by Gene Wolfe
Not knowing what else to say, I said, “Yes.”
“It didn’t help, but I’ve left it off ever since. My poor granddaughter doesn’t complain, and I’m more comfortable without it for some reason.”
As she spoke, she had plucked her right eye from its socket.
“Here, Horn. Take it, please. It’s a bad part, and not of the least use to me anymore.”
Reluctantly, I let her put it into my hand, which she closed around it for me with her own slender fleshlike fingers.
“If I were to tell you what it is, the part number and all that, it would be of very little use to you. But with the actual part, you might be able to find another one, and you’ll recognize it if you come across one.”
I resolved then to make every effort to find two (at which I have failed also) and told her so.
“Thank you, Horn. I know you will. You were always such a good boy. Sometimes it’s very hard to bear, but I shouldn’t feel blue. I really shouldn’t. The gods have given me a-a consolation prize, I suppose you’d call it. I can see into the future now, just as my dear sib Maytera Mint could. Did I tell you?”
I believe I must have said that I had always assumed she could prophesy, as all sibyls could.
“I wasn’t any good at it, because I couldn’t ever see the pictures. I knew the things everybody knows, what an enlarged heart means, and all those commonplace indicants. But I couldn’t see things in the entrails the way my dear sib could, and Patera, too. Now I can. Isn’t that strange? Now that I’m blind, I have ulterior vision. I can’t see the entrails till I touch them. But when I do, I see the pictures.”
Silk, I knew, had prophesied in that way; but I also knew that he had not had great faith in such prophesies. He had been both fascinated by and skeptical of the entire procedure. Bearing all that in mind, I asked whether she would be willing to prophesy for me, provided I could supply a good big fish for a victim.
“Why, yes, Horn. I’m very flattered.”
She paused, thinking. “We must have another fire for your sacrifice, however. A fire here outside. I built a little altar of stones, too. It’s what I use when the men who come in boats want me to do it.”
She began to walk slowly, searching left and right with the white wand she carried; and for a moment I saw her, and the rock itself and Mucor, as strangers must have-as the “men in boats” she talked about no doubt saw them: a place and two women so uncanny that I was amazed that anybody had the courage to consult them.
There is no point in recounting here how I caught a fish and carried it up that steep and weary path in a bucket, or how we built a small fire for it on the altar, lighting it from the one inside, before which Mucor sat motionless while the young hus munched her apple.
I loaned Maytera the long hunting knife Sinew had given me, and held my fish steady for her. She cut its throat neatly (not through the gills as one commonly kills fish, but as if it had been a rabbit); turning, she raised her thin arms to the point at which the Sacred Window would have stood, had we possessed one, and uttered the ancient formula.
(Or perhaps I should say that the empty northern sky was her Window. Is not the sky the only Sacred Window we have here, in which we strive to trace the will of gods who may not yet have deserted us?)
“Accept, all you gods, the sacrifice of this fine shambass. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that are to come. What are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured. Should you, however, choose otherwise…”
As she pronounced these words, I was beset by a sensation so extraordinary that I hesitate to write about it, knowing that I will not be believed.
No, my dearest wife, not even by you.
I saw nothing and heard nothing, yet it seemed to me that the face of the Outsider had appeared, filling the whole sky and indeed overflowing it, a face too large to be seen-that I was seeing him in the only way that a human being can see him, which is to say in the way that a flea sees a man. Call it nonsense if you like; I have often called it nonsense myself. But is it really so impossible that the god of lonely, outcast things should have favored those two, exiled as they were to their sea-girt, naked rock? Who was, who could be, more broken, exiled, and despairing than Maytera Marble? Whether or not there was truth in the presence that I sensed then, I fell to my knees.
Turning back to the altar and me, Maytera Marble laid my fish open with a single swift cut that made me fear for my thumb. I took back the knife, and her old-woman’s fingers probed the abdominal cavity in a way that left me feeling they had eyes in their tips I could not see.
“One side’s for the giver, that’s you, Horn, and the augur. That’s me. The other’s for the congregation and the city. I don’t suppose-”
Abruptly she fell silent, half crouching with her head thrown back, her blind eye and empty, aching socket staring at nothing, or perhaps at the declining sun.
“I see long journeys, fear, hunger and cold, and feverish heat. Then darkness. Then more darkness and a great wind. Wealth and command. I see you, Horn, riding upon a beast with three horns.”
(She actually said this.)
“Darkness also for me. Darkness and love, darkness until I look up and see very far, and then there will be light and love.”
After that she was silent for what seemed to me a very long time. My knees hurt, and with my free hand I tried to brush away the small stones that gouged them.
“The city searches the sky for a sign, but no sign shall it have but the sign from the fish’s belly.”
Now I must get to bed, and there is really nothing more to record. Although Maytera urged me to spend the night in their hut, I slept on the sloop, very tired but troubled all night by dreams in which I sailed on and on, braving storm after storm, without ever sighting land.
* * *
It is very late. My palace is asleep, but I cannot sleep. Earlier I was yawning over this account. If I write a little bit more, perhaps it will make me sleepy again.
