The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe

by Kij Johnson

  “Where is the sky?” Gnesa touched the blueness with one short finger.

  “That blue is their sky.”

  “There is no patterning, no mass? What is it made of?” Gnesa’s field was Material Studies. She turned the card over and fell silent. The back was simpler: CARTE POSTALE printed in dark blue on plain white; angular handwriting in ink that had faded from black to the color of old blood.

  Veline, you always wish for proofs—R.

  “‘Veline’?”

  “Me.” Vellitt looked down at the little photograph, the tiny bright women, the specks on the piazza’s flagstones: birds, or debris. “I didn’t believe him when he told me about the sky, so he brought this to me. Gnesa, I can follow Jurat and Stephan Heller to Hatheg-Kla. I know the way. I’ve crossed the forest and I’ve seen the Gate.”

  Gnesa frowned. “Too dangerous. If it comes to that, I’ll send Daekkson.”

  “It must be me.”

  “No. Daekkson is twenty years younger than you—and, not inconsequentially, male. The west . . . that is rough country, Vellitt.”

  Vellitt snorted “The Skai plains? Hardly!— No, I do take your point, but consider: which of us is more likely to bring her back? I’m her tutor, Arbitrix for her Exams. We need her to listen, to understand what is at risk if she clings to this folly. If he comes up with Jurat on the road to the Gate, she will not listen to him. Stephan Hellar may make trouble—if he loves her, he will do so. It will be hard for Daekkson to retrieve her without a scandal. And if they have passed it? He has no options.”

  “Would you have options?” said Gnesa.

  “More than Daekkson, anyway. Trust me, Gnesa. I will find a way.”

  Gnesa stared into the flames for a moment. “Your point is valid, and I accede. But—can you travel fast enough?”

  “I’ll have to, won’t I?”

  They were interrupted by a knock at the door. Daekkson, back from The Speared Hart: Stephan Heller had departed that very afternoon in the company of an extraordinarily beautiful woman: obviously Jurat, by the nightkip’s dazzled description. They had asked about roads leading west.

  Gnesa dismissed Daekkson and turned to Vellitt. “That’s that, then. Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Does it matter?” Vellitt said, suddenly tired of it all. “It’s what I do: teach women not to be fools. I have spent the last twenty years of my life here—making a place for women who don’t fit anywhere else. She can’t be allowed to ruin it for the others.”

  “All right. How soon will you depart?”

  “Immediately. Professor Freser at Thanes-College can take my lectures and students. Can you let everyone else know who needs to?”

  “Done.” Gnesa jotted something down and stood. “I’ll get the Bursar to pull together some funds for you. Bring Jurat back to us, Vellitt. And yourself.” Gnesa embraced her, a sudden surprising touch, then was gone.

  * * *

  It was not quite an immediate departure, but it was quick for all that. Vellitt Boe unearthed from the recesses of her closet a small leather pack, crumpled and smelling slightly, pleasingly, of ancient rains and distant soil. She found her old walking boots and her walking stick of gnurled black wood.

  When Vellitt Boe was young, she had been a far-traveller, a great walker of the Six Kingdoms, which waking-world men called the dream lands. She had seen Irem, that pillared ruin, and she knew that it was not the fantasia of the Academician’s pretty painting above her desk but—like the rest of the world—dirtier and infinitely more interesting.

  She had been born in the harbor town of Jaren, where the frigid Xari spilled into the northern reaches of the Cerenarian Sea; but in her nineteenth year she left, and for years after that she voyaged: crossed plains and forests and fenlands; ascended mountains and walked in the belly of the under-realms; sailed in strange-hulled boats across unfamiliar oceans under the low sky. She had travelled until she realized that this yearning life could not be sustained, that time would eventually erode away her strength and courage; and so she stopped. She applied to the Women’s College of the University of Celephaïs and settled into rooms there, a perfect student, brilliant and disciplined. She received her Physical Studies degree in Mathematics and came to Ulthar, to stay and grow old and teach other young women more rational responses to their restlessness. It had been sensible, a reasonable end to her far-travelling youth.

