Alyx groaned. Behind her eyelids she was reliving one of the small contretemps of her life: lying indoors ill and badly hurt, with the sun rising out of doors, thinking that she was dying and hearing the birds sing. She opened her eyes. The sun shone, the waves sang, there was the little girl watching her. The sun was level with the sea and the first airs of evening stole across the deck.
Alyx tried to say, “What happened?” and managed only to croak. Edarra sat down, all of a flop.
“You’re talking!” she exclaimed with vast relief. Alyx stirred, looking about her, tried to rise and thought better of it. She discovered lumps of bandage on her hand and her leg; she picked at them feebly with her free hand, for they struck her somehow as irrelevant. Then she stopped.
“I’m alive,” she said hoarsely, “for Yp likes to think he looks after me, the bastard.”
“I don’t know about that” said Edarra, laughing. “My!” She knelt on the deck with her hair streaming behind her like a ship’s figurehead come to life; she said, “I fixed everything. I pulled you up here. I fixed the boat, though I had to hang by my knees. I pitched it.” She exhibited her arms, daubed to the elbow. “Look,” she said. Then she added, with a catch in her voice, “I thought you might die.”
“I might yet,” said Alyx. The sun dipped into the sea. “Long-leggedy thing,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “get me some food.”
“Here.” Edarra rummaged for a moment and held out a piece of bread, part of the ragbag loosened on deck during the late catastrophe. The pick-lock ate, lying back. The sun danced up and down in her eyes, above the deck, below the deck, above the deck. . .
“Creature,” said Alyx, “I had a daughter.”
“Where is she?” said Edarra.
Silence.
“Praying,” said Alyx at last. “Damning me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Edarra.
“But you,” said Alyx, “are—” and she stopped blankly. She said “You—”
“Me what?” said Edarra.
“Are here,” said Alyx, and with a bone-cracking yawn, letting the crust fall from her fingers, she fell asleep.
* * * *
At length the time came (all things must end and Alyx’s burns had already healed to barely visible scars— one looking closely at her could see many such faint marks on her back, her arms, her sides, the bodily record of the last rather difficult seven years) when Alyx, emptying overboard the breakfast scraps, gave a yell so loud and triumphant that she inadvertently lost hold of the garbage bucket and it fell into the sea.
“What is it?” said Edarra, startled. Her friend was gripping the rail with both hands and staring over the sea with a look that Edarra did not understand in the least, for Alyx had been closemouthed on some subjects in the girl’s education.
“I am thinking,” said Alyx.
“Oh!” shrieked Edarra. “Land! Land!” and she capered about the deck, whirling and clapping her hands. “I can change my dress!” she cried. “Just think! We can eat fresh food! Just think!”
“I was not,” said Alyx, “thinking about that.” Edarra came up to her and looked curiously into her eyes, which had gone as deep and as gray as the sea on a gray day; she said, “Well, what are you thinking about?”
“Something not fit for your ears,” said Alyx. The little girl’s eyes narrowed. “Oh,” she said pointedly. Alyx ducked past her for the hatch, but Edarra sprinted ahead and straddled it, arms wide.
“I want to hear it,” she said.
“That’s a foolish attitude,” said Alyx. “You’ll lose your balance.”
“Tell me.”
“Come, get away.”
The girl sprang forward like a red-headed fury, seizing her friend by the hair with both hands. “If it’s not fit for my ears, I want to hear it!” she cried.
Alyx dodged around her and dropped below, to retrieve from storage her severe, decent, formal black clothes, fit for a business call. When she reappeared, tossing the clothes on deck, Edarra had a short sword in her right hand and was guarding the hatch very exuberantly.
“Don’t be foolish,” said Alyx crossly.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me,” remarked Edarra.
“Little one,” said Alyx, “the stain of ideals remains on the imagination long after the ideals themselves vanish. Therefore I will tell you nothing.”
“Raahh!” said Edarra, in her throat.
“It wouldn’t be proper,” added Alyx primly. “If you don’t know about it, so much the better,” and she turned away to sort her clothes. Edarra pinked her in a formal, black shoe.
“Stop it!” snapped Alyx.
“Never!” cried the girl wildly, her eyes flashing. She lunged and feinted and her friend, standing still, wove (with the injured boot) a net of defense as invisible as the cloak that enveloped Aule the Messenger. Edarra, her chest heaving, managed to say, “I’m tired.”
“Then stop,” said Alyx.
Edarra stopped.
“Do I remind you of your little baby girl?” she said.
Alyx said nothing.
“I’m not a little baby girl,” said Edarra. “I’m eighteen now and I know more than you think. Did I ever tell you about my first suitor and the cook and the cat?”
“No,” said Alyx, busy sorting.
“The cook let the cat in,” said Edarra, “though she shouldn’t have, and so when I was sitting on my suitor’s lap and I had one arm around his neck and the other arm on the arm of the chair, he said, ‘Darling, where is your other little hand?”
