Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

She laughed. “How little you understand! You are married, yes?”

I shook my head.

“No wonder! Because it is spring, the winter things are most cheap. Besides, the hat I wore all last winter is old. Most ragged! It is a hat to laugh at, an old wool hat that was not good when it was new.” She tugged at my arm. “Come! There is a shop near. I show you.”

It was not near, but she did. The hat I eventually bought for her was a perky round cap of what looked to me like fox fur. She was thrilled with it, posing a dozen times in front of the mirror in the store before we left.

When we were out on the street again, I said, “How will you explain your new hat to Kleon?”

“He does not see it until autumn.”

“Yes, but he’ll see it then. What’ll you tell him?”

Her chin went up and her shoulders back. “The truth! I will tell him you bought it for me.”

“He’ll be jealous.”

“Good! Let him be most jealous. He needs much more jealous, that Kleon.”

We were walking, of course. The police have their patrol cars, and there are limousines for high officials. In a day, you might see three or four trucks and a dozen wagons. But private cars? Buses and cabs? All that shit? Forget it! Ordinary people walk everywhere.

The way to the Willows was not hard, but it seemed to me like it went on forever. We walked in the street like everybody else. The crazy plan of the streets, which zig to the right or zag to the left every few blocks, wears out a walker.

“Your streets should have names,” I told Martya.

“If this street had a name and I called to it, would it come to me?” Seeing I had no answer, she laughed.

After a while I said, “You give names to your houses.”

“To cats and dogs also. If you call a dog, it will come to you sometimes. Cats will not come. So our houses are cats.”

I asked the name of Kleon’s house.

“I do not wish to tell. It is ill luck for me.”

“Then I’ll ask Kleon. We’re going back tonight, aren’t we?”

“We must. If he does not let us in, we go to the police and they shoot him.”

“You’ll be a wealthy widow,” I said.

Martya sniffed. “He has nothing.”

“He has his house.”

She shrugged. “We must turn here, why do you walk straight ahead?”

“Here” was the little path through the dark, crowding trees to the door of the Willows. We had walked so far that I had nearly forgotten that eventually we would get there.

When we had gone to the Willows earlier, the sun had been high overhead, and lonely sunbeams had penetrated the crowding leaves. Now the sun was low, and a cloudy sky promised a dark night. Martya’s hand found mine and we walked together, not quite side by side, down a path I could not see that was barely wide enough for one person.

“You do not have a light?”

“No,” I said. “Do you have matches?”

“No. We should have bought a … I do not know this word. To hold in the hand and give light.”

“Taschenlampe.”

“Yes, a flashlight, where there were shops. Someone would have them.”

“We’ll get one tomorrow,” I told her.

“Tomorrow will be too late.”

After that I stumbled, she swore for me, and we walked on silently while the trees made fun of us. Their silence was a lot bigger and a lot older than ours. As I tried the most likely looking key in the front door lock, Martya asked, “Are you going to start searching now?”

“Yeah. I want to look the whole place over and make plans. What to do first, what tools I’ll need, and so on.”

“It is haunted. This you must know.”

“I know you said it was.” The likely key squeaked and balked in the lock. “People always say these old houses are haunted. If nobody’s living there, it’ll be a haunted house in a year.” I wrestled with the key. “This lock needs a squirt of WD40, or if we can’t get that a squirt of oil.”

“We will see no ghosts because the sun is still in the sky.” It seemed like Martya was talking to herself instead of me. “One cannot see ghosts by daylight. Who does not know this?”

The key turned at last. “Then we won’t see them,” I told her.

“We will not see them, but they will be there.”

“So what? So will we. Maybe they’ll tell us where the treasure is.”

I opened the door and went in. It was dim, but not as dark as I had expected, maybe because the ceilings were so high. The windows, pointed at the top like the ones in a church, rose high above my head.

“He would not have had willows.” Martya’s voice, hushed and kind of querulous, sounded behind me. “Not the one who builds thus. Fruit trees for him.”

I agreed without giving her much attention. The foyer we stood in was pretty clearly a preliminary room. Benches stuck out from two walls and there were hooks for hanging coats. Even so, it was big and imposing, with great big fireplaces at both ends. Looking back at Martya, I said, “They didn’t have central heating when this was built, I guess.”

She stopped, looking frightened. “What is it you talk of? I do not know.”

“A furnace to heat the whole building.”

“Oh, that. Public buildings have these. We do not. Can we go out?”

“I haven’t even started.” The door to the next room stood open, and I walked into it.

It was nearly empty but really interesting just the same. A few pieces of furniture were covered with dirty white drop cloths. A dozen or so more, the ones with no upholstery, had none and were thick with dust. You could tell that pictures and tapestries had hung on the walls back when the room was new, but they were gone now. Over the big fireplace at the other end, crooked swords and a little round shield of dark iron and peeling leather had been left behind. I pointed and said, “I wonder why they didn’t take those.”

“Who would want things from such a house?”

“We do,” I told her. “We want the treasure, and we’d like to find it. Your friend Volitain does, too.”

“Perhaps they are fastened to the wall.”

That made sense. I stepped up onto the hearth, which was a good foot above the floor. The swords and the little shield were higher than that, too high for me to do more than touch them. I got out my pen and my little notebook.

“What are you writing?”

“That I’ve got to get a stepladder.”

“So that you can take those things? Let us go. I do not like this place.”

“I do,” I said. “Or anyhow I like it so far. And I don’t want the swords or the shield. I want to look in back of them. There could be a hole in the stonework in back. We ought to look.”

“Volitain will have thought of it.”

“You’re right. He may have looked there. When you think of a place nobody who searched this place will have thought of, you let me know straight off.” Having finished my note, I snapped my notebook shut.

“There are mirrors in here,” Martya muttered.

I stepped down. “I’d think they’d have been taken.”

She shook her head. “Not all of them.”

“Come on! We need to look at some more rooms.” I led the way without looking back to see if she was following me. “Is this something Volitain told you?”

“They call to me.” She sounded like she had not moved an inch.

“Magic mirrors?” It made me think about this book, which I had already been planning. “I’ll have to find out about them.”

Martya said, “Do you not know mirrors call out to women?”

I had thought the foyer was pretty big. The next room was three times its size, a lot bigger than Kleon’s whole house. A lot of furniture remained, dark and heavy tables, chairs, and cabinets. The floorboards had been torn up in places.