  Packing came to her automatically, a memory stained not into her mind but into the muscles of her hands and arms. The tricks came back: how to roll her spare socks and where the tin box of medical supplies best fit. She stowed a sweater, a blouse, heavy gloves, her flat steel canteen, a comb and toothbrush, soap in a small bottle, whetstone and oil, matches—all the oddments of travelling finding their places in the pack as though they knew their way. She added her electric torch, but such torches had existed only as expensive, temperamental fripperies thirty years ago, so she also found her old tinder-box. She tested the flint: satisfied, for her hand had preserved the precise, economical flick that sent blue-white sparks spattering across her leather desk-pad. Dropping the tinder-box into its little interior pocket, she lifted the rucksack by its shoulder straps. It was lighter than it would have been, for she no longer had rope and grapnel, nor her blanket roll, nor the compact little cooking kit she had once carried; but it was heavy enough, for all that.

  She carried it out to the sitting room and dropped it on the settee. She still owned the machete she had carried so long ago, so she unearthed it from the back of a drawer and strapped the ancient sheath in its place. It nestled gently into the cradle it had worn for itself, just beneath the top flap.

  It was only a few days’ travel, in any case. She would be crossing the plains of the River Skai, going through Nir and Hatheg-town—small but civilized enough in their way. Later, when she approached the wastelands of the Stony Desert, there would be roadside inns, or a farmer could be paid for a night in an unused or hastily vacated bedroom. It would be more dangerous when she entered the forest that girdled Hatheg-Kla, for it was inhabited by the zoogs, strange, sinuous, and untrustworthy; but she would be less than a day under those glowing trees, and she had been there before. As for the waking world, if it should come to that? She had no idea what to expect, so there was no predicting what would be needed.

  She took up her knife from where it had rested for twenty years, a combination paperweight and letter-opener half-buried beneath the papers on her desk. It made a tiny sound as she unsheathed it. The edge was still sharp. She returned it to its sheath and slipped it beneath her jacket.

  She laced on her walking boots and stood, and for a moment looked about herself, at the dark, crooked gables and slanting ceilings of her rooms, the cluttery wallpaper and soft furniture. She had been in these rooms for twenty years and everything was as known as her own reflection: more, for in recent years she had not lingered on that ageing stranger in the silvered glass.

  On an impulse, she walked into the bedroom and looked at herself in the pier mirror. A stranger infinitely familiar stared back: a stern-eyed woman in walking tweeds, with heavy laced boots and black-and-silver hair pulled away from her lined face. An old woman but not soft—or, she thought with a sudden inward wry laugh, perhaps not quite old, but also softer than she had been.

  She was interrupted by a soft knock: the College’s Bursar, with academic robes tossed over her seafoam-green nightdress and her hair a tangled braid, looking quite mad. She had things for Vellitt: letters of credit, an oiled-leather purse filled with coins, a small parcel of weight-stamped gold lozenges, and a little notebook ruled for bookkeeping. She did not speak of Vellitt’s task, only said a quick farewell, with a stern enjoinder to record all expenditures for the University’s Accountancies. As the Bursar left, a sleepy scullery maid appeared, bringing sandwiches from the kitchen for the first day’s travel. Typical of Gnesa to think of this, even in the middle of so much else to do.

  * * *

  And so Vellitt Boe le
ft Ulthar Women’s College, walking silent and alone across the quad and through the postern gate: Daeksson back at his post in the porter’s hutch, looking uncommonly weary. “Well forth,” he said as she passed; and, “No ill thing,” she replied. Stepping through the postern gate, she let the heavy door fall shut behind her.

  She paused and looked about herself. A narrow slice of sky overhead showed as pitch darkness, for the lane was narrow here, ancient and kenneled and crowded close by stone walls pierced by many-paned windows, dark now.

  This was Tierce Lane, but she knew them all, every mews and alley. For twenty years she had paced Ulthar’s bounds, traversed its parks and ancient greens, crossed squares, passed fountains. And the people: her colleagues and Fellows and friends—and a thousand lesser connections, with kellarkips and shopkips, the girl who served sardines and cream tea at Gulserene’s and the cheerful delivery boy from Patles’s Books. These were home, or something that passed for home.

  She was brought back to herself by a sudden movement at her feet. It was the small black cat that had followed her to Clarie Jurat’s rooms; or another like it. It wreathed her ankles, gazing upward, and its eyes shone with light reflected from the lamp over the postern gate. “I have nothing for you,” Vellitt said. “Go back inside, little one.”

