Gene Wolfe: The Fifth Head of Cerberus

I should have mentioned yesterday (but forgot) that when we set up the tent I discovered we had not brought an ax, or any other sort of implement with which to drive the tent pegs. I chided the boy about this a little, but he only laughed and soon set the matter straight by pounding them in with a stone. He finds plenty of dead wood for the fire and snaps it over his knee with surprising strength. To build the fire he makes a sort of little house or bower of dead twigs, which he fills with dry grass and leaves, doing the whole construction in less time than it has already taken me to write this. He always (that is, last night and tonight) asks me to light it for him, apparently considering this a superior function to be performed only by no less a person than the leader of the expedition. I suppose there is something sacred about a campfire, if God’s writ runs so far from Sol; but, perhaps so as not to overwhelm us with the holy mystery of smoke, he piously keeps ours so small that I am amazed that he is able to cook over it. Even so, he burns his fingers pretty often, I notice, and each time boylike thrusts them into his mouth and hops around the fire, muttering to himself.

April 8 . The boy is the worst shot I have ever seen; it is almost the only thing I have found thus far he doesn’t do well. I have been having him carry the light rifle, but after watching him trying to shoot for three days I have taken it away from him—his whole idea seems to be to point the gun in the general direction of whatever animal I indicate to him, shut his eyes, and pull the trigger. I honestly think that in his heart of hearts (if the boy has such a thing) he believes it is the noise that kills. Such game as we’ve gotten so far I have shot myself, either snatching the light rifle away from him after he had fired once and making a second (running) shot before whatever he had missed was out of sight, or by using the heavy rifle, which is a waste of expensive ammunition as well as of meat.

On the other hand, the boy (I don’t really know why I call him that, except that his father did; he is nearly a man, and now that I come to think of it, only eight or nine years younger, physiologically at least, than I am) has the best eye for wounded game I have ever seen He ij. better than a good dog, both at locating and retrieving—which is saying a good deal—and has traveled often in the “back of beyond”, though he’s never been as far upriver as the (I hope not mystical) sacred cave we’re looking for. At any rate he seems to have lived in the wilderness with his mother for long periods—I get the impression she didn’t care much for the kind of life her husband made for them in Frenchman’s Landing, for which I can’t say I much blame her. However that may be, with the boy’s nose for blood and my shooting, I don’t think we’ll run short of meat.

What else today? Oh yes, the cat. One had been following us, apparently at least since we passed through Frogtown. I caught a glimpse of it today about noon, and (the sun-shimmer reinforcing the deceptive and fantastic quality extension has in the green landscape under this black-sky) thought for an instant that it was a tire-tiger. My bullet went high, naturally, and when I saw it kick up dust, everything snapped back into perspective: my “scrub trees” were bushes, and the distance which I had thought at least 250 yards away was less than a third of that—making my “tire-tiger” only a big domestic cat of Terrestrial stock, no doubt a stray from some farm. It seems to follow us quite deliberately, staying, now, about a quarter mile behind us. This afternoon I took a couple of rather long-ranged (200 to 300 yards) shots at it, which upset the boy so much that I regretted my felicidal intentions and told him that if he could get the animal into camp he could keep it as a pet. I suppose it is following us for the scraps of food we leave behind. There will be plenty for it tomorrow—I got a dew-deer today.

April 10 . Two days of uninterrupted hiking during which we have seen a good deal of game but no sign of any still-extant Annese. We have crossed three small streams which the boy calls the Yellow Snake, the Girl Running, and the End-of-Days; but which my map tells me are Fifty Mile Creek, the Johnson River, and the Rougette. No trouble with any of them—the first two we are able to ford where we struck them, the Rougette (which painted my boots and the legs of the boy and the mules), a few hundred yards upstream. I expect to see the Tempus (which the boy calls simply “The River”) tomorrow, and the boy assures me that the Annese sacred cave must lie a good deal farther up; he says, indeed, that the banks we have bypassed by our route are mud, not stone, and could not hold a cave.

It finally occurred to me that if the boy has lived (as he says) a good part of his life in the wild Country, he may be—despite the corrupting influence of his father and his own consequent belief that he is himself partly Annese—an excellent source of information. I have the interview on tape, but as I have tried to make it a practice to do with the more interesting material, I transcribe it here.

Self: “You’ve told me that you and your mother have often lived, you say in spring and summer particularly, “in back of beyond”—sometimes for months at a stretch. I have been informed that fifty or more years ago Annese children often came to play with human children on the remote stock farms. Did anything of that sort ever happen to you? Did you ever see anyone out here besides your mother and yourself? After all, we’ve seen no one in four days.”

V. R. T.: “We saw a great many people almost every day, many animals and birds, trees that were alive, just as you and I have traveling, as you say for these four days—though this is still not the back of beyond where one sees gods come floating down the river on logs, and trees gone traveling, the gods with large and small heads, and blossoms of the water hydrangea in their hair; or the elk-men whose heads and hair and beards and arms and bodies were like those of men, whose legs were the bodies of red elk so that they needed to mate with the cow-women once as beasts and once as men do, and fought shouting all spring on the hillsides, then when the black mereskimmers flew back from the south were at once friends again and went away with their arms around each other and stole eggs from the pine-thrashers or kicked stones at me; and The Shadow Children of course came to steal by evening, riding up in the bubbles and the foam from the springs—then my mother would not let me go out from beneath her hair—this was when I was very small—after the sun set, but when I was larger I would go out and shout and make them run!—they believe—they always believe—that they’ll get all around, and then they’ll all run in at once, biting; but if you turn quickly and shout, they never do, and there are never as many of them as they think, because some are only in the minds of the others so that at the time to fight they fade back into each other and become one lonely.”

Self: “Why haven’t you and I seen any of these strange things?”

V. R. T.: “I have.”

Self: “What have you seen—I mean, while you’ve been with me.”

V. R. T.: “Birds and animals and trees living, and The Shadow Children.”

Self: “You mean the stars. If you see anything extraordinary you’ll tell me, won’t you?”

V. R. T.: (Nods)

Self: “You’re an unusual boy. Do you ever go to school when you’re with your father in Frenchman’s Landing?”

V. R. T.: “Sometimes.”

Self: “You’re almost a man now. Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do in a few years?”