by Gene Wolfe
I ran for the knife, the heletay Langi opened coconuts with. I thought of the boar, and by God I charged them. I must have been terrified. I do not remember, only slashing at something and someone huge that was and was not there, and in an instant was back again. The sting of the windblown sand, and then up to my arms in foaming water, and cutting and stabbing, and the hammerhead with my knife and my hand in its mouth.
We got them all out, Langi and I did. But Mark has lost his leg, and jaws three feet across had closed on Mary. That was Hanga himself, I feel sure.
Here is what I think. I think he could only make one of us see him at a time, and that was why he flashed in and out. He is real. (God knows he is real!) Not really physical the way a stone is, but physical in other ways that I do not understand. Physical like and unlike light and radiation. He showed himself to each of us, each time for less than a second.
Mary wanted children, so she stopped the pill and did not tell me. That was what she told me when I drove Rob’s jeep out to North Point. I was afraid. Not so much afraid of Hanga (though there was that, too) but afraid she would not be there. Then somebody said, “Banzai!” It was exactly as if he were sitting next to me in the jeep, except that there was nobody there. I said, “Banzai,” back, and I never heard him again; but after that I knew I would find her, and I waited for her at the edge of the cliff.
She came back to me when the sun touched the Pacific, and the darker the night and the brighter the stars, the more real she was. Most of the time it was as if she were really in my arms. When the stars got dim and the first light showed in the east, she whispered, “I have to go,” and walked over the edge, walking north with the sun to her right and getting dimmer and dimmer.
I got dressed again and drove back and it was finished. That was the last thing Mary ever said to me, spoken a couple of days after she died.
She was not going to get back together with me at all; then she heard how sick I was in Uganda, and she thought the disease might have changed me. (It has. What does it matter about people at the “end of the earth” if you cannot be good to your own people, most of all to your own family?)
Taking off.
We are airborne at last. Oh, Mary! Mary starlight!
Langi and I will take Adam to his grandfather’s, then come back and stay with Mark (Brisbane or Melbourne) until he is well enough to come home.
The stewardess is serving lunch, and for the first time since it happened, I think I may be able to eat more than a mouthful. One stewardess, twenty or thirty people, which is all this plane will hold. News of the shark attack is driving tourists off the island.
As you see, I can print better with my left hand. I should be able to write eventually. The back of my right hand itches, even though it is gone. I wish I could scratch it.
Here comes the food.
An engine has quit. Pilot says no danger.
He is out there, swimming beside the plane. I watched him for a minute or more until he disappeared into a thunderhead. “The tree is my hat.” Oh, God.
Oh my God!
My blood brother.
What can I do?
The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun
In the years before the river changed its course, both men and women understood all the things that are above the air, though they did not teach these things, as they themselves understood them, to their grandchildren. This is what they said:
This sky that bows over your head is a field, O most cherished Becca, and is of the best black land. So you may see it even now. Look up, until your eyes have forgotten the fire. Look between the stars.
This greatest of all fields belongs to an old man and his wife—I know their names, though I may not reveal to you such sacred things until you are tall and wise. When the weather is fair, and the night wind makes it pleasant to walk about, the old man seeds his whole field. Before you ate, wrapping your meat in the good bread your mother baked for us today on her flat stone, you watched the seeds fall. Remember? Each seed that the old man sows is a shining star. Because it is from his hand that those seeds fall, they shape themselves into men and beasts and many other things, the Little Bear and the Great Bear, the Hunter and his Hounds, and all the rest that you see now. And until their seeds have sprouted, all of these things are free to dash across the sky.
Then comes the rain. Its clouds cover them, and they grow, and we never see those beasts and men again until, on the next fine night, the old man sows the sky-field with new stars. If you were to walk among them, O cherished Becca, as our own longfather did, who himself ran and played in the old man’s field, you would be dazzled by their beauty, just as our longfather was, for they grow higher and ever higher, and brighter and ever brighter. No flowers in our fields are ever so beautiful or so many-colored as they are. And even as a single grain of corn grows to a fine, tall plant bearing a hundred grains such as once it was, so with all of these stars.
Then the old woman, who is the old man’s wife, picks them, every one except those that have grown from the Tree of the South. Them she leaves to the old man as seed for the morrow, but the rest she heaps on her bakestone. From the birch she cuts a new, white pestle and pounds it across the sky until she has ground all of the stars to powder. At dawn she moistens her flour with water dipped from the lake, and more drops are scattered from her fingers than you and I together could ever count. You will see these drops when you wake, on grass and bush and stone, and even on the new elk hide that I pegged to dry.
Then out comes the old woman’s rolling pin, the finest that has ever been, a rolling pin of the strong and magical gold of the old time. Here, we see only one round end of it, which we call the sun. With it she rolls out the world upon her blue baking stone.
