy to break; the whole thing could sort of fold up and break you like a nutcracker.

  “They went fast, you see, faster than bats but not so carefully, and so they collided all the time. St. Clay said he heard from Great St. Roy—and St. Roy had seen Road in the last days when there were millions of these cars, like ants along a path, like shoals of minnows—St. Roy said that Road killed in a year as many people as there are in Little Belaire, twice over.” I started out over that proud, dove-gray thing. Nearby, its stone could be seen to be cracked by weeds, and the ditch that separated its parts was filled with saplings growing tall. You could stand in the middle of one half and be aimed right at the Other Coast, the angels knew how far away; you could pass things that the truthful speakers have forgotten for hundreds of years, and come to the Other Coast at last, and then cross to the other side and be pointed home, and never once leave Road. And yet it killed people.

  Now the whole sky was clear, and the wind that filled up the air to its blue height was dying away. Seven Hands got up and started down the steep slope toward Road, and I followed him. �
��Why didn’t they just stop, then,” I asked, “and just walk along it? Or just—just look at it?”

  “They did, eventually, when everything went off,” said Seven Hands, finding footing. “But in the ancient days, they didn’t mind much; they weren’t afraid; they were angels. And besides, there were millions of them; they didn’t mind a few thousand killed.”

  We reached its edge and walked out to the middle of its near part, and faced the huge knot in it miles away, and the Other Coast far farther than that. “We came along Road,” Seven Hands said, stamping lightly on its smooth surface. “St. Bea and St. Andy came along it in the saints’ days, and left Road just here. And went to rebuild Big Belaire. But you knew all that.”

  I knew some of it. I hadn’t known this was the place, or this the Road we had left. “Tell me,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “help me make a fire.” We gathered sticks and kindling and made a fire in the middle of Road, and. Seven Hands took matches from his sleeve and lit it. When it was a small bright blaze we sat near it, and bound our hands in our sleeves, and pulled over our hoods, and Seven Hands began to talk.

  “There were nearly a thousand of us. We had wandered, oh, I don’t know, a hundred years, a hundred and a half, and had never forgotten the Co-op Great Belaire or truthful speaking in all those years after the Storm had passed; we had stayed together; others had joined us. And now we had come here. It was spring then; we had stopped for the night, and sat here on Road and put up tents and unloaded things, and St. Bea and St. Andy opened the old wagon, and there were fires lit; well, imagine a thousand and their fires here.

  “St. Bea talked late with St. Andy that night. They talked about the children there, and the old people; they spoke over and over the things they knew from Big Belaire and from the old times, and how it might be that the wagons would be lost and with them many memories of those times. Already a lot had been forgotten. And I suppose they looked out at Road, which they had come along, as we do now. And, St. Andy said, that was when St. Bea got the idea. You know what the idea was.”