Return to the Whorl tbotss-3

by Gene Wolfe

Pig's chuckle rumbled in his chest. "Nae donkey fer me, but thank yer kindly. Bucky can, an' he'll thank yer better'n Pig. Yer a buck an' a brathair."

  Tansy touched Hound's elbow. "The shade's nearly up already, dear."

  "I'll wait for them to get some rest," he told her. "We can camp, if we have to."

  He turned back to Pig. "But there's something else we ought to talk about. You two haven't known each other long, have you?"

  "Have we? We've nae. Met h'up h'on ther road ternight, we did. Yer need nae fash. Yer nae gang ter tittle naethin' what's news ter auld Pig."

  "It's just…" Hound glanced helplessly at his wife. "We werewere all sitting there pretending. You and Tansy were, and I was, too. All of us except his bird."

  "Good bird!" Oreb's tone declared that matter settled.

  Tansy asked, "Do you really know what we know, Pig? You're not from around here."

  "Aye."

  "I do too. I think so. I-I know Hound better than anybody, and I could tell from the way he opened our house to you, and the way he talked. I think I could, I mean, I did. I really do."

  Hound drew a deep breath. "He kept saying and saying he was looking for Calde Silk. But that's Calde Silk right there. That's Calde Silk himself, Pig. You never saw him, but people have told me he's living with his wife in the old manse, quite near here."

  "Aye, laddie. Meant ter call h'on him, but he was nae ter home. Door h'open an' wife dead, layin' h'in a box. Felt a' her. Met h'up wi' him an' H'oreb Wafter. Kenned who he was an' he dinna." Slowly and heavily Pig sank to the grass. "Lucky fer Pig, yer say. Huh. Lucky fer him? Time'll say. Pig dinna ken nae more'n H'oreb there."

  He lay back, his sheathed sword clasped to his chest. "Yer best ter call him Horn when he wakes. An' rouse me, will yer?"

  In a moment more he was snoring. Hound and Tansy stared at each other, but found nothing to say.

  He was in a boat, and there was a monster greater and more terrible than the leatherskin below it, its face showing through the long smooth swell. He opened his old black pen case, dipped a black quill into the little ink bottle and began to write furiously, conscious of how short-how terribly short-a time was left to him.

  I am just setting out for Pajarocu, he wrote, knowing nothing of what is about to transpire there, not even knowing that my son Sinew has decided to track me down and go to Green with me, or that mygrand- son, Krait, the son of my daughter Jahlee, will soon join me as a son.

  The scratching of the quill slowed and died. He stared at the paper. Who was Krait? He had no daughter, no sons.

  To the west, a lonely bird flew over the water, black as it crossed and recrossed the sun; he knew the bird was Oreb, and that Oreb was calling, "Silk? Silk? Silk?" as he flew. The bird was too far, its hoarse voice too faint to be heard. He thought of standing and waving, of calling Oreb to him, of lighting the lantern and running it up the mast for Oreb to see, so that the leatherskin or something else in the water would come to him, would come called by his burning prayer at sunset. He thought of looking over the side at the monstrous face beneath the water, of challenging it to emerge and destroy him if it could. He did none of these things.

  The boat rocked, becoming the cradle he had made for Hoof and Hide, a cradle large enough for two, so that Nettle, sitting in the sea, could rock the two together, rocking with her left hand while the right drove the quill: Enlightenment came to Patera Silk on the ball court; nothing could be the same after that. The book that they had never been able to begin begun at last, the book that lay behind his effort to make paper, behind the paper-making that had succeeded where nothing else would succeed, the paper-making that had made him the envy of his brothers and the pride of his mother, the papermaking that had been the salvation of the family.

  I am just setting out for Pajarocu. Who was Pajarocu and what had he done? He crossed out the words and rewrote them: It is worthless, this old pen case. It is nothing. You mightgo around the market all day and never find a single spirit who would trade you a fresh egg for it. Yet it holds-

  Enough. Yes, enough. I am sick with fancies. That was it. That was good. He reached down to turn the page so that he might begin a new one, but there was no need; the one he had written remained blank.

