Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 04]

by The Fall of the Shell (v0. 9) (epub)

  Aylor spat in disgust. “Might have known. He’s always sure have some stupid aphorism to shroud his selfishness in “He who can’t gain his end by worth, tries to gain it by words,” the hermit replied.

  “Where’d you find it? May I look there?” Gamwyn asked.

  “Found it at the finding place. And—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Aylor said. “He who looks with the hawk’s eye, finds what the hawk would find. He who looks with the eye of a clam, finds what a clam would find.”

  “Eye of a clam? My old friend, I believe you’ve had too much sun. Anyone—”

  “Yeah. He who gets too much sun, gets from light darkness.”

  “That’s good. That’s very good. I’ll have to remember that.”

  “And he who always has a saying never has to have a doing.”

  “Jeez. I cry, Aylor, look how busy I am. Someday this will all make sense. All is in order if we can find the order.”

  “Order is awful the way you see it.”

  “No, my friend. Ordure is offal.”

  Grumbling but amused, the old Atherer left Gamwyn with the hermit and took his way back to Sagol. Darew promised to take the boy to the place where he found the shell when he finished brushing away the loose rust from the latest object he had unearthed. While he worked at it, Gamwyn moved through the aisles of his collection, frustrated and a little angry. Soon, quite naturally, he came back to the shells, and noticed for the first time the richness and variety of the collection. They were arranged in the open on rough planks, all in groups resembling each other. As he moved through them, Gamwyn was startled to see what was obviously the exact image of the rear tower of Threerivers. He took it up. Yes. It certainly was the right one, with its broad and spreading spiral, its large, hooded opening.

  He ran to Darew with it. The old man paid no attention at first, then looked up quizzically. “That one? You can find bags and baskets of that one down on the beach.” He snorted. “That’s no rarity.”

  “Nothing is rare where it is in plenty, but where I’m from, it’s not only rare but unknown. It’s the main guard tower, in miniature, even to those mottled colorings.” “Nothing is rare where it is in plenty, eh. Very good. Smart boy. I’ll have to remember that. Rare is not plenty. Clever. Why didn’t I think of that. I’ve been neglecting my philosophy.” He laughed raucously. Gamwyn felt chagrined. Darew scrutinized him, then put down his sandstone abrader. “Tell me what the other towers are like. Shells?” “The water tower is a tall spiral quite like some of our local snails, but different. Longer. It’s as though you took a coil of wet clay and spun it up to a point in your hands.”

  “I have those over there,” the hermit said, pointing a long, crooked finger. “Many kinds. What about the others?” “Oh. The other main one is curious. It’s really used for produce storage. It isn’t like the others at all. It’s large, humped, with openings on the ends. It curves over like a roof.” Gamwyn gestured with his hands. “Inside you walk down a center aisle. The sides curve in and around toward you, forming shallow bins for compost. Above them are shelves and racks.”

  “A money shell.”

  “What?”

  The hermit sighed and stood up, dusting himself. Finding two old sacks by a tree, he handed one to Gamwyn, then started for the beach without a word. Once there, they turned east away from Sagol, and sauntered on the sand, Gamwyn looking quizzically at the old man, who absently splashed in the light surf like a child, watching the sea birds, sand, waving grass, and the sky with an unabashed delight. Gamwyn walked along beside him wondering what they were doing. After they had walked about three and a half ayas, they came to an area rich in shells. The old man stooped over, moving slowly, putting shells in his bag, humming lightly.

  Gamwyn followed suit, soon becoming completely enraptured by the varied shapes, colors, sizes, and textures of the shells. Some curved broad and flat, like the small river clams at home, but ridged in many ways, patterned, colored, toothed, or bent. Rifts of small spirals of various kinds lay in miniature handfuls. Large, heavy, knobbed shells lay half filled with sand, and worn and broken ones revealed inner structures of bizarre design.

  Finally Gamwyn found the miniature of the storage tower, then found a slightly larger model, Darew suddenly appeared at his shoulder and put a tight spiral in his hand. It was not quite the water tower, but almost. In a quarter sun’s looking, Gamwyn had nearly a dozen varieties like it, including what seemed to his memory to be the exact model. Walking up beyond the reach of the waves, he laid them all out in rows, fascinated by the shapes. But there was nothing like the shell he had come for.

