Wyst: Alastor 1716

by Jack Vance

  “It’s a wurgle,” one of his fellows said. “Damnation and vileness![40] I believe it’s my Dalbuska!”

  “Then where’s the kit?” bellowed Booch. “Did she drown herself? Hey, fellow!”—this to Jantiff—“What did you see?”

  “The kit and the wurgles. She led them down to the water and when I came to look she was gone.”

  “And my good wurgles! Pastola put a curse on her; the witches swim underwater like smollocks!”

  Booch shouldered Jantiff aside and returned to the mad. The other two followed.

  Jantiff watched as they marched to the pool and there observed the corpse of the witch-woman. After a few minutes’ muttered conversation they called up their wurgles and tramped off toward Balad into the last lavender rays of the setting sun.

  Jantiff returned to his hut. He found the witch-girl where he had left her, sitting wan and still.

  “You’re safe now,” said Jantiff. “Don’t be frightened; no one will harm you here. Are you hungry?”

  The girl responded by not so much as quiver. In a state of shock, thought Jantiff. He built a good blaze in his fireplace and turned her chair toward the heat. “Now: warm yourself. I’ll cook soup, and there’ll be roast percebs as well, with scallions and oil!”

  The girl stared into the fire. After a few moments she listlessly held out her hands to the blaze. Jantiff, preparing the meal, watched her from the corner of his eye. Her face, no longer contorted by terror, was pinched and pale; Jantiff wondered about her age. It was certainly less than his own, still he could not regard her as a child. Her breasts were small and round; her hips, while unmistakably feminine, were slender and unobtrusive. Perhaps, thought Jantiff, she was of a constitution naturally slight. He bustled here and there, and presently served up the best meal his resources allowed.

  The girl showed no diffidence about eating, though she took no great quantity of food. Jantiff from time to time attempted conversation: “There, now! Are you feeling better?”

  No response.

  “Would you like more soup? And here: a nice perceb.” Again no answer. When Jantiff tried to serve out more food, she pushed the plate away.

  Her conduct was almost that of a deaf-mute, thought Jantiff. Nonetheless, something about her manner left him in doubt. Perhaps his language was strange to her? This consideration bore no weight: at the clearing in the woods there had likewise been no conversation.

  “My name is Jantiff Ravensroke. What is your name?” Silence.

  “Very well then; I must supply a name for you. What about ‘Pusskin’? or ‘Tickaboo’? or ‘Parsnip’? Even better, Jilliam;[41] that would do nicely. But I mustn’t make jokes. I shall call you ‘Glisten’ because of your hair and your golden fingernails. ‘Glisten’ you shall be.”

  But “Glisten” would not acknowledge her new name, and sat leaning forward, arms on knees, staring into the fire. Presently Jantiff saw that she was weeping.

  “Come, come, this won’t do! You’ve had a miserable time, but …” Jantiff’s voice trailed off. How could he console her for the loss of someone who might have been her mother? Indeed, her self-control was marvelous in itself! He knelt beside her and gingerly patted her head. She paid no heed, and Jantiff desisted.

  The fire burnt low. Jantiff went outside, to fetch wood and look around the night. When he, returned within, Glisten—so he had resolved to call her—had lain herself on the damp floor with her face to the ground. Jantiff surveyed her a moment, then bent over and with a bit of undignified stumbling, carried her to the bed. She lay limp and passive, eyes closed. Jantiff somberly banked the fire with three green logs and removed his boots. After a moment’s hesitation he diffidently removed Glisten’s sandals, noting that she had also gilded her toenails. A curious vanity! A symbol perhaps of caste, or status? Or an ornamental convention, no more? He lay down beside her and pulled up the ragged old coverlet—an item also rescued from Fariske’s shed. For a long time he lay awake until finally the witch girl’s breathing indicated sleep.

  Chapter 13

  The light of dawn entered Jantiff’s makeshift window. He cautiously raised himself on his elbow. Glisten was awake, and lay with her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  “Good morning,” said Jantiff. “Are you speaking to me today? … I thought not… Well, life goes on and I must gather my percebs. But first, breakfast!”