  He stood up and shouted, but he could not recall the bird's name and the bird would not come in any case, could not hear him, remained in his pen case no matter how wildly he shouted or how loudly he waved his arms. Something with tusks and shining eyes was swimming to him, swimming east, always and forever east, in a spearstraight line from Shadelow, its wake marked already by faint phosphorescence.

  He shouted until Seawrack rose from the sea to comfort him, smoothing his hair with two smooth, white hands. "It's only a dream, Horn, only a dream. If you need anyone, Hound and I are right here."

  He wanted her to stay, to lie in their boat with him and comfort him, but she vanished when he tried to hold her, and it was getting dark and Green rising, a baleful jade eye. There were water bottles in the racks; but the boat was gone and the salt sea with it, the sea that was a river called Gyoll in which corpses floated, savaged by big turtles with beaks like the beaks of parrots, the river that circled with whorl, the river over which the stars never set. He had come to the end of that river, and it was too late.

  He sat up. The well-remembered walls of the pit encircled him, walls marked with dank crevices opening on ruinous passages half filled with earth and stones. "It's dirt up here," a voice behind him rasped. He turned and saw Spider sitting behind him on the tumbled column, Spider in conversation with small girls in starched frocks. "It's all dirt," Spider repeated, and added, "I can tell from how it's made."

  He asked politely how he could find Hyacinth.

  "Down there." The blond girl pointed. "She's down there like Spider and me."

  The dark girl nodded. "Down there where you're going, and she can't ever come back. Take a cake for the dog."

  Spider nodded, too, saying, "It's dirt down there. I can tell from how it's made." Spider took something green from his pocket and handed it over. It was one of the crawling green lights that lined the tunnels, and it began to crawl across his palm, gleaming in the hot sunshine until he closed his fingers around it. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you very much."

  "Oh, you ain't thanked me yet," Spider told him. "You'll thank me when you're down there."

  He knelt and wiggled through the opening and back onto his boat, where the crawling green light he had put upon the ceiling was Green rising in the east, a baleful eye. Pig was seated in the stern, his hand upon the tiller and Oreb on his shoulder. "Good Silk," said Oreb. Pig removed the dirty gray cloth that had covered his eyes; and when it was gone, he, who had supposed that he could see, could actually see.

  And Pig's big, bearded face was Silk's.

  "This is really very kind of you," he told Hound when he had washed and sipped the mate Tansy made for him, "but won't we be getting a late start?"

  "Yes," Hound conceded, "but it doesn't matter much. Usually I start before shadeup, as Tansy will attest, I'm sure, because she always gets up too, even though I tell her not to, and makes breakfast for me."

  Tansy laughed. "I go back to bed after he leaves."

  "If I have good weather," Hound continued, "and drive the donkeys for all I'm worth, there's a nice old inn in the middle of the city that I stop at. It's not too terribly expensive, and I'm right there to start my buying the next day."

  "I understand."

  "But even if we left this instant, we couldn't possibly reach the city before shadelow. So we'll camp along the road someplace, or stay at a country inn I know about. It's not as nice as the one I usually stay at, but it will save us a few bits, and if we rough it beside the road, that will cost nothing. Either way, we'll finish the trip tomorrow, and I'll start my trading tomorrow afternoon."

  Tansy asked, "Shall I cook something now for you two, or wait till Pig wakes up?"

  "Wait," Hound told her. "He'll eat more than Horn and me put
together."

  "Then I'd like to show Horn our shop. Can I?"

  Hound looked at him, shrugging. "Do you want see it? It's very ordinary, except for being so small."

  Tansy said, "But it's where we work, so it's not ordinary to us. It's ours, and the others aren't."

  Their shop was on the village square, a very short distance from the little house on the edge of the village in which they lived. He stayed respectfully behind them as they mounted its three steep steps and unlocked its door.

  "I don't think we'll have any customers this early," Tansy told him, "but if we do, we'll sell them whatever they've come for, and then lock up again when we go. I'll open up for the day after you and Hound and Pig leave."

  "You said it was small." He paused to look around at the shiny pots and pans suspended from the ceiling, the barrels of nails and the hammers and saws hung from nails in the walls. "But it's bigger than our house on Lizard, and we raised three children in that house."

  "There are rooms up above, too," Tansy told him. "My father used to rent them out. We tried to, but we couldn't find anybody who wanted them."

