by Gene Wolfe
“Good morning Maytera.” Awkwardly, the fork and the smoking pan remained in Silk’s hands; there was no place to put them down. “I suffered a little mishap last night, I’m afraid. I fell. It’s still somewhat painful, and I haven’t been able to sleep.” He congratulated himself—it was all perfectly true.
“So you’re making breakfast already. We haven’t eaten yet, over in the cenoby.” Maytera Rose sniffed hungrily, a dry, mechanical inhalation. “Marble’s still fooling around in the kitchen. The littlest thing takes that girl forever.”
“I’m quite certain Maytera Marble does the best she can,” Silk said stiffly.
Maytera Rose ignored it. “If you want to give me that, I’ll take it over to her. She can see to it for you till you come back.”
“I’m sure that’s not necessary.” Sensing that he must eat his tomatoes now if he was to eat them at all, Silk cut the thinnest slice in two with his fork. “Must I leave this instant, Maytera? I can hardly walk.”
“Her name’s Teasel, and she’s one of Marble’s bunch.” Maytera Rose sniffed again. “That’s what her father says. I don’t know her.”
Silk (who did) froze, the half slice of tomato halfway to his mouth. “Teasel?”
“Her father came pounding on the door before we got up. The mother’s sitting with her, he said. He knocked over here first, but you didn’t answer.”
“You should have come at once, Maytera.”
“What would have been the use when he couldn’t wake you up? I waited till I could see you were out of bed.” Maytera Rose’s good eye was upon the half slice. She licked her lips and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Know where she lives?”
Silk nodded miserably, and then with a sudden surge of wholly deplorable greed thrust the hot half slice into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. He had never tasted anything quite so good. “It’s not far. I suppose I can walk it if I must.”
“I could send Marble after Patera Pard when she’s done cooking. She could show him where to go.”
Silk shook his head.
“You’re going to go after all, are you?” A moment too late, Maytera Rose added, “Patera.”
Silk nodded.
“Want me to take those?”
“No, thank you,” Silk said, miserably aware that he was being selfish. “I’ll have to get on a robe, a collar and so forth. You’d better get back to the cenoby, Maytera, before you miss breakfast.” He scooped up one of the smaller slices with his fork.
“What happened to your tunic?”
“And a clean tunic. Thank you. You’re right, Maytera. You’re quite right.” Silk closed the door, virtually in her face, shot the bolt, and popped the whole sizzling slice into his mouth. Maytera Rose would never forgive him for what he had just done, but he had previously done at least a hundred other things for which Maytera Rose would never forgive him either. The stain of evil might soil his spirit throughout all eternity, for which he was deeply and sincerely sorry; but as a practical matter it would make little difference.
He swallowed a good deal of the slice and chewed the rest energetically.
“Witch,” croaked a muffled voice.
“Go,” Silk mumbled. He swallowed again. “Fly home to the mountains. You’re free.”
He turned the rest of the slices, cooked them half a minute more, and ate them quickly (relishing their somewhat oily flavor almost as much as he had hoped), scraped the mold from the remaining bread and fried the bread in the leftover liquid, and ate that as he once more climbed the stair to his bedroom.
Behind and below him, the bird called, “Good-bye!” And then, “Bye! Bye!” from the top of the larder.
OREB AND OTHERS
Teasel lay upon her back, with her mouth open and her eyes closed. Her black hair, spread over the pillow, accentuated the pallor of her face. Bent above her as he prayed, Silk was acutely conscious of the bones underlying her face, of her protruding cheekbones, her eye sockets, and her high and oddly square frontal. Despite the mounting heat of the day, her mother had covered her to the chin with a thick red wool blanket that glowed like a stove in the sun-bright room; her forehead was beaded with sweat, and it was only that sweat, which soon reappeared each time her mother sponged it away, that convinced him that Teasel was still alive.
