Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

She was standing in the middle of the floor having a cow, and Papa Iason was pulling on his boots. I yelled, “Martya!” and hugged her. Her eyes just about popped out of her head.

Then she said, “He will want you! He will want you, too!”

We left as soon as Papa Iason got his boots on, all four of us packed into the one police car, both women in back with me and Papa Iason up front with the driver. It was dumb, but I kept wanting to remind Naala that I had never gone to tell Papa Zenon about Rosalee. Only I could not, because I was listening to Martya. Also to Naala’s questions. And I was asking Martya quite a few of my own.

You can split all women into two groups. There are the ones who will give you a straight, simple answer, and the ones who tell you a dozen things you don’t need to know before they get around to what you need to know, if they ever do. My guess is there are maybe a hundred in Group 1 and all the rest are in Group 2.

So here’s Martya, definitely a Group 2 girl, with a whole bunch of editing by me. “When you disappear my husband—you remember my husband? Remember Kleon?”

“Sure.”

“He knows they shoot him as soon as they know you are gone. He tells me he will leave in the morning but I think he fears I tell them because when I wake up he is already gone. I wait for him to come home, but he never comes so—”

“Where is Rathaus hide?” Naala asked across me.

“There will be much walking. I will show. I search the whole house for money, because I know Kleon hides money somewhere, but he takes it. In cellar, even, is no money. So I take the money I find and shut up the house. I think where does Kleon not go? It is to the capital! There are the police everywhere I am tell so he does not go there. So I go. Only I have the little money.”

I said, “Maybe you’ve got relatives here?”

“With no money it is no travel. I must find food, find work so I am paid. Once I find a picnic. Three boys they have, also two girls. Their names…”

And so on. Naturally I wanted to know whether Martya had sold it and how often, only there was no point asking about that because I would never get the truth that way. What was also natural was that Naala wanted to know where Rathaus was, because that was the main thing for her. Only after a while I could see that Martya did not know the name of the place, only how to get there.

Papa Iason up in the front seat wanted to know what was wrong with him. I got the feeling that Papa knew a good deal of medicine even if he was not a doctor, and I could see how he would, working with poor people all the time and going to sick beds the way he did.

It boiled down to just about everything. Russ could not keep anything on his stomach. He could not move his arms (or not much) and his hands shook when he tried to feed himself. Plus a bunch of other stuff, and it all sounded bad.

“So they make me sign the paper or I will go to jail,” Martya was saying. “On this paper are many terrible things I never do. If they give to the police I will hang, but I must sign or they go to the police. I sign and after this I am a slave.”

“You were shoplifting,” I told her.

“No! I never steal. I take nothing ever!”

“Oh, yes you did! You were shoplifting and they caught you. Listen, it’s okay with me, only we’ve got to have the truth. You went to that shop and boosted some stuff, including the shawl you wrapped the hand in.”

I was talking to Martya but watching Naala when I said that, and her eyes went wide for just a second. It made me feel really, really good.

“Some of it you probably sold, but there was some of it you kept,” I told Martya. “Only you made the dumb mistake of going back there again because it had been easy the first time. The second time they grabbed you as you went out the door and found their stuff on you. So they had you dead to rights and made you sign. Was the hand supposed to kill Russ?”

“I would not kill him, the hand does it.”

“Got it. Did they tell you where he was?”

“He is in Frost Forest. This they know. I find out where.”

Naala wanted to know how, and I said, “Two drinks. Remember?” That turned out to be about right. He had a guy in one of the little villages bringing him food, and Martya had found the guy—seen him sneaking off at night with a package—and gotten him to talk.

After that she had gone to see Russ with the hand in a shopping basket the Unholy Way had given her. He was well then, and he had caught the hand and tried to throw it into the fire, only something had happened then that scared him. So he ran down Martya, who had just left, and talked her over onto his side. There would be money, and he would give her a lot of it, enough to buy pardons for her and Kleon with plenty left over after it. Besides they would knock the props out from under the Unholy Way, and she would get her confession back. He was a magician, too, only a good magician and his magic was stronger than theirs. Eventually, she went over. Then he sent her to Papa Iason with the hand.

I knew damn well that sooner or later we would have to get out of the car and hike, and it was sooner rather than later. The Frost Forest was big and empty and quiet. Also cold and as dark as black paint because it was on the north side of the mountain. The cop had a flashlight and Martya had a lantern, but the darkness and the cold seemed to press in on us just the same.

The trees were big and far apart. Their foliage must have been green, but it looked black that night. Most of them did not have limbs until you got three or four stories up. Sometimes it seemed to me like they were just trees, but sometimes it seemed like we were walking over a broken stone floor inside a big, big building with columns all around us, rows and rows of columns that stretched off into the night one hell of a lot farther than I could see.

Somehow I had always thought forests were more or less level. This one was steep, a mountainside like I said, and there were big rocks and little cliffs between the trees. As far as I could see there were no animals, which figured because there was nothing there for them to eat. I asked Martya if Russ was in a cave, and she looked at me funny and said he had a tent. Before I get into this further, I ought to say that the cop who had driven our car did not like being there with us. Naala had made him come.

So was another cop. If I have to tell you who that was, you have not been paying attention.

Let me level with you here. I was expecting to find the man in black with Russ and the prospect scared the crap out of me. He was not there. Nobody else was, either, until we came.

Papa Iason gave him a special blessing for the sick, and that seemed to help him some. Then we went back to the car, with me holding up one side of him and Papa Iason holding up the other. Russ could walk a little, but it seemed to me he was pretty heavy anyway. Naala had put him under arrest, and promised Papa Iason and me that he would get medical treatment and there would be no rough stuff until he was well.

Do I have to say that it was a lot slower, and a lot harder, going back than it had been coming? Sure, we were going downhill. But it was steep and we had to be careful not to fall or drop Russ, and by that time I was so tired I could have laid down right where I was and gone to sleep. I had new blisters, too, and the old ones that had burst or I had lanced hurt like hell.

We were maybe halfway back when it started to get light, not the sun coming up, but a sort of gray light in the sky. That was when it hit me and I knew what was wrong. I said, “He’s a doll!” It came out louder than I had wanted it to.

Naala wanted to know what I meant and I said I would tell her if we could take a break, set Russ down, and sit down ourselves. So we did.