  Jantiff blew up the fire, boiled tea and toasted bread. For five minutes Glisten watched apathetically, then—abruptly, as if prodded—she sat up, swung her legs to the floor. She slipped on her sandals and with an inscrutable sidelong glance toward Jantiff, walked from the hut. Jantiff sighed and shrugged and turned his attention back to the food. Glisten doubtless longed for the company of her own kind. He could offer only temporary security, at best. She was better off in the Sych. Nevertheless he felt a pang of regret; Glisten had invested his but with something heretofore lacking: companionship? Perhaps.

  Jantiff prepared to eat a solitary breakfast… Footsteps. The door swung open. Glisten entered, her face washed, her hair ordered. She carried in her skirt a dozen brown pods which Jantiff recognized as the fruit of the turnover vine. Glisten deftly husked the pods, dropped them into a pan. Five minutes later, Jantiff gingerly tasting, found them a most savory adjunct to the toasted bread.

  “I see that you are a wise girl, indeed,” said Jantiff. “Do you like the name ‘Glisten’? If you do, nod—or better, smile!” He watched her closely and Glisten, whether or not responding to his instruction, seemed to manage a twist of the lips.

  Jantiff rose to his feet and gazed out over the dreary ocean. “Well, no avoiding it. The percebs must be harvested, and now I need nine bucketloads! Oh, my clammy skin; can it tolerate such abuse?”

  Luckily for Jantiff his shoal of rocks had lain fallow for years and the outer face was heavily encrusted. Jantiff worked with an energy born of discomfort, and in record time gathered his nine buckets. Glisten meanwhile had wandered about, often looking toward the forest, as if listening for a summons or a call, which evidently she failed to hear. At last she came down to the shore, and seating herself primly on a rock, watched Jantiff at his work. When Jantiff began to shell and clean his catch, she helped him: listlessly at first, then with increasing deftness. Well before noon, Jantiff was ready to make his deliveries.

  “I must leave you,” he told Glisten. “If you decide to go away then you must do so, without regrets. Of course if you care to stay, you are more than welcome. But above all remember: if you see anyone, hide, and quickly!”

  Glisten listened soberly and Jantiff went off about his business.

  The Old Groar was full, of gossip about the witch chasing, which by general consensus had gone well. “They’re cleared from the Sych, this end at least,” declared one man. “Cambres caught his two garden thieves and downed them on the spot.”

  “Hal That will soothe his soul!”

  “Booch is in an awful state; he missed his young kit He swears she ran out on the water and led Dusselbeck’s good Feigwel wurgles to their death.”

  “Ah, the thing!”

  “Still the wurgles tore a witch-mother properly to bits!”

  “Now they’ll have to take the treatment!”

  This last was evidently a jocularity; everyone laughed, and at this point Jantiff departed the tap room.

  During the afternoon he started his decoration of the Cimmery, working with great intensity and so completed perhaps a third of his job. He might have accomplished, more had be not found himself fretting and anxious to return to his hut. Along the way he stopped by the general store and bought new bread, oil, a packet of dehydrated goulash and another of candied persimmon slices.

  When he returned to the hut, Glisten was nowhere to be seen, but the fire was burning, the bed had been put in order and the but seemed unaccountably tidy. Jantiff went out to look this way and that. “Better, far better, if she’s gone,” he muttered. “After all, she can’t stay here after I’ve gone off to Uncibal.�
� Even as he turned to enter the hut, Glisten came trotting across the meadow, looking back over her shoulder.

  Jantiff seized up his cudgel but whatever had alarmed her made no appearance.

  At the sight of Jantiff, Glisten slowed her pace to a demure walk .. She carried a cloth sling full of green finberries. Ignoring Jantiff as if he were invisible, she put down the berries, then stood looking pensively back toward the forest.

  “I’m home,” said Jantiff. “Glisten! Look at me!”

  Somewhat to his surprise—by coincidence, so he suspected—the witch-girl turned her head and studied him somberly. Half in frustration, half in jest, Jantiff asked: “What goes on in your mind? Do you see me as a person? or a shadow? or a chattering moon-calf?” He took a step toward her, thinking to arouse some flicker of reaction: surprise, alarm, perplexity, anything. Glisten hardly seemed to notice, and Jantiff rather sheepishly contented himself with handing over the packet of sweetmeats. “This’ is for you,” he said. “Can you understand? For Glisten. For dear little Glisten, who refuses to talk to Jantiff.”