  It did not. Vellitt walked to where Tierce Lane met the High and turned west, and the cat trotted beside her. This was the old part of town: half-timbered buildings with overhung second stories and peaked roofs, the occasional shrine or public building of heavy granite or blocks of labradorite. The air smelled of ancient mold, but also of herbs, of rue and basil and catmint, for every window had a hanging basket bright with greenery. When she crossed Affleur Road, a single lamp shone in the Weeping Tower of New College—a student in his rooms, cramming for Exams as Clarie Jurat should have been. Later, on the Mercü, a light beamed from the open back door of a bakery: the smell of fresh bread everywhere. There were few other signs of life; even Ulthar’s ubiquitous cats were scarce, pursuing their private errantries as the night eased into dawn.

  She crossed Six Corners, automatically making the Elder Sign. After this, the High widened and opened into a series of arcades and markets, and the smells changed, to new-gathered greens, spices, hanging pheasants, and the pork and mutton that already hung in linen-wrapped pink slabs in front of the flescher’s; for now morning was coming. The tea-seller called out a greeting to Vellitt as she unlaced her canvas shop-front; they had talked often enough of tea, weather, far places. Vellitt only waved as she passed. If all went well she would be back soon; if it did not— But there was no reason to think of that.

  She turned onto Nir Road, and the buildings spaced themselves out, became detached houses, then cottages with gardens. Small hornless goats eyed her through withy fences. She heard poultry chuckling in back gardens, and once through the open window of an ivy-wrapped cottage, a woman’s voice singing: “Sarnath, Sarkomand, Khem, and Toldees; Always say, ‘Thank you!’ and, ‘Sir, if you please.’”

  Vellitt paused when she came to the top of Never-rye Hill, panting a little from the long ascent. Ulthar behind her was achingly beautiful in the rose-pink rays of the new sun: the Six Hills crazed as a tumbled quilt, a random patchwork of red gabled roofs frilled with ornamental iron chimney-pots and lightning rods, and the dark gaps that were roads and gardens. Crowning the highest of the hills, the Temple: a tower surrounded by a grassy field, bright with the first tents for the great Sheep-fair, which was to commence in three days. Like a garland about the hill’s base were the Seven Colleges of Ulthar’s University: New College, Eb-Taqar, and Meianthe School and the others; ancient, cool, palladian structures of pale stone blushing the sunrise pink of cherry blossoms, their quadrangles turned trapezoidal by perspective; hints of lush garden. Newest and humblest of them, the Women’s College was a clutter of buildings scarce fancier than the town, but she gazed hungrily until she identified the bell tower and the slate roof of the new dining hall.

  Never-rye Hill was capped with a little shrine, knee-high and fashioned of porphyry so worn that it was impossible to know what god it honored, whether Great One or Other or some being altogether different. It was traditional to leave a nut when one left Ulthar, and the shrine was half-buried in hazels and almonds, walnuts and acorns, everything much picked over by squirrels. She had forgotten to bring an offering, but a century ago, some thoughtful traveller had planted a walnut tree close by. It took but a moment to find a fallen nut in the long grasses and lay it among the others.

  The small black cat from the College had seated itself upon the shrine’s stained offering slab (for it was not always nuts that were offered here) and was cleaning its ears with complete absorption. It was unlike cats to travel like this, but she also knew that cats lived according to their own schemes and agendas. “It grows harder from here,” she warned the cat, but it dropped to the path and walked forward as though to say, You are wasting time.

  Vellitt came to the great stone bridge that crossed the River Skai and paid the penny toll to cross. She inquired of the money-taker whether she remembered two people from the night before, but the girl only shook her head: her brother had managed the booth; she had only begun her shift an hour ago. “People mostly don’t cross at night, any case,” she added with a melodramatic shiver, “on account of the ghost!”—set to launch into the story of the man buried alive in the bridge’s masonry. But Vellitt had heard it before and moved on, leaving the girl to relate it to the reluctant zebra-drover behind her.

