How bright they stand, the bound stalks in the sun, like little wigwams for the field spirits, like people too, like old women with rustling skirts of yellow-gray; their hair is blowing! Now I know I will remember this when I go on—for I am going on without death, never doubt it, I promise you I shall not die by my own hand.
I saw two hawks circling and circling in the upper wind above Wayland’s field. I thought up to them: You are like me, but you have all the world’s air to fly away in.
The hawks are bound to the earth as I am, they must hunt food in the grass and branches, men shoot arrows from the earth to tear their hearts. Still they enter regions unknown to us, and maybe they and the wild geese have found an easy way to heaven.
Into the woods again on the far side of Wayland’s field I hurried, and down and up the ravine that borders it, shadowed ground with alder and gray birch and a cool place of ferns I know of where sunlight comes late in the morning and mild. The brook in tine ravine bottom was running scant from the dry weather, leaves collecting on the bodies of smooth shining stones. I did not go downstream to the pool but climbed the other side of the ravine and took the path—hardly that, merely a known place where my feet have passed before— to the break in the trees that lets you out on this road, and I thought: Here I will do it, somewhere farther on in the shadows.
It is wider than a wood-road and better kept, for wagons use it now and then, and it is supposed to wind through back ways southeast as far as Nupal, ten miles they say or even more—I never believed much of what I hear about Nupal. The trading of our village has always been with Maplestock, and surely nobody goes to Nupal except those tinkers and gyppos and ramblers with their freaky wagons, squirrel-eyed children, scrawny dogs. A sad place it must be, Nupal, more than seven hundred crammed into the one village, as I hear it. I don’t understand how human beings can live like that—the houses may not be standing as horridly close together as folk tell. Maybe I’ll see the place in passing. I’ve noticed a dozen times, the same souls who sniggle about with ugly fact until it looks like fancy will turn right-about and ask you to believe that ugly fancy is fact.
I went down the road not running any more, nor thinking more about Father Horan. I thought of Eden.
Then I thought about my mother, who is going to marry Blind Hamlin the candlemaker, I’m told. She wouldn’t tell me herself, the winds told me. (Toby Omstrong told me, because he doesn’t like me.) Let’s hope the jolly wedding isn’t delayed by concern over my absence—I am not coming back, Mother. Think of me kindly while tumbling with your waxy man, or better, think of me not at all, the cord is cut, and anyhow didn’t you pick me up somewhere as a changeling?
Hoy, there I was on your doorstep all red and nasty, wrapped up in a cabbage leaf! Likely story. But we can’t have it thought that you gave birth to a monster, even one begotten by a little shoemaker whose image you did your best to destroy for me. (But I saved some pieces, I try to put them together now and then. I wish I could remember him; the memories of others are not much more help than wind under the door, for people don’t understand what I want to know—small blame to them, they can’t hear the questions I don’t know how to ask—and I think your memories of him are mostly lies, Mother, though you may not know it.) “He was a poor sad soul, Benvenuto.” Was he, Mother? “He broke my heart with his unfaithfulness, Benvenuto.” But Blind Hamlin is going to stick it back together with mutton-fat, remember? “He drank, you know, Benvenuto, that was why he could never make a decent living.” Why, I will drink to you, Mother, I will drink to the wedding in Mam Miriam’s best apple brandy before I leave this poor empty house where I am writing.
Don’t destroy Blind Hamlin, Mother. I don’t like him, he’s a crosspatch bag of guts, but don’t destroy him, don’t whittle him down as you must have scraped my father down with the rasp of words—but I forget, I am a changeling. Poor Blind Hamlin!—there may be witchcraft in it, Mother. It troubles me that a man who can’t see makes candles for those who will not. Don’t destroy him. Make another monster with him. I’d like a monster for a half-brother—but there, never mind, I’m not coming back to Trempa, make all the monsters you wish. The world’s already full of them.
