Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

“Like Vlad,” I said.

He agreed. “But who shall say what it was? The angel drives Adam from paradise with a sword of fire, and fairies take such shapes to frighten us. Who shall say?”

Martya asked, “Where is it he see this dog?”

The small man ignored her. “I have said many things I shall do for you,” he told me. “I will have your baggage returned to you, seek to have your charges dismissed and your passport in your hands once more, and arrange that the rent shall remain unchanged. One thing more I do. There is a priest I shall send to you.”

When Martya and I returned to the Willows, I took down the mirror. I was on the top step of our stepladder, and it was all I could do to get down the steps holding the mirror out in front of me. Martya screamed and I nearly dropped it.

There had been, just like Martya had told me, a dead woman behind it. She was scooched down in a hollow in the wall, looking like a mummy nobody had wrapped up. She had long, pale hair.

“We must get her down.” Martya was still gasping. “With one of these sheets we will cover her. A Christian burial. She need that.”

I said, “It might be better to leave her right where she is and call the police.”

“What is this! You wish to rot in Herrtay? Never do you get out, fool! Someone they must blame. No!”

It was hard to get myself to touch the dead girl at first, but pretty soon I was worrying about hurting her when I did it. She felt like I might break off an arm or something trying to get her out. Her skin felt like rotten leather and it seemed like she might fall apart any minute. I was about to lay her on the floor when I saw Martya had pulled the dustcover off a narrow couch upholstered in peacock blue silk. As reverently as I could manage, I laid the dead girl’s mummy on that while Martya made the sign of the cross. When the old couch’s dirty white dustcover was back in place, you could not see the mummy anymore, but boy oh boy did we ever know she was in there.

“She is dead already, do you think, when they are put her there? Or she is lives, and—and…”

I comforted Martya as well as I could.

She must have cried for ten or fifteen minutes, maybe longer. Finally she said, “I will go home, and you must come too so I do not fear. Tomorrow we come back, perhaps. Or you alone. I do not know.”

I said okay. It seemed like she got it together while we walked back to Kleon’s place. If she ever smiled I did not see it, but she stopped crying and it seemed like she was not so scared. If we talked, I guess I have forgotten everything we said. Maybe we did not talk about anything. I know I was thinking about the dead-girl problem. What were we going to do about her and how should I handle it? Only I knew it would be way too fast to spring anything about it on Martya.

When we got to Kleon’s and were sitting at the kitchen table sipping hot tea, I took a big chance. “According to what we heard that guy from the ministry say, there’s a big lake near here. Is that right?”

Martya nodded. “The city crowd it, but it does not move. Formerly, the rich houses pressed upon it. These were blow up when the Russians came. Now there is a park and a beach. There are thieves, also wolves, so this park is most dangerous by night. There is the beach beyond and the wolves are sometimes not hungered, so people take their children there to swim.”

“Wolves?” I had heard it but I could not believe it.

“Yes, for the thieves. They hunt by night, like them. They come into the city from the east. The streets they do not like, there is too much houses, too many people. In the park, they think, is better. The thieves hide there. They wait for someone to come, such women as me or old bent men. The wolves do not wait. They fall upon the thief and he is dead. They eat him. The police say we shoot them, but they shoot only two, I think, and there is trouble about those. So they let them live and the wolves do not attack them. If the sun is bright and you are more than one, you are safe.”

I asked, “What about women like you, and the old people?”

“We do not go into the park alone because of the thieves, so we are safe. Do you wish to see the lake?”

Of course I said I did.

“Do you fish? Many fish there. I have fished, though I am not so skilled. My father took me when I was small.” She giggled. “I promise him I bait the hook myself, but when we are in the boat he must do everything. There are many fish, some most big. What you catch, I will cook for us.”

I said that a lot of fish were not good to eat.

“No, no! All our fish are good. This you will see. We have…” Martya reeled off the names of a couple of dozen fish, but they were in her language. None of them meant a thing to me. “You fish,” she finished. “You row the boat, also. What you catch I clean and cook for us.”

I said okay, only I told myself I would not row any boat if I could help it.

There were no motorboats, but for twice the price of a rowboat we could rent a little sloop. It was about noon when we put out. I am no expert sailor, but I know the rudiments. Besides, the rig of our little sloop was as simple as a rig can be, and sailing the quiet blue waters of Lake Perilimna was nothing like crossing the North Pacific from Dutch Harbor to Hokkaido. My dad and I did that one time.

Martya was in her glory, lounging on a beach towel spread on the roof of our cabin and looking sexy as hell. She had brought a bottle of stinking oil that was supposed to keep you from getting sunburned and greased her skin with it whenever she thought somebody was paying attention. Since she had nothing on but the faded bottom of what had probably started out as a bikini, her skin took a lot of greasing. When the sail and the tiller could handle things on their own, I kept busy rubbing stinky oil on her back and drying my hands on my face and ears.

With the sloop the man had let us have a couple of long bamboo poles and a few hooks. Our bait was pretty various. Martya had supplied balls of flour and rancid fat. I had added a can of chopped fish and a big can of slimy little animals I suppose must have been newts. I trolled, putting my pole in a socket and changing bait from time to time. Each fish we caught delighted Martya. As for me, I was happy there were not more.

Lake Perilimna is big, irregular, and cold. Really long, too. Martya told me the capital was at the other end. There are bays and inlets all over, and islands covered with trees scattered around. They probably have names, but Martya did not know them and I never learned them. When we had sailed along the coast quite a ways, and had begun to sail back toward the yellow bricks and church spires of Puraustays, I broke down and asked Martya where Vlad’s summer home had been.

She shook her head until her amber curls danced. “I have never hear of this place. It is a tale to frighten children, I think.”

“That man from the ministry of whatever it was seemed pretty serious about it. He was warning us, and trying to do it without putting down his own country.”

“Then ask him! I do not know.”

“If there’s anything like that here, it will probably fill a whole chapter in my book. I can’t just pass over a thing like that.”

We were nearing an island bigger than most of them, and it was like what I said had broken a spell, or maybe cast one. I caught sight of battlements above the tops of a bunch of hemlocks, and I pointed and shouted.

Martya would not look. “What is this? You are not nice all today.”

“A castle! There’s a castle on that island.”

“You will go there.” It was not a question.

“Damn straight!”

“Also you will wish me to go with you, into another terrible place like your house.”