On Blue's waters

by Gene Wolfe

  We anchored there and refilled our water bottles, and I sent Babbie ashore and let him trot around and explore the steep green wood. To tell the truth, I was feeling very guilty about having made him stay on the sloop so often when we were going up the coast, and was half minded to leave him there to recover his health as well as his freedom; I felt sure it would be a happier as well as a healthier place for him than my cramped little boat, and I recalled that Silk had tried more than once to free Oreb. Throughout my life I have done my best to imitate Silk (as I am doing here in Gaon), at times with some success.

  Perhaps I am getting better at it. They seem to think so, at least. But I had better sleep.

  * * *

  I should not have stopped last night before mentioning that we lay at anchor in the bay that night. Seawrack and I slept side by side under the foredeck, thankfully without Babbie; and that soon after we lay down she asked whether we would put out again in the morning. From her tone it was clear that she did not want to.

  Neither did I; and so I said that I planned to stay another day to hunt, and that with luck we would have fresh meat for supper the next night. To the best of my memory, we had no meat left on board at that time except the shank of the very salty ham that Marrow had given me; and I was thoroughly tired of that, and still more tired of fish.

  The following day began bright and clear, and presented me with what I then considered a serious problem, I having not the least presentiment of what the island held in store for me. Seawrack was anxious to go with me, and Babbie was even more anxious, if that were possible-it would have been sheer cruelty to leave him behind. Nonetheless, I was very conscious that if anything happened to the sloop all hope of bringing Silk to New Viron would be gone.

  I considered leaving Babbie on board, as I had there; but how much protection could a young hus provide? A young hus, I should have said, who had by no means recovered all his strength? Against a sudden gale, very little. Against the crew of some other boat that put in to water as we had, just enough to get him killed.

  I also considered asking Seawrack to stay. But if bad weather struck, the best thing she could possibly do would be to furl the sails (and they were furled already) and remain at anchor in the little cove we had found, which the sloop would do by herself. As for protecting it from the crew of another boat, how much could one young woman do, without a weapon or a right arm? Against honest men, the sloop would require no protection. By the other kind she would be raped, killed, or both.

  For a second or two, I even considered remaining behind myself; but Seawrack could not use the slug gun, and might easily find herself in danger. In the end, we all went. No doubt it was inevitable.

  It was a silent, peaceful, lonesome place whose thickly forested slopes seemed to be inhabited only by a few birds. Mighty trees clung to rocks upon which it seemed that no tree could live, or plunged deep roots into the black soil of little hidden dales. On Green one finds trees without number, monstrous cannibals ten times the height of the tallest trees I saw on the island; but they are forever at war with their own kind, and are troubled all the while by the trailing, coiling, murderous lianas that have seemed to me the living embodiment of evil ever since I first beheld them.

  There was nothing of Green here save the huge trunks, and bluffs and rocky outcrops resembling Green’s distant, towering escarpments in about the same way that a housecat resembles a baletiger. In one, we discovered a deep cave with its feet in clear cold water, a dry cave with a ceiling high enough for a man to have ridden a tall horse into it without bowing his head or taking off his hat; and we spoke, Seawrack and I, of returning there after we had brought Silk to New Viron. We would build a wall of stout logs to close the entrance, and live there in peace and privacy all our days, plant a garden, trap birds and small animals, and fish. Was it really criminal of us to talk in that fashion? I knew that it could never be, that Nettle and my sons and the mill would be waiting when I came back to the Lizard.

  And that even if I did not return, it could never be. Seawrack, I feel sure, did not. So it was wrong of me, was cruel and cowardly, to share her snug dream and encourage her in it. I must be honest here. It was, as Silk would say, seriously evil. It was a crime, and I was (and am) a monster of cruelty. All that is true, but give me this-I have done worse, and for half an hour we were as happy as it is possible for two people to be. The Outsider may condemn me for it, but I cannot regret that half hour.

  If it is true that in some sense Silk and Hyacinth remain forever beside the goldfish pond at Ermine’s where I sought them, may not Seawrack and I live in the same sense in a certain dry cave among towering, moss-draped trees on the island that will always be “The Island” to me? I have said that I can be cruel because I know it for the truth; and I know too that the universe, the whorl of all whorls, can be much crueler. I hope it is not cruel enough to deprive even the smallest and most ghostly fragment of my being of the happiness that Seawrack and I know there.

  There came a moment when I wanted to return to the sloop. We had seen no game and no sign of any; we were all tired, and Babbie, who had ranged ahead at first sniffing and snuffling here and there, lagged behind. What was worse (although I did not say it) was that I was not sure of the way back to the sloop; and I was afraid that we would have to strike the shore of the island wherever we could reach it, and try to follow it until we found the little bay to the north in which we had anchored. We were tired already, as I have said, and had not yet begun what might be a very long walk. It seemed more than possible that we would not be able to locate the sloop before shadelow.

  Seawrack pointed to a ridge, not very distant but only just visible through the trees. “You wait here,” she said, “and let me go up there and see what’s on the other side. You and Babbie rest, and I’ll come right back.”

