Gelane and Enalla mourned her loss, of course, but their lives went on. Gelane was a good enough cooper that his local customers were patient with him when the fish were biting. Emgaard is fairly remote, and its nearby streams aren’t heavily fished, so Gelane wasn’t the only businessman in town whose ‘gone fishing’ sign was always handy. They’d gather in the local tavern after the sun went down and talk for hours about their sport. The dry-goods store was attached to the tavern, and I happened to be in that part of the establishment one night while Gelane was over in the tavern picking up tips on how to outsmart trout. The local fishermen were gathered in a semi-circle around the fireplace with their feet up on the hearthstone telling lies for all they were worth. ‘I saw old Crooked Jaw walking on his tail across that pond of his this morning,’ one of them announced. ‘He seems to have come through the winter fairly well.’
‘He always does,’ another fisherman noted. ‘There’s a lot of feed in that beaver pond of his. There’s not much current to wash it away.’
‘Who’s Crooked Jaw?’ Gelane asked, just a little timidly. He sat in a chair away from the fireplace, obviously not wanting to push himself in on the veterans.
‘He’s a big old trout who made a stupid mistake when he was hardly more than a minnow,’ the first angler replied. ‘He took the hook of some earl or something who didn’t know very much about fishing. Anyway, as close as we can tell, the earl yanked a whole lot too hard, and he broke that young fish’s jaw. That’s how the fish got his name. His lower jaw’s all twisted off to one side. As far as we know, Crooked Jaw spent all the time while his jaw was healing up thinking about the mistake he’d made. Believe you me, young feller, it takes a real clever lure to get Crooked Jaw to even look at it. He don’t hardly ever make no mistakes.’
‘Have all the fish around here got names?’ Gelane asked.
‘Naw,’ another fisherman laughed, ‘just the big ones as is too smart t’ get therselves caught.’
‘I hooked a fairly large one in the pool below that waterfall just outside of town the first day I was here,’ Gelane said modestly. ‘He wasn’t on the end of my line very long, though – and there wasn’t much of my line left after he broke free. I think he took about half of it with him.’
‘Oh, that was Old Twister,’ another grizzled angler immediately identified the fish. ‘That pool there’s his private property, and he collects fishing line.’
Gelane gave him a puzzled look.
‘All the big ones hereabouts have their own favorite pools,’ another old fisherman explained. ‘Crooked Jaw lives in that beaver pond, Twister lives in that pool under the falls, Dancer lives near the deep bend a mile or so above the falls, and the High Jumper lives in the riffle on the downstream side.’ He looked around at the other anglers with an unspoken question in his eyes, and they all nodded. ‘Why don’t you pull your chair closer to the fire, young feller?’ the old man suggested. ‘I get a crick in my neck when I try to talk to somebody back over my shoulder.’
And that was when Gelane joined the local fraternity. He pulled his chair up into the place the other fishermen made for him, and then he spoke, politely, of course. ‘I didn’t quite follow what you meant when you said that Twister collects fishing line,’ he said to the grizzled man who’d identified the fish in question.
‘It’s a trick he’s got,’ the angler explained. ‘I think Twister’s got delicate lips, and he don’t like the way a fishhook bites in. So what he does is roll over and over in the water, wrappin’ the fish-line around him. Then, after he’s got your line all snarled up, he swims on downstream at about a mile a minute. Now, Twister’s a big, heavy rascal, an’ when he hits the end of your line, he snaps it like a cobweb. Happens all the time.’
‘That was Twister I hooked then,’ Gelane said excitedly. ‘That’s exactly what he did to me.’ His eyes grew dreamy. ‘I’ll get him, though,’ he predicted. ‘Someday I’ll get him.’
‘I wish you all the luck in the world, friend,’ a balding angler said. ‘Old Twister’s almost pushed me into poverty just buying new fishing line every time I walk by that pool of his.’