  Darew’s shadow crossed the shells. “See? No shell like the one you want. But he who can modify his wants to suit the possibilities can live happily. He who desires the impossible cries because he cannot soar like the birds—who cannot think or read.”

  Gamwyn sifted dry sand through his hands. “Somehow I’ll find one,” he said. “There have to be some. Craydor had one. Ravell brought one. You have one, too. There must be others.”

  “In the ruin. They must have been brought here. I found mine in the ruin. Out of the old may often come the new. You may dig with me. Eventually we may find one.”

  “But I don’t have all my life. Who knows what they are doing to my brother while I scratch around in your ruins.” “Patience is often an attitude that simply makes comfortable the inevitable.”

  Gamwyn looked out over the water and felt inside the broad emptiness he saw there. Maybe the old man was right. Well, he would continue to look. He would dig if he had to. He would never give up.

  But that evening, when he had left the hermit and returned to Sagol, things looked much more bleak. Aylor put his arm around the boy and patted his shoulder, but said nothing. Aylor’s family, a large one, with three married sons and their children, all seemed very solicitous-. But Aylor also said, “School tomorrow. For you, too, Gamwyn. You’ll have time.”

  “School?”

  “You won’t mind, Gam,” Artess said. “It isn’t like Mur-kal. Today we went fishing.”

  “Fishing?”

  “How else can you leam tides, weather, currents, navigation, fish, and work?” Aylor asked.

  Gamwyn felt relieved. “Jeez I cry,” he said.

  “Picked that up from the old man already, eh?”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Don’t know. Now, time to pray to the Lost One and then to bed. We shake out sail before sunup tomorrow.”

  The next three weeks saw Gamwyn fishing far off shore, drying fish with the children, measuring, cutting, and splitting wood for dwellings, weaving rush mats, and grinding shell to bum for mortar—all in school. When the others had free days, which they often spent in singing, working, or swimming, Gamwyn worked with the old hermit at the rain site.

  It had evidently been a town in ancient times. Back from the beach, it was still choked with sand where it wasn’t buried. Darew had shoveled away great quantities of sand, exposing broken streets and shattered buildings. He was interested in small artifacts, which he continued to collect and speculate about Some of his conclusions Gamwyn found very shrewd, but others seemed strange. However, the old hermit didn’t like disagreement, so Gamwyn always kept silent or agreed with him. The old man talked incessantly, peppering his talk with endless aphorisms, some of them amusing and incisive. Sometimes others came to dig or talk, always bringing Darew something to eat or some small present. The hermit was grateful for the company, though he never admitted it, preferring to seem aloof.

  As time advanced, Gamwyn grew more despairing. Day seemed to flow into day without hope of solving his dilemma. The Atherers lived a rich life of leisure and work, replete with social enjoyments and the gentle religion of the Lost One that all of Sagol embraced. But Gamwyn seemed no closer to his shell than he had been when he left Pelbarigan. Artess and Reo seemed settled, and Reo was seldom separated from Aylor’s granddaughter, Daun, who took care of him like a mother.

 
; One morning, as summer was well advanced, Gamwyn arose to find a number of men on the beach, staring southward with shaded eyes. Gamwyn noticed a mass of clouds, but it seemed to him little different from those he had seen in the past.

  “What do you think?” one man asked.

  “I think it’ll be a big one. I think we ought to begin to move now.”

  “We may waste a lot of time if it isn’t.”

  “We may lose everything if it is.”

  “Call Oin.”

  A boy ran off to get her. Oin came down from her stilted house slowly and painfully, carrying a stick. She advanced toward the beach in a slow shuffle, chewing something with toothless gums. At last - she arrived among the men and squinted southward, still chewing. She stood for a long time, but finally said, “Start moving now.” Then she turned and started back.