  Her plan was to follow the Lhosk-Hatheg road past Hatheg-town, to the great curve where it approached the zoogs’ forest, just before it plunged into the Stony Desert to meet the caravan road. For now, she was still on the plains of the Skai: open country threaded through with hedges, pretty rolling farmland, and pasturage the dusty green of late summer, scattered with white-fleeced sheep. She stopped for lunch at an inn well past the bridge, and afterward, she repacked her rucksack, to remove everything that four hours’ walk made less imperative, arranging to have the excess shipped back to College. The black cat watched with interest, and when Vellitt at last shrugged back into the straps, it leapt easily onto the top flap and settled there. It almost exactly countered the weight she had just removed, but its breath was pleasant on her ear. It seemed a fair trade.

  The afternoon was slower: she had always been a great walker, but it had been years since she had gone so far. Being sensible about her age, she had called it, but in fact there had been no impetus to work harder when she was only traversing the mannerly Karthian Hills or the pleasant garden-lands of the Skai. Her muscles stretched and grew warm, began to ache and then grew numb: all usual enough for the first day out, she recalled.

  The air was misted with pollen from the ripening fields. Across a valley, she saw (and heard) a tractor trundling across a pasture, a glossy, violent red against all the green, but mechanical vehicles were still a recent and rare thing in these regions, and mostly it was oxen or zebras pulling carts and threshers, and the voices of the drivers calling out, Chirac, chirac, hai! The sun blanked the sky to a pale blue, the titanic swellings faded to no more than slight differences in tint and texture.

  She stopped for the night just past the little town of Nir, at a road-inn called the Lost Lamb. No one there had seen Jurat and Stephan Heller. The only other travellers were three young traders with cinnamon and sandalwood from distant Oonai, on their way to the thousand gilded spires of Thran. They smelled of their sweet wares, and she could not help but breathe deeply; but they, seeing only an old woman in sturdy shoes, did not speak to her.

  * * *

  Vellitt Boe awoke aching in every joint. For the first miles, all she could think of were hot baths and her research desk back at the University library, no doubt delightfully baking in the sunlight that would be coming through the clerestory windows; but her stiffness eased with movement, and she began to walk as the far-traveller she had once been. Certainly, the morning was beautiful, the
sun bright and the seething sky faded to faint basketweaves. As she left the plains and ascended into the hills, the farmhouses and cottages became less frequent, and their fences had the look of being constructed to keep things out as much as in. The hedgerows grew wild, and sometimes she caught hints of a green glow in their tangled hearts.

  She came to the top of a ridge and saw the country spread around her: the Lhosk-Hatheg Road a pale line across the tangled green and gold countryside; the peaks and the green wooded slopes of Mount Lerion to her north and white-capped Mount Thurai to the northwest; and to the west, hazy with distance and always so much larger than she ever remembered, the great mountain Hatheg-Kla, its snowy peak fading into the shifting sky, so that she could not be sure of its final height.

  She stopped at a remote house and bought bread, tomatoes, and slices of smoked goat’s belly. Vellitt asked about Jurat and Stephan Heller, but the farm-woman had seen nothing, only took the money unsmiling and returned inside, shutting the door firmly against the slight midday breeze. Vellitt lunched alone a mile later, on the parapet of a stone bridge across the sun-spangled Reffle. Knowing the stream’s reputation, she did not refill her canteen, and when the cat ambled down to investigate the water’s edge, she called it back. A moment later her caution proved justified: a bird alighting on a willow wand that overhung the Reffle dropped suddenly, as though dead or drugged, and a red-scaled carp the size of a wild boar rose from the shadows of the stream bottom and sucked the bird in.

  The afternoon was less pleasant: hotter and dusty. Her shoulders under the straps felt raw, and her thighs burned. Just before dusk she stopped at a farmhouse to rent a room from a grim-faced man who answered direct questions but offered nothing more. Yeh, Hatheg was just a’ways along t’road. Yeh, he saw a couple walking that way this very morn: the girl swart-haired and the man very tall. Yeh, he might’ve been a dreamer (he made the Elder Sign); he had that look on ’m; but he wasn’t paying no attention, he had his own work to do, not idle like some. That night in the little attic room, Vellitt wrote Gnesa Petso: I’m relieved, I suppose, she ended. I might have been wrong, and Jurat on a dhow down the Skai, halfway to the coast.