Starwater Strains

by Gene Wolfe

  Curious, Susan asked, “Did he really call you little lady?”

  “Heck no. You said to leave out the names so I did.”

  Susan sighed. “I suppose it’s better that way. How did he say to get to the lake?”

  “He didn’t.” Ettie shrugged. “Want me to go in and ask him again?”

  “Will you?”

  “Not unless you tell me to.”

  “All right. Ettie, you get yourself back in there and tell him we must find Hunter Lake. Don’t take no for an answer. You have to be firm with men, and you might as well learn now.”

  Nodding, Ettie went back inside. It would be smart, she told herself, to spend quite a bit of time in there. She pulled a book off the shelf in the parlor and opened it. The Alhambra, by Washington Irving. It looked as though it had never been read.

  After a minute or two, she realized that her mother was trying to peer through the very dirty windowpane and the filthy curtains, and went into the sitting room. There was a nice old rocker in there. She sat in it and rocked awhile, reading Washington Irving.

  Outside again, blinking in the sunlight, she realized that she had never really decided what to say when she came out. To buy time, she cleared her throat. “You really want to hear this?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Okay, first he asked me all about you. That was after I had said you kept sending me back in. He said you sounded like a real bitch, and if you came in he’d get the chamber pot and throw shit at you.”

  “Ettie!”

  “Well, you said you wanted to hear it. After that he explained to me about Hunter Lake. He said didn’t I know why they called it that? I said because a hunter found it. He said that was wrong. He said it was’cause it hunted people. He said it could move all around just like a bear and climb trees—”

  Susan stamped her foot. “We want directions.”

  “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

  “Did he give you any directions? Any directions at all?”

  “Just go home. I told you that the first time.”

  “We need directions, not stories. Go back in there and tell him so.”

  Ettie walked through the empty house, slowly, stopping to stare at things and open drawers, until she felt that something was following her. When she did, she hurried back outside, slamming the door and running down off the porch. “I’m not going back in there! Never! Never any more. You can ground me forever! I won’t!”

  Susan studied her, her lips pursed. “That bad, huh?”

  “Yes!”

  “Did he give you directions?”

  Mutely, Ettie went to the car and got in. Two minutes passed before Susan slipped into the driver’s seat next to her. “Ettie?”

  Ettie said nothing, and Susan started the engine.

  “Get out of here,” Ettie told her. “Pull out onto the road again. Turn left.”

  “That’s away from the cabin. I thought you wanted to go home.”

  “Home-home,” Ettie said. “Not away-home. Turn left.”

  “Our bags are back at the cabin.”

  “Left.”

  Susan turned left.

  “Go down this road,” Ettie said, “till you see a road off to the right through the cornfield. There’s no sign and it’s easy to miss.”

  Wanting to do more than glance at her, Susan slowed instead. Twenty miles an hour. Fifteen. Ten.

  “Slower,” Ettie told her. “Follow it to the woods. Stop the car and get out. Look for the path. Follow the path to the house. A Injun named George Jones lives in the house. He knows. Give him ten dollars.”

  “You said ‘Injun,’” Susan muttered. “You never even say Indian.”

  Ettie said nothing.

  Half a mile later, Susan saw the road, braked too late, backed up, and turned down it—a red dirt road barely wide enough for a farm truck, two ruts flanking a strip of grass and weeds.

  When the road would take them no farther, she and Ettie got out.

  “Please don’t lock the car,” Ettie said. “I’ve got a feeling we might want to get in and get away quick.”

  Susan stared, then shrugged. “I think I see the path. I’m going down it. You can wait in the car if you want to, but it may be quite a while.”

  “You won’t leave the keys?”

  “No.”

  “Two will be safer than one,” Ettie said.

  The house was a shack, perhaps ten feet by fifteen. An Indian woman was tending a tiny plot of vegetables. Susan said, “We’re looking for George Jones,” and the Indian woman straightened up and stared at her.

  “We need his help. We’ll pay him for it.”

  The Indian woman did not speak, and Ettie wanted to cheer.