Darling, you will want to know about Maytera’s prophecy, and what Mucor said when at last she returned to us from her search for Silk.
You will also want to know the solution to the mystery of the fish. About that, I can really tell nothing. I have certain suspicions, but no evidence to back them up.
Let me say this. An island-our own island of Lizard, for instance-is in fact a sort of mountain thrust out of the sea, as all good sailors know. If the sea were to recede, we would discover that our mill is really situated not at the foot of the Tor but on a mountaintop. An island, that is to say, exists not only in the air but 10 the water that is beneath the air. I have reason to suspect that there were four of us, not three, on the island I have named Mucor’s Rock. (I do not include Babbie.) Mucor, I believe, communicated with that fourth person by means you understand no better-and no worse-than I do. You will recall how she appeared to Silk and others, in the tunnels, on the airship, and even in Silk’s own bedroom. This may have been something of the same kind.
Maytera’s prophecy regarding me was entirely accurate. You may object that save for the part about the beast with three horns-which I will treat separately in a moment-it was very general. So it was; but it was correct as well, as I have said. I did indeed journey long, endure hunger, thirst, cold and heat, and terrible darkness of which you shall read before this record closes-assuming that I will someday finish it for you. Here in Gaon, I have great wealth at my command and my orders are obeyed without question.
On Green I rode a three-horned beast, as Maytera foresaw. Indeed, I was riding it at the time I was wounded fatally. But I shall say no more about that. It would only disturb us both.
As for Mucor’s report, I am yawning again already. I will leave that anticlimax for another day.
-4-
THE TALE OF THE PAJAROCU
The next morning I found Mucor and Maytera Marble enjoying the sunshine in front of their hut. At the sound of my steps, Maytera blessed me as she used to bless our class at the beginning of each day
at the palaestra, recommending us to the god of the day. Mucor, to my astonishment, actually said, “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I replied. “You’re back. I’m very glad to have you back with us, Mucor. Happier than I can say. Did you find Silk?”
She nodded.
“Where is he?”
“Sit down.” She and Maytera Marble were sitting upon one sun-warmed stone, she cross-legged and Maytera with hands clasped over her shins.
I sat on another. “But you found him? He’s still alive? Please tell me. I’ve got to know.”
“Once I found him, I stayed with Silk a long while. We talked three times.”
“That’s wonderful!” He was alive, clearly, and at that moment 1 could have jumped up and danced.
“He asked me not to tell you where he is. It will be very dangerous for you to try to go where he is. If you find him, it will be dangerous for him, and for Hyacinth as well.” This was said without any expression, as Mucor always spoke; but it seemed to me that there was a spark of concern in her eyes, which were usually so empty.
“I have to, Mucor. We need him, and I have given my word that I will try.”
She shook her head, sending her wild black hair flying. “I told Silk what you told me, that the people here want him to come and lead them. He said that if he were their leader he would only tell them to lead themselves, telling every man and every woman to do what he or she knows should be done. Those words are his.”
“But we need the favor of the gods!”
Maytera remarked quietly, “You knew once whom the good gods favor, Horn. I taught you that while you were still very small. Have you forgotten it?”
I sat thinking for a few seconds. At last I said, “Mucor, you told Silk what I told you when I came.”
She nodded. Her eyes were dull once more, and fixed upon something far away.
“This is my fault, because I didn’t explain the situation as fully as I should have. It’s actually my fault twice. My fault for not explaining, and my fault that certain people in New Viron want Silk to be their caldé. The same thing is true, I’m told, in Three Rivers and some other towns, and that’s my fault, too. My wife and I wrote our book, and it has been more widely read, and much more often copied, than we had ever dreamed it would be.”
“What about the women troopers from Trivigaunte?” Maytera inquired.
“No. Though their men may feel differently. But they want him in Urbasecundus, and in other towns even farther from here. I said my wife and I wrote that book, and it sounds as if I’m trying to divide the blame. I’m not; our book would never have been written if I had not been determined to write it before I died. Nettle saw how hard it was and offered her help, which I gladly accepted. But the fault is mine alone.”
I waited for Mucor to speak, which was nearly always a mistake.
“Maybe it was a foolish thing to do, though I didn’t think so at the time. It was to be a book about Silk, Silk’s Book, and mostly it was. But you’re in it, both of you, and so are General Mint and Maytera Rose. Maybe I should have said all three of you are in there.”
“Really?” Maytera asked.
“Yes. So too are your son Blood, and His Cognizance, and the inhumu that we called His Cognizance Patera Quetzal back in Old Viron. And Corporal Hammerstone, and Patera Incus. Do you remember Patera Incus?”
“Yes, Horn. Yes, I do. My husband thought the whorl of him.” I had been away from her for too long to tell whether she was smiling or frowning.
“But it was mostly about Patera Silk,” I continued, “and I tried to show how good and wise he was, and how he made mistakes sometimes but was never too proud to acknowledge that he’d been wrong. Most of all, how he never gave up, how he kept working for peace with the Ayuntamiento and peace with Trivigaunte, no matter how badly things were going or how impossible any peace seemed. I believed that a book like that would help everyone who read it, not just now or next year, but long after Nettle and I were gone. Nettle thought so, too, and wanted to help create a gift that we could give our children’s children, and their children.”