  I told her that I would go with her, naturally, and took pains to lead the way.

  “There’s so much sunshine,” she said as we climbed that final slope. “There can’t be any trees there. Not big ones like these.”

  I told her it was probably a good-sized cliff, that we would see trees below it, and that we might have a fine view of the island and the sea around it. What we really saw when we topped the ridge was less dramatic but a great deal stranger.

  -8-

  THE END

  It was a circular valley entirely free of the mature trees that had formed the forest of the mountain slopes, and filled instead with the bushes, vines, and saplings that had been absent there, green, lush, and saturated with an atmosphere of newness that I really cannot describe but was immediately conscious of. After hours of climbing through the airless antiquity of the forest, it was as though we had been awakened from the deepest of sleeps with a bucket of cold water.

  Seawrack cried, “Oh! Look! Look!” and pressed herself against me. From her voice, she felt wonder and even awe; but she shook with fear, and at that moment, I was ignorant of the cause of all three.

  “The walls, Horn. Their walls. Don’t you see them?”

  I blinked and looked, then blinked again before I was able to make out one curving line of masonry practically submerged in the rising tide of leaves.

  “I know places in the sea where there are walls like those,” Seawrack told me. Her voice was hushed. “ ‘Underwater’ is what you say.”

  I started down, followed reluctantly by Seawrack and even more reluctantly by Babbie. “Human beings, people like you and me, people from the Whorl, can’t have built this. It’s too old.”

  “No…”

  “It was the Vanished People. It had to be. There’s a place near New Viron, but I don’t think it’s as old as this. And Sinew says he found an altar in the forest. I told you about that.” Answered only by silence, I glanced over my shoulder at Seawrack and received a fear-filled nod.

  “Sinew’s altar was probably in a chapel of some kind originally, a shrine or something like that. This was a lot bigger, whatever it was.” I stopped walking, having nearly
tripped over a line of crumbling glass not much higher than my ankle.

  “You wanted to go back.” The fear had reached her voice. “So do I. Let’s go back right now.”

  “In a minute.” The glass was deep blue, but seemed more transparent than the clearest glass from Three Rivers. I picked up a piece, feeling absurdly that it would show me the place as it had been hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years ago. It did not, but the valley I saw through that fragment of blue glass appeared more brightly sunlit than the one my naked eyes beheld.

  “There’s nothing left here,” Seawrack murmured. “These are old, ruined, broken things nobody wants anymore, not even the trees.”

  “Something kept trees from growing here for a long while,” I told her. “Some chemical they put in the ground, or maybe just a very solid, thick pavement underneath this soil. It can’t have been many years since it gave out. Look at these young trees. I can’t see even one that seems to be ten years old.” Silently, she shook her head.

  “I’ve been trying to guess how this blue glass works. It’s as if it sees more light from the Short Sun than we do and shows it to us. Here, look.”

  “I don’t want to.” Seawrack shook her lovely head again, stubbornly this time. “I don’t want to look at their trees, and I don’t want to look through their glass. Babbie and I and going back to your boat.”

  “If we could-” In my surprise, I dropped the glass, which shattered at my feet.

  “What is it?”

  I had been looking down into the valley as I spoke, and thanks to the blue glass I had seen motion. I pointed with my slug gun. “That bush shook. Not the big one, but the little one next to it. There’s some kind of animal down there, a pretty big one.”

  “Don’t!”

  I had taken a step forward, but Seawrack caught my arm. “Let me tell you what I think. Please?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t think it was a-a medicine they poured on the ground, or stone underneath, or anything like that. I think they lasted longer here.”

  It was a new thought to me, and I suppose my face must have shown my surprise.

  “Out on this little island, so far from all the other land people. For a long time they mended the walls and painted them, and dug up the trees and wild bushes. Ten years, is that what you said?”

  “Yes.” Another bush a little farther from us than the first had trembled ever so slightly, a ghost of motion that would have been easy to miss.

  “Ten years ago, they gave up. There weren’t enough left to do it anymore, or it was too much work that didn’t make sense. I know you think I’m stupid-”

  “I don’t,” I told her. “You’re naive, but that’s something else entirely.”

  “You think I’m stupid, but I can think of people, people like us? Two-legged people like you and me and all the people on that boat living here, and there wasn’t anybody else anywhere. We’d mend our boats and the walls we’d built for a while, and then somebody would die, and there’d be more work for everybody who was left. And somebody else would die. And pretty soon we’d stop, but we wouldn’t be dead, not all of us. The last of us wouldn’t die for a long while.”

  “All right,” I told her. “If it’s one of the Vanished People, I won’t shoot him. Or her, either. But I’d certainly like to see them.” I did not believe that it was, and in that I was quite correct.

  For a few minutes that seemed like an hour I scoured the bushes with Babbie trotting at my heels; then a greenbuck broke cover and darted away, leaping and zigzagging as they do. Babbie was after it at once, squealing with excitement.