I am not writing this for my mother. She will not be the one to find it here. Whoever does—I pray you, read this page if you like and the one before it that begins “She wouldn’t tell me herself”—read and then throw away, in God’s name. For I would like the truth to be somewhere in the world, maybe in your head, whoever you are, but I don’t wish to slap my mother in the face with it, nor Blind Hamlin either. Blind Hamlin was never unkind to me. I am all soreness, the tenderest touch smarts on a burned skin. I will mend. I don’t hate my mother—do I hate anyone?—is it a sign of my monster-hood that I don’t hate anyone?—or if I do, I will mend, I’ll cease hating wherever I am going, and even forget. Especially forget. Read those pages and throw away and then, you too, forget. But save the rest, if you will. I don’t want to die altogether in your mind, whoever you are.
Down that road I came. I think I left behind me most of what had appeared certain in the world; the new uncertainties are still to find. Where did I encounter you? Who are you?—oh, merely the one supposed to find this letter. So then you are not the new person I need to find—someone not Eden, nor Andrea whom I loved, but some other. But with Andrea I understood that heaven would open whenever he looked on me.
In that road through the woods beyond Wayland’s field the trees stand close on either side, oak and pine and enormous tulip trees where the white parrots like to gather and squabble with the bluejays, and thickets that swell with a passion of growth wherever an opening like that road lets through the sun. Oaks had shifted into the bronze along with the clear gold of maple trees when I passed by, yet I saw few leaves fallen. You remember some of the wise prophets in Trempa have been saying it’ll be a hard winter, with snow in January for sure. The Lord must save a special land of forgiveness for the weather prophets—other lands of liars have some chance of learning better. As I looked along the slender channel of the road, I saw the stirring of distant treetops under the wind, but here that wind was hushed, cut to a modest breeze or to no motion at all. And suddenly the stillness was charged with the fishy loathsome reek of black wolf.
It is a poison in the air and we live with it. I remember how it has always happened in the village: days, weeks, with no hint of the evil, and when we have forgotten and grown careless, then without warning the sour stench of them comes on the air, and we hear their rasping howl in the nights—nothing like the musical uproar of the common wolves who seldom do worse than pick up a sheep now and then—and people will die, ambushed, throat-torn, stripped of flesh and bones cracked for the marrow. Some tell of seeing the Devil walk with them. He teaches them tricks that only human beings ought to know. He leads them to the trail of late travelers, to lonely houses where a door may be unlatched, or someone seized on the way to shed or outhouse. And yet they do say that black wolf will not attack by day; if a man comes at him then, even if he is at his carrion, he may slink off; now I know this is true. At night black wolf is invincible, I suppose. The smell hung dense on that woodland road, coming from all around me, so that I could not run away from it.
I had my thin strength, and a knife; my knife is from the hands of Wise Wayland the Smith, and there is a spell on it. For look you, no harm comes to me if I am wearing it. I was not wearing it when Andrea’s family moved away and took him with them—all the way to Penn, God help me. I was not wearing it when they came on me with Eden in Wayland’s field and called me monster.
In fear I went ahead, not trying for quiet because no one ever surprises black wolf. I came on the beast on the far side of a boulder that jutted into the road, but before that I heard the sounds of tearing. It had ripped the liver from the body. Blood still oozed from all the wounds. Enough remained of the face so that I knew the man was old Kobler. His back-pack was not with him, nor any gear, so he had not been on his way to the vi
llage. Perhaps he had been taken with some sickness, and so the wolf dared to bring him down in broad day.
By this time Kobler will be expected in the village. They’ll wonder why he doesn’t come marching to the General Store with his stack of reed baskets and Mam Miriam’s beautiful embroideries and such-like, and slap down his one silver coin, and fill his back-pack with the provisions for Mam Miriam and himself. True, he was never regular in the timing of his visits; another week or two might go by before anyone turns curious. People don’t think much unless their convenience is joggled, and old Kobler was so silent a man, never granting anyone a word that could be held back—and Mam Miriam herself hardly more than a legend to the town folk—no, I suppose they won’t stir themselves unduly. All the same I must leave, I must not be caught here by those who would stone me for their souls’ benefit. Nothing keeps me in this house now except a wish to write these words for you, whoever you are. Then I will go when the night wind is blowing.
