by K. J. Parker
He sighed. “I don’t think I can stand any more of this.”
“What?”
“Being with you.”
STICKS AND STONES can’t break my bones, but words sure can hurt me.
Words, in fact, are the only things that can hurt us, in our family. It hit me like—well, like the ground, I suppose; except that when one of us gets hurled from the ramparts of heaven, it’s the ground that takes the heavy damage. I was so shocked I couldn’t bear to stay there any more. With a thought, I soared back through the clouds, to where I always go when I’m upset; which is silly, because that’s where nearly everything that upsets me happens.
“Hello,” I called out. “I’m home.”
Mother was in the Lesser Great Hall. I perceive it as a bleak, freezing cold hexagonal chamber at the far end of the house, with the back wall forming a huge picture window looking out on the Eastern Sea. She looked at me. “What are you doing here?” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something?”
She was weaving. It’s supposed to be the destinies of men, but I think it’s just something she does to pass the time. Could be both, of course. “I needed a break.”
“Really.”
“That mortal just insulted me.”
“Poor baby.”
“He said he couldn’t stand being with me.” She clicked her tongue. “Well,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
A silence can be more eloquent than a million words.
“What?” I demanded.
“That’s mortals for you,” she said. “No tact.” Coming from her, it was one of the most outrageous
statements ever made. “Tact,” I repeated. “You agree with him, don’t you?”
“Of course not. Don’t be silly.”
“You do. You think I’m unpleasant to be with.”
“Sweetheart.” She wasn’t looking at me. “You’re my daughter and I love you. I want you to know that.”
Terrible things happen when we get angry. Not to us, naturally. “But?”
She took just a little bit too long over choosing her words. “I’ve had plenty of time to get used to you,” she said.
TIME. THE T word, in our house.
A mortal stands on the same hilltop every night and looks at the sky. To him, it appears that the stars are moving. All wrong, of course. The stars don’t move; it’s the Earth. (Sorry, didn’t you know that? Oops. Forget I spoke)
It’s the same with us and Time. We don’t change. Things move past us, but we’re fixed. I think I may have been young once, for twenty years, the blink of an eye; it was over so quick I didn’t notice and certainly can’t remember. I shall never be older than I am now, except in a dressing-up body. Of course I can look like anybody or anything I want, to anyone else; I can’t see myself, for obvious reasons, except in a mirror or a glass darkly, and I never bother. Everybody and everything else blossoms and flourishes like leaves on a tree, and withers and perishes, but naught changeth me; so what would be the point?
Pol once said something interesting. If you don’t travel, you don’t arrive.
So, yes; my mother and my father, my brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts have all had plenty of time to get used to me. And even now, they can’t stand me for more than five minutes. Am I really that bad?
“NO,” MY MOTHER said.
There were tears in my eyes. “You’re just saying that.”
“You’re really not that bad,” she said, “compared to the rest of us. No worse.”
“No better?”
She snapped her fingers and the Loom of Destiny vanished. “This is all because you’ve been spending time with mortals,” she said. “It doesn’t do anyone any good. Look at Pol. All those dreadful mortal females. It makes him sulky and sarcastic.”
“No better than any of the others?”
She shrugged. “What’s so special about being better?” she said. “It’s not like they give prizes for it.”
I looked at her for quite some time. Then I said; “Thank you. That’s all I needed to know.”
“Is it? Did I say something clever?”
I nodded. “Purely by accident. I think I’ll go now.”
I could feel her relax. “It’s not that I don’t like having you home,” she said. “It’s just—”
“Yes.”
She smiled at me. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
“YOU’RE BACK,” HE said.
The T thing again. Three weeks had passed, in his timescale, since I stormed off in my huff. Since then he’d traversed four hundred miles of impossibly difficult terrain—towering mountain passes, impenetrable jungles, rivers in spate, fever-haunted marshes. Along the way he’d acquired two mules, laden with supplies and equipment. I vanished them irritably. He looked at the space where they’d been, and sighed.
“Against the rules,” I said.
“No. The rule was, no porters or other humans.” “The rule changed.”
“Ah.”
He looked round to see what he’d got left. I glared at him, but he didn’t notice. “You’ve got on fine without me, by the look of it.”
That got his attention. “It’s been hell,” he growled at me. “I nearly died three times. I got swept away crossing a river, I lost my footing climbing a sheer cliff and ended up trapped in a crevasse, and I trod in quicksand.”
“You’re looking well on it.”
“A caravan of No Vei heard me screaming, and they pulled me out. They fed me and gave me new clothes, since I’d lost absolutely everything. When I told them what I was trying to do, they told me I must be mad and gave me two mules laden with supplies.” He paused. “I assume you’re going to tell me that was all you, watching over me.”
I’d been about to. “I knew you could look after yourself,” I said. “For the easy stages of the journey.”
Another sigh. “Did you have to take everything?”
“You won’t need things now I’m back,” I said. “You’ll have me instead.”
HE’D LET HIS hair grow long. It suited him.
