by Gene Wolfe
Then I walked to Kleon’s.
When I knocked on the door I remembered how the boss border guard had knocked with the barrel of his pistol. That’s when I decided for sure that I would not write the travel book yet. That I would write this book you are holding instead, and get started just as soon as I got back to the States.
Martya opened the door. I was not sure she would be back, even though I had waited a few days so she would have a head start. But there she was, and she opened the door wide so I could come in. She motioned to me, and we went back into the kitchen. “You are hungry. I will make you something.”
I said, “Sure,” and sat down. “How did you know I was hungry?”
“Always you are hungry. Something else, too.” She made a gesture I know my editor will not let me describe. “We cannot. It is late and Kleon will be home soon.”
That gave me the opening I had wanted. I said, “I wouldn’t do it anyway, Martya. You’re Kleon’s wife.”
“You no longer think me beautiful!” She looked ready to spit. “I feed you, yes! But poison!” She got out a couple of big sausages, threw them into a dirty pan, and put them on the stove.
I did not say anything.
“This you see?” It was a big black thing shaped like a mug that I knew darned well was her pepper shaker. “It is poison!” She shook pepper over our sausages.
I said, “You’re beautiful and I could go for you in a big way. But it would be wrong and I knew it would be wrong when you got down on your knees and begged the Leader to save Kleon. What we did before—”
“You would not sit with me! You humiliate me before all the rest! I pat the seat beside me, over and over I pat, but you will not sit!”
“With Naala right there watching? She’d have cut my throat.” I decided not to say anything about Martya’s begging Naala to help Kleon in the car going up.
“You are strong.” She came over and felt the muscle in my arm.
“Not as strong as Kleon.”
“Stronger!” She sat on my lap. “Is harmless, you see? He come home soon. When I hear door open I jump up.” She gave me a big kiss and went off to apply more lipstick.
Cut to the chase. Kleon came home and you can imagine how he felt about me being there. I told him I did not want a fight, which was probably a mistake. I tried to explain why I had come back, and he swung at me.
He did not even try to hide it, just took a short step toward me and swung a roundhouse right. I ducked a little and rolled a little, and moved in.
I will not even try to give you the whole thing. I do not remember it well enough for that, just to start with. My guess is it lasted less than two minutes, although I do not really know. He landed a couple of punches while I worked over his belly and chest. Pretty soon he went down and I stepped back to give him a chance to stand up. He did and he wanted more, which I had not really expected. That was one tough little man.
I put him down again with one to the side of the neck, and he stayed down while I explained that I was not going to touch Martya and it was over between us. He was still down when I left, only Martya was trying to help him up.
Volitain would have been next if I had the hand, but I had to go back to the Willows and get it. My face was a little beat up and my lip was bleeding. Sure, everybody I passed stared at me, but before I get into that I ought to say that nobody who is not wearing gloves should head-punch the way Kleon had. If you cannot land a solid one, it does not do much good. And if you can, you will bust up the bones in your hands. Kids do that and get away with it because they are not strong enough to do any real damage to themselves. Grown men learn pretty soon to punch the soft parts.
Anyhow I was getting stared at, so when I got to the Willows, I decided to wait until sundown before I went to Volitain’s. There would be a better chance of catching him at home then, or that’s what I thought, and I was not going to have to worry so much about a cop seeing me. It was getting to be late afternoon by then, so that is what I did. Just to pass the time I got the hand out and to make sure I still had it and it was all right, and when I saw it was fine I tried to explain to the young witch I had seen one time what I had planned.
Nothing doing, as far as I could tell. She did not appear, and the hand did not move at all. The rest of the time I sat around telling myself that I had been crazy to come back to Puraustays and by this time I ought to be in New York writing this.
Only sometimes I told myself I really should have gone to Germany with Russ and Rosalee. But it was bullshit, all of it. This was something I had to try.
The shadows got long and I heard a wolf howl, or maybe it was a dog, and off I went. I remembered Volitain’s house pretty well and his cherry trees really well, so I found his place without much trouble. I rang his bell and pounded his front door with the knocker, only nobody came. After that I went around the house looking for an unlocked door or an open window. Nothing. So I was just starting to sit down on his stoop when I heard somebody on the path. I stood up and it was him, only he knew me about half a second before I knew him.
We shook hands and he asked if I had been back to America. I said no, just in the capital and out on the lake. I was going to tell him my face was beat up, but I figured he had seen that already. We went into the house, and I told him I did not have a lot of money but I would pay him what I could afford if he would doctor my face a little.
He said he would, and the price would depend on how bad I was hurt. When he had gotten me under a light and looked me over, he said there was nothing there that would not heal of itself in a few days so there would be no charge. I got some ointment and a couple of bandages. My idea was to wait until he was through to talk about the Willows, but he asked about it while he was putting on the second bandage.
“You say you have but little money. Thus you did not find the treasure after all.”
I said, “No, but I’m going to try again tonight, if you’ll help me.”
“Ahhhh!”
“You didn’t know what happened to me?”
