by Gene Wolfe
Her laugh was like nothing on earth. It was as if there were golden bells hanging among the flowers through a forest of the loveliest trees that could ever be, and a wind sighing there was ringing all the bells. When I could open my eyes again, I whispered, “Who are you? Really?”
“She you called.” She smiled, not trying to hide her eyes anymore. Maybe a leopard would have eyes like those, but I kind of doubt it.
“I called Seaxneat’s wife Disira. You aren’t her.”
“I am Disiri the Mossmaiden, and I have kissed you.”
I could still feel her kiss, and her hair smelled of new-turned earth and sweet smoke.
“Men I have kissed cannot leave until I send them away.” I wanted to stand up then, but I knew I could never leave her. I said, “I’m not a man, Disiri, just a kid.”
“You are! You are! Let me have one drop of blood, and I will show you.”
* * *
By morning the rain had stopped. She and I swam side by side in the river, and lay together like two snakes on a big shady rock, only an inch above the water. I knew I was all different, but I did not know how different. I think it was the way a caterpillar feels after it has turned into a butterfly and is still drying its wings. “Tell me,” I said, “if another man came, would he see you like I see you now?”
“No other man will come. Did not your brother teach you about me?”
I did not know whether she meant you or Bold Berthold, Ben, but I shook my head.
“He knows me.”
“Have you kissed him?”
She laughed and shook her head.
“Bold Berthold told me the Aelf looked like ashes.”
“We are the Moss Aelf, Able, and we are of the wood and not the ash.” She was still smiling. “You call us Dryads, Skogsfru, Treebrides, and other names. You may make a name for us yourself. What would you like to call us?”
“Angels,” I whispered; but she pressed a finger to my lips. I blinked and looked away when she did that, and it seemed to me, when I glimpsed her from the corner of my eye, that she looked different from the girl I had been swimming with and all the girls I had just made love with.
“Shall I show you?”
I nodded—and felt muscles in my neck slithering like pythons. “Good lord!” I said, and heard a new voice, wild and deep. It was terribly strange; I knew I had changed, but I did not know how much, and for a long time after I thought I was going to change back. You need to remember that.
“You won’t hate me, Able?”
“I could never hate you,” I told her. It was the truth.
“We are loathsome in the eyes of those who do not worship us.”
I chuckled at that; the deep reverberations in my chest surprised me too. “My eyes are mine,” I said, “and they do what I tell them. I’ll close them before I kiss you, if we need more privacy.”
She sat up, dangling her legs in the clear, cold water. “Not in this light.” Her kick dashed water through a sunbeam and showered us with silver drops.
“You love the sunlight,” I said. I sensed it.
She nodded. “Because it is yours, your realm. The sun gave me you, and I love you. My kind love the night, and so I love them both.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand. How can you?”
“Loving me, couldn’t you love some human woman?”
“No,” I said. “I never could.” I meant it.
She laughed, and this time it was a laugh that made fun of me. “Show me,” she said.
She kicked again. The slender little foot that rose from the shimmering water was as green as new leaves. Her face was sharper, green too, three-cornered, bold and sly. Berry lips pressed mine, and when we parted I found myself looking straight into eyes of yellow fire. Her hair floated above her head.
I embraced her, lifting and holding her, and kissed her again.
Chapter 8. Ulfa And Toug
When she had gone, I tried to find her cave again. It was not there, only my bow, my quiver, and my clothes lying on the grass. The spiny orange bow that had seemed very large to me was suddenly small, almost a toy, and I would have torn my shirt and pants if I had managed to put them on.
Throwing them aside, I drew my bow, pulling the string to my ear as I always had. The spiny orange did not break, although I bent it double; but the bowstring did. I flung it away, and got out the string Parka had bitten off for me from her spinning, the string whose murmuring voices and myriad strange lives had disturbed my dreams for so many nights. I tied loops in its ends and put it on my bow, and it sang there when I drew it to my ear, and sang again—a mighty chorus far away—when I sent an arrow flying up the slope.