This she has been doing for many, many years. Indeed, before our longfather was born, she was doing her work in this same way, day after day, because the old man who sows the stars is always hungry and eats all that she bakes, so that after every day there is hardly a scrap of world left for tomorrow. Can you wonder then, O cherished Becca, that when she has done a whole year of such hard work the old woman wearies? Less and less she toils, so that our days wane, shorter and shorter. And the dry white flour that she has pounded from the stars sifts down upon us, out of the sky. Catch one single speck of it on a fleck of walnut bark and look at it very closely, and you may see that her flour is of stars still. Or find a golden leaf that has fled the maple, piece it with a locust thorn, and place a single drop of clear water on the hole that the thorn has made. Look through that drop at your snowflake upon the bark, and you will see that it is a star truly.
But she tires, as I told you, of so much grinding and rolling and baking. She grows careless even of treasures. Then come the Hounds, leaving the side of the Hunter, their master, and the pursuit of the Great Bear, which is their proper business. And together the Hounds make off with the old woman’s rolling pin. With her golden rolling pin in their jaws, each striving to snatch it from the other, those bad Hounds run away, far, far to the south.
Do not laugh, O cherished Becca! For this is a serious matter for you and me. So far to the south, the golden sun seems small and cold. The deer are lean then, there are no berries, apples freeze and rot no matter how many leaves we heap upon their pit, and wolves, made bold by the Hounds’ absence, sniff ‘round the camp at night, caring nothing for our fire. At that time, children who venture out into the freezing dark without their fathers are torn to pieces. Do not forget!
See where I point, just above the blasted spruce? There course the Hounds, so far in the south that before we sleep they will be running through the trees. Asterion and Chara are their names, dog and bitch. Do you see them bounding between the racing clouds, O cherished Becca? Cor Caroli, La Supera, the Spiral Nebula, and all the rest. All these names I shall teach you when summer comes again, and you are taller.
It would go ill with us, O cherished Becca, if those bad Hounds were allowed to play with the golden sun until they tired
of it. We should have nights without days, and see fair Skuld, winter’s Morning Star, rise and set, with never a glimpse of morning.
But away to the south, the child rides his goat. We cannot see them now from our camp, though soon we will. The child loves us, perhaps. So at least we hope. Certainly his goat hates Hounds, as goats always do. Thus, as the Hounds approach him, he lowers his head to butt and drives them north again, their game ended for another year.
Or their task done. Perhaps that is how we should say it. Having so nearly lost her golden rolling pin, the old woman understands once more how dear a thing it is that she treated so carelessly, and returns to her task. Can you guess, O cherished Becca, what shapes she has cut from her dough? Yes, I am one, but not the only one by any means. Tree and rock and stream are her work as much as I—or you. The rabbit that you chased today is hers. So are the feet upon which you ran after it.
No, one does not see her in the sky, though there are other women there. One sees—
You did? And taller than the trees? Bent and stem?
No, those were not bulls you heard, but the roaring of her lions. I did not know. Yes, this is the time at which one sees her. Her rolling pin is gone, as I told you, and she herself left free to stroll about the world as she desires. I do not wonder that she smiled at you. Who would not? But, oh, cherished Becca, you must be careful, very careful, all your life. Those who see such things, even in the sky, must always have a care. I am glad she did not speak to you.
I see.
That is an old name of hers—a name I would have said that all but I had forgotten.
Fauna.
It was Fauna, the Bona Dea, some say, who sent the she-wolf that … Well, never mind. Nature, we call her now. But you must call her Fauna, O cherished Becca, because she has told you to. She is lonely, perhaps, for her old name; nor is the sun the only thing that leaves us and returns. Yes, I know that I said I could not tell you yet. It was because I did not think you old enough, O cherished Becca. But I was wrong. When Nature says that a child is grown, the child is grown. Even I know that, though I have never counted myself among the wise.
The names of the Hounds I have taught you already. The goat has many, of which the best and safest is Capricorn. Him, too, you may meet in wood or field, most often at noon, they say. Possibly that is because he must be back at his place in the sky by nightfall. Capricorn or Stonebuck, both are safe. But flee him, O cherished Becca. Fly from him, or he will butt you or do worse. Flee any goat, or any man with a goat’s feet and horns. If you see the print of his cloven hoof beside water, turn away. And whether you see him on earth or in the sky, know that he brings heat and storm.
Now lay you down, O cherished Becca. You will see the stars better so. Count them, if you would see their true shapes.
That is well, and here is your blanket snug about you. There is the Swan, and there the Harp. See how beautiful they are! Cygnus and Lyra, we call them.
The old man? No, I will not tell you his name. Not I! Neither now nor ever. You will learn it soon enough. Close your eyes.
That is well. Sleep for a moment, and the stars will wait for you.
Sleep.
Forget the old man and his name while still you may. I am glad, very glad, O small and much-cherished Becca, that I shall not be present when you find it out at last.