When he had swung his beads and chanted the last of the prescribed prayers, her mother said, “I heard her cry out, Patera, as if she’d pricked her finger. It was the middle of the night, so I thought she was having a nightmare. I got out of bed and went in to see about her. The other children were all asleep, and she was still sleeping, too. I shook her shoulder, and she woke up a little bit and said she was thirsty. I ought to’ve told her to go get a drink herself.”
Silk said, “No.”
“Only I didn’t, Patera. I went to the crock and got a cup of water, and she drank it and closed her eyes.” After a moment Teasel’s mother added, “The doctor won’t come. Marten tried to get him.”
Silk nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
“If you’d talk to him again, Patera…”
“He wouldn’t let me in last time, but I’ll try.”
Teasel’s mother sighed as she looked at her daughter. “There was blood on her pillow, Patera. Not much. I didn’t see it till shadeup. I thought it might have come out of her ear, but it didn’t. She felt so cold.”
Teasel’s eyes opened, surprising them both. Weakly, she said, “The terrible old man.”
Her mother leaned forward. “What’s that?”
“Thirsty.”
“Get her more water,” Silk said, and Teasel’s mother bustled out. “The old man hurt you?”
“Wings.” Teasel’s eyes rolled toward the window before closing.
They were four flights up, as Silk, who had climbed all four despite his painful right ankle, was very much aware. He rose, hobbled to the window, and looked out. There was a dirty little courtyard far below, a garret floor above them. The tapering walls were of unadorned, yellowish, sunbaked brick.
Legend had it that it was unlucky to converse with devils; Silk asked, “Did he speak to you, Teasel? Or you to him?”
She did not reply.
Her mother returned with the water. Silk helped her to raise Teasel to a half-sitting position; he had expected some difficulty in getting her to drink, but she drank thirstily, draining the clay cup as soon as it was put to her lips.
“Bring her more,” he said, and as soon as Teasel’s mother had gone, he rolled the unresisting girl onto her side.
When Teasel had drunk again, her mother asked, “Was it a devil, Patera?”
Silk settled himself once more on the stool she had provided for him. “I think so.” He shook his head. “We have too much real disease already. It seems terrible…” He left the thought incomplete.
“What can we do?”
“Nurse her and feed her. See she gets as much water as she’ll drink. She’s lost blood, I believe.” Silk took the voided cross from the chain around his neck and fingered its sharp steel edges. “Patera Pike told me about this sort of devil. That was—” Silk shut his eyes, reckoning. “About a month before he died. I didn’t believe him, but I listened anyway, out of politeness. I’m glad, now, that I did.”
Teasel’s mother nodded eagerly. “Did he tell you how to drive it away?”
“It’s away now,” Silk told her absently. “The problem is to prevent it from returning. I can do what Patera Pike did. I don’t know how he learned it, or whether it had any real efficacy; but he said that the child wasn’t troubled a second time.”
Assisted by Blood’s stick, Silk limped to the window, seated himself on the sill, and leaned out, holding the side of the weathered old window frame with his free hand. The window was small, and he found he could reach the crumbling bricks above it easily. With the pointed corner of the one of the four gammadions that made up the cross, he scratched the sign of addition on the bricks.
“I’ll hold you, Patera.”
Teasel’s father was gripping his legs above the knees. Silk said, “Thank you.” He scratched Patera Pike’s name to the left of the tilted X. Patera Pike had signed his work; so he had said.
“I brought the cart for you, Patera. I told my jefe about you, and he said it would be all right.”
After a moment’s indecision, Silk added his own name on the other side of the X. “Thank you again.” He ducked back into the room. “I want you both to pray to Phaea. Healing is hers, and it would appear that whatever happened to your daughter happened at the end of her day.”
Teasel’s parents nodded together.
“Also to Sphigx, because today’s hers, and to Surging Scylla, not only because our city is hers, but because your daughter called for water. Lastly, I want you to pray with great devotion to the Outsider.”
Teasel’s mother asked, “Why, Patera?”
“Because I told you to,” Silk replied testily. “I don’t suppose you’ll know any of the prescribed prayers to him, and there really aren’t that many anyway. But make up your own. They’ll be acceptable to him as long as they’re sincere.”
