by Gene Wolfe
“A little, Niman Pryderi.”
“Are you going to cry this time?”
Bin shook his head. “I’m bigger.”
“You will cry, this time,” the schoolmaster told him. “You’ll scream. When class resumes, I’m going to ask you questions, and they will be questions you can’t answer. I’ll see to that. Then I’ll bend you over my desk and whale away. It will hurt and you’ll cry, but the boys who are ready to league against you will like you after that. And the girls will talk about how you were beaten when they go home this afternoon, not about what you said. Do you understand?”
“I think so, Niman Pryderi.”
The schoolmaster’s voice softened. “Guilt is the worst part, Bin. Knowing that we were on the devil’s side, and that what we got was less than we deserved. I want to spare you that. You’ve done nothing wrong. Have you ever raked something out of the fire with a stick?”
Bin nodded.
“That’s what I’ll be doing, with my switch. Remember that.”
Gam saw the tracks the tears had left down a face not particularly clean and said, “What happened?” and hugged him, and he ate his supper standing up. There was fresh bread for supper, and to divert him from his sufferings she told him about the salt some kind neighbor had surely left for them, a nice big sack of clean white salt just sitting there on the doorstep when she had gone to the well. “Spring was in the air, Bin. I guess you noticed, too, when you children went outside to play? I was thinking about it, it felt so nice, and I turned around and carried my bucket back in, and there it was, sitting on the step.”
By a great effort of will, Bin succeeded in not looking at his bed; it seemed likely the other boy would not have gone to bed so early anyway. He would want some of the new bread after Gam had gone to sleep, Bin decided, and he had earned it, too.
“You want to study your book now?”
He shook his head. “I’m goin’ out to play. It’ll be dark soon. I’ll study then.”
“You got switched for not knowing the answers, Bin. You know them now?”
“That’s why I’d like you to help me study when I come back.”
Once outside, he found his stick and made straight for the barn that had been Niman Joel’s. There was still snow on the ground here and there, and ice that cracked beneath the hard wooden soles of his boots; but there was water, as well, puddles to splash in, and cold drippings that fell from the eaves of the barn onto his head and down the back of his neck, finding their way inside the greasy wool and the old gray shirt.
Most of all, there was the new-year feeling in the air, as Gam had said. It would be kite-flying time before long, and the first kite-flying time in which he was not youngest flier. Emlyn and Cu and Sid would look to him for help with their kites, just as—
Footsteps. He froze.
It was Gid; Bin relaxed a little.
Gid looked around. “Bin? Bin, I know you’re in here. Where are you?”
Bin stepped forward. “Here I am. I thought maybe I could kill a big rat, Gid, like you did. So I stayed real quiet.”
“This’s our barn now.”
Bin nodded.
“We don’t want nobody thinkin’ it don’t belong to nobody. It’s ours.”
Bin nodded again.
“Niman Joel’s dead, and his wife’s run out. So we took his place for what he owed. Who you got with you?”
“Nobody.” The question had taken Bin by surprise.
“Yes, you do. I seen you comin’ across our new field.”
“I did,” Bin admitted, “only there wasn’t nobody with me.”
“I seen him.” Gid stepped nearer—larger, older, and stronger. “You better tell me, an’ I mean now.”
Bin resorted to logic. “If there was anybody, he’d be in here.”
Gid’s fist struck him under the left eye, and he yelped with pain, backing away.
“Don’t you yell when I hit you!” Gid waded in, fists flying, and Bin fell. The kicks were worse—much worse—than the blows of Gid’s fists.
And then the heavy stick Bin had brought to kill rats was above Gid’s head. It came down hard with a noise like a sack of feed dropped from high up, catching Gid where his neck joined his shoulder. Gid swung around, and it hit his forehead with the sound of a hammer pounding a board, and he fell.
The stick fell, too; for an instant, Bin caught sight of the other boy in the dimness of the barn. Then he was gone.
So was Bin, taking his stick with him, as soon as he could get to his feet. The wood was not a comfortable place in weather like this, full of ice and water, with snow-water dripping from every tree; but it was a familiar place, and he remembered the saw-whet. If the other boy had come here one time, he might come here again.