  One of the men sighed. “Begin with the boats,” he said. Someone blew a large seashell, which produced a mournful bellow, and people began to tumble from their houses. Soon Gamwyn was caught up in the mass move back from the beach. The smaller boats were slid along the sand, then in a trough that led inland. The three larger boats were lifted by a crowd of men onto large sledges that accommodated their keels, and dragged back over the rolling flat land on the main road inland. The whole village dragged and carried, even the small children. Gamwyn helped haul a small boat with a rope, wondering why the Atherers traveled so far, for they went over scrubby hills almost two ayas, finally sliding the boat up a long, high hill. Behind it he saw the houses of the winter town, Adant, and fields, now weedy. He knew a storm was coming, but surely nothing could demand such work.

  The men trotted all the way back. Gamwyn arrived tired, but he was given little chance to rest. The clouds to the south, now a dark, swirling mass, had moved closer. The surf had risen, too, and now lifted, rolled, and slammed into the beach in hollow roarings.

  After the boats had been moved, the crowds began to lift the shelters • using long poles that slid under the raised flooring, carrying each structure entire. Soon the long communal building had been taken down, its planks and logs tied into bundles for dragging. The wind picked up as the cloud piles reached in over Sagol, blowing from the west along the beach. Weel, one of Aylor’s sons, looked up at it as he worked. “God help us,” he shouted. “This one’s coming straight on in.”

  By the time Gamwyn had made three trips back from the beach, he was exhausted. But much of the summer settlement still remained to be moved. He sank down a moment. Someone grabbed him roughly by the arm. “Not now. Later.” The man was furious, and as he wearily stood up to work, Gamwyn realized dimly that was the first time since arriving at Sagol he had seen anyone angry.

  He took hold of a pole and helped walk another of the conical houses along the road inland. Soon the wind began to tug, then tear at the thatch. The Atherers he Was working with stopped to lash the structure to the poles, but as they finished, the wind rose, heaved the structure upward, and ripped it from their hands, tilting it and rolling it into a mass of heavy oaks. The men ran back to help by. the beach, but their effort was of no use, for the rising wind had tom away the remaining houses, and the whole body of people began to flee inland.

  Gamwyn felt a tug on his arm. It was Aylor, who leaned close to his ear and shouted, “Have you seen the hermit?” “No,” the boy shouted back.

  “I’m afraid for him. The sea will reach his place.”

  “How could it?”

  “Trust me. I’ve lived here. It will. Come on.”

  “I’ll go get him,” Gamwyn shouted, his words whipped away in the wind and pelting rain.

  Aylor grabbed his arm. “No. Too late. He’ll have to get along himself. He should know better than to stay. Maybe he’s gone. Come.”

  Gamwyn looked at the old man’s lined face streaming with water, his eyes nearly shut against it. Aylor took his arm and led him inland. As they moved, sideways to the wind, Gamwyn could scarcely believe what he saw, for the whole landscape seemed to bend and pitch in the screaming gale. Leaves and branches blew by. The force of the wind threw him to his knees several times, but others lifted him. They moved in a tight mass, supporting each other.

  At last they came over the long hill. At its summit, Gamwyn turned around and glimpsed a surge of the sea as it rose and toppled far inland among the scrubby trees. Aylor moved him on. In a short while, they stumbled into a heavy, stone-walled house, and suddenly everything was still and muted.

  In the dim light, Gamwyn could make out many huddled bodies, as the Atherers relaxed and waited out the hurricane. At first they were still, but eventually one of them started a slow hymn to the undying love of the Lost One. Others took it up. The mellow voices had a calming effect, and eventually Gamwyn nodded off to sleep, waking only when people moved over him to go outside. He himself eventually stood up and stooped out the door, finding the wind very light and most of the people climbing on the summer houses, refastening their bindings after tying them together tighter in a single mass.

  Gamwyn climbed up the hill and looked seaward, but the deep gray sky and blowing water kept him from seeing far. He heard a voice and turned to find Artess calling and beckoning. He stumbled down the hill. When he reached her, she took his arm, saying, “It’s not over yet, they say. This is just the middle of it. Come on now. The wind’s picking up again.”