It was an old dog wolf, and foul, alone, his fangs yellowed. He held his ground hardly a moment when I walked down on him with the knife of Wayland flashing sunlight on his eyes. I did not understand immediately that Kobler was past help—then the wolf moved, I saw the liver, I knew the look on the old man’s mask was no-way meant for me. Jon Kobler, a good fellow I think, Mam Miriam’s servant, companion, and more. He shrank from the world as she did, nor do I see how you could hold it against either of them, for often the world stinks so that even a fool like me must hold his nose. It will not harm them now if I tell you they were lovers.
The wolf slunk off through the brush into a ravine. It must have been the power of Wayland’s knife—or is it possible that black wolf is not so terrible as folk say? Well, mine is a knife that Wayland made long since, when he was young; he told me so.
He gave it to me on the morning of the best day of my life. Andrea had come to me the day before, had chosen me out of all the others in the training yard— although I seldom shone there, my arm is not heavy enough for the axe or the spear-throwing, and in archery I am only fair, undistinguished. He challenged me to wrestle, I put forth my best, almost I had his shoulders down and he laughing up at me, and then presto! somehow I am flung over on my back and my heart close to cracking with happiness because he has won. And he invited me to go on the morrow with him and some of his older friends for a stag hunt through Bindiaan Wood, and I had to say, “I have no knife, no gear.”
“Oh,” says Andrea, and April is no kinder, “we’ll find extra gear for you at my father’s house, and as for a knife of your own, maybe Wayland the Smith has one for you.”
I knew that Wayland Smith did sometimes make such gifts to boys just turning men, but had never imagined he would trouble with one so slight-built as I am and supposed to be simple-minded from the hours with the books. “You do hide your light,” says Andrea, whom I had already loved for a year, scarcely daring to speak to him. He laughed and pressed my shoulder. “Go to ancient Wayland, do him some little favor—there’s no harm in him—and maybe he’ll have a knife for you. I would give you mine, Benvenuto,” he said, “only that’s bad magic between friends, but come to me with a knife of your own and we’ll make blood brotherhood.”
So the next morning I went to Wayland the Smith with all my thoughts afire, and I found the old man about to draw a bucket of water from his well, but looking ill and drooping, and he said, “O Benvenuto, I have a crick in my arm—would you, in kindness?” So I drew the water for him, and we drank together. I saw the smithy was untidy with cobwebs, and swept it out for him, he watching me and rambling on with his tales and sayings and memories that some call wanton blasphemies—I paid little heed to them, thinking of Andrea, until he asked me, “Are you a good boy, Benvenuto?” His tone made me know he would like to hear me laugh, or anyway not mind it, indeed I could hardly help laughing at a thousand silly notions, and for the pleasure of it, and the joy of the day; and that was when he gave me this knife I always carry. I don’t think I answered his question, or at least only to say, “I try to be,” or some such nonsense. He gave me the knife, kissed me, told me not to be too unhappy in my life; but I don’t know what one must do to follow that counsel, unless it is to live the way all others do, like baa-sheep who come and go at the will of the shepherd and his dog and must never stray from the tinkle of the wether’s bell.
Oh, yes, that day I went on the hunt with Andrea, armed with the knife that was given me by Wayland Smith. We killed a stag together, he marked my forehead, with our own blood then we made brotherhood; but he is gone away.
There was nothing anyone could have done for old Kobler except pray for him. I did that—if there’s anything to hear our prayers, if the prayers of a monster can be noticed. But who is God? Who is this cloud-thing that has nothing better to do than stare on human pain and now and then poke it with his finger? Is he not bored? Will he not presently wipe it all away, or go away and forget? Or has he already gone Way, forgotten?
You will not have me burnt for these words because you will not find me. Besides, I must remember you are simply the unknown who will happen on this letter in Mam Miriam’s house, and you may even be a friend. I must remember there are friends.