  Susan opened her purse and took a ten-dollar bill from her wallet. She showed it to the Indian woman. “Here it is. Ten dollars. That’s what we’ll pay him to guide us to Hunter Lake.”

  Something that was no expression Susan had ever seen before flickered in the Indian woman’s eyes. And was gone. “He fish,” she said.

  “In Hunter Lake?”

  Slowly, the Indian woman nodded.

  Susan breathed a sigh and gave Ettie one triumphant glance. “Then take us to him, or tell us how to find him.”

  The Indian woman held out her hand, and Susan dropped the ten into it. The Indian woman clutched it, wadding it into a tiny ball.

  “How do we get there?”

  The Indian woman pointed. The path was so narrow as to be almost invisible even when they were on it. A game trail, Susan decided. “Deer made this,” she told Ettie.

  If Ettie spoke, twenty or thirty feet behind her, she could not be heard.

  “They need water,” Susan explained, “just like us. They must go to Hunter Lake to drink.” Privately, she wondered how far it was, and whether her feet would hold up. She was wearing her jogging shoes, but she rarely jogged more than a couple of blocks. Ettie, in jeans, T-shirt, and loafers, was probably worse off still. But younger, Susan told herself. Ettie’s a lot younger, and that counts for a lot. “Ettie?” She had stopped and turned.

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Am I going too fast for you? I can slow down.”

  “A little bit.”

  Susan waited for her to catch up. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  Susan bent and kissed her. “Really, dear. I love you. You know that. I’ll always love you.”

  Ettie shook her head. “That’s not how it will be. Not really. I’ll always love you, Mom.”

  Susan kissed her again. “Now tell me what’s troubling you.”

  “I was wondering if I’d turned off the TV before we left.”

  “Really, dear?”

  Ettie nodded.

  “Is that all?”

  “Why I’d told you that stuff. About the Native American. All this. I could have just said he wouldn’t tell, only I didn’t.”

  “Because you’re an honest, decent person, Ettie.”

  Ettie shook her head. “Because he made me. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.”

  “Well, come on.” Susan turned and began to walk again. “It’s probably right over the next hill.”

  “It’s a long, long way,” Ettie said despondently. “Besides, this path doesn’t even go there. We’ll walk until we’re too tired to walk any more, and be lost in the woods. Nobody will ever find us.”

  In point of fact, Susan was right. The path skirted the crest of the hill and descended sharply through close-packed hardwoods. For almost twenty minutes Susan and Ettie picked their way through these, Susan holding up branches for Ettie, who hurried under them, waving away mosquitoes.

  As abruptly as the explosion of a firework, they emerged into sunlight. Water gleamed at the bottom of a steep hillside thick with ferns. On the other side of the gleam, water like molten silver cascaded down the face of a miniature cliff.

  Susan raised her camera. A hundred yards or so down to the water—from here, she co
uld only suggest that by showing a few fern fronds at the bottom of the picture. Then the water, then the cliff with its waterfall, then white clouds in the blue sky, and thank God for sky filters.

  She snapped the picture and moved to her left.

  “Are we really going to stay here?” Ettie asked.

  “Only overnight, dear. We’ll have to carry some gear from the car—not the tent, just the sleeping bags and a little food. It won’t be all that hard. Will you want to swim?”

  Ettie shook her head, but Susan was looking through her viewfinder and did not see her. It wasn’t really a hundred yards, she decided. More like fifty. She snapped the picture, and decided the next should be taken at the water’s edge.

  “Mom …”

  She stopped and turned. “Yes, Ettie? What is it?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t go down there.”

  “Afraid I’ll fall in? I won’t, and I doubt that it’s very deep close to shore.” Susan turned and began walking downhill again. She was a little tired, she decided; even so, walking down a gentle slope over fern was remarkably easy.

  “Mom!”

  She stopped again.

  “Where’s the Native American man, Mom? Where’s George Jones? He was supposed to be down here fishing. I can see the whole lake. There’s nobody here but us.”

  Suddenly, Ettie was tugging at her arm, “It’s coming up! Get back!”

