Gene Wolfe: Nightside the Long Sun

He wanted to run but shook his head instead. “No, Great Goddess. I’m terribly sorry.”

“But I can’t wipe the glass. Wipe this glass for me, Silk. And I’ll forgive you.”

“If you’ll—My handkerchief has blood on it, Great Goddess. Perhaps in there—”

“I won’t mind. Unless it’s still wet. Do as I asked. Won’t you, please?”

Silk got out his handkerchief, stained with Orpine’s blood. At each step he took toward the glass, he felt that he was about to burst into flames or dissolve into the air like smoke.

“I watched him kill a thousand once. Men, mostly. It was in the square. I watched from my balcony. They made them kneel facing him, and some still knelt when they were dead.”

It seemed the depth of blasphemy to whisk his ragged, bloodstained handkerchief up and down those lovely features, which when the dust was gone seemed more real than he. Not Molpe; Molpe’s hair fell across her face. Not—

“I wanted to faint. But he was watching me from his balcony. Much higher up, with a flag over the thing there. The little wall. I was staying at his friend’s house then. I saw so much then. It doesn’t bother me any more. Have you sacrificed to me today? Or yesterday? Some of those big white bunnies, or a white bird?”

The victims identified her. “No, Kypris,” Silk said. “The fault is mine; and I will, as soon as I can.”

She laughed again, more thrilling than before. “Don’t bother. Or let those women do it. I want other services from you. You’re lame. Won’t you sit down now? For me? There’s a chair behind you.”

Silk nodded and gulped, finding it very difficult to think of words in the presence of a goddess, harder still when his eyes strayed to her face. He struggled to recall her attributes. “I hurt my ankle, O Great Goddess Kypris. Last night.”

“Bouncing out of Hyacinth’s window.” Her smile grew minutely wider. “You looked like a big black rabbit. You really shouldn’t have. You know, Silk? Hy wouldn’t have hurt you. Not with that big sword or any other way. She liked you, Silk. I was in her, so I know.”

He took a deep breath. “I had to, Gentle Kypris, in order to preserve the anipotence by which I behold you.”

“Because Echidna lets you see us in our Sacred Windows, then. Like a child.”

“Yes, Gentle Kypris; by her very great kindness to us, she does.”

“And am I the first, Silk? Have you never seen a god before?”

“No, Gentle Kypris. Not like this. I had hoped to, perhaps when I was old, like Patera Pike. Then yesterday in the ball court—And last night. I went into that woman’s dressing room without knocking and saw colors in the glass there, colors that looked like the Holy Hues. I’ve still never seen them, but they told us—we had to memorize the descriptions, actually, and recite them.” Silk paused for breath. “And it seemed to me—it has always seemed to me, ever since I used the glass at the schola, that a god might use a glass. May I tell them about this at the schola?”

Kypris was silent for a moment, her face pensive. “I don’t think … No. No, Silk. Don’t tell anybody.”

He made a seated bow.

“I was there last night. Yes. But not for you. Only because I play with Hy sometimes. Now she reminds me of the way I used to be, but all that will be over soon. She’s twenty-three. And you, Silk? How old are you?”

“Twenty-three, Gentle Kypris.”

“There. You see. I prompted you. I know I did.” She shook her head almost imperceptibly. “All that abstinence! And now you’ve seen a goddess. Me. Was it worth it?”

“Yes, Loving Kypris.”

She laughed again, delighted. “Why?”

The question hung in the silence of the baking sellaria while Silk tried to kick his intellect awake. At length he said haltingly, “We are so much like beasts, Kypris. We eat and we breed; then we spawn and die. The most humble share in a higher existence is worth any sacrifice.”

He waited for her to speak, but she did not.

“What Echidna asks isn’t actually much of a sacrifice, even for men. I’ve always thought of it as a token, a small sacrifice to show her—to show all of you—that we are serious. We’re spared a thousand quarrels and humiliations, and because we have no children of our own, all children are ours.”

The smile faded from her lovely face, and the sorrow that displaced it made his heart sink. “I won’t talk to you again, Silk. Or at least not very soon. No, soon. I am hunted…” Her perfect features faded to dancing colors.

He rose and found that he was cold in his sweat-soaked tunic and robe, despite the heat of the room. Vacantly, he stared at the shattered window; it was the one he had opened when he had spoken with Orchid. The gods—Kypris herself—had prompted him to throw it open, perhaps; but Orchid had closed it again as soon as he left, as he should have known she would.

He trembled, and felt that he was waking from a dream.

An awful silence seemed to fill the empty house, and he remembered vaguely that it was said that haunted houses were the quietest of all, until the ghost walked. Everyone was outside, of course, waiting on Lamp Street where he had left them, and he would be able to tell them nothing.

He visualized them standing in their silent, straggling line and looking at one another, or at no one. How much had they overheard through the window? Quite possibly they had heard nothing.

He wanted to jump and shout, to throw Orchid’s untasted goblet of brandy out the window or at the empty glass. He knelt instead, traced the sign of addition, and rose with the help of Blood’s stick.

Outside, Blood demanded to know who had summoned him. Silk shook his head.

“You won’t tell me?”

“You don’t believe in the gods, or in devils, either. Why should I tell you something at which you would only scoff?”

A woman whose hair had been bleached until it was as yellow as Silk’s own, exclaimed, “That was no devil!”

“You must keep silent about anything you heard,” Silk told her. “You should have heard nothing.”

Blood said, “Musk and Bass were supposed to have found every woman in the place and made them come to this ceremony of yours. If they missed any of them, I want to know about it.” He turned to Orchid. “You know your girls. Are they all here?”

She nodded, her face set. “All but Orpine.”

Musk was staring at Silk as though he wanted to murder him; Silk met his eyes, then turned away. Speaking loudly to the group at large, he said, “We’ve never completed our third circuit. It is necessary that we do so. Return to your places, please.” He tapped Blood’s shoulder. “Go back to your place in the procession.”

Orchid had kept the Writings for him, her finger at the point at which he had stopped reading. He opened the heavy volume there and began to pace and read again, a step for each word, as the ritual prescribed: “Man, himself, creates the conditions necessary for advance by struggling with and yielding to his animal desires; yet nature, the experiences of the spirit, and materiality need never be. His torment depends upon himself, yet the effects of that torment are always sufficient. You must consider this.”

The words signified nothing; the preternaturally lovely face of Kypris interposed itself. She had seemed completely different from the Outsider, and yet he felt that they were one, that the Outsider, who had spoken in so many voices, had now spoken in another. The Outsider had cautioned him to expect no help, Silk reminded himself as he had so many times since that infinite instant in the ball court; he felt that he had received it nevertheless, and was about to receive more. His hands shook, and his voice broke like a boy’s.