“To the contrary,” he said, “I did know. You were taken away by the Legion of the Light.”
“You’re right, I was. How did you know?”
“I listen to my radio now and then.”
“Sure. You heard me and recognized my voice, and that was all there was to it. Got it.”
He laughed. “Not quite as you say.”
“Want to tell me the rest?”
“No. I wish that you tell me how you propose to find our treasure.”
I said, “Do you laugh at magic?”
“When to laugh is appropriate, yes.”
I took out the hand. “Would you laugh at this?”
He shook his head.
“Good. Can you read Greek?”
“So many questions. Why do you wish to know what you ask me?”
I bent the fingers straight and pointed to the palm. “This blur is a spell for finding treasure. If you’ll translate it for me, I mean to use it tonight.”
He bent over to look, then pulled out a drawer I remembered and got out his big magnifying glass. After moving the hand into a better light, and lighting up the spell with a little flashlight, he said, “Yes. There is Greek, and Latin, too. There must be candles for the ends of the fingers. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“Five small candles. I will provide them. Also I will go with you. The spell must be pronounced correctly and by one having authority. That is always true. I am such a one, so I shall recite it. Afterward we search for the treasure together.” He gave me back the hand.
I said, “You’re afraid I’ll cheat you. I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know you would not. More also. I know you will not find it by this method without me.”
“I’ll be glad to have your help.”
He stared at me. Volitain had a stare that went right through you. You not only felt like he was trying to read your mind, you felt like he was doing it and it was pretty easy.
With Magos X, you felt like he already knew.
Finally Volitain said, “This means you must give me my share. I will be there when the treasure is found. Do you realize this?”
“Sure,” I said. “You get a third and Martya gets a third. That was the deal.”
“Shall we have Martya with us?”
I had not thought of that and I said so, adding that it seemed like a good idea if we could get her.
“Her husband has beaten you. Will not he beat you again if we attempt this?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t beat me, I beat him. I’ll fight him again if he wants to fight, only he won’t.”
Volitain said, “Then let us try.” He went out for a minute and came back with a dark lantern, and off we went.
While we were walking back to Kleon’s, I got to thinking about the wolves and how they killed people at night.
Also the man in black. I do not like being scared and generally am not, but I wished I had not left my gun behind in the Willows.
Martya answered the door, saying Kleon was asleep. “He have drink much. He know you have won me.”
I shook my head. “I beat him, that’s all. You belong to him, not to me.”
She kind of studied me before she said, “In time your thoughts will change. Tell me when this happens.”
I wanted to say I would write her a letter, but I did not.
Volitain told her, “We go to find the treasure of Eion Demarates. You need not come with us if you are afraid. We will divide it honestly and present your share to you.”
“You know where this is?”
I said, “No, but we think we know how to find it.”
“I come. Wait here. I must get his key from Kleon’s pocket.”
It should not have been cold, and I guess really it was not. But the wind was off the lake, and the sun had been down for quite a while. I was glad I had on my wool sports jacket, and maybe I should have let Martya have it. But the hand was in the pocket, and I could see all kinds of trouble if she found it. She wanted to link arms. I did not. If she was cold she never showed it.
I could see she was listening for something as soon as we got into the Willows, so after a minute or two I asked her, “Hear anything?”
She shook her head. “No…” She swallowed. “No footsteps upstairs.”
“Sure. He’s right here with us.”
She blinked. Her mouth opened and closed, but she did not say anything.
Volitain said, “You heard me, eh?”
I nodded. “We both did. Okay, it could have been a spook, but I didn’t think so and if it was just some guy, which was what it sounded like, it had to be you. Nobody else knew that Martya and I had come here to look for the treasure. You slammed a door once, too.”
“Did I? Yes, I suppose I did. I was disgusted, not with you but with myself. I had been spying on my friends, a thing I would have supposed beneath me.”
Martya said, “It is not haunted, this house? That is what we must believe?”
I got out the hand. “It probably is. If it wasn’t before we got here it is now, come to think of it.”
Volitain nodded and chuckled.
“You wish to terrify me! Volitain, too! You make a pact before you come!”
“Not us.” I pointed. “That looks like a table under the dust cloth. How about if you pull it off?”
“Serve yourself!” Martya wanted to spit.
I put the hand back in my pocket and pulled off the cloth. Under it was a little egg-shaped table, just right for one man eating alone. I laid the hand on it, on its back, and watched the fingers straighten themselves out. They moved slowly but they moved, all five at the same time.
Volitain got out his candles and a box of matches, sticking a candle on each fingertip with hot wax. The candles were about twice as big as the ones you might put on a birthday cake, but there was nothing fancy about them. They were black or maybe dark brown.
I wanted to know if they were corpse fat.
“The fat of a human corpse? No. If an animal’s corpse will do, yes.” He was bending over the hand with his magnifying glass, reading the fading tattoo by the candlelight. Pretty soon he started reading the Greek spell, or prayer or whatever it was, doing it loud and slow.