  It was. Gamwyn felt the storm come quite suddenly, from the east this time, and he crouched into the door of the stone house as the sky began to howl again. Inside, candles were lit, and some of the people were playing a game with pebbles, chuckling and joking. But when the singing began again, all joined in.

  Gamwyn didn’t know how long the storm continued, since he drowsed off again, his exhausted body lying limp. His whole interior self seemed to rise out of it, leaving the empty shell below, as he rose unblown high into the air to look for the old hermit. He felt as if he stayed there, distant and still, untouched by the anger of the wind, seeing nothing but gray sky, dark rain, and blowing debris.

  When he finally jerked awake, it was almost evening. The wind had died down, and the stone house was nearly empty. Outside, he found the Atherers working on their summer houses, separating them, tightening lashings, refastening thatch. He walked to the top of the hill again, but he couldn’t see the road southward. Suddenly a thought settled on him like a vulture. He had done it again. Every time he joined a society, it experienced some disaster. Was it a curse? What would he do next? He turned and saw Artess walking up the hill toward him, disheveled by the storm.

  “Come and eat,” she said. “A big fish chowder. You look awful. What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, nothing.” He suddenly realized how hungry he was. Artess slipped her hand into his as they went down the hill. He looked at her.

  She smiled. “I was scared,” she said. “But they don’t seem too worried about it. All the valuable things are in these stone houses. Look. They are used to such storms— even though this was a bad one.”

  As he finished his chowder, Gamwyn became aware of Aylor standing over him. “In the morning, you go look for Darew, Gam. The storm’s about over now. A lot of work left. But we have the time. We’re all safe. Ever see anything like that?”

  “No, sir. Only a tornado or two.”

  “We have a lot of rebuilding to do. Lost some crops. But nothing so bad. We’ll have to see how the beach is. Something like this will change it all around. Had enough food?” “Oh. Yes.” As Gamwyn said this, Aylor turned away. Gamwyn could see that the old man was tired, too, dragging his feet toward the long stone house again.

  16

  In the evening, Pion appeared in the door to Bival’s room with a tight roll of paper, which he handed to Warret. “This is from Brudoer. He says to read it. He says the original is in Craydor’s hand and that he found it.”

  “Pion,” Bival said, rising and running out into the hall after him. Pion stopped. “Pion, where is he? I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t k
now where he is,” Pion replied tonelessly.

  Bival took his shoulders and faced him. Then, like a cup filled to overflowing, she began to sob, putting her head against his shoulder. Pion looked past her at Warret until, finally, Bival stopped. “May I read the roll?”

  “I think Brudoer meant that, though his note said Warret.”

  “We are on the same side. Don’t you see?”

  “Yes. I see. That is a fact, but my emotions haven’t agreed yet.”

  “All that other seems like something in another world.”

  “It was. Another world but not a forgotten one. It’s all right, Bival. Don’t worry. We know if we are going to survive, we’ll have to do it. We’ll get nothing from the Protector.”

  They regarded each other silently for a moment. Then Pion smiled slightly and turned away.

  Near the South Ocean, the morning after the hurricane dawned clear and bright, with a few scudding clouds. As Gamwyn walked toward the beach with most of the Atherers, he could hear the long rollers still pounding the shore. As they walked they cleared debris from the road, but still it remained gullied and clogged with sanddrifts. Gamwyn could hardly believe that a storm could have such massive force. As they neared the site of the summer village, it seemed wholly strange. All had been swept away. The shore itself revealed jutting rocks where none had been seen before.

  The Atherers seemed undiscouraged, and immediately set about measuring out the village again. After a short while, Aylor took Gamwyn aside and said, “You’d best go see about Darew. He’s been through these before, but maybe none this bad. He ain’t so careful as we are, and he might worry about all his junk. Look sharp for him. Take your time. Bring him here if he needs help.”

  Gamwyn set out immediately, but the shoreline seemed so much altered he had trouble telling where to turn away from the beach. Searching where he thought the hermit’s camp had been revealed nothing. Eventually, though, he recognized a tree. Yes, that was on the south end of the old man’s collection. Where was the rest? Nothing was visible. A bit of shell here, or a stick there, might have belonged to Darew, but nothing was obvious.