I could not draw that arrow to my ear, it was too short by two spans; yet it sped flat as a bullet and buried half its shaft in the bole of an oak.
Naked, I returned to Glennidam at twilight, and struck the little, black-bearded man because he laughed at me, and laid him flat. When he could stand and speak again, he told me Ravd and Svon had left that morning.
“Then I can hope for no help from them,” I said. “I must have clothes just the same, and since you are here and they aren’t, you must provide them. How will you do it?”
“W-we have c-cloth.”
His teeth were chattering, so I was patient with him. “M-my w-wife will s-s-sew for you.”
We went to his house. He fetched out his daughter, and I promised not to harm her. Her name was Ulfa.
“A knight was here yesterday,” she told me when her father had gone. “A real knight in iron armor, with huge horses, and two boys to wait on him.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. I wanted to hear what she would say next.
“He’d a big helm hanging from his saddle, you know how they do, with plumes and a lion on it, and a lion on his big shield, too, a gold lion with blood on its claws where they raked the shield, like.”
“That was Sir Ravd,” I told her.
“Yes, that’s what they do say. We had to stand and wait his pleasure, and go in one by one when the boys said, only I didn’t. Papa was feared his pleasure might be his pleasure.” She giggled. “If you know what I mean, and I still a maid, so he hid me in the barn and pitched straw over me, only I got out and watched, and talked to some of them that had been in. Some of the women, I mean, for there was men, too, only I don’t think he would, with them. Hold still while I pin.”
Her pin was a long black thorn.
“They said he asked about the Free Companies, only they didn’t tell nothing, none of them did, even if they all had to swear. Are you sure you don’t want some mush? We’ve lard to fry in from the barrows Pa slaughtered last fall.”
“I’ll kill a deer for you,” I promised her, “in payment for these clothes.”
“That’ll be nice.” The black thorn was back between her teeth.
I drew my bow, reflecting that it had been all I could do to bring an arrow near my ear the day before. Talking to myself, I said, “A short arrow at that.”
“Hmmm?” Ulfa looked up from her work.
“In my quiver. Two arrows I made for myself from spiny orange, and two I took from a boy I fought.”
“One of the boys with him had splendid clothes,” she confided. “I got as close as I could to look. Red pants, I swear by Garsecg’s gullet!”
“That was Svon. What about the other boy?”
“Him? Oh, he was ordinary enough,” Ulfa said. “About like my brother, but might be good-looking in a year or two.”
“Didn’t he have a bow like mine?”
“Bigger’n yours, sir.” She had finished cutting her cloth and begun to sew, making long stitches with a big bone needle. “Too big for him was the look of it. Brother had one too, only it’s broke. Pa says when a bow’s not strung it oughta be bigger than the man that carries it, and most is smaller of what I’ve seen. Like yours is, sir.”
‘“I need longer arrows,” I told her. “Does your Pa have a rule for arrows, too?” Still plyi
ng her needle, she shook her head.
“In that case I’ll give you one I just made. An arrow ought to reach from the end of the owner’s left forefinger to his right ear. Mine are far shy of that.”
“You’ll have to find new ones.”
“I’ll have to make new ones, and I will. What if I were to tell you I was the boy with the big bow?”
The needle stopped in mid stab, and Ulfa looked up at me. “You, sir?” I nodded.
She laughed. “That boy that was here yesterday? I could’ve shut my hand “round his arm, almost. I doubt I could get both ’round yours, sir.”
Pushing the trousers she had been making for me to one side, she rose. “Can I try?”
“May I try. Yes, you may.”
Both her hands could not encircle my arm, but they could caress it. “You should be a knight yourself, sir.”
“I am.” My declaration surprised me, I think, much more than it surprised her; yet I recalled what Ravd had said—“We find this man to be a knight”—and it carried an inner certainty. “I am Sir Able,” I added.