Maytera’s hand groped toward me. “You’re a good boy, Horn. Too lively and fond of mischief, but good at heart. I always said so, even when I had to take my switch to you.”
I thanked her. “There was something else, Maytera. I felt he deserved it, deserved a book telling everyone what he had done, and I felt sure that if I didn’t write down all the things I knew about him, nobody would.”
Maytera said, “He deserved your tribute, dear.” And Mucor, “He does.”
“So I tried. It was a lot of work for me and even more for Nettle, because she had to copy what I’d written over and over. But when we were finished and I read it as somebody who hadn’t known him would, I realized I hadn’t done him justice, that he had been greater than I had been able to show. Ever since it began to be read, people have been telling us that we exaggerated, that he couldn’t have been as great and good a man as my wife and I said he was. We’ve always known that all the error was on the other side.”
Maytera Marble sniffed. One of the parts she had taken when Maytera Rose died had been that sniff, so expressive of skepticism and contempt. “You think you’ve got to go because they’d never have known about young Patera Silk if you and that girl hadn’t written about him.”
“Yes, I do.”
“That was how I used to treat Maggie, our maid. Every time she did some little favor for me, I made it her task, and added to it. Oh, I knew it was wicked, but I did it just the same.”
Hoping to bring her to herself again, I said, “Did you really, Maytera Marble?”
She nodded, and something in the movement of her head told me that it was still Maytera Rose who gave her assent. “I said to myself that if she was ninny enough to let me impose on her like that, she deserved everything she got. I was right, too. Both ways… Horn?”
“Yes, Maytera. I’m still here. What is it?”
“You don’t owe my granddaughter and me any more favors. You’ve been very, very generous with us, and the only help that my granddaughter’s been able to give you has been to tell you to help yourself. Now I need to ask you for another favor, one that I want almost as much as I want a new eye-”
“I’ll get two if I can, Maytera.”
“You’re going to go anyway? In spite of what Patera Silk said?”
I was, of course, because I had to. I temporized by saying that there were many other things in the Long Sun Whorl that were needed in New Viron.
“We must be realistic, Horn. Are you realistic?”
I said that I tried to be.
“You may not be able to find a new eye for me, much less two. I-I understand that. So do you, I feel sure.”
I nodded and said, “I also understand that because we told everyone about Silk, I’m the one who must go back for him when he’s needed so badly here. When I got to New Viron I asked Marrow for a copy of a certain letter he had shown me. Do you remember Marrow, Maytera?”
Her old woman’s fingers smoothed her dirty black skirt over her thin metal thighs. “I used to go to his shop twice a week.”
“He’s not a bad man, Maytera. In fact, he’s a very good man as men are judged in New Viron today. He has been a good and generous friend to me ever since I agreed to go back and get Silk. But when his clerk came in to copy that letter, he wore a chain.”
She said nothing, and I was afraid she had not understood me. I said, “I don’t mean jewelry, a gold or silver chain around his neck. His hands were chained. There were iron bands around each wrist, and the chain ran between them.”
She said nothing. Neither did Mucor.
“They make those chains short enough that a man wearing one can’t fire a slug gun properly. He can’t work the slide to put a fresh round into the chamber without letting go of the part that his right hand holds.”
“You needn’t explain any more, Horn. Not about the gun or the chains, I mean.”
I did anyway. I had lived on Lizard too long, perhaps, seeing few people other than you yourself, Nettle darling, and our sons. I said, “I watched him write, copying it out for me, and I couldn’t help seeing how careful he was to keep it back, keep it from smearing his ink. It wasn’t a big chain, Maytera. It wasn’t a heavy chain at all, just a little, light chain with seven little links. The men who unload boats wear much heavier ones. He probably thinks that he’s being treated kindly, and in a way he is.”
“I quite understand, Horn. You don’t have to tell us any more.”
“Once-this is two or three years ago-I talked to a man in town who was boasting about how beautiful a girl he had was. He even offered to take me to his house so that I could see her.”
“Did you go?”
I had but I denied it, one of those lies we tell without knowing why. “I asked him if the chain didn’t get in the way when they made love, and he said no, he made her hold her hands over her head.”
“Is this about Silk? Yes, I suppose it is.” Maytera was silent for a moment. “Like Marl. Marl was a friend of mine back home. Like the clerk, except that he didn’t have to wear a chain. All right, I understand why you think you must bring Silk here. In your place, I suppose I would, too.”
“Even though he doesn’t want to? He wanted very badly to go with us when we left. You must remember that, Maytera-how much he wanted to go with us, how eager he was. He hated all the evil he saw in the Whorl, and he must have hoped that people would be better in a new place.”
She said nothing.
“A lot are. Many of us are. That’s what I ought to say, because I’m one of them. We’re not as good as he would want us to be, but we’re better than we were in a lot of ways. Just thinking about starting fresh in a new place made Auk better, and if he and Chenille landed here-”