by Gene Wolfe
“There will be fish on it. Bring them up, too.”
I told her that I would be happy to, and discovered that it was easy as well as pleasant to step out of that hut and into the sunlight.
The steep path from the more or less level top of the island to the little inlet in which I had moored gave me a good view of it (and indeed of the entire inlet) at one point, and there were no fish on the rock she had indicated. I continued my descent, however, thinking I would bring up the apples with something else in lieu of the fish. When I reached the rock, three fish flopped and struggled there so vigorously that it seemed certain that all three were about to escape. I dove for them and caught two, but the third slipped from between my fingers and vanished with a splash.
A moment afterward, it leaped from the water and back onto the rock, where I was able to catch it. I dropped all three into an empty sack I happened to have on board, and hung it in the water while I got three apples from Marrow’s barrel and tied them up in a scrap of sailcloth. As an afterthought, I put a small bottle of cooking oil into one pocket, and a bottle of drinking water into another.
When I returned to the hut, there was a fire blazing in the circle of stones. After giving Maytera Marble the apples, I filleted the fish with Sinew’s hunting knife, and Mucor and I cooked them in a most satisfactory fashion by impaling fillets wrapped in bacon on sticks of driftwood. I also mixed some of the cornmeal with my oil (I had forgotten to bring salt), made cakes, and put them into the ashes at the edge of the fire to bake.
“How is dear Nettle?” Maytera Marble asked.
I said that she had been well when I left her; and I went on to explain that I had been chosen to return to the Long Sun Whorl and bring Silk here, and that I was about to set out for a foreign town called Pajarocu where there was said to be a lander capable of making the return trip, as none of ours were. I went into considerably more detail than I have here, and she and Mucor listened to all of it in silence.
When I had finished, I said, “You will have guessed already how you can help me, if you will. Mucor, will you locate Silk for me, and tell me where he is?”
There was no reply.
When no one had spoken for some time, I raked one of the cornmeal cakes out of the fire and ate it. Maytera Marble asked what I was eating; that was the first time, I believe, that I realized she had gone blind, although I should have known it an hour before.
I said, “One of the little cakes I made, Maytera. I’ll give your granddaughter one, if she’ll eat it.”
“Give me one,” Maytera Marble said; and I raked out another cake and put it into her hand.
“Here is an apple for you.” She rubbed it against her torn and dirty habit, and groped for me. I thanked her and accepted it.
“Will you put this one in my granddaughter’s lap, please, Horn? She can eat it after she’s found Patera for you.”
I took the second apple, and did as she asked.
She whistled shrilly then, startling me; at the sound, a young hus emerged from the shadows on the other side of the fire, at once greedy and wary. “Babbie, come here!” she called, and whistled again. “Here, Babbie!”
It advanced, the thick, short claws some people call hooves loud on the stone floor, its attention divided between me and the food Maytera Marble held out to it. I found its fierce eyes disconcerting, although I felt reasonably sure it would not charge. After hesitating for some while, it accepted the food, the apple in one stubby-toed forepaw and the cornmeal cake in its mouth, giving me a better look than I wanted at the sharp yellow tusks that were only just beginning to separate its lips.
As it retreated on seven legs to the other side of the fire, Maytera Marble said, “Isn’t Babbie cute? The captain of some foreign boat gave him to my granddaughter.”
I may have made some suitable reply, although I am afraid I only grunted like a hus.
“It’s practically like having a child with us,” Maytera Marble declared. “One of those children one’s heart goes out to, because the gods have refrained from providing it with an acute intellect, for their own good and holy reasons. Babbie tries so very hard to please us and make us happy. You simply can’t imagine.”
That was perfectly true.
“The captain was afraid that ill-intentioned persons might land here and fall upon us while we slept. It’s active mostly at night. From what I have been given to understand, they all are, just like that bird dear Patera Silk had.”
I said that while I had never hunted hus, according to what my son had told me, that was correct.
“So dear little Babbie’s always active for me.” She sighed, the weary hish of a mop cleaning a floor of tiles. “Because it’s always night for me.” Another sigh. “I know that it must be the gods’ will for me, and I try to accept it. But I’ve never wanted to see again quite as much as I do today with you come to visit us, Horn.”
I tried to express my sympathy, embarrassing both myself and her.
“No. No, it’s all right. The gods’ will for me, I’m sure. And yet-and yet…” Her old woman’s hands clasped the white stick as if to break it, then let it fall to wrestle each other in her lap.
I said that in my opinion there were evil gods as well as benevolent ones, and recounted my experience the week before with the leatherskin, ending by saying, “I had prayed for company, Maytera, and for a wind, to whatever gods might hear me. I got both, but I don’t believe the same god can have sent both.”
“I-you know that I’ve become a sibyl again, Horn? You must because you’ve been calling me Maytera.”
I explained that Marrow had told me.
“With my husband and I separated, and no doubt separated permanently-well, you understand, I’m sure.”
I said I did.
“We had begun a child, a daughter.” She sighed again. “It was hard, dreadfully hard, to find parts, or even things we could make them from. We never got far with her, and I don’t suppose she’ll ever be born unless my husband takes a new wife, poor little thing.”