The Friendship Light
For my own part I have my journal; for my late brother-in-law’s, his tape. I will refer to myself as “Ty” and to him as “Jack.” That, I think, with careful concealment of our location, should prove sufficient. Ours is a mountainous—or at least, a hilly—area, more rural than Jack can have liked. My sister’s house (I insist upon calling it that, as does the law) is set back two hundred yards from the county road. My own is yet more obscure, being precisely three miles down the gravel road that leaves the county road to the north, three-quarters of a mile west of poor Tessie’s drive. I hope that these distances will be of help to you.
It began three months ago, and it was over—properly over, that is to say—in less than a week.
Though I have a telephone, I seldom answer it. Jack knew this; thus I had received a note from him in the mail asking me to come to him on the very day on which his note was delivered. Typically, he failed to so much as mention the matter he wished to discuss with me, but wrote that he would be gone for several days. He was to leave that night.
He was a heavy-limbed blond man, large and strong. Tessie says he played football in college, which I can well believe. I know he played baseball professionally for several seasons after graduation, because he never tired of talking about it. For me to specify his team would be counterproductive.
I found him at the end of the drive, eyeing the hole that the men from the gas company had dug; he smiled when he saw me. “I was afraid you weren’t coming,” he said.
I told him I had received his note only that day.
“I have to go away,” he said. “The judge wants to see me.” He named the city.
I offered to accompany him.
“No, no. I need you here. To look after the place, and—You see this hole?”
I was very tempted to leave him then and there. To spit, perhaps, and stroll back to my car. Even though he was so much stronger, he would have done nothing. I contented myself with pointing out that it was nearly a yard across, and that we were standing before it. As I ought to have anticipated, it had no effect upon him.
“It’s for a friendship light. One of those gas things, you know? Tess ordered it last fall … .”
“Before you had her committed,” I added helpfully.
“Before she got so sick. Only they wouldn’t put it in then because they were busy tuning up furnaces.” He paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead with his index finger, flinging the moisture into the hole. I could see he did not like talking to me, and I resolved to stay for as long as I could tolerate him.
“And they don’t like doing it in the winter because of the ground’s being frozen and hard to dig. Then in the spring it’s all mushy.”
I said, “But here we are at last. I suppose it will be made to look like a carriage lamp? With a little arm for your name? They’re so nice.”
He would not look at me. “I would have canceled the order if I’d remembered it, but some damned woman phoned me about it a couple days ago, and I don’t know—Because Tess ordered it—See that trench there?”
Again, I could hardly have failed to notice it.
“It’s for the pipe that’ll tap into the gas line. They’ll be back tomorrow to run the pipe and put up the lamp and so on. Somebody’s got to be here to sign for it. And somebody ought to see to Tess’s cats and everything. I’ve still got them. You’re the only one I could think of.”
I said that I was flattered that he had so much confidence in me.
“Besides, I want to visit her while I’m away. It’s been a couple of months. I’ll let her know that you’re looking after things. Maybe that will make her happy.”
How little he knew of her!
“And I’ve got some business of my own to take care of.”
It would have given me enormous pleasure to have refused, making some excuse. But to see my old home again—the room in which Tessie and I slept as children—I would have done a great deal more. “I’ll need a key,” I told him. “Do you know when the workmen will come?”
“About nine-thirty or ten, they said.” Jack hesitated. “The cats are outside. I don’t let them in the house anymore.”
“I am certainly not going to take any responsibility for a property I am not allowed to enter,” I told him. “What if there were some emergency? I would have to drive back to my own house to use the telephone. Do you keep your cat food outside, too? What about the can-opener? The milk?”
“All right—all right.” Reluctantly, he fished his keys from his pocket. I smiled when I saw that there was a rabbit’s foot on the ring. I had nearly forgotten how superstitious he was.
; I arrived at the house, which for so many years had been my home, before nine. Tessie’s cats seemed as happy to see me as I was to see them—Marmaduke and Millicent “talked” and rubbed my legs, and Princess actually sprang into my arms. Jack has had them neutered, I believed. It struck me that it would be fairly easy to take one of the females—Princess, let us say—home with me, substituting an unaltered female of similar appearance who would doubtless soon present Jack with an unexpected litter of alley kittens. One seal-point Siamese, I reflected, looks very like another; and most of the kittens—very possibly all of them—would be black, blacks being exceedingly common when Siamese are outcrossed.
I would have had to pay for the new female, however—fifty dollars at least. I dropped the idea as a practical possibility as I opened a can of cat food and extended it with one of tuna. But it had set my mental wheels in motion, so to speak.
It was after eleven when the men from the gas company came, and after two before their supervisor rang the bell. He asked if I was Jack, and to save trouble I told him I was and prepared to sign whatever paper he might thrust under my nose.
“Come out here for a minute, will you?” he said. “I want to show you how it works.”
Docilely, I followed him down the long drive.
“This is the control valve.” He tapped it with his pencil. “You turn this knob to raise and lower the flame.”
I nodded to show I understood.
“Now when you light it, you’ve got to hold this button in until it gets hot—otherwise, it’ll go out, see? That’s so if it goes out somehow, it’ll turn off.”
He applied his cigarette lighter, and the flame came on with a whoosh.