“Mm hm,” said Alyx.
“It was the cat, walking across his lap! But he could only feel one of my hands so he thought—” but here, seeing that Alyx was not listening, Edarra shouted a word used remarkably seldom in Ourdh and for very good reason. Alyx looked up in surprise. Ten feet away (as far away as she could get), Edarra was lying on the planks, sobbing. Alyx went over to her and knelt down, leaning back on her heels. Above, the first sea birds of the trip—sea birds always live near land—circled and cried in a hard, hungry mew like a herd of aerial cats.
“Someone’s coming,” said Alyx.
“Don’t care.” This was Edarra on the deck, muffled. Alyx reached out and began to stroke the girl’s disordered hair, braiding it with her fingers, twisting it round her wrist and slipping her hand through it and out again.
“Someone’s in a fishing smack coming this way,” said Alyx.
Edarra burst into tears.
“Now, now, now!” said Alyx, “why that? Come!” and she tried to lift the girl up, but Edarra held stubbornly to the deck.
“What’s the matter?” said Alyx.
“You!” cried Edarra, bouncing bolt upright. “You; you treat me like a baby.”
“You are a baby,” said Alyx.
“How’m I ever going to stop if you treat me like one?” shouted the girl. Alyx got up and padded over to her new clothes, her face thoughtful. She slipped into a sleeveless black shift and belted it; it came to just above the knee. Then she took a comb from the pocket and began to comb out her straight, silky black hair. “I was remembering,” she said.
“What?” said Edarra.
“Things.”
“Don’t make fun of me.” Alyx stood for a moment, one blue-green earring on her ear and the other in her fingers. She smiled at the innocence of this red-headed daughter of the wickedest city on earth; she saw her own youth over again (though she had been unnaturally knowing almost from birth), and so she smiled, with rare sweetness.
“I’ll tell you,” she whispered conspiratorially, dropping to her knees beside Edarra, “I was remembering a man.”
“Oh!” said Edarra.
“I remembered,” said Alyx, “one week in spring when the night sky above Ourdh was hung as brilliantly with stars as the jewelers’ trays on the Street of a Thousand Follies. Ah! what a man. A big Northman with hair like yours and a gold-red beard—God, what a beard!— Fafnir—no, Fafh—well, something ridiculous
. But he was far from ridiculous. He was amazing.”
Edarra said nothing, rapt.
“He was strong,” said Alyx, laughing, “and hairy, beautifully hairy. And willful! I said to him, ‘Man, if you must follow your eyes into every whorehouse—’ And we fought! At a place called the Silver Fish. Overturned tables. What a fuss! And a week later,” (she shrugged ruefully) “gone. There it is. And I can’t even remember his name.”
“Is that sad?” said Edarra.
“I don’t think so,” said Alyx. “After all, I remember his beard,” and she smiled wickedly. “There’s a man in that boat,” she said, “and that boat comes from a fishing village of maybe ten, maybe twelve families. That symbol painted on the side of the boat—I can make it out; perhaps you can’t; it’s a red cross on a blue circle—indicates a single man. Now the chances of there being two single men between the ages of eighteen and forty in a village of twelve families is not—”
“A man!” exploded Edarra. “That’s why you’re primping like a hen. Can I wear your clothes? Mine are full of salt,” and she buried herself in the piled wearables on deck, humming, dragged out a brush and began to brush her hair. She lay flat on her stomach, catching her underlip between her teeth, saying over and over “Oh— oh—oh—”
“Look here,” said Alyx, back at the rudder, “before you get too free, let me tell you: there are rules.”
“I’m going to wear this white thing,” said Edarra busily.
“Married men are not considered proper. It’s too acquisitive. If I know you, you’ll want to get married inside three weeks, but you must remember—”
“My shoes don’t fit!” wailed Edarra, hopping about with one shoe on and one off.
“Horrid,” said Alyx briefly.
“My feet have gotten bigger,” said Edarra, plumping down beside her. “Do you think they spread when I go barefoot? Do you think that’s ladylike? Do you think—”
“For the sake of peace, be quiet!” said Alyx. Her whole attention was taken up by what was far off on the sea; she nudged Edarra and the girl sat still, only emitting little explosions of breath as she tried to fit her feet into her old shoes. At last she gave up and sat—quite motionless—with her hands in her lap.
“There’s only one man there,” said Alyx.
“He’s probably too young for you.” (Alyx’s mouth twitched.)
“Well?” added Edarra plaintively.
“Well what?”
“Well,” said Edarra, embarrassed, “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Oh! I don’t mind,” said Alyx.
“I suppose,” said Edarra helpfully, “that it’ll be dull for you, won’t it?”
“I can find some old grandfather,” said Alyx.
Edarra blushed.
“And I can always cook,” added the pick-lock.
“You must be a good cook.”
“I am.”