Hidden by her shift, her nipples brushed my elbow. “Then you ought to have a sword.”
“Others have swords too,” I told her, “but you’re right just the same. I’ll get one. Go back to your sewing, Ulfa.”
When the trousers were finished and she had begun the shirt, I said, “Your father was afraid Sir Ravd would rape you. So you said.”
“Ravish me.” She nodded. “Only not because of his name. I don’t think he knew it then.”
“Neither do I. Isn’t your father afraid I’ll ravish you myself?”
“I don’t know, Sir Able.”
“A man intent on rape could do much worse. Have you no mother, Ulfa?”
“Oh, yes. By Garsecg’s grace she’s still among us.”
“But being blind, or crippled in her hands, she can no longer sew?”
Ulfa bit her thread, waking a memory. “She can, Sir Able, I swear to you. She sews better’n I, and taught me. Only skillful sewing takes sunlight.”
“I see. Who’s in this house, Ulfa? Name them all.”
“You and me. Ma, Pa, and brother Toug.”
“Really? They’re uncommonly quiet. I haven’t heard a voice or a step, other than yours and mine. Where is your mother, do you think?”
Ulfa said nothing, but I followed the direction of her eyes, and opened the door of a wretched little room that appeared to be a sort of pantry. A woman Brega’s age was huddled in its farthest corner, her eyes wide with fright.
I said, “Don’t worry, Ma. However this falls out, I’ll do you and your daughter no hurt.”
She nodded and compelled her lips to smile, and the pain of her effort made me turn away.
Ulfa joined us, eager to distract me. “Try it on now. I have to be sure it’s not too small.”
I did, and she ticked like a beetle in the wall, saying I had the shoulders of a barn door.
I laughed, and said I had not known barn doors boasted shoulders.
“You think you’re ordinary, I s’pose, and the rest of us dwarfs.”
“I saw myself in the water,” I told her. “I had been with a woman called Disiri, and—”
“Disira?”
“No. Disiri the Mossmaiden, who I imagine must have given Disira her dangerous name. She wanted to lie in the shade, but she left when the sun was high. I happened to stand in the sunlight, and I saw my reflection. I was ... I was held back once, Ulfa. Not allowed to grow with the years. She said something about that, and she undid that holding back.” It hurt, but I added, “I would guess for her own pleasure.”
Ulfa’s mouth formed a small circle. She said nothing.
“Anyway I am as I am, and I have to make myself longer arrows.”
Hesitantly, Ulfa said, “We try to stay on good terms with the Hidden Folk.”
“Do you succeed?”
“Oh, a bit. They heal our sick sometimes, and watch the forest cattle.”
“As long as you speak well of them, and put food out for them?”
She nodded, but would not meet my eye.
“Bold Berthold and I leave them a bowl of broth and a bite of ash-cake now and then.”
“We sing songs they like, too, and—and do things, you know, in places we can’t ever talk about.” Ulfa’s needle was fairly flying.
“Songs that can’t be sung for strangers, and things you can’t speak of even among yourselves? Bold Berthold told me something about it.”
After a long pause, she said, “Yes. Things I can’t talk about.”
“Then talk about this. Is Disiri great among the Aelf?”
“Oh, yes.” Ulfa rose, holding up the shirt for me to admire.
“A great lady?”
“Worse.”
I tried to imagine Disiri worse. “Perhaps she punishes bandits and the like. Liars.”
“Anybody that offends her, sir.”
I sighed. “I love her, Ulfa. What am I do?”
Ulfa put her mouth to my ear. “I don’t know ‘bout love yet, Sir Able.”
“And I won’t teach you—or at least, not much. Give me my shirt. I promise to try not to get my blood on it.”
I pulled it over my head and flexed my shoulders; it was as loose-fitting as I could have wished. “Didn’t Pa tell you to make it tight, so as to bind me?”
Ulfa shook her head.
“He hadn’t time to think of that, perhaps, or perhaps he thought I would not be wearing it. I suppose it must be easy to kill a man between a woman’s legs.”
