The Magician of Karakosk: Tales from the Innkeeper's World

by Peter S. Beagle

  Fishes for a little while,

  let a fish’s realm beguile.

  Strangers from a world afar—

  oh, taste and savor what you are.

  And sure enough, the Thief found that yes, he was beginning to enjoy his new fishness. He moved in the water as none of us will ever move in air, indeed, they flowed through each other, no border where he ended and it began. Quick and alert he had always had to be, but this little green body did what he wanted before he knew that was his wish, and by the time he did know, it was already on to the next thing a fish’s body had to be doing. Gills to sift air from water, funny barbel whiskers to tell him what’s good to eat and what’s nearby wanting to eat him, fins on his sides and back and below to shape his flight just so, tail so small, so powerful. Indeed, how fine to be a fish! The Thief laughed for pure joy, and he felt Tai-sharm laughing, too, somewhere far ahead.

  The barbels and the taste of the water—not tongue-taste, mind, more like a tingle in his gills—told the Thief that they’d actually left the pool and were racing along some sort of tunnel, some outlet draining into… into what? He could not see the walls close around him, but his new skin said they were of stone and clay, and there were tree roots thrusting out from both sides, clutching at the water, at him. Ahead, Tai-sharm, small and shining; behind, that endless riddling song:

  Peasant child and sly lightfingers,

  even fishes may be singers.

  Weeds and beetles, worms and kings—

  all that breathes and hungers sings.

  How long they hurtled so, the Thief never knew, for fish do not bother about such things. But presently the taste-tingle was different, and the weight of the water told his skin that they were again in a pool. This one was quiet, clear, shallow. Tai-sharm and the Thief rested gratefully here, turning to face the Singing Fish. It loomed above them: small for a fish, perhaps, but huge to smaller ones, and ugly even to another fish, with its piss-yellow jowls and saggy redslubbered body. It said, “You are safe here, for the moment. We are beyond the walls.”

  “Thank you,” answered the Thief when he had caught his breath. “Now, if you will kindly return us to our proper forms, I will return to the inn, fetch my horse, and take this young person straightway home to her mother.”

  “I think perhaps not,” says the Singing Fish. “The King’s men-at-arms will be all over Baraquil tonight like ants on a dead fly. Canny as you are, good thief, you’d not get a mile out of town, not as a mounted man escorting a young girl. Now as a man on foot carrying a basket containing two fish, you might have some small chance.”

  “Two fish,” the Thief said, quite carefully. “Two fish?”

  The Singing Fish chuckled, or whatever fish do; all Choushi-wai knows is that the Thief and Tai-sharm felt the jar of it in the marrow of their bones. The Singing Fish said, “And why not? Am I not also entitled to be taken where I would be? Before ever you return the King’s intended to old Sharm—and there’s a woman for you!—you will carry me to the sea and release me there. This is my fee for aiding you in your time of need.”

  Fish or no, the Thief was the Thief. He said, “Wait, wait just a bloody minute here. In the first place, Tai-sharm has twice saved your life, so she owes you nothing, as well you know. In the second place, you wouldn’t last a day in the salt sea. What are you playing at, tell me now?” Fish or no, the Thief was very tired.

  “I wish only to see the ocean,” answered the Singing Fish. “To be the least part of the ocean’s imagining, as I have for so long imagined it. Whether I survive a day or a minute there is my own affair and none of yours. If you hope ever to return to your homes, you will do as I tell you.”

  The Thief had a word or two to say to that, but Tai-sharm pushed swiftly past him, swimming close to the Singing Fish to reply, “We will that, sir, and glad of the chance. Pay no heed to this one here—he was my mother’s idea, and she’s quite old.”

  Well, and so. There that was. The Thief protested mightily against abandoning his mountain pony, and much good it did him. Had you or you or Choushi-wai been strolling Baraquil, come that evening, we might have seen a small dark man wandering absently down a narrow alley which turned quietly into a back road in a while. In one hand he’d have been carrying the sort of square, tight-woven basket that the fisherfolk make to keep their catch fresh on the long way to market. In the other would have swung a smaller basket full of soft buzzing, scratching, and scuffling. Fish need to eat, and the Singing Fish was extremely particular.