“That’s nice. You remind me of a cat we once had, a very fierce, black, female cat who was a very good mother,” (she choked and continued hurriedly) “she was a ripping fighter, too, and we just couldn’t keep her in the house whenever she—uh—”
“Yes?” said Alyx.
“Wanted to get out,” said Edarra feebly. She giggled. “And she always came back pr—I mean—”
“Yes?”
“She was a popular cat.”
“Ah,” said Alyx, “but old, no doubt.”
“Yes,” said Edarra unhappily. “Look here,” she added quickly, “I hope you understand that I like you and I esteem you and it’s not that I want to cut you out, but I am younger and you can’t expect—” Alyx raised one hand. She was laughing. Her hair blew about her face like a skein of black silk. Her gray eyes glowed.
“Great are the ways of Yp,” she said, “and some men prefer the ways of experience. Very odd of them, no doubt, but lucky for some of us. I have been told—but never mind. Infatuated men are bad judges. Besides, maid, if you look out across the water you will see a ship much closer than it was before, and in that ship a young man. Such is life. But if you look more carefully and shade your red, red brows, you will perceive—” and here she poked Edarra with her toe—”that surprise and mercy share the world between them. Yp is generous.” She tweaked Edarra by the nose.
“Praise God, maid, there be two of them!”
So they waved, Edarra scarcely restraining herself from jumping into the sea and swimming to the other craft, Alyx with full sweeps of the arm, standing both at the stern of their stolen fishing boat on that late summer’s morning while the fishermen in the other boat wondered— and disbelieved—and then believed—while behind all rose the green land in the distance and the sky was blue as blue. Perhaps it was the thought of her fifteen hundred ounces of gold stowed belowdecks, or perhaps it was an intimation of the extraordinary future, or perhaps it was only her own queer nature, but in the sunlight Alyx’s eyes had a strange look, like those of Loh, the first woman, who had kept her own counsel at the very moment of creation, only looking about her with an immediate, intense, serpentine curiosity, already planning secret plans and guessing at who knows what unguessable mysteries. . .
(“You old villain!” whispered Edarra, “we made it!”)
But that’s another story.
<
* * * *
R. A. Lafferty, the author of this magnificently loony story, is a 51-year-old bachelor, an ex-drinker, a sports fan, and a collector of languages. Self-taught (except for an International Correspondence Schools degree in electrical engineering), he has a reading knowledge of all the languages of the Latin, German and Slavic families, as well as Gaelic and Greek. The Army sent him to Morotai (Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia), New Guinea and the Philippines, and at one time he could speak pretty good Passar Malay and Tagalog. He turned to writing, about six years ago, as a substitute for serious drinking. The tavernkeepers weep while we rejoice: Lafferty’s stories are full of a warm Bacchic glow, recollected in sobriety—euphoria, comradeship, nostalgia, and the ever-renewed belief that something wonderful may happen.
* * * *
THE HOLE ON THE CORNER
By R. A. Lafferty
Homer Hoose came home that evening to the golden cliché: the un-noble dog who was a personal friend of his; the perfect house where just to live was a happy riot; the loving and unpredictable wife; and the five children—the perfect number (four more would have been too many, four less would have been too few).
The dog howled in terror and bristled up like a hedgehog. Then it got a whiff of Homer and recognized him; it licked his heels and gnawed his knuckles and made him welcome. A good dog, though a fool. Who wants a smart dog!
Homer had a little trouble with the doorknob. They don’t have them in all the recensions, you know; and he had that off-the-track feeling tonight. But he figured it out (you don’t pull it, you turn it), and opened the door.
“Did you remember to bring what I asked you to bring this morning, Homer?” the loving wife Regina inquired.
“What did you ask me to bring this morning, quick-heat blueberry biscuit of my heart?” Homer asked.
“If I’d remembered, I’d have phrased it different when I asked if you remembered,” Regina explained. “But I know I told you to bring something, old ketchup of my soul. Homer! Look at me, Homer! You look different tonight!different!! You’re not my Homer, are you!
Help! Help! There’s a monster in my house!! Help, help! Shriek!”
“It’s always nice to be married to a wife who doesn’t understand you,” Homer said. He enfolded her affectionately, bore her down, trod on her with large friendly hooves, and began (as it seemed) to devour her.
* * * *
“Where’d you get the monster, mama?” son Robert asked as he came in. “What’s he got your whole head in his mouth for? Can I have one of the apples in the kitchen? What’s he going to do, kill you, mama?”
“Shriek, shriek,” said mama Regina. “Just one apple, Robert, there’s jus
t enough to go around. Yes, I think he’s going to kill me. Shriek!”
Son Robert got an apple and went outdoors.
* * * *
“Hi, papa, what’s you doing to mama?” Daughter Fregona asked as she came in. She was fourteen, but stupid for her age. “Looks to me like you’re going to kill her that way. I thought they peeled people before they swallowed them. Why! You’re not papa at all, are you? You’re some monster. I thought at first you were my papa. You look just like him except for the way you look.”
Orbit 2 - Anthology Page 21