  Hound said, "There are so many empty houses these days. Anybody who wants a house can just move in."

  "So we keep the extra stock up there, and there's a bed so Mother can nap when she gets too tired. We should have brought you here last night, then you could have slept in a bed."

  "My father had a shop like this in the city. I shouldn't say like this, really, because his wasn't as big. He sold paper and quills and ink, and account books and so forth."

  Hound's eyebrows went up. "That might not be a bad idea for us. You can't buy paper here in Endroad. I'll see what a ream goes for in the city."

  Tansy said, "Nobody here will want that much."

  "Of course not." Hound's voice was brisk. "One bit for two sheets of paper and one envelope. We'll have a big bottle of ink, too, and sell it by measure."

  "You couldn't sell quills here," Tansy said. "Just about everybody hunts, or keeps geese and ducks."

  "Or both," Hound added. "Look at this maul, Horn. I made it myself, so it cost us nothing, and we've got it priced at nine bits, which is what you'd have to pay for a maul like this in the city. The head is elm and the handle's ash. I finished them both with pumice and flax-seed oil."

  "That doesn't burn well in lamps, but it's a good polish for wood," Tansy said.

  He accepted the maul and carried it to a window to admire it; and she, somewhat timidly, stepped closer and pushed up the sleeves of his plain brown tunic. "What happened to your arms?"

  He glanced down at their soiled bandages. "I cut myself somehow. I want to say reaching into some brambles, because they are injuries of that sort; but I don't remember exactly how it happened."

  Hound said, "Some of those look pretty nasty."

  "I saw them when he took the maul," Tansy said. "I'm going to take those off and put something on the cuts, Horn, and then I'll tie them up again for you. Sometimes somebody cuts himself in here, so I keep bandages and things upstairs." She hurried to the narrow stair at the back of the shop.

  He told Hound, "I'm putting you to a great deal of trouble."

  "We're glad to do it." Hound took the maul and restored it to its place on the wall. "I just wish we could do more for you, and that my father could be here to help. He'd like to, I know."

  As Hound spoke, Oreb swooped though the open door to perch on the handle of a scythe. "Stand up. Big man."

  "Pig's awake, you mean?"

  Oreb's scarlet-crowed head bobbed. "Pig up."

  "In that case, we ought to rejoin him as soon as possible."

  "Go shop," Oreb explained. "Bird say. Say shop. Pig go."

  Hound chuckled. "You know, I'm starting to understand him. Is your friend coming to meet us here, Horn?"

  He nodded, hearing Tansy's small, swift feet again upon the stairs. "I only hope he can find it."

  "If he could find his way to Viron from the East Pole, he can find our shop in this village."

  "Roll up your sleeves," Tansy ordered; and then, "Wait, I'll do it for you. Hold out your arm. This may hurt."

  "I hope so."

  She glanced up at him. "You do? Why?"

  "Because I feel that I've done something wrong, that I've failed a test of some sort and deserve to be punished."

  He paused, recalling the kitchen and the woman who had tied the bandages Tansy was cutting away with scissors. "Did I say something last night about not remembering when I slept last? That's incorrect; I slept in a field of new wheat. I dreamed about Nettle sitting on the beach, and trying to warn her-trying to warn somebody anyway, and failing."

  "Poor Silk!" Oreb flew to his shoulder.

  "Yes, poor Silk indeed, with no one but a fool like me to search for him. He may or may not need help, but every god knows New Viron and I do."

  "Hold still," Tansy directed. "This isn't the first time you've hurt your arm, is it? That's an ugly scar."

  At the door a new voice asked, "You say you were the only 'un lookin' for Calde Silk, stranger?"

  Hound said, "Gods be, Merl. Is there something we can do for you this morning?"

  "Mornin' to you 'n your wife." A spare, middle-aged man in a worn tunic of faded green stepped into the shop. "Saw your door open is all."

  Tansy glanced up. "This is our friend Horn, Merl. He's cut himself, and I'm salving them for him. See how brave he is?"

  "You're lookin' for Calde Silk, you says?" Merl rubbed his stubbled jaw.

  "Yes, I am. Do you know where I can find him?"

  "Was in the old manse, only nobody hardly seen him there."

  "Can you tell me where that is?"