  So the Thief walked all the way from Baraquil to the sea with those two baskets in his clever hands. Some say that he invented a new curse on fishes with every step, but that is not true. He was already running short on the fourth day.

  Just as the Singing Fish had warned, the King’s men were seeking everywhere for Tai-sharm, and he was halted again and again by different companies and searched at swordpoint each time. When they asked him what he was doing carrying two live fish away from market, he gaped as foolishly as he could and answered that he was taking them home with him to make lots of little ones, so he wouldn’t have to stand all day in the cold water throwing a net over and over. Each time the soldiers looked at each other, laughed, cuffed his head for luck, and rode away. And the Thief walked on.

  At night, curled in damp hollows or shallow caves, he had no choice but to hear the faraway voices of Tai-sharm and the Singing Fish talking together in the basket. The Singing Fish told tales of kings and princesses sporting in the maze when it was new, and of the time before there was any maze or any palace at all, only him in his pool, wise and cold and alone, dreaming of the open sea. Tai-sharm would speak of her village and her mother, their stony, stingy fields and their one old rishu, who worked just as hard as they did for a mouthful of dry grass and another of grain. And the Thief, weary as he was, lay awake and listened.

  Once he heard Tai-sharm ask the Singing Fish, “But can even you tell me why I was made so? My head full of fancies and wonderings that never yet thatched a roof nor put a crop in the ground—what is such a stupid head doing on a peasant body in a no-name village? I think I belong nowhere, except in this basket with you. I think I should just be a fish.”

  The Singing Fish gave her no answer for such a while that the Thief almost fell asleep waiting. Then he heard it say, “And what sort of a fish is it chooses to give up its life for nothing but to leap and play an hour among the great waves? To see the krakens and the green seadrakes for even a moment before they eat me? What is that but absolute stupidity? Down where I swim stupid is only a word, like madness or love.” And there, in the Thief’s basket, it began to sing once more:

  Old I am, and far I see,

  and much there is to learn from me.

  But how we are to live and die—

  child, you are as wise as I.

  A week or so later, and there’s the sea—no great port, mind, nor even a fishing village, nothing but an empty place where the land stops. Tide past the turn, but hardly a ripple breaking; no boats to be seen except for a sail or two, so far out only their pale topsails show against a paler sky. A bit of a stony slope for the Thief to scramble down, basket held over his head and sloshing fishy water on him to boot. At water’s edge he crouched on the shingle, opened the basket and said, “Well, here we are.”

  “I thank you,” said the Singing Fish, most courteously. “Now you have only to take me up in your hands and put me in the sea. Your task is done.”

  Yet the Thief hesitated, asking, “Sir, are you sure of this?” And in the basket Tai-sharm cried, “No, he isn’t! Don’t do it!” Her thrashing tail and fins slopped more water in the Thief’s face.

  “Be still,” the Singing Fish told her. “This is my desire. Take me up, good thief—and you, Tai-sharm, my friend, I bid you, be as you were. Assume your proper form again.”

  “I will not,” said Tai-sharm, and for this one time she sounded like the child she was. “I will not, I will stay a fish and swim out to sea with you. Tha
t is my desire.”

  The Singing Fish barely glanced at her as the Thief gingerly cupped his hands around it, lifted it into the air and hurried to set it down in the shallows. But when the Thief turned his head, there was Tai-sharm as ever, looking silly with both feet in a fish basket. She said nothing, but came quickly to crouch beside him, staring down at the ugly red-and-yellow fish as it tasted the sea for the first time.

  “Interesting,” it said at last. “A little tart, a little tinglish, but very interesting.” The waves were beginning to come in now: let us try to imagine them, we who have never seen a wave or a sail, or a cloud-colored kulishai drifting alone above a bustling, stinking harbor. Long, low, silky rollers, these must have been, just a dainty flurry of white along their crests and a sort of marbly veining where they curled. They made even the shallow water stir, and the Singing Fish had to back and fill with its side fins to hold itself steady.