The ‘fishing club’ was comprised for the most part of local businessmen, and when Gelane modestly admitted that he’d just set up his barrel-works, he was immediately accepted as a kindred spirit – which is to say that everybody realized that barrels took second place in his view of the world. My father’s a sly one, I’ll give him that. Nothing Gelane could have done in Emgaard would have gained him acceptance quite as quickly as picking up his fishing pole had.
When autumn finally rolled around and the fishing season more or less ended, Gelane went back to making barrels and attending to various other domestic duties. He hadn’t as yet caught Old Twister, but he did catch Enalla at an appropriate time, so by Erastide she was quite obviously pregnant.
It’s a peculiarity of village life that nothing cements a family’s position in the community quite so much as the wife’s first pregnancy. In a peculiar sort of way, the incipient infant becomes the property of the entire village. The ladies all stop by to give the new motiier-to-be advice – most of it bad – and the men-folk spend hours congratulating the father-to-be. We’d only lived in Emgaard for about a year and a half, but in the eyes of our fellow villagers were now ‘old-timers’. We’d merged with the rest of the village, and there’s no better way to become invisible.
In the early summer of 4899 Enalla went into labor, and it was an easy delivery. Enalla didn’t think so, but it was. The infant was a boy, naturally. It almost always is in the Rivan line for a number of very good reasons, heredity being only one of them.
Gelane insisted that his son be named Garel, in honor of his own father, and I really had no objection to that. It wasn’t a Cherek name, but it was Alorn enough not to be considered unusual. On the evening of the eventful day, when Enalla was sleeping and Gelane and I sat by the small fire, he with his infant son and I with my sewing, he looked reflectively into the fire. ‘You know something, Aunt Pol?’ he said quietly.
‘What’s that, dear?’
‘I’m really happy about the way things have turned out. I didn’t really like it in Sendaria.’
‘Oh?’
‘When I lived at the Stronghold back during the war, I got all puffed up. I lived with King Cho-Ram’s family, and everybody went around calling me “Your Highness”. Then after Vo Mimbre, you took us to Seline and made me learn how to make wooden barrels. I didn’t really like that, you know. I thought it was beneath me. That’s how Chamdar got his hook in my jaw. That “Rivan King” business was like an angle-worm waved in Old Twister’s face. If I did that, Twister wouldn’t be able to help himself; he’d have to bite my bait. Does Chamdar ever do any fishing, Aunt Pol? If he does, he’s probably very good. He certainly hooked me easily enough.’ He laughed then, just a bit ruefully. ‘Of course, I’m not nearly as clever as Old Twister is.’
‘We broke Chamdar’s line, though,’ I told him.
‘You mean you did. If you hadn’t made it possible for me to hear what he was thinking, he’d have had me on a platter for supper. Anyway, I’m glad we moved here to Cherek. The people here in Emgaard aren’t quite as serious as the Sendars in Seline were. Is it against the law to laugh in Sendaria? Sendars never seem to enjoy life. If I’d have hung my “gone fishing” sign on the door of the barrel-works in Seline, everybody in town would have talked about it for a year. Here in Emgaard, they just shrug and let it go at that. You know, I go for whole weeks without even thinking about crowns and thrones and all that foolishness. I’ve got good friends here, and now I’ve got a new son. I love it here, Aunt Pol, I really do. Everything I want in the whole wide world is here.’
‘Including Old Twister,’ I added, smiling fondly at him.
‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed. ‘Old Twister and I have this little appointment. I will catch him one day, Aunt Pol, but don’t start polishing your roasting pan, because after I catch him, I’m going to let him go again.’
Now, that startled me. ‘You’re going to do what?’
‘I’m going to unhook him, unwrap my line from around him and then slip him back into the stream.’
‘If you’re just going to turn him loose, why catch him?’
He grinned broadly. ‘For the fun of catching him, Aunt Pol. And, of course, if I turn him loose, I can catch him again.’
Men!
It was during Enalla’s pregnancy that my wandering father went to Gar og Nadrak to follow up on one of those deliberately vague hints in the Darine Codex, and while he was there, he teamed up with a Nadrak gold-hunter named Rablek – and would you believe that they actually stumbled across a sizeable deposit of gold? I’ve seen my father’s stack of gold bars, and though he’s not quite as rich as I am, at least I don’t have to worry about his picking my pocket every time he needs a few pennies for beer.