When I rose from kneeling beside the poor mess that was what remained of Kobler, I heard rustling in the brush. That wolf had no companions or they would have been with him tearing at the meat, but perhaps he was rallying from his fright, hungry for something young and fresh. I understood too that the sun was lowering, night scarcely more than an hour away. Night’s arrival would be sudden in the manner of autumn, which has a cruelty in it, as if we did not know that winter is near but must be reminded with a slap and a scolding. Only then did I think of Mam Miriam, who would expect Kobler’s return.
When was the last time any of you in Trempa saw Mam Miriam Coletta? I had not even known she was daughter to Roy Coletta, who was governor of Ulsta in his time. Or was this only something she dreamed for me, something to tell me when perhaps her wits were wandering? It doesn’t matter: I will think her a princess if I choose.
She was twenty-five and yet unmarried, hostess of the governor’s mansion at Sortees after her mother’s death, and she fell in love with a common archer, one of the Governor’s Guard, and ran away with him, escaping from her locked bedroom on a rope made from a torn blanket O the dear romantic tale! I’ve heard none better from the gyppos—their stories are too much alike, but this was like some of the poems of Old Time, especially as she told it me, and never mind if her wits wandered; I have ceased speculating whether it was true.
You think the archer was this same man who become Poor Old Kobler, marching into town fortnightly with his back-pack and his baskets, and the embroideries by a crazy old bedridden dame who lived off in the Haunted Stone House and wouldn’t give anyone the time of day?
He was not. That archer abandoned her in a brothel at Nuber. Kobler was an aging soldier, a deserter. He took her out of that place and brought her to Trempa. He knew of the old stone house in the woods so long abandoned—for he was a Trempa man in his beginnings, Jon Kobler, but you may not find any bones to bury— and he took her there. He repaired the solid old ruin; you would not believe what good work he did there, mostly with wood cut and shaped out of the forest with his own hands. He cared for her there, servant and lover; they seem not to have had much need of the world. They grew old there, like that.
Rather, he did, I suppose. When I saw her she did not seem very old. Why, I first heard talk and speculation about them (most of it malicious) when I was six years old; I think they must have been new-come then, and that’s only nine years ago. Yesterday or perhaps the day before, nine years would have seemed like a long time to me. Now I wonder if a thousand years is a long time, and I can’t answer my own question. I am not clever at guessing ages, but I would think Mam Miriam was hardly past forty; and certainly she spoke like a lady, and told me of the past glories as surely no one could have done who had not known them—the governor’s mans
ion, the dances all night long and great people coming on horseback or in fine carriages from all over the county; she made me see the sweaty faces of the musicians in the balcony, and didn’t she herself go up one night (the dance at her tenth birthday party) to share a box of candy with them? She spoke of the gardens, the lilac and wisteria and many-colored roses, the like you never saw in Trempa, and there were odd musky red grapes from some incredible lan$ far south of Penn, and from there also, limes, and oranges, and spices she could not describe for me. Telling me all this simply and truly, she did seem like a young woman, even a girl— oh, see for yourself, how should I know? There she lies, poor sweet thing, in the bed Jon Kobler must have made. I have done what I could for her, and it is not much.
I am wandering. I must tell of all this as I should, and then go. Perhaps you will never come; it may be best if you do not.
I prayed for Kobler, and then I went on down the road—despising the wolf but not forgetting him, for I wish to live—as far as its joining with the small path that I knew would take me to Mam Miriam’s. There I hesitated a long while, though I think I knew from the start that I would go to her. I don’t know what it is in us that (sometimes) will make us do a thing against our wishes because we know it to be good. “Conscience” is too thin a word, and “God” too misty, too spoiled by the many who mouth it constantly without any care for what they say, or as if they alone were able to inform you of God’s will—and please, how came they to be so favored? But something drives, I think from within, and I must even obey it without knowing a name for it.
Universe 5 - [Anthology] Page 10