  It was, or at least it seemed to be. Surely the lake had not been that large.

  “It’s a natural phenomenon of some kind,” Susan told Ettie, “like the tide. I’m sure it’s harmless.”

  Ettie had released her arm. Ettie was running up the slope like the wind. A loafer flew off one foot as Susan watched, but Ettie never paused. She walked up the slope to the spot, found the loafer, and looked back at the water.

  In a moment more it would be lapping her feet.

  She turned and ran, pausing for a moment at the highest point of the path to watch the water and take another picture. That was probably a mistake, as she realized soon after. The water had circled the hill, not climbed it. She ran then, desperately, not jogging but running for all that she was worth, mouth wide and eyes bulging, her camera beating her chest until she tore it off and dropped it. The Indian shack was nowhere in sight; neither was her car. Woods gave way to corn, and corn to woods again, and the water was still behind her. When the land over which she staggered and stumbled rose, she gained on the water, when it declined, the water gained on her with terrifying rapidity.

  Ettie had turned back to look for her, limping on tender feet. She met the water before she had gone far, and thereafter ran as desperately, leaving a trail of blood the water soon washed away. Twice she fell, and once crashed straight though a tangle of briars whose thorns did nothing at all to hold back the water behind her.

  “Here, Ettie! Over here!”

  She looked to her left, and tried to shout Mom. There was precious little breath left for Mom.

  “It’s our cabin! Over here!”

  It was not. The cabin they had rented had been of logs. This was white clapboard.

  “Get in!” Susan was standing in the doorway. (Behind Susan, Ettie glimpsed the flickering televsion screen.) Ettie stumbled in, and fell.

  Susan slammed the door and locked it. “It’ll try to get in under it,” she said, “but we’ll pack it with towels. Clothes. Anything.” She had thrown her suitcase on the bed. She opened it.

  Ettie raised her head. “I’ve got to wake up, Mom.”

  “We’ll beat it!” Briefly, Susan bent to kiss her. “We’ve got to!”

  Then Ettie faded and was gone, and Susan was alone in the clapboard cabin. Water crept past the towels and her terry-cloth robe to cover the cabin floor. When the water outside had risen higher than the windowsills, it crept under and around the sashes to dribble on the floor.

  Henrietta woke sweating, terrified of something she could not name. Through the closed door, Joan said, “Everything’s ready, Mom. You want to have your Mother’s Day breakfast in bed?”

  “No,” Henrietta whispered. More loudly, “No. I don’t want to stay in here. I’ll be out in a minute, honey.”

  There were two robes in her closet, terry-cloth and silk. Henrietta put the silk one on over her nightgown and tied its belt with a sudden violence she could not have explained.

  The bed was a mess, sheet and blanket twisted and half on the floor. As she paused to straighten it up before she left the bedroom, her eyes caught the dull red of old copper. Once the worn little coin was in her hand, memories came flooding back.

  Bacon and waffles, real butter and almost-real maple syrup in the sunshine-yellow breakfast nook, and Joan spraying Pam on the waffle iron. “Coffee’s on the stove,” Joan announced.

  Henrietta sat, put the penny on her plate, and stared at it. A minute passed, then two. At last she picked it up and dropped it into a pocket of her robe.

  “Do you know,” she told Joan, “I’ve just recalled how your grandmother died, after being wrong about it all these years. She drowned.”

  “Sure.” Joan held the steaming coffeepot. She filled Henrietta’s cup. “Fluid in her lungs. Uncle Ed told me.”

  The Boy Who Hooked the Sun

  On the eighth day a boy cast his line into the sea. The sun of the eighth day was just rising, making a road of gold that ran from its own broad, blank face all the way to the wild coastline of Atlantis, where the boy sat upon a jutting emerald; the sun was much younger then and not nearly so wise to the ways of men as it is now. It took the bait.