He’d lost all the maps in the quicksand, of course, so I had to tell him the way. I have to concede, I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory in my capacity as navigator. Things look different from the air—gradients, for example, and depths of rivers and thickness of ice, and you don’t tend to notice whether or not there are bridges, or if the green bits are grassland or swamp. “You could fly us over that,” he said, as we stood staring up at a vertical cliff-face I’d somehow overlooked. “Go on. It’d be easy as pie.”
“Get thee behind me,” I told him. “You have to do this, or it won’t count.”
“I’m an accomplished rock-climber,” he said. “You’re the one who keeps getting into difficulties.”
True. But that’s what the rope is for. I’d told him, go on, cut it, let me fall, but he insisted on hauling me up. I broke a fingernail.
“I’m a quick learner,” I said. “We won’t have any trouble this time.”
“I hope not. Have you any idea how heavy you are?”
“Don’t be idiotic. I’m insubstantial. I weigh practically nothing.”
He looked at me and pulled a particularly irritating grin. “If you say so,” he said. “Look, why don’t you fly, and I’ll meet you at the top?”
ACTUALLY, A VERY good question. I was, after all, accompanying him—which I could do in relative comfort, using my god-given faculties. Where this notion of sharing every aspect of the human experience had crept in, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t in the original plan, but now it seemed to be of the essence of the enterprise. Ah well. What fun is a game if you can’t change the rules as you go along?
We started to climb the cliff. He was right; he really was very good at it. We weren’t roped together this time, because of course he’d lost the rope, and his spiky things you bash into the rock, and all the rest of the gear. I cheated just a little bit by reducing my body weight to that of a small feather.
About two-thirds of the way up, he grabbed hold of a ledge above his head and put his weight on it, and it crumbled and gave way. He scrabbled madly with his feet, but the soles of his boots slipped off the smooth surface of the cliff, and there wasn’t another handhold in reach. He screamed, and fell.
What happened next is a bit of a blur; the next thing I remember clearly is touching down with both feet on the goat-cropped grass on the top of the cliff, and gently putting him down, as though he was made of glass.
He’d closed his eyes. He opened them and looked at me. The palms of his hands had been cut to ribbons, and there was a three-inch gash down his left cheek. I don’t think he was aware of them, so I healed them before he noticed.
“Thank you,” he said.
“See? Didn’t I tell you? You do need me after all.” His eyes narrowed. “It was you,” he said.
“I saved you, yes.”
“You made the rock crumble under my hand. So you could rescue me.”
I was so stunned I forgot to be angry. “No,” I said, “I didn’t. It was an accident. The rock was loose.” “I don’t believe you.”
“Really, it’s true.”
He got painfully to his feet. “Isn’t there something
in scripture about a providence in the fall of a sparrow? I don’t think accidents happen when you’re around.” “It was an accident, for crying out loud.”
He shook his head. “Nice try. Presumably the crevasse and the quicksand were you as well. Proving to me I couldn’t manage on my own.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“You’re everywhere, it says so in the Good Book.”
“It’s not true.”
“Ah. So scripture tells lies, just like you. I’m not in the least surprised.”
“I hate you,” I said.
“You know, I’d sort of gathered that. Ever since I prayed to you in the Temple and you wouldn’t forgive me.”
“Drop dead.”
He went white as a sheet, until he was certain he was still alive. “Figure of speech,” I said. “I can do them, you know.” I gave him my sincere look. “Really and truly, I didn’t crumble the rock. It was an accident.”
He had that wary look, like a dog that’s been kicked and doesn’t trust humans any more. He backed away a couple of steps, keeping his eyes on me all the time. “What?” I said. “What’s the matter now?”
“You could’ve killed me.”
“Don’t be silly. I told you, it was just a figure of speech.”
“But it needn’t have been.”
He’d lost me. “What?”
“You could’ve meant it. You could have ordered me to drop dead, and I’d have died.”
I shrugged. “To the gods all things are possible, yes, big deal. What about it?”
“What would’ve happened then?”
I couldn’t see what he was getting at. “You’d have been dead.”
“Yes. And what would’ve happened to you?”
“Me?”
“Answer the question.”
I turned away. “We need to get going,” I said. “It’s three miles due west, then we follow a sheep-track down into the valley. There’s fresh water.”
“Answer the question.”
I still had my back to him. “All right,” I said. “I’d have been sorry. And sad. But since I never had the slightest intention—”
“Nothing.”
“You what?”
“Nothing would’ve happened to you,” he said. “Nothing at all. You kill a man, you take a life, you shrug and move on. It could just be a whim, or a flash of pique. You lose your temper for less than a second, and that’s that. No consequences.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “That’s getting into the whole business of predestination. I mean, if you were destined to do something important, like found a city or start a war, and you die before your time, then obviously there’s consequences.”
“No consequences,” he said, “to you. Personally.” I had to turn round. “No,” I said. “I suppose not.”
He nodded slowly. “And then there’s me,” he said. “For twenty years, ever since we were children, Lysippus was the proverbial thorn in my flesh. He was bigger and older than me, he made me eat worms. His estate was next to mine; he was always breaking down fences, cutting my timber, leaving gates open. In politics, whichever side I was on, he was on the other side. He cheated me in business deals. He seduced my wife.”
“I thought he was supposed to be your best friend.”