  Glisten put the packet aside, and began to clean the berries. Jantiff watched in a warm suffusion. How pleasant this might have been under different circumstances! But in a month he would be gone and the but would again fall into ruins, and Glisten must return to the forest.

  Jantiff, contriving fanciful arabesques in red, gold, dark blue and lime green across the front of the dreary old Cimmery, looked around to find Eubanq shuffling quietly past. Jantiff jumped down from the trestle. “Eubanq, my good fellow!”

  Eubanq halted somewhat reluctantly, shoving his bands into the pockets of his fawn-colored jacket He cast an eye over the decorated timbers. “Ah, Jantiff. You’re doing fine work, getting the old Cimmery ready for the fair. Well, you’ll want to get along with your work, and I mustn’t disturb your concentration.”

  “Not at all!” said Jantiff. “This is no more than improvisation; I can do it in my sleep. I have a question for you: a business matter, so to speak.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m paying a hundred ozols for transportation to Uncibal space-port, in time to catch the Serenaic; correct?”

  ‘Well, yes,” said Eubanq guardedly. “That was the proposal we discussed, I believe.”

  “A hundred ozols is a large sum of money and naturally pays all costs for the trip. I may want to bring a friend along; the hundred ozols will of course suffice. I mention this now to avoid any possible misunderstanding.”

  Eubanq’s pale blue eyes flicked across Jantiff’s face, then away. “What friend might this be?”

  “No matter; it’s really all hypothesis at the moment But you agree that the hundred ozols will cover our costs?”

  Eubanq considered, pursing his thick lips, and at last shook his head. “Well, Jantiff, I should hardly think so. In this business we’ve got to work to rules; otherwise everything goes topsy-turvy. One passage: one fare. Two passages: two fares. That’s the universal rule.”

  “Another hundred ozols?”

  “Correct.”

  “But that’s an enormous amount of money! I’m renting the flibbit on a trip basis, not by fares.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it. On the other band, I’ve got a hundred expenses to consider: overhead, maintenance, depreciation, interest on the initial investment—”

  “But you don’t own the boat!”

  “It’s all to the same effect. And never forget, like anyone else I hope to gain a bit of profit from the transaction.”

  “A very generous profit,” cried Jantiff. “Have you no human feelings or generosity?”

  “Very little of either,” Eubanq confessed with his easiest grin. “If you don’t like my price, why not try elsewhere? Gooch might be persuaded to borrow the Grand Knight’s Dorpby for the afternoon.”

  “Hmf. I expect that you’ve received confirmation of my passage aboard the Serenaic?”

  “Well, no,” said Eubanq. “Not yet. Apparently there’s been some sort of mix-up.”

  “But time is getting short!”

  “I’ll surely do my best.” Eubanq waved his band and went on his way.

  Jantiff continued painting, using furious emphatic strokes which lent a remarkable brio to his work. He calculated his assets. A hundred ozols was well within his reach, but two hundred? Jantiff counted forward and backward, but in every case fell short by fifty or even sixty ozols.

  Later in the day at the Old Groar, Jantiff cut and primed the panels be would paint for Fariske. There was still talk of the witch-chasing, to which Jantiff listened with a curled lip. Someone had noted remnants of the band straggling north toward the Wayness Mountains. All agreed that the Sych had been effectively cauterized, and talk turned to the, forthcoming Market Fair. A certain portly fisherman went to watch Jantiff at his work. “What will you paint on these panels?”

  “I haven’t quite decided. Landscapes, perhaps.”

  “Bah, that’s no entertainment! You should paint a humorous charade, with all the Old Groar regulars dressed in ridiculous costumes!”

  Jantiff nodded politely. “An interesting idea, but some might object. Also, I’m not being paid to paint portraits.”

  “Still, put my picture somewhere in the scene; that’s easy enough.”

  “Certainly,” said Jantiff. “At a charge of, say, two owls. Fariske, of course, must agree.”

  The fisherman drew back his head like a startled turtle. “Two ozols? Ridiculous!”

  “Not at all. Your image will hang on this wall forever, depicting you in all your joviality. It is a kind of immortality.”