I tried to be sympathetic.
“So there wasn’t any reason not to. I couldn’t have my own child anymore, the child that had been my dream for all those empty years. Since I could not, I thought it might be nice to teach bio children like you again, the way I used to when I was younger. The ordinances of the Chapter let married women become sibyls, His Cognizance said, under special circumstances like mine, provided that the Prolocutor consents. He did, and I took the oath all over again. Very few of us have ever taken it more than once.”
I nodded, I believe. I was paying more attention to Mucor, who sat silently with the apple untouched in her lap.
“Are you listening, Horn?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”
“I taught there in New Viron for a good many years. And I kept house for His Cognizance, which was a very great honor. People are so intolerant, though.”
“Some are, at least.”
“The Chapter has fought that intolerance for as long as I’ve been alive, and it has achieved a great deal. But I doubt that intolerance will ever be rooted out altogether.”
I agreed.
“There are children, Horn, who are very much like little Babbie. Not verbal, but capable of love, and very grateful for whatever love they may receive. You would think every heart would go out to them, but many don’t.”
I asked her then about Mucor, saying that I had not realized it would take her so long to find Silk.
“She has to travel all the way to the whorl in which we used to live, Horn. It’s a very long way, and even though her spirit flies so fast, it must fly over every bit of it. When she arrives, she’ll have to look for him, and when she finds him, she’ll have to return to us.”
I explained that it was quite possible that Silk was here on Blue, or even on Green.
Maytera Marble shook her head, saying that only made things worse. “Poor little Babbie’s quite upset. He always is, every time she goes away. He und
erstands simple things, but you can’t explain something like that to him.”
Privately, I wished that someone would explain it to me.
“He’s really her pet. Aren’t you, Babbie?” Her hands, the thin old-woman hands she had taken from Maytera Rose’s body, groped for the hus, although he was far beyond her reach. “He loves her, and I really think that she loves him, just as she loves me. But it’s hard, very hard for them both here, because of the water.”
For a moment I thought she meant the sea; then I said, “I assumed you had a spring here, Maytera.”
She shook her head. “Only rainwater from the rocks. It makes little pools and so on, here and there, you know. My dear granddaughter says there are deep crevices, too, where it lingers for a long time. I’ve had no experience with thirst, myself. Oh, ordinary thirst in hot weather. But not severe thirst. I’m told it’s terrible.”
I explained that a spring high up on the Tor gave us the stream that turned my mill, and acknowledged that I had never been thirsty as she meant it either.
“He must have water. Babbie must, just as she must. If it doesn’t rain soon…” She shook her head.
Much too late, I remembered that the uncomfortably large object in my pocket was a bottle of water. I gave it to her, and told her what it was. She thanked me effusively; and I told her there were many more on my boat, and promised to leave a dozen with her.
“You could go down and get them now, couldn’t you, Horn? While my granddaughter’s still away.”
There had been a pathetic eagerness in Maytera Marble’s voice; and when I remembered that the water would not be of the smallest value to her, I was deeply touched. I said that I did not want to miss anything that Mucor said when she came back.
“She will be gone a long, long time, Horn.” This in her old classroom tone. “I doubt that she’s even reached our old whorl yet. There’s plenty of time for you to go down and get it, and I wish you would.”
Stubbornly, I shook my head; and after that, we sat in silence except for a few inconsequential remarks for an hour or more.
At last I stood and told Maytera Marble that I would bring up some water bottles, and made her promise to tell me exactly what Mucor said if she spoke.
It had been morning when I arrived, but the Short Sun was already past the zenith when I left the hut. I discovered that I was tired, although I told myself firmly that I had done very little that day. Slowly, I descended the path again, which was in fact far too steep and dangerous for anyone to go up or down it with much celerity.
At the observation point I have already mentioned, I stopped for a time and studied the flat stone on which I had found our fish. It was sunlit now, although it had been in shadow when I had failed to see them; I told myself that they had certainly been there whether I had seen them or not, then recalled their vigorous leaps. If in fact they had been there when I had looked down at the sloop, they would certainly have escaped before I reached them.
As I continued my descent to the inlet and my sloop, I realized that it actually made no difference whether they had been there when I looked or not. They had certainly not been present when I had tied up. Even if I had somehow failed to see them, I would have kicked them or stepped on them.
Mucor had been in my sight continuously from the time I had encountered her outside her hut, and Maytera Marble from the time I had gone in. Who, then, had left us the fish?
I rinsed the sack that had held the fish, put half a dozen water bottles into it, and spent some time peering down into the calm, clear water of the inlet, without seeing anything worth describing here. One fish had regained the water, as the other two surely would have if I had not caught them in time. It had been forced to leap back onto the rock almost immediately.
By what?
I could not imagine, and I saw nothing.
Maytera Marble was waiting for me outside the hut. I asked whether Mucor had returned, and she shook her head.
“I have the water right here, Maytera.” I swung the sack enough to make the bottles clink. “I’ll put them anywhere you want them.”
“That’s very, very good of you. My granddaughter will be extremely grateful, I’m sure.”