I sent word to him about Garel’s birth, and he stopped by that autumn to have a look at his new grandson. Then he and I had a chance to talk. ‘How did the fishing business work out?’ he asked me.
‘Probably better than you imagined it would,’ I replied. ‘Every man in Emgaard drops everything he’s doing when the fish start biting, and they accepted Gelane as a brother just as soon as he told them about Old Twister.’
‘Who’s Old Twister?’
‘That big fish that got away from Gelane the first day we got here.’
‘The local fish have names?’
‘A quaint custom here in Emgaard. Any word about Chamdar?’
‘Not a peep. I think he’s gone down a hole some place.’
‘I believe I can live without his company.’
‘Don’t worry, Pol. I’ll get him someday.’
‘Now you sound just like Gelane. He says the same thing about Old Twister. There’s a difference though. Gelane wants to catch Old Twister, but then he wants to let him go again.’
‘What for?’
‘So he can catch him again.’
‘That’s absolutely absurd.’
‘I know. It’s what he wants to do, though. Give my best to the twins. Will you be staying for supper?’
‘What are we having?’
‘Fish. What else?’
‘I think I’ll pass, Pol. I’m in the mood for baked ham this evening.’
‘This particular fish didn’t have a name, father. It’s not like we’ll be earing an old friend.’
‘Thanks all the same, Pol. Stay in touch.’ And then he left.
Our lives passed quietly and uneventfully in Emgaard. As he grew more proficient at his hobby, Gelane reached the point where he caught Old Twister at least once a year, and during the winter months he’d take food out to that secluded little pool in the swiftly-running mountain stream and feed his friend. I’m certain that Twister appreciated that, and he probably reached the point that he actually recognized his benefactor – by his smell certainly, if not by his appearance.
Enalla had two more children in rapid succession, both girls, so I had lots of babies to play with.
Old Twister died, of natural causes probably, in the winter of 4801, and given the number of predators and scavengers along the banks of any mountain stream it’s really rather remarkable that Gelane actually found him. My nephew’s face was sorrowful, and there were even tears in his eyes when he brought the huge trout home. He leaned his fish-pole against the side of the house, and I don’t believe he ever touched it again. Then he sadly buried his friend near the stone wall in my garden, and he transplanted a pair of rose-bushes to mark the spot. You would not believe how big those bushes grew or how beautiful the roses were. Maybe in some strange sort of way that was Twister’s thanks for all the times Gelane had fed him in the winter.
Late that summer – 4902, I think – something got into the stream that supplied water to our village. I don’t think it was a dead animal, because the illness that swept through Emgaard didn’t have that kind of symptoms. Despite my best efforts, many people in Emgaard died, and among them was Gelane. My time for grieving came only later, since there were still those among the sick who could be saved. Then, after the illness had run its course, I devoted much of my time trying to locate the source of the infection, but it eluded me.
Enalla and the children had not fallen ill, but the impact of my nephew’s death was probably even more devastating than a personal illness ever could have been. There was at that particular time only one real vulture in Emsat, and he approached Enalla filled with false sympathy and an insultingly small offer for Gelane’s shop. ‘Why don’t you let me handle it, dear?’ I suggested.
‘Oh, would you, Aunt Pol? I can’t decide what to do.’
‘I can, dear,’ I told her, and I did. I visited the tavern that very evening and advised the local fishermen’s group of the offer and let them know that I found the fellow who’d made it very offensive. They took care of the matter for me, and our local entrepreneur left town the very next morning – right after I’d treated a number of cuts and abrasions and set the broken bone in his right arm. Evidently, he’d fallen down a flight of stairs – repeatedly. Small town justice in Cherek is very direct, I noticed.