As he descended the stairs to the street, one steep and painful step at a time, Mucor spoke behind him. “That was interesting. What are you going to do next?”
He turned as quickly as he could. As if in a dream, he glimpsed the mad girl’s death’s-head grin, and eyes that had never belonged to Teasel’s stooped, hard-handed father. She vanished as he looked, and the man who had been following him down the stairs shook himself.
“Are you well, Marten?” Silk asked.
“I went all queer there, Patera. Don’t know what come over me.”
Silk nodded, traced the sign of addition, and murmured a blessing.
“I’m good enough now, or think I am. Worryin’ too much about Sel, maybe. Rabbit shit on my grave.”
* * *
In the past, Silk had carried a basin of water up the stairs to his bedroom and washed himself in decent privacy; that was out of the question now. After closing and locking both, he covered the Silver Street window with the dishrag and a dish towel, and the garden window (which looked toward the cenoby) with a heavy gray blanket he had stored on the highest shelf of the sellaria closet against the return of winter.
Retreating to the darkest corner of the kitchen, almost to the stair, he removed all his clothing and gave himself the cold bath he had been longing for, lathering his whole body from the crown of his head to the top of his cast, then sponging the suds away with clean, cool water fresh from the well.
Dripping and somewhat refreshed, yet so fatigued that he seriously considered stretching himself on the kitchen floor, he examined his discarded clothing. The trousers, he decided, were still salvageable: with a bit of mending, they might be worn again, as he had worn them before, while he patched the manteion’s roof or performed similar chores. He emptied their pockets, dropping his prayer beads, Blood’s two cards, and the rest on the scarred old kitchen table. The tunic was ruined, but would supply useful rags after a good laundering; he tossed it into the wash basket on top of his trousers and undershorts, dried those parts of himself that had not been dried already by the baking heat of the kitchen with a clean dish towel, and made his way up to bed. If it had not been for the pain in his ankle, he would have been half asleep before he passed the bedroom door.
* * *
His donkey was lost in the yellow house. Shards of the tumbler Blood broke with Hyacinth’s golden needler cracked under the donkey’s hooves, and a horned owl as big as a Flier circled overhead awaiting the moment to pounce. Seeing the double punctures the owl had left half concealed in the hair at the back of Teasel’s neck, he shuddered.
The donkey fastened its teeth in his ankle like a dog. Though he flailed at it with Sphigx’s walking stick, it would not let go.
Mother was riding Auk’s big gray donkey sidesaddle—he saw her across the skylit rooftops, but he could not cry out. When he reached the place, her old wooden bust of the caldé lay among the fallen leaves; he picked it up, and it became the ball. He thrust it into his pocket and woke.
* * *
His bedroom was hot and filled with sunlight, his naked body drenched with sweat. Sitting up, he drank deeply from the tepid water jug. The rusty cash-box key was still in its place and was of great importance. As he lay down again, he remembered that it was Hyacinth whom he had locked away.
A black-clad imp with a blood-red sword stood upon his chest to study him, its head cocked to one side. He stirred and it fled, fluttering like a little flag.
Hard dry rain blew through the window and rolled across the floor, bringing with it neither wind nor respite from the heat. Silk groaned and buried his perspiring face in the pillow.
It was Maytera Marble who woke him at last, calling his name through the open window. His mind still sluggish with sleep, he tried to guess how long he had slept, concluding only that it had not been long enough.
He staggered to his feet. The busy little clock beside his triptych declared that it was after eleven, nearly noon. He struggled to recall the positions of its hands when he had permitted himself to fall into bed. Eight, or after eight, or possibly eight-thirty. Teasel, poor little Teasel, had been bitten by an owl—or by a devil. A devil with wings, if it had come in through her window, and thus a devil twice impossible. Silk blinked and yawned and rubbed his eyes.
“Patera? Are you up there?”
She might see him if he went near the window. Fumbling in a drawer for clean underclothes, he called, “What is it, Maytera?”