  “Farewell,” it said. “Farewell, good thief who kept his word. Farewell, Tai-sharm—remember my song when you forget kings and palaces and handsome courtiers, and even that you were a fish with me. Remember my song.” Half a wriggle of its body, a push with its ragged tail, and it was off with the next wave, gone from sight like that, and only a last tuneless rhyme floating back to them, faint as the kulishai’s hungry cry:

  Thief, beware of what you seize—

  it may yet bring you to your knees.

  Tai-sharm, rejoice that you possess

  such a precious foolishness.

  Strangers from a world afar,

  oh, taste and savor what you are.

  Tai-sharm strained her eyes for a glimpse of it, slipping through the waves as surely as though it had been born to them, leaping over them as it had dreamed of leaping, dancing out to sea. She stared after it for so long that the Thief finally said beside her, “It is gone, Tai-sharm.”

  “No,” she answered him, fiercer than ever she answered the King, or the Minister, or her mother. “No, I can still see him!” And she watched a long time more, until they had to move back and back from the hissing, bellowing high tide, and there was nothing to see but water and stone. The Thief turned away, shaking sand out of his boots.

  “Come,” he says. “You’ll need a deal of practice in having feet again before you put them under your mother’s table. And you won’t get the same satisfaction out of eating bugs—we’ll have to find a farm or an inn by nightfall, or sleep hungry. Come.”

  He was just setting the fish basket afloat, as seemed proper somehow, when Tai-sharm snatched it up to keep always. “I was happy there,” she said quietly to no one. “It was quite nice being a fish, even in a basket.”

  “Yes, I know,” said the Thief. He put his arm around her shoulders. “Besides, think of the children’s faces when they hear how their father carried their mother in a fish basket to save her from being made a queen. Let’s hurry—I can hardly wait to tell them.”

  Tai-sharm did not push his arm away, but she looked at him for a long moment before she began to smile. “I liked the Singing Fish better,” she murmured, and our Tai-sharm had never murmured in her life.

  The Thief smiled back. “Well, of course you would. Being a fish yourself at the time. We’ll speak of such things as we go. Besides, we can name one of the girls for it. Or the boy, as you choose. Leave it to your mother, that’s what I say.”

  It grows late, and the shadows lengthen—can you see them walking away together, the one dark head not much higher than the other? Can you hear their voices, if you close your eyes and make no sound? Tai-sharm is asking, “But one day they will find they might have been princes and princesses, instead of the children of a thief and a peasant. What will you tell them then?”

  Listen, listen, don’t breathe, you can hear the Thief’s laughter, soft as it is. “Why, I’ll say to them, At least you all have a proper trade. How many royal brats can say that?”

  No, now they really are gone, like the Singing Fish, and the sad King in his palace at Baraquil, like the Chief Minister with all his secrets and his servants, like old Sharm herself—gone back into the basket whose name is Choushi-wai. Pray for the poor, pray for the gods, and remember to bring Choushi-wai the red ardeet melons in the morning—the others are still too sour. Walk safely on the night paths home.

  GIANT BONES

  Boy, call me in to you just once more, and you will regret it until you’re very, very old. I’ll not tell you again, the jejebhai’s due any hour now—twins, by the look of it—and if I’m not with her she’s like as not to smother one while she’s dropping the other, crazy as she is. So I haven’t the bloody time to tell you tales, nor smooth your blanket, nor bring you water. If your mother were here, as she bloody should be, instead of being off in Chun nursing your aunt because the idiot woman didn’t have sense enough to leave red kalyars alone in the wet season, then she could play games with you all night, for all of me. But if I climb up to this loft again tonight, it will be with a willowy switch in my hand. Do you understand me?

  What? What under your bed? Rock-targs? There’s never been a single rock-targ in this flat-arse farmland, you know that as well as I do. They’re mountain creatures; they won’t come below the snowline to feast on a fat caravan, never mind squeezing themselves under one scrawny little boy’s bed. There aren’t any even in our high country, come to that. The giants ran them all out. They’re still afraid of the giants, even now.

  What? No, there aren’t any giants under your bed, either. The giants are gone, too, long and long since. Haven’t been any since your great-great-great-grandfather’s time, I can tell you that for a fact. Go to sleep, if you know what’s good for you.