We might have left the village after that, but Enalla was reluctant to leave Gelane’s grave behind, and by now she had many friends in the village. Garel and his sisters grew up there, and when Garel was sixteen, the bell rang in my head again. The girl who rang it was a bubbly blonde Cherek girl named Merel, and we got the pair of them married on fairly short notice. There weren’t any bars for windows in Emgaard, and the village was immersed in a deep forest where there was far too much underbrush for my comfort, given the inevitable adolescent urge for exploration. Merel was one of those incredibly fertile Cherek girls who seem to be almost constantly pregnant. Every couple of years, Garel, who was now the village carpenter, added more rooms to our house, but he could still barely keep up. His eldest son, Darion, ended up with thirteen brothers and sisters.
I kept the family in Emgaard for probably longer than I’d stayed in one place since I’d left Arendia. There weren’t any Angaraks in Cherek, after all, and the people in Emgaard shrugged off my longevity with the fairly simple, but wildly inaccurate explanation, ‘She’s a physician, after all, and everybody knows that physicians all know how to live for hundreds of years. They do it with all them secret herbs, you know:’ I always choked just a little when I heard one of them say that, largely because he pronounced the ‘h’ in ‘herbs’. It was their misconception, not their mispronunciation, that made it possible for me to remain in Emgaard with the descendants of Gelane and Enalla. I knew that I was breaking one of the primary rules, but it’s safe to do that in Cherek, because just about everybody in Cherek breaks the rules every time he gets the chance.
We were all very happy there, and the centuries moved by at their stately pace almost unnoticed. I even lost track of the years, and I’m usually careful about that. I think it was in 5250 – or maybe it was ‘51 – when father stopped by for one of his infrequent visits. This time it wasn’t a purely social call, though. “The twins are starting to dig some hints out of the Mrin that we’re getting close to the Godslayer, Pol,’ he said gravely.
‘Is it soon, father?’
‘Well, no, not too soon, but definitely within the next century or so.’
‘If we’re getting that close, I’d better start thinking about relocating to Sendaria, hadn’t I?’
He gave me a quizzical look.
‘I can read the Darine and the Mrin as well as you can, father,’ I told him pointedly. ‘I know where the Godslayer’s supposed to be born.’
‘Don’t jump just yet, Pol. The twins might be able to dig out a more specific time for us to work with, and I don’t want you wandering around in Sendaria when I don’t have Chamdar’s location pinpointed. Who’s the current heir?’
‘His name’s Geran, father. I like to keep that name well-polished for some very personal reasons. He just got married, so I don’t think his son’s
going to be the one we’ve been waiting for.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘His bride’s a Cherek, father, and a friendly glance is enough to make a Cherek girl pregnant. She’ll probably go into labor before I can get packed and move us to Sendaria.’
‘Are Chereks really that fertile?’
‘Why do you think they all have such large families?’
‘I thought it might have something to do with the climate.’
‘What could the climate have to do with it?’
‘Well, there are all those long, cold winter nights with nothing to do but –’ He broke off abruptly.
‘Yes, father?’ I said sweetly. ‘Do go on. I find your scientific speculation absolutely fascinating.’
He actually blushed.
Chapter 36
It wasn’t too long after father’s visit that mother also paid me a call – figuratively speaking, of course. ‘Pol,’ her voice came to me.
‘Yes, mother?’ I replied, setting aside the pot I’d been scrubbing.
‘You’re going to have to go to Nyissa. Ctuchik’s trying to subvert Salmissra. Somebody’s going to have to set her straight.’
‘Why me?’ I didn’t mean it, of course.
There was a long pause, and then my mother laughed. ‘Because I said so, Pol. Whatever possessed you to ask such a foolish question?’
‘It’s a family trait, mother. I’ve been listening to young boys ask that same question for twelve centuries or so now. Isn’t it infuriating?’
‘How do you usually answer?’
‘About the same way you just did. I’ll speak with the twins and ask them to fill in for me here. Then I’ll go talk with the snake woman. Is Ctuchik corrupting her personally?’
‘No. Ctuchik almost never leaves Rak Cthol. He’s got Chamdar handling it.’
‘Ah, that’d explain why father hasn’t been able to find him.’
Polgara the Sorceress Page 73