“He was.” He turned his head away. “He did it—Oh, I don’t know. Mostly I think it was just teasing, counting coup. He liked to get me really angry, and then laugh at me. I think he really loved me, in his own way, like a brother. You know, like cats that scratch you? She only does it because she likes you?”
It sounded just a bit too much like my own family for comfort. “Humans,” I said.
“Yes, maybe. We’re not perfect. Me, I stuck it for twenty years, because he was my friend. I forgave him, over and over and over again. Then, when I came home and found him and Rhodope in our bed, I knew I couldn’t stand it any longer.” He shrugged. “And the moment he was dead, I was sorry. I knew I’d done the wrong thing.”
“A bit late for that.”
“Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. But I knew what I had to do, to put it right. I went to Temple and prayed for forgiveness. To which I am entitled. And which I didn’t get.”
“I explained about that,” I said.
He didn’t seem to have heard me. “And after that it was all consequences. All my land and property taken away, a jail cell, the noose, eternal damnation.” He shook his head. “I could’ve accepted that,” he said. “It was only fair. It was right and proper. And then you show up.”
“Just as well for you that—”
“Be quiet. You showed up. With a snap of the fingers, you undo it all. I’m free, I’m pardoned, I get all my stuff back. In the eyes of the law, I didn’t do anything bad at all. But that’s wrong. You shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“All right. I won’t bother.”
He ignored me. “Instead,” he said, “I get let off if I play a game for you. Entertainment. Something to help you pass the weary hours of eternity. And you can go around stopping hearts, sending plagues, burning down cities, anything you want, and there are no consequences whatsoever. Why? Why is it like that?”
I gave him the frostiest look I could manage. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“Because you’re stronger. For the same reason Lysippus could make me eat worms when we were kids. Because he could hold me down with one hand and stuff worms in my mouth with the other, and no matter how hard I struggled, all my strength put together couldn’t match his, and the more I fought, the more he laughed. Because he was stronger; no other reason.”
I’m really rather proud of how well I kept my temper. “All right,” I said. “Yes. Call it stronger if you like. The truth is, we’re a higher form of life than you are, and therefore we’re entitled. Our superiority gives you the right. Like you’ve got the right to kill pigs and chickens.”
For some reason that made him smile. “Higher and superior,” he said. “You honestly believe that.”
“Of course.”
“Mphm.” He beamed at me. “Superior,” he repeated.
“Yes. Like you’re superior to your serfs and tenants, which means they have to work all day in the blazing sun while you loaf about. And what do you think would happen to you if you killed one of them? Let’s just suppose that, for argument’s sake. Suppose one of your servants was standing where you are now, and just for the hell of it you pushed him off the cliff. Well?”
He was quiet for a long time, and I was sure I’d beaten him. Then he said; “Until I met you, I’d have known what the consequences would be. I’d have known that I’d be punished for my crime with eternal damnation, because the gods are just and good, because that’s what t
hey’re for. Now, though—”
He grinned at me, and I’m afraid something snapped. I have a temper, I admit it. I yelled something at him and suddenly there was this ferocious gust of wind—like I said earlier, bad things happen when we get angry—and it caught him up and swept him backwards over the edge of the cliff.
OH, I CAUGHT him, needless to say. I was there so fast, I’d have had time to comb my hair and do my nails. I cradled him in my strong arms, like a mother with her baby, and floated back up to the top.
“Don’t say anything,” I told him. “Don’t say a word.”
THE NEXT MAJOR obstacle was crossing the Great North Sea.
We stood on a shingle beach. The tide was coming in fast, frothy and the wave-crests white as milk. I’d conjured up a ship well in advance. It was riding at anchor fifty yards offshore, in a little cove.
“If it’s all the same to you,” I said, “I’ll fly. Meet you on the other side.”
He looked at me sideways. “I have no idea how you work these things.”
“It’s easy. Hoist the sail, then steer with the rudder. To make it stop, there’s a big stone with a rope tied to it.”
“You’re going to fly.”
“I get seasick.”
Stupid lie, but it was all I could come up with in the heat—make that the freezing cold panic—of the moment. I have no issues whatsoever with the sea, of course. It’s just water, with a pinch of salt.
“I could take the long way round,” he said. “Follow the coast, dry land all the way. It adds three weeks to the trip, but there’d be no fooling around with boats.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” I told him. “Tens of thousands of mortals, your inferiors in birth, breeding and intelligence, make their livings sailing ships on the sea. If they can do it, so can you.”
“But you’re flying.”
I smiled at him. “Do you want to spend a night and two days cooped up in something that size with me?”
He thought about it, not for very long. “For the record,” he said, “I think this is a terrible idea.”
I watched him set sail, arranged a favourable wind, then turned myself into a seagull. I spread my wings and flew as high as I could. I was, of course, kidding myself. I hadn’t gone far when a black speck swooped down at me right out of the sun. Before I had a chance to get out of the way, it grew into a huge grey-black cormorant; it crashed into me, closed its claws round my neck and plunged me down under the water. By the time I’d resumed my true shape, we were at the bottom of the sea, just outside the entrance to the Northern Palace.