  The boy jerked his pole to set the hook, and grinned, and spat into the sea while he let the line run out. He was not such a boy as you or I have ever seen, for there was a touch of emerald in his hair, and there were flakes of sun-gold in his eyes. His skin was sun-browned, and his fingernails were small and short and a little dirty; so he was just such a boy as lives down the street from us both. Years ago the boy’s father had sailed away to trade the shining stones of Atlantis for the wine and ram skins of the wild barbarians of Hellas, leaving the boy and his mother very poor.

  All day the sun thrashed and rolled and leaped about. Sometimes it sounded, plunging all the earth into night, and sometimes it leaped high into the sky, throwing up sprays of stars. Sometimes it feigned to be dead, and sometimes it tried to wrap his line around the moon to break it. And the boy let it tire itself, sometimes reeling in and sometimes letting out more line; but through it all he kept a tight grip on his pole.

  The richest man in the village, the moneylender, who owned the house where the boy and his mother lived, came to him, saying, “You must cut your line, boy, and let the sun go. When it runs out, it brings winter and withers all the blossoms in my orchard. When you reel it in, it brings droughty August to dry all the canals that water my barley fields. Cut your line!”

  But the boy only laughed at him and pelted him with the shining stones of Atlantis, and at last the richest man in the village went away.

  Then the strongest man in the village, the smith, who could meet the charge of a wild ox and wrestle it to the ground, came to the boy, saying, “Cut your line, boy, or I’ll break your neck,” for the richest man had paid him to do it.

  But the boy only laughed at him and pelted him with the shining stones of Atlantis, and when the strongest man in the village seized him by the neck, he seized the strongest man in return and threw him into the sea, for the power of the sun had run down the boy’s line and entered into him.

  Then the cleverest man in the village, the mayor, who could charm a rabbit into his kitchen—and many a terrified rabbit, and many a pheasant and partridge too, had fluttered and trembled there, when the door shut behind it and it saw the knives—came to the boy saying, “Cut your line, my boy, and come with me! Henceforth, you and I are to rule in Atlantis. I’ve been conferring with the mayors of all the other villages; we have decided to form an empire, and you—none other!—are to be our king.”

  But the boy only
laughed at him and pelted him with the shining stories of Atlantis, saying, “Oh, really? A king. Who is to be emperor?” And after the cleverest man in the village had talked a great deal more, he went away.

  Then the magic woman from the hills, the sorceress, who knew every future save her own, came to the boy, saying, “Little boy, you must cut your line. Sabaoth sweats and trembles in his shrine and will no longer accept my offerings; the feet of Sith, called by the ignorant Kronos son of Uranus, have broken; and the magic bird Tchataka has flown. The stars riot in the heavens, so that at one moment humankind is to rule them all, and at the next is to perish. Cut your line!”

  But the boy only laughed at her and pelted her with the shining stones of Atlantis, with agates and alexanderites, moonstones and onyxes, rubies, sardonyxes, and sapphires; and at last the magic woman from the hills went away muttering.

  Then the most foolish man in the village, the idiot, who sang songs without words to all the brooks and boasted of bedding the white birch on the hill, came to the boy and tried to say how frightened he was to see the sun fighting the line in the sky; though he could not find the words.

  But the boy only smiled and let him touch the pole, and after a time he too went away.

  And at last the boy’s mother came, saying, “Remember all the fine stories I have told you through the years? Never have I told you the finest of all. Come now to the house the richest man in the village has given back to us. Put on your crown and tell your general to stand guard; take up the magic feather of the bird Tchataka, who opens its mouth to the sky and drinks wisdom with the dew. Then we shall dip the feather in the blood of a wild ox and write that story on white birch bark, you and I.”

  The boy asked, “What is that story, Mother?”

  And his mother answered, “It is called ‘The Boy Who Hooked the Sun.’ Now cut your line and promise me you will never fish for the sun again, so long as we both shall live.”

  Ah, thought the boy, as he got out his little knife. I love my mother, who is more beautiful than the white birch tree and always kind. But do not all the souls wear away at last as they circle on the Wheel? Then the time must come when I live and she does not; and when that time comes, surely I will bait my hook again with the shining stones of Uranus, and we shall rule the stars. Or not.