Before he started, I had been hearing all sorts of little noises, none of them loud and none noises I paid a lot of attention to, the moan of the night wind in the chimneys, crickets, and small quiet things that were most likely mice. Another noise that may have been the lapping of the lake water. The lake is not very far from where we were. When it started everything got very quiet, not so much like the wind had stopped blowing or the crickets had stopped chirping, but like I had become deaf to all that.
It only lasted a few seconds. Then it started to get noisy. Things were waking up all around, or maybe coming to life. They were stirring, pushing off whatever it was that had been covering them. They were making all sorts of other noises, too. Moaning and grunting. Maybe some were talking to others, or just talking to themselves. Claws were scratching at the broken floors, going up the walls and across the ceilings.
Then something was looking over my shoulder, and I knew it would be a really, really bad idea for me to turn around to see what it was. Martya had grabbed me and was sticking to me like paint.
The hand turned and pointed.
25
HOMEWARD BOUND!
I was scared, but for some reason I had thought Volitain would not be. I was wrong. His face was as white as the dirty sheets that covered the furniture when he got out something I thought at first was a pocket watch and opened it up. Later I found out it was a fancy compass. His hands shook when he took the compass bearing, but he took it just the same. He wrote it down, too, scribbling in a little black notebook before he shut his compass and put it back in his pocket.
Then he blew out the candles.
The other noises stopped and the moan of the wind came back. The crickets started chirping again. Probably the mice came back, too, but I was not paying much attention.
“Over there,” I said. I pointed.
“Indeed.” Volitain had started off.
Martya said, “That wall. We must tear it down. Are your tools here still?”
I said I did not think so.
Volitain waved to us. “We must go into the next room and take a second bearing.”
Martya caught up with him, insisting that the treasure was in the wall.
“Which it would take us all night to tear down even if we had brought tools.”
This time I put the hand on top of an instrument of some kind. I suppose it was a harpsichord, but I do not know a lot about the old stuff. I will not tell you again about putting on the candles or reading the spell, because it was pretty much the same as last time except that all those things we woke up the first time were already awake.
Only what happened next was different. There were lights, faint lights, mostly white, some blue. Some stood still, some circled around us. I had the feeling that if one were to touch me I would die, and that I would want to die, too. I know that does not make a lot of sense, but it is how I felt. Martya started screaming, and that made everything worse. The room rocked. We talk about that at clubs sometimes because it feels like that, but here there was nobody dancing, and no music until the instrument we had put the hand on began to play.
That was when Volitain blew out the candles.
I said, “I wanted to hear it.” I was bullshitting because I wanted him to think I was tough, and I think he knew it. He did not say anything.
Martya stopped yelling and whispered, “The hand pointed the wrong way.” I was surprised she had even noticed.
Volitain shut his notebook. “It pointed the right way, although it was in almost precisely the same bearing as previously. It may be that the treasure of Demarates is buried outside. Had you thought of that?”
He did not wait for her answer, and neither did I. I followed him into the next room. It was one I reco
gnized, the big downstairs bedroom with the painted ceiling. I had lain on my back taking pictures of that ceiling for quite a time, getting up to tinker with my lights and so forth. There was some furniture in that room, the bed and some other stuff, but we crossed the room and laid the hand on the floor, not far from the wall. Then I got a really big surprise. Volitain said, “You must place the candles this time,” and he was talking to me.
It was like getting slugged. I wanted to ask why, but I was afraid I knew. Or at least I had good guesses. The first one was that he had been scared—hell, I had been scared, and I had not done it—and did not think he could do it a third time.
The second was that he knew it was dangerous and felt like he should not have to take all the risk.
What I said was, “I’ll try, but you have to tell me if I’m not doing it right.”
He nodded. “I shall.” That is one word where they live: “doekei.”
I got another surprise a minute later. He helped. He squatted down behind the hand and lit the candles one by one and passed them to me. I thought he would have to read the spell, but I suppose he had memorized it by then. He whispered each line to me, and I repeated it loud and firm without knowing what the words meant.
To me, that was the worst one because it was the only one that made me feel like something was happening to me, not just to the room or the house. I cannot describe it any better than by saying I felt like I was turning into my own shadow. I was getting thinner and darker somehow, and I felt light enough to float away.
Other stuff was happening, too.
The one that got my attention first was that the white witch was there. Her hand was on the floor where I had put it, with the candles I had put there burning at the tips of her fingers. But it was back on her arm, with her kneeling down to keep her hand where it was, pointing slantwise into the wall. I backed away. I did not think about it, I just did it. I smelled woodsmoke from the fireplace and the sour reek of the candles on the fingers of the hand.
Another thing was that more furniture was coming back. A table and some chairs and two more chests of drawers. A wardrobe as big as the cabin on our boat had been, and a lot taller. There was a carpet under my feet, and the dustcover had been pulled off the bed. I think the man sitting up in it was screaming, but I could not hear him. He had a beard and a mustache, and I want to say that only his eyes showed how scared he was but that would not be strictly true. Something inside me kept saying, “Blow out the candles!”