“I—I wouldn’t have a thing to do with ... You know. With nothing like that, sir Able. Queen Disiri my witness.” Her small, strong hands caressed shoulders that thanks to her were no longer bare.
“I believe you,” I told her, and kissed her.
A wolf howled in the distance, and in a strangled voice she said, “A Norn-hound. It’s a bad omen. If—if you was to stay with me tonight, I would stay awake to warn you.”
I smiled. “I won’t. But you’re right, the hunt is on. Warn me of what? Your father and your brother?” Wordlessly, she nodded.
“I thought they might burst in when I kissed you. Hoped they would, because it would be better to fight where I’ve got light. Let’s try again.”
I kissed again and held her longer. When we separated, I said, “So that’s the taste of human women. I didn’t know.”
She stared but did not speak. I went to the window and looked out into the street. It was too dark to see anything.
“I know a little something about love now, Sir Able.” She was rubbing herself against me, reminding me of grandma’s cat. “There’s something down here that’s hot as the steam from the kettle.”
“Your father and brother didn’t rush in. You must’ve noticed.”
“Your servant girl didn’t notice a thing right then, Sir Able. Except for you.”
“So it will be outside in the dark. But this house has a rear door. I saw it when we looked in on Ma.”
I opened the door to the pantry, nodded to the cowering woman, and threw open the door in the opposite wall.
Outside were a boy with a spear and two men with brown bills. The men poked at me as if I were a burning log, but I caught a bill in each hand, snatched them from their owners (though I had to kick the larger), and broke the shafts over my knee. The boy dropped his spear and fled.
He did not get far. I snatched up my bow and ran after him, and caught him in a little meadow near the forest. “Are you Toug?”
Perhaps he nodded; if so I could not see him; and if he spoke, it was so softly I could not hear him. I pinned his arm behind his back and rapped his ear with my bow when he screamed. “You have to answer my questions,” I told him, “and answer honestly. Promptly, too, and politely. Is this forest safe by night?”
“No, sir,” he muttered.
“I didn’t think so. We need each other, you see. While I’m with you, you get my protection—a needed safeguard, at least �
��til the sun’s back. I, on the other hand, need you to warn me of danger. Suppose I got annoyed and killed you.”
He trembled, shaming me. He was only a little kid.
“I wouldn’t get your warning then, and things might be bad for me. We’ve got to be careful. And look out for each other. Your name’s the same as your dad’s?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That was his house?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ve got to speak clearly, and call me Sir Able. I don’t want you to duck my questions with uh-huh and huh-uh either, not any more, or even yes and no. You talk about every answer you give.” I wanted to say like in school, but I changed it quick to, “Or else you’ll get a broken arm.”
“I’ll try.” Toug swallowed audibly. “Sir Able.”
“Good. You were ready to kill me with that spear when I opened the door, but I’ll forget it, if you let me. There were two men with bills with you. Who were they?”
“Vali and my pa, Sir Able.”
“I see. I knocked your father down for laughing at me. I guess he resented it. His name is ... ?”
“He’s Toug too.” We were crossing a moonlit glade, and Toug eyed its shadows as if he expected a lion in every one of them.
“You told the truth. That’s good.” I stopped, making him stop too. “And who’s Vali?”
“A neighbor,” Toug muttered.
I shook him. “Is that how you talk to a knight?”
“Our neighbor, Sir Able. Right next door.”
“I expected you in the street. That was why I went out the back. How did foe outguess me?”
“Pa did, Sir Able. He said he thought you’d sneak out the back.”
“‘Sneak.’ Well, that’ll be a lesson to me. Suppose your father had been wrong?”
“Ma’d a’ told us, and we’d a’ gone ’round both sides a’ the house, so one got behind.”
“And put his bill into me?”
Toug nodded, and I shook him until he managed to say, “That’s it, Sir Able, or if we wasn’t in time we’d a’ waited where the path goes through the alders.”