I ventured to say that they could as easily live on the mainland in some remote spot, and that although I felt sure their life there would be hard, they could at least have all the fresh water they wanted.
“We did. Didn’t I tell you? His Cognizance gave us a place like that. We-I-still own it, I suppose.”
I asked whether their neighbors had driven them away, and she shook her head. “We didn’t have any. There were woods and rocks and things on the land side, and the sea the other way. I used to look at it. There was a big tree there that had fallen down but wouldn’t quite lay flat. Do you know what I mean, Horn?”
“Yes,” I said. “Certainly.”
“I used to walk up the trunk until I stood quite high in the air, and look out over the sea from there, looking for boats, or just looking at the weather we were about to get. It was a waste of time, but I enjoyed it.”
I tried to say that I did not think she had been wasting her time, but succeeded only in sounding foolish.
“Thank you, Horn. Thank you. That’s very nice of you. Look at the sea, Horn, while you can. Look at it for me, if you won’t do it for yourself.”
I promised I would, and did so as I spoke. The rock offered a fine view in every direction.
“It wasn’t good soil,” Maytera Marble continued. “It was too sandy. I grew a few things there, though. Enough to feed my granddaughter, and a little bit over that I took to town and sold, or gave the palaestra. I had a little vegetable patch in the garden at our manteion. Do you remember? Vegetables and herbs.”
I had forgotten it, but her words brought back the memory very vividly.
“Patera had tomatoes and berry brambles, but I had onions and chives, marjoram and rosemary, and red and yellow peppers. All sorts of things. Little red radishes in spring, and lettuces all summer. I tried to grow the same things on our farm, and succeeded with most of them. But my granddaughter would swim out here and stay for days and days. It worried me.”
Looking east to the mainland, I said, “It would worry me, too. It’s a very long swim, and she can’t be strong.”
“I built a little boat, then. I had to, so I could come out here and get her. I found a hollow log and scraped out all the rotten wood, and made ends for it. They were just big wooden plugs, really, but they kept the water from running in. Sometimes she would not go, and I’d have to stay out here with her till she would. That was why I built this little house. Then a storm came, a terrible one. I thought it was going to blow our little house away. It didn’t, but it broke my boat. I can’t swim, Horn.”
She looked up as she said it in such a way that sunshine struck her face, and I saw that her faceplate was gone. The lumps and furrows that had seemed deformities were a host of mechanisms her faceplate had hidden when I had known her earlier. Trying to ignore them, I said, “I can take you both back to the mainland in my sloop, Maytera. Nettle and I built it to carry our paper to the market in town, and it will carry the three of us easily.”
She shook her head. “She wouldn’t go, Horn, and I won’t leave her out here alone. I only wish-but I don’t worry about falling off anymore. I tap on the stone with my stick, you see.” She demonstrated, rapping the rock between us. “A man who came to consult my granddaughter made it for me, so now I can always find the edge.”
“That’s good.”
“It is. Yes, it is. I was feeling blue when you came, Horn. I feel blue at times, and sometimes it lasts days and days.”
Her free hand groped for me, and I stepped nearer so that she could put it on my shoulder.
“How tall you’ve grown! Why, you’ve taken me out of myself, just by coming to see us. Not that I should ever be blue anyway. I had good eyes for hundreds and hundreds of years. Most people don’t get to see things for anything like that long.
Look at all the children who die before they’re grown! Dead at fifteen or twelve or ten, Horn, and I could name a dead child for you for every year between fifteen and birth.”
When she spoke again, the voice was Maytera Rose’s. “My other eyes. I had them less than a hundred years, and Marble ought to have taken them when she took my hands and so many other things. Taken the good one, I mean, for one was blind.
“But I didn’t. I left her eyes, because I never realized my own were wearing out. Her processor, yes. I took that, but not her eye. Horn?”
“Yes, I’m still here, Maytera. Is there some way I can help you?”
“You already have, by bringing us those nice bottles of water for my granddaughter and her pet. That was very, very fine of you, and I will never forget it. But you’re going home, Horn? Isn’t that what you said? Going back to-to the whorl we used to live in?”
I told her that I was going to try to go wherever Silk was and bring him to New Viron, which was what I had sworn to do; and that I thought he was probably in Old Viron, in which case I was going to go there if the people of Pajarocu would allow me on their lander.
“Then I want to ask a very great favor. Will you do me a very great favor, Horn, if you can?” Her free hand left my shoulder and Went to her own face. “My faceplate is gone. I took it off myself, and put it away somewhere. Have I told you?”
I shook my head, forgetting for a moment that she could not see it.
“We were here on this rock, my granddaughter and I, after the storm, and one of my eyes just went out. I told myself that it was all right, that the other one would probably last for years and years yet, and I could take good care of my poor granddaughter with one eye as well as I had with two.”
She sounded so despondent that I said, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I do. I must. It was only four days, Horn. Four days after my left eye failed, my right eye failed, too. I took them out and reversed them, because I knew there was a chance that one might work then, but it didn’t help. That was when I took my faceplate off, because I felt somehow that it was in the way, that I was trying to look through it. And I couldn’t have. It’s solid metal, aluminum I think. They all are.”