“Hello, Bin.”
Bin whirled, and found the other boy behind him. “That was good,” Bin said with solemn sincerity, “what you done for me. I owe you.”
The other boy smiled. “Owe me what? A pair of boots like yours?”
“Sure! Lemme find a place to set, ’n I’ll take ’em off.”
The other boy shook his head. “I don’t want them, Bin. They’re too heavy for me. I was testing you, and I shouldn’t do that. I won’t, ever again.”
“Then I won’t test you, neither.”
“Good. Why did you go into that barn? Were you looking for me?”
Bin nodded. “About school. The salt, too. It was right of you, ’n I wanted to say I’d give some a’ the bread tonight. You goin’ to be in my bed again?”
“If you don’t object.”
“Then I could a’ said there, only I didn’t know.”
“You wanted to tell me something about your school, too.”
“Yeah.” Bin ran his fingers through his unruly hair, spat, and ran his fingers through his hair again. “‘Bout school ’n Niman Joel. All that. They said how bad it was to burn him. It didn’t seem so bad to me when they was doin’ it. Everybody was yellin’ ’n carryin’ on. I was, too.”
“I understand, Bin, and I don’t blame you.”
“Course I couldn’t see much. I said I did, after, only it was a lie. I seen a little, but they was crowdin’ around the fire too close.”
He waited for some comment from the other boy, but none came.
“So then today in school they said how bad it was, burnin’ a neighbor like that, ’n I said why do it if you don’t like to? ’N I got warmed for it pretty good. Just for sayin’ that. He said it wasn’t for that, only it was. So I got to wonderin’ what Niman Joel done, you know? The Flyin’ People’s rich, they say, ’n whatever they say, why that’s got to go. Fil said he most likely told on them that talked against ’em, only everybody does, ’n they got to know that. So what’d he do? ’N I remembered you used to sleep in his barn, sometimes anyhow, so maybe you’d know.”
“He was very poor,” the other boy said.
Bin nodded. “He didn’t have but the one mule. I know that.”
“Hatred is a luxury, Bin. Like whiskey. Do you know about whiskey?”
“Sure.”
“People who have good farms make it and drink it, and for the most part it does them little harm. But those who are truly poor must choose between whiskey and food, and if they choose whiskey they die. Hatred is like that. Niman Joel had to devote all his energy to feeding himself and his family. He carved spoons and bowls and pannikins in winter, and sold them, though he got very little for them. From spring until fall he worked from sunrise to sunset, trying to grow enough food, and hay enough to carry his mule through the winter. I tried to help him now and then, and sometimes I succeeded.”
“That’s good.”
“I think myself very rich, Bin. You may not believe me, but I do. This whole, beautiful world of yours lies open before me. I can go wherever I want to, and do whatever I want to. I watch the sun go down, and I watch the moon come up. Its mountains and its seas are all mine. I can see them and play on them anytime I want, and I wish that I could sh
ow them to you as well.”
“Did you show him?”
Sadly, the other boy shook his head. “I couldn’t. But I helped him sometimes, as I said, and as I said, he was too poor to hate. He didn’t hate—he couldn’t afford to, and I think that the others must have seen that. I tried—”
“Wait up!” Bin made an urgent gesture. “You’re one?”
“Would you hate me, Bin? If you thought I was?”
“Sure!”
“Then I am not, because I know you can’t afford it. I’m cold, and you’re cold, too. I can see you are. I think we both ought to go inside and warm ourselves before Gam’s fire. You promised her you’d study tonight, and she was going to help you. Remember?”
“You better not let her see you,” Bin said as he turned away. “She’ll have a fit.”
Behind him, the other boy said, “She won’t see me, Bin. I promise you.” Bin had the feeling that if he turned around he would not see the other boy either.
