Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

Before he started, I had been hearing all sorts of little noises, none of them loud and none noises I paid a lot of attention to, the moan of the night wind in the chimneys, crickets, and small quiet things that were most likely mice. Another noise that may have been the lapping of the lake water. The lake is not very far from where we were. When it started everything got very quiet, not so much like the wind had stopped blowing or the crickets had stopped chirping, but like I had become deaf to all that.

It only lasted a few seconds. Then it started to get noisy. Things were waking up all around, or maybe coming to life. They were stirring, pushing off whatever it was that had been covering them. They were making all sorts of other noises, too. Moaning and grunting. Maybe some were talking to others, or just talking to themselves. Claws were scratching at the broken floors, going up the walls and across the ceilings.

Then something was looking over my shoulder, and I knew it would be a really, really bad idea for me to turn around to see what it was. Martya had grabbed me and was sticking to me like paint.

The hand turned and pointed.

I was scared, but for some reason I had thought Volitain would not be. I was wrong. His face was as white as the dirty sheets that covered the furniture when he got out something I thought at first was a pocket watch and opened it up. Later I found out it was a fancy compass. His hands shook when he took the compass bearing, but he took it just the same. He wrote it down, too, scribbling in a little black notebook before he shut his compass and put it back in his pocket.

Then he blew out the candles.

The other noises stopped and the moan of the wind came back. The crickets started chirping again. Probably the mice came back, too, but I was not paying much attention.

“Over there,” I said. I pointed.

“Indeed.” Volitain had started off.

Martya said, “That wall. We must tear it down. Are your tools here still?”

I said I did not think so.

Volitain waved to us. “We must go into the next room and take a second bearing.”

Martya caught up with him, insisting that the treasure was in the wall.

“Which it would take us all night to tear down even if we had brought tools.”

This time I put the hand on top of an instrument of some kind. I suppose it was a harpsichord, but I do not know a lot about the old stuff. I will not tell you again about putting on the candles or reading the spell, because it was pretty much the same as last time except that all those things we woke up the first time were already awake.

Only what happened next was different. There were lights, faint lights, mostly white, some blue. Some stood still, some circled around us. I had the feeling that if one were to touch me I would die, and that I would want to die, too. I know that does not make a lot of sense, but it is how I felt. Martya started screaming, and that made everything worse. The room rocked. We talk about that at clubs sometimes because it feels like that, but here there was nobody dancing, and no music until the instrument we had put the hand on began to play.

That was when Volitain blew out the candles.

I said, “I wanted to hear it.” I was bullshitting because I wanted him to think I was tough, and I think he knew it. He did not say anything.

Martya stopped yelling and whispered, “The hand pointed the wrong way.” I was surprised she had even noticed.

Volitain shut his notebook. “It pointed the right way, although it was in almost precisely the same bearing as previously. It may be that the treasure of Demarates is buried outside. Had you thought of that?”

He did not wait for her answer, and neither did I. I followed him into the next room. It was one I recognized, the big downstairs bedroom with the painted ceiling. I had lain on my back taking pictures of that ceiling for quite a time, getting up to tinker with my lights and so forth. There was some furniture in that room, the bed and some other stuff, but we crossed the room and laid the hand on the floor, not far from the wall. Then I got a really big surprise. Volitain said, “You must place the candles this time,” and he was talking to me.

It was like getting slugged. I wanted to ask why, but I was afraid I knew. Or at least I had good guesses. The first one was that he had been scared—hell, I had been scared, and I had not done it—and did not think he could do it a third time.

The second was that he knew it was dangerous and felt like he should not have to take all the risk.

What I said was, “I’ll try, but you have to tell me if I’m not doing it right.”

He nodded. “I shall.” That is one word where they live: “doekei.”

I got another surprise a minute later. He helped. He squatted down behind the hand and lit the candles one by one and passed them to me. I thought he would have to read the spell, but I suppose he had memorized it by then. He whispered each line to me, and I repeated it loud and firm without knowing what the words meant.

To me, that was the worst one because it was the only one that made me feel like something was happening to me, not just to the room or the house. I cannot describe it any better than by saying I felt like I was turning into my own shadow. I was getting thinner and darker somehow, and I felt light enough to float away.

Other stuff was happening, too.

The one that got my attention first was that the white witch was there. Her hand was on the floor where I had put it, with the candles I had put there burning at the tips of her fingers. But it was back on her arm, with her kneeling down to keep her hand where it was, pointing slantwise into the wall. I backed away. I did not think about it, I just did it. I smelled woodsmoke from the fireplace and the sour reek of the candles on the fingers of the hand.

Another thing was that more furniture was coming back. A table and some chairs and two more chests of drawers. A wardrobe as big as the cabin on our boat had been, and a lot taller. There was a carpet under my feet, and the dustcover had been pulled off the bed. I think the man sitting up in it was screaming, but I could not hear him. He had a beard and a mustache, and I want to say that only his eyes showed how scared he was but that would not be strictly true. Something inside me kept saying, “Blow out the candles!”

Martya was on her knees blowing them out before I understood that she and Volitain were inside me somehow, and it was Volitain who had told me to blow them out.

Here is what I think. I think that he and Martya were really there, but I could not see them. The only Volitain and Martya I could see (the Volitain and Martya I thought I saw) were my idea of Volitain and Martya. Does that make any sense? Either that, or I was spread out all over the room somehow.

I wanted to sit down but the chairs I had seen were gone, and I did not want to sit on that bed. So I stood.

Martya said, “It’s in the wall!”

Volitain shook his head. “The chimney, I think.”

He turned to me. “The hand is yours. Do you still desire it?”

I said, “Sure,” keeping my voice as steady as I could.

“Then take it. Cast the candles into the fireplace, please. That I think will be the best.”

Martya said, “I will not touch it. You cannot make me.” She was trying to sound brave.

“I am not trying to make you touch it. But you are to share equally when we find the treasure of Demarates. Even now you wish that?”

“Yes!”

“Grafton brought the hand. It is his. He has placed the candles also, and recited the spell. That is much. I say it, and you need not agree with me. I do not care. I have placed the candles twice and extinguished them twice. I have lit them three times and recited the spell twice. It was I, too, who recorded the information we gleaned. That is much also. You have blown the candles out once. Nothing more than that. Now we have another task for you if you are to share with us.”