  Now what’s he crying about? Because there aren’t any giants? Is that it? Boy, there are times… what? Oh now, don’t you start that again, do you hear me? You are not too small, I never said that, that was your Uncle Tavdal, and he’s a fool. But a tall fool, just as you’ll be, stop stewing over it. You’re small for your age, yes, but so were your sisters Rii and Sardur, whatever they say now. So was Jadamak—he didn’t even start getting his growth until he was well older than you, there’s another fact for you. And I’ll tell you something more—

  What? Be quiet, I thought that was the jejebhai bleating…. No, I guess not. Not that it would mean much if it were—she’s just like you, call and call and carry on, and when you get there, nothing but big eyes and feeling a bit lonesome. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if she decided not to drop them till dawn, like last time. Spiteful animal, always was. Like your aunt.

  How do I know you’ll be tall? Well, let me ask a question for a change—have you ever seen a short one in our family? Think about it, name me one—uncles, cousins, second cousins, distant as you like. No? Hah? No, and you won’t either, I don’t care how far you look. Every one of us is big, man or woman, wise or brainless. It’s how we are, the same as those Mundrakathis down by the canal, all with those pale, pale skins and the men with their extra little fingers. Only with us it’s a bit different, there’s a bit more to it. Ask your mother sometime, she’ll tell you.

  I said your mother. No. No, absolutely not, I’m going back down to the barn this minute. Besides, your mother’s the one to ask about things like that. She’s the one who tells stories, sings the old wisdom songs, passes things on when it’s time. I’m just the one who takes care of the beasts. Fair enough—we both push the plow. I’m going now, that’s all.

  No, I said no! Give it up, boy, before you really rouse me. I can’t afford to lose even one jejebhai kid, let alone two, not with the price of vegetables gone so low it’s hardly worth hauling them to market. Good night, good-bye, and go to bloody sleep!

  Because I do know, there’s why! Because of your three-times-great-grandfather and the giants of Torgry Mountain, there’s why! Nine years old, she should have told you by now, and I’ll tell her so when she comes home, if she ever does. Instead of leaving it for me.

  All right. All right, then—but one squall from the barn and y
our mother tells you the rest, is that a bargain? And you’ll keep to it, like a grown man? No fussing, no sniveling? Mind, now.

  Well. I’ve not told stories much—I don’t know where you’re supposed to start, or what’s important to put in. So I’m just going to begin with your great-great-great-grandfather, only I can’t keep calling him that all through, so I’ll call him Grandfather Selsim. That was his name, or close enough to it.

  Now. Grandfather Selsim was the first of our lot to come into this country. He didn’t mean to, not as far as I ever learned, being no farmer but a coppersmith by trade aye, a tinker if you like, and horsedealer as well betimes, tell the truth. But he was living in the north, beyond the mountains, when times were hard and land was dear. And that was good for the tinker, you see, because folk were mending and making do in those days, not buying all new like your aunt in Chun and that fat maggot she married. But it wasn’t such a fine thing for the horsedealer, no, nor for anyone with even a few dreams of settling somewhere and might be starting a family. I was up north myself one time, working, before we had this place, before you were born. Never liked it much.

  So one morning Grandfather Selsim just up and says, “Well, that’s it, I’m surely done here,” and he jumped on that ugly-tempered, leg-biting churfa he always rode and headed straight south. No notion where he was bound, no friends or relations beyond Rhyak, everything he owned sold fast and cheap to feed him along the way. Just going south, traveling by the sun and the mountains dead ahead. And that was your great-great-great-grandfather Selsim.

  Did you hear anything just then? Tell me if you did, mind, because I’ll know. There’s a sound she makes when the kid… no, no, nothing yet. All right. I hate this. Where was I?

  Right, so. Grandfather Selsim, he’d been here and there enough to know that mountains aren’t ever as close as they look, but for all that he was near to being out of food by the time he reached the northern foothills. Oh, he did some tinkerwork along the way for a meal or two, and he likely even begged when it came to it. There’s those in the family wouldn’t ever admit to that, but I say you do what’s to do. All we know, we mightn’t be here tonight, you and I and them, too, if Grandfather Selsim had been ashamed to beg. And maybe he was thinking about us all, that far back, hey? Who knows?