Gam had finished washing up and was waiting for him inside, with Bin’s tattered little arithmetic book on her lap. They had finished with IF JON HAS FIVE APPLES, JORJ HAS FOUR APPLES, AND JAK HAS THREE APPLES, HOW MANY APPLES DO THE BOYS HAVE? And were starting on IT IS FOUR O’CLOCK AND OTO WANTS TO SLED when someone knocked. Bin opened the door and Niman Corin came in without asking, with Gid behind him. “Another boy hit my son with a stick,” Niman Corin told Gam. “He was playing with your grandson, and this other boy came up behind him and hit him.” He looked around at Gid, who nodded.
“I’m sorry to hear,” Gam said politely. “I hope he’s not hurt bad.”
“He saw that boy go in here with your grandson.” Niman Corin did not bother looking around this time. “Didn’t you, Gid?”
“Yes, sir,” Gid said.
Gam shook her head. “Bin came in to study a bit ago, but there wasn’t anybody with him. Were you playing with somebody outside, Bin?”
Bin said, “Yes’m.”
“Who with?”
“Him. Gid.”
Gam looked severe. “You didn’t hit him with any stick, I hope, Bin.”
“No, ma’am. I never.” Privately Bin considered that it might be nice to hit Gid with a stick in the future.
“Did anybody?”
“Yes, ma’am. This one boy did.”
Niman Corin aimed a thick forefinger at Bin. “A boy that was playing with you and Gid?”
“No, sir, Niman Corin. He just come up behind Gid ’n whapped him. I never seen he’s there till he done it.”
Niman Corin looked angrier than ever. “What’s his name?”
Bin strove to remember, hoping he could not. “I don’t know. He told me once, only I forget.”
“Does he live around here?”
“I don’t know, Niman Corin. I don’t think so.”
Gam cleared her throat, the sound of a woman with much of import to say. “‘It’s four o’clock and Oto wants to sled. If it takes half an hour to walk to the hill, and Oto must be home for supper by six, how long will he have to sled?’”
“Why you old bitch!” Niman Corin glared at her.
She looked up from Bin’s arithmetic. “You take that back.”
Niman Corin’s face, red already, grew redder still. “You look at my son’s head.”
“I’ve seen it,” Gam declared. “Now I want you to look at Bin’s bottom. Take off your trousers, Bin.”
Bin did not.
“He was switched for not getting his lessons,” Gam explained, “beat harder than a lot would beat a mule. I’m sure Niman Pryderi had reason, but I don’t like it. I’m going to see to it he’s never switched so bad again. Now you take back what you said or you clear out of my house.”
Gid said, “He’s hidin’ in here, Pa. I seen him come in.” He lay down to look under Gam’s bed.
Bin had been thinking about the other boy, and not about Oto. He said, “Two hours?”
Gam stood up and closed the arithmetic. “You listen here,” she told Niman Corin. “I don’t give a rap for what your Gid thinks he seen. I was sitting right there when Bin came in, and there wasn’t nobody with him. You’ve came in my house and called me a name that will stand between us when these boys are grown men. You get out.”
“I’ve been a friend to you,” Niman Corin told her.
“Not so I’ve noticed. Get out!”
He left, and Gid left with him after looking under Bin’s bed, and after that Gam began to cry.
Shula’s mother stopped Bin on the way to school. “I see you’ve got a new boy living in your house, Bin. What’s his name?”
“There isn’t none,” Bin told her, and knew he lied.
“I saw your grandma going to market yesterday,” Shula’s mother insisted, “and there was a little boy with her. It wasn’t you.”
Bin shrugged.
“I come up to talk, and he wasn’t there anymore. It was like he’d just flown away.”
After recess, Shula herself told the schoolmaster, “Bin was talkin’ to some boy that don’t go to our school. I seen them way over by the trees.” Nor was that the only such report.
They found Bin in the woods one day when the first bold trees had donned their spring green. Niman Adken caught him by one arm and, when he tried to pull away, Niman Corin by the other; and they walked him back to town, saying hardly a word between them. The stake was being driven in as they got there, Niman Torn with a sledge and Niman Rasmos with a maul, so the sounds of the blows they struck (standing in a wagon and pounding down the stake until it stood no taller than a man) differed: Bang! Bam! Bang! Bam! Bang! Bam! On and on.