  Oreb fluttered dolefully. "No go."

  "Well, I could right enough. Only he's not there no more. Not now, anyhow." Merl drew himself up. "You seen these men that got their heads all wrapped up, Hound? They got shawls or somethin' tied around them like a woman."

  Hound shook his head. "You mean here?"

  "Right here in Endroad. I'm tellin' you. You see 'em, stranger?"

  "No see," Oreb declared for both.

  "Unless you mean my friend Pig, who ties a cloth around his head to conceal his sightless eyes, I have not."

  " 'Stead of a hat's what I mean. I figure they're fixin' to kill him. They got slug guns 'n swords, 'n these here big knives." Merl pointed to a corn knife on the wall. "'Bout like that 'un, only nicer. They come to my place in the big dark of yesterday. Scared Spirea 'n Verbena to where they crawled right under the bed. Fact."

  Hound asked, "How many were there?"

  "There's three." Merl paused. "Foreign-lookin', 'n had foreign- soundin' names, too, to where I don't recollect 'em. Not from nowheres near here's what Myrtle says to me, 'n she had the right of it. I told how to get to the old manse, 'n I tells 'em try there. I don't know as how he's in there, I says, only you state your business with him, 'n maybe you'll find out somethin' you're needin' to know."

  He asked, "Did they find him? Please, sir, this is extremely important to me."

  As she knotted a clean bandage Tansy murmured, "I doubt that he knows."

  "Never thought to see 'em again, I'll tell you. I did, though, just walkin' to town this mornin'. Met 'em where the road crosses. Couldn't of been a hour ago."

  "Did they find Silk?" he repeated.

  Merl shook his head. "Said not. Said there wasn't nobody home." Merl laughed. "They didn't like me much, I'll tell you. But I says well I told you everythin' I knew, so try in the city. They says yep, that's where they's bound for."

  Hound said, "It's where I'm going with Horn here and another man, too. We've already tarried too long."

  "I agree. I thank you-I can't possibly thank you and Tansy enough for all your kindness-but if these foreign men really do intend harm to Silk, I must find him first; and the one thing everyone seems to agree upon is that he isn't here."

  Hesitantly, Hound asked, "You'll be going your own way, you and Pig, as soon as we reach th
e city? To look for Calde Silk, and for a doctor for Pig and so on?"

  "Yes, I suppose so."

  "Then I…" Hound glanced at his wife. "We'd like to give you something to remember us by, wouldn't we, Tansy?"

  She looked up, and her smile rendered her small, sweet face radiant. "I was hoping to give them some food to take with them, if it's all right with you."

  "Yes. Absolutely. But they'll eat it, and then it will be gone. I mean something that Horn can keep."

  He said, "That certainly isn't necessary, and since I'll be traveling on foot for the most part-"

  "On one of our donkeys, until we get into the city."

  "I must travel light, of necessity. Really, I'd much prefer you wouldn't."

  Hound ignored it. "This is what we have. What you see here. Choose anything you like."

  Interested, Oreb flew up to perch on the edge of a stew pot and peck at a grater.

  Hound said, "A little pan that you could cook in wouldn't weigh much, and I think you might find it comes in very handy."

  Tansy added, "Or a sewing kit to mend your clothes, Horn. We have those, too, with needles and a pair of little scissors and everything, that you roll up in a cloth. You could carry it in your pocket."

  He pointed. "If you're serious-and I repeat that you really needn't do this-that's what I'd like to have."

  "A lantern?"

  He nodded. "Last night-really it was before last night, I suppose, during what Merl called the big dark-I wanted such a lantern very badly indeed; I would have given far more than I possess for one. To get one for nothing is more than I prayed for, if you're still sure that you want to do this."

  "Certainly we do. Hound can reach it down for you."

  Merl whispered, "They got better 'uns in back. Those is the three-bit 'uns. Them in back's five."

  "That's right," Hound said. "I'll get you one." He went to the back of the shop and returned a moment later carrying a black lantern somewhat smaller than the tin ones suspended from the ceiling. "This one's enameled, you see. It opens like this so you can light it, and once you've closed it, it will blow away before it blows out."

  Merl leaned over the small black lantern, studying it as if he expected to receive it. "Thought you was out of candles."