  I threw my slug gun to my shoulder and was able to get off one quick shot. The greenbuck broke stride and stumbled to its knees, but in less than a breath it had bounded up again, cutting right and running hard. It vanished into brush, and I sprinted after it, all my fatigue forgotten, guided by Babbie’s agitated hunck-hunck-bunck!

  Very suddenly I was falling into darkness.

  Here and thus baldly I had intended to end both tonight’s labor and this whole section of my narrative. I wiped this new quill of Oreb’s and put it away, shut up the scuffed little pen case I found where my father must have left it in the ashes of our old shop, and locked the drawer that holds this record, a thick sheaf of paper already.

  But it cannot be. It cannot be a mere incident like Wijzer’s drawing his map and the rest. Either that fall must be the end of the entire work (which might be wisest) or else it cannot close at all.

  So let me say this to whoever may read. With that fall, the best part of my life was over. The pit was its grave.

  It must be very late, but I cannot sleep. Somewhere very far away, Seawrack is singing to her waves.

  -9-

  KRAIT

  When I regained consciousness it must have been almost shadelow. I lay on my back for a long while then, occasionally opening my eyes and shutting them again, seeing without thinking at all about anything I saw. The sky darkened, and the stars came out. I remember seeing Green directly above my up-turned face, and later seeing it no longer, but only the innocent stars that had fled before it and returned when it had gone.

  It was at about that time that I felt the cold. I knew I was cold and wished that I were not. I may have moved, rubbing myself with my hands or hugging myself and shivering; I cannot be sure. Glittering eyes and sharp faces came and went, but I appealed for no help and received none.

  Sunlight warmed me. I kept my eyes closed, knowing that it would be painful to look at the sun. It vanished, and I opened them to see what had become of it, and saw Babbie’s familiar, hairy mask peering at me over the edge of the pit. I closed them again, and the next time I opened them he had gone.

  I think it was not long afterward that I came to myself. I sat up, cold, full of pain, and terribly thirsty. It was as if my spirit had gone and left my body unoccupied as it did on Green; but in this case it had returned, and my memories (such as they were) were those of the body and not those of the spirit. It was day again, perhaps midafternoon. I was sitting among earth and fallen leaves in a pit about twelve cubits deep.

  (My own height, I should say, was three cubits and two hands at that time-a good deal less than it is now. Looking up at the walls of the pit while there was still light enough for me to do it, I estimated their height as three to four times my own.)

  They had originally been of smooth stone of a kind that was not shiprock, or granite, or any other with which I was familiar. In places it had fallen away, and bare earth thick with gravel could be seen through the openings. These gave me hope of climbing out, but when I tried to stand up I found myself so weak and dizzy that I nearly fell, and quickly sat down again.

  It is conceivable that the pit had been intended as a trap from its beginning, but I do not believe that it was. It seems to me instead that it was all that remained of some work of the Vanished People, possibly the cellar of a tower or some such thing. The tower (if there had ever been one) had collapsed centuries earlier, scatter- ing its wreckage across the valley and leaving this pit to collect the leaves of autumn and unfortunates like me. Eventually treacherous vines had veiled its opening, weaving a sort of mat which I had torn to shreds when I fell. A few long strands hung over the edge still, and it seemed to me that I might be able to climb out with their help, if only I could reach them; but I was, as I have said, too weak even to stand.

  Strangely, I did not sleep that night, although I had slept so long-three days at least-after my fall. I did not, but sat up shivering and tried to rake together a bed of leaves for myself that would keep me warm, or at least less cold, finding among them my slug gun and the clean bones and skulls of several small animals, instruments of divination in which I read my own fate. I prayed; and at intervals of an hour or so, I fired my slug gun into the air, hoping that Seawrack would hear the shots, wherever she was, and realize that I was still alive. When only two cartridges remained, I resolved to reserve them until there was some hope that someone was n
earby.

  (Until I heard her voice, I suppose; but in sober fact I hear her now although she is so far away.)

  Then I would-this is what I promised myself-fire one shot more; and if that also failed, a last cartridge would remain.

  Morning came, and with it warmth and a new face that looked at me over the edge of the pit. At the time I thought it the face of a boy or a small man. “There you are,” the owner said. He stood, and I must have seen that he was naked. Possibly I realized that he was not human as well, but if I did it made little impression on my mind.

  A moment more, and to my numb astonishment he leaped from the edge, down into the pit with me, saying, “I want to get you out.”

  No doubt it was said ironically, but I heard nothing of that. My rescuer had arrived.

  “Shall I do it?”

  Logically I should have said that he was trapped now just as I was; naturally I said nothing of the kind. “Please,” I said, and I believe I must have nodded. “Please help me if you can.”

  “I can if you’ll let me. Will you?”

  No doubt I nodded again.

  He strode over to my slug gun, a diminutive, sexless figure. Picked it up, cycled the action, and threw it to his shoulder, aiming at the sun, or perhaps only at the edge of the pit. “I can’t use one of these, Horn,” he said, “but you can.”

  “Be careful.” My voice had become a weak croak, and seemed the voice of a stranger. “The safety’s off, and you chambered a fresh round.”