They kept Bin there while the wood was unloaded from another wagon, and when Niman Smit and Niman Kruk brought a bottle of kero. There were other boys watching by then, shouting to each other just as he had shouted when Niman Joel had burned, and helping unload wood. But Bin did not shout, and could not have helped unload, because Niman Adken had his left arm, and Niman Corin his right. And when the grownups chased the boys and crowded them out so they themselves could see better, Bin was not chased and not crowded at all. He stood way up front instead, where he could see everything that was being done, and they would not let him go.
He thought then of the game in the wood, and how he would hide in the hollow log next time where the other boy would never be able to find him; but he knew that there would never be a next time, not really, and the other boy had flown into the leaves up above, and through the leaves, and up into the sky when Niman Adken and Niman Corin had come, working hard to do it even if he had no wings that you could see. They would never play together in the woods anymore, or sit in front of the fire hearing stories, or huddle together under the old quilt and the blanket on cold nights. No, never.
Then Niman Adken bent down and sort of whispered, “Maybe it’d be better if you shut your eyes,” and some men brought Gam with her hands tied and a rope around her neck like a dog would have; and they took it off and tied her to the stake with it, and everybody threw wood and some of it hit her, and Niman Smit and Niman Kruk poured their kero on it.
Niman Lipa puffed his cigar hard after that, and when it was going good he lit a rag tied on a stick from it; and the reverend came and went right up to Gam like he was going to cut her loose and talked to her, and she talked back, and he nodded a lot and gave her a tract to hold. But he never cut her loose, and when he went away he walked like he was never coming back, right through everybody that was watching, and on out. Niman Lipa puffed again and lit another rag on another stick (or maybe the same one, if he had put the first one out) and threw it. And the kero caught pretty slow, but it caught, the fire jumping up and dying down, and fire got into the wood, too, just little flames here and there, only it was wood burning and you could smell it through the smell of kero, bright little tongues of yellow flame climbing up the pile closer to Gam all the time.
Bin yelled for somebody to help her, and Niman Adken and Niman Corin held him tighter, and he saw Fil between a
couple grown-ups, and Fil was not yelling and did not look happy or sad or anything, just watching. He wiggled out of his coat then and ran up onto the wood and stamped the little flames. And it was funny, but nobody came to catch him. Nobody.
The fire got bigger anyway, and Bin stamped as fast as he could and yelled, “They’re nicer ’n we are! They really are nicer! You don’t know!”
Slowly at first—a few big drops—then harder and harder, it began to rain.
The Legend of Xi Cygnus
In the fall sky, not long after sundown, you may see Cygnus the Swan, which the Greeks called Ornis. In its right wing is the small yellow star that the Arabs (the only people to have named it as far as I know) call Gienah. Its legend is ancient, having reached us at the speed of light.
A small world circling that star was ruled by a giant. To be sure, he was not such a giant as we have here, a giant with eyes and arms and legs all like a man’s, only larger. But he was a giant indeed among his own kind, both huge and strong, and so we will call him that. Like most giants, he was inclined to be tolerant and rather lazy; but like other giants, he could be roused to anger, and his size and strength were so great that when thus roused he was terrible indeed. The legend concerns him, his life, and his death.
There was, upon the world ruled by this giant, a race of Dwarves, numerous, malevolent, and proud, much given to cruel jests and small thefts, the bane of the Centaurs, the Sylphs, the Demons, and all the other peoples of that world, detested and feared. And so it was that when the giant had at last unified it under his rule, he punished these Dwarves severely, to the applause of all those whom they had so long vexed and despoiled. Their fortresses, castles, citadels, and other strong places he pulled down, so that they might no longer mock their neighbors from their ramparts. Into the many mouths of their mines (which were rich and extensive, and very deep) he directed the waters of a hundred rivers and streams.
Nor was that all. He burned their towns and villages, gave over their flocks and their herds to the bears and the wolves, returned their fields to the herbs and the thronging wildflowers from which they had been taken, and set free the bondsmen who had worked them. Lastly, he caused all of the Dwarves to be counted; and finding them too many, with his own hand he slew every tenth.