“A doctor! He says he’s come to treat you! Are you hurt, Patera?”
“Wait a moment.” Silk pulled on his best trousers, the only pair that remained, and crossed the room to the window, twice stepping painfully on pebbles.
Maytera Marble waited in the little path, her upturned face flashing in the hot sunshine. Doctor Crane stood beside her, a shabby brown medical bag in one hand.
“May every god favor you both this morning,” Silk called down politely.
Crane waved his free hand in response. “Sphigxday and Hieraxday, remember? That’s when I’m in this part of town! Today’s Sphigxday. Let me in!”
“As soon as I get dressed,” Silk promised.
With the help of Blood’s lioness-headed walking stick, he hobbled downstairs. His arm and ankle seemed more painful than ever; he told himself firmly that it was only because the palliating effects of the drug Crane had given him the night before—and of the potent drinks he had imprudently sampled—had worn off.
Limping and wincing, he hurried into the kitchen. The heterogeneous collection of items he had left on the table there was rapidly transferred to his clean trousers, with only momentary hesitation over Hyacinth’s gleaming needler.
“Patera?”
His blanket still covered the garden window; resisting the temptation to pull it down, he lurched painfully into the sellaria, flung open the door, and began introductions. “Maytera, this is Doctor Crane—”
Maytera Marble nodded demurely, and the physician said, “We’ve already met. I was tossing gravel through your window—I was pretty sure it was yours, since I could hear you snoring up there—when Marble discovered me and introduced herself.”
Maytera Marble asked, “Did you send for him, Patera? He must be new to our quarter.”
“I don’t live here,” Crane explained. “I only make a few calls here, two days a week. My other patients are all late sleepers,” he winked at Silk, “but I hoped that Silk would be up.”
Silk looked rueful. “I was a late sleeper myself, I’m afraid, today at least.”
“Sorry I had to wake you, but I thought I might give you a ride when we’re through—it’s not good for you to walk too much on that ankle.” By a gesture Crane indicated the sellaria. “I’d like to have you sitting down. Can we go inside?”
Maytera Marble ventured, “If I might watch you, Patera? Through the doorway…?”
“Yes,” Silk sa
id. There should be ample opportunity to speak with Crane in private on the way to the yellow house. “Certainly, Maytera, if you wish.”
“I hadn’t known. Maytera Rose told Maytera Mint and me at breakfast, though she didn’t seem to know a lot about it. You—you were testy with her, I think.”
“Yes, very much so.” Silk nodded sadly as he retreated into the sellaria, guilt overlaying the pain from his ankle. Maytera Rose had been hungry, beyond question, and he had turned her away. She had been inquisitive too, of course; but she could not help that. No doubt her intentions had been good—or at least no doubt she had told herself they were, and had believed it. How selflessly she had served the manteion for sixty years! Yet only this morning he had refused her.
He dropped into the nearest of the stiff old chairs, then stood again and shifted it two cubits so that Maytera Marble could watch from the doorway.
“All right if I put my bag on this little table here?” Crane stepped to his left, away from the doorway. There was no table there, but he opened his bag, held up a shapeless dark bundle so that Silk could see it (though Maytera Marble could not), dropped it on the floor, and set his bag beside it. “Now then, Silk. The arm first, I think.”
Silk pushed up his sleeve and held out his injured arm.
Bright scissors Silk recalled from the previous night snipped away the bandages. “You probably think your ankle’s worse, and in a way it is. But there’s an excellent chance of blood-poisoning here, and that’s no joke. Your ankle’s not going to kill you—not unless we’re playing in the worst sort of luck, anyway.” Crane scrutinized the wounds under a tiny, brilliant light, muttered to himself, and bent to sniff them. “All right so far, but I’m going to give you a booster.”
To keep his mind from the ampule, Silk said, “I’m very sorry I missed our prayers this morning. What time is it, Maytera?”
“Nearly noon. Maytera Rose said you had to—is that a bird, Patera?”
Crane snapped, “Don’t jerk like that!”