  “True. Two owls it is.”

  “You may also paint my image,” said another. “I’ll pay the two ozols now.”

  Jantiff held up a restraining hand. “First Fariske must be consulted.”

  Fariske made no difficulties. “These fees will naturally reduce your payment from me.”

  “By not so much as a dinket!” Jantiff declared stoutly. “In fact, I want half of my fee now, so that I may buy proper pigments.”

  Fariske protested, but Jantiff held firm and finally had his way.

  As he returned to the hut Jantiff once again totted up his expectations. “Ten panels… I can crowd five faces into each panel, if necessary. That’s fifty faces at two ozols each: one hundred solid ringing ozols, and my difficulties vanish like smoke!” Jantiff arrived home in an unusually optimistic mood.

  As usual, Glisten was nowhere to be seen; apparently she did not care to stay alone in the hut. But almost immediately upon Jantiff’s return she came from the forest with a bundle of shaggy bark, which when scraped and washed yielded a nourishing porridge.

  Jantiff ran to take her bundle. He put his arm around her waist and swung her up and around in a circle. Setting her down, he kissed her forehead. “Well, young Glisten, my lovely little sorceress: what do you think! Money pours in by the bucketful! Faces for Fariske’s panels, at two ozols per face! So then: would you like to live at Frayness on Zeck? It’s a long way and there’s no wild forest like this, but we’ll find what’s wrong with your voice and have it fixed, and there’d be no witch chasing, I assure you, except the kind of pursuit every pretty little creature enjoys. What about it? Do you understand me? Away from Wyst, off across space to Zeck? I don’t quite know how I’ll manage the fare, but no doubt the cursar will help. Ah, that elusive cursar! Tomorrow I must telephone. Uncibal!”

  At the moment he was more interested in Glisten. He sat on the bench and pulled her down upon his lap, so that he was looking directly into her face. “Now then,” said Until!, “you must really concentrate. Listen closely! If you understand, nod your bead. Is this understood?”

  Glisten seemed to be amused by Jantiff’s earnestness, though her lips twitched by no more than an iota.

  “You wretched girl!” cried Jantiff. “You’re absolutely frustrating! I want to take you to Zeck and you show not a flicker of interest. Won’t you please say something or do something?”<
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  Glisten comprehended that somehow she had distressed Jantiff. Her mouth drooped and she looked off across the sea. Jantiff groaned in exasperation. “Very well then; I’ll take you willy-nilly and if you want to come back to your dank black forest you shall do so!”

  Glisten turned back; Jantiff leaned forward and kissed her mouth. She gave no response, but neither did she draw away. “What a situation,” sighed Jantiff. “If only you’d give me some little inkling, just a hint, that you understand me.”

  Glisten once again produced her wisp of a smile. “Ma!” said Jantiff. “Perhaps you understand me after all, and only too well!”

  Glisten became restive; Jantiff reluctantly allowed her to leave his lap. He rose to his feet. “Zeck it is then, and please, at the last minute, don’t cavort and hide like a wild thing.”

  During the night a storm blew in from the south; in the morning long combing breakers pounded the rocks and Jantiff despaired of gathering percebs. An hour later the wind moderated. A black rain sizzled upon the surface of the ocean, somewhat moderating the surf. Jantiff forced his shrinking flesh into the water, but was unmercifully swept back and forth, and finally retreated to the shore.

  Taking his buckets he set off eastward along the beach, hoping to find a sheltered pool. At the far end of Isbet Neck, with the ocean on the right hand and Lulace Sound on the left, he found a spot where the currents swung past two long fingers of rock, and created a still deep pool between. Here the percebs grew large and heavy, with a large proportion of the prized coronels, and Jantiff harvested a day’s quota in short order. Glisten appeared from nowhere; together they shelled the catch and carried the yield back to the but for cleaning. “Everything seems to work for the best,” declared Jantiff. “A storm drives us from our rocks and we find the home of all percebs!”

  And it seemed that Glisten gave a nod of endorsement for Jantiff’s opinions.

  “If only you could speak!” sighed Jantiff. “The local folk wouldn’t dare to chase you, since you could go to the telephone and notify the cursar. Ah, that music! where can he be? He is duty bound to hear petitions, but he has become thin air!”