Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

First, Pas. He was the greatest of all, and it seemed that Silk might have influence with him. Silk had been my staunch friend, as well as my teacher.

An even better case might be made for Scylla. I had come from her sacred city, where I was born; and I was trying to reach New Viron, which is her town as well, at least nominally. Besides which, she is the goddess of water, and I was on the water and would soon be in need of drinking water.

Last the Outsider, whose case was nearly as good. Of the three, he seemed most apt to hear my prayer. No god, perhaps, had much reason to think well of me; but he had more than any other. Also, he had been Silk’s favorite, and when Silk did not say that he trusted no god at all (which to tell the truth he frequently did) he said that the Outsider was the only god he trusted.

To be safe, I decided to address all three jointly. I knelt, and found myself tongue-tied. How could I address those three as a group? Pas might or might not be Silk, in part at least. Sinew had been quite correct about that. From what Auk and Chenille had told Nettle and me, Pas’s daughter Scylla was willful, violent, and vindictive. If ever a goddess seemed apt to resent being put in second place, it was she.

The Outsider seemed to me at that time as faceless and mysterious as the god or gods of the ancient inhabitants of this whorl we call Blue. He was, moreover, the god of outcasts and outlaws, of the broken and discarded. I considered myself neither an outcast nor an outlaw; and far from being discarded, I was about to undertake a mission of utmost importance for my town. Such being the case, what could I find to say to him? That I had no claim on his benevolence, but hoped for his help without one?

In the end, I prayed to whatever god might hear, stressing the helplessness and hopelessness we settlers felt, who had left our manteions and their Sacred Windows behind us, with so much else that we held dear, in obedience to Pas. A wind from the west, north, or east would be of greatest service to me, I told the hypothetical god. I had to go to New Viron, and eventually reach Pajarocu-a town quite unknown to me-before its lander lifted off. The feeblest breeze would be more than welcome, if only it would move my boat.

Had I ended my prayer there, I might have saved myself an infinity of fear and dismay; but I did not. Out of my heart I spoke of my loneliness and of the feelings of isolation that had swept over me as I waited half a day and more for a change in weather. Then I promised to learn all that I could about the Outsider and the gods of this whorl, to honor Pas and Scylla most highly if I ever returned to the whorl in which I was born, and to do anything in my power to bring them both here if they were not here already. I also (but this was to myself) solemnly swore to buy sweeps when I got to New Viron; and I recited every prayer that I could recall.

All this, as you may imagine, occupied quite some time. When I lifted my head at last, it was already shadelow, with only the smallest crescent of the Short Sun visible above the western horizon. Day was passing; but something else had gone before it, or so I felt. For what must have been half a dozen minutes, I watched the Short Sun set and looked about me, hoping to learn what it had been. The sloop seemed unchanged, with only a trifle more water in its bilge than there had been after I had bailed it. The sky was darker, and its few clouds ruddy in place of white, but that was only to be expected. The dim and distant shore of Main (I thought of it as distant, at least) was nearly black now, but otherwise the same.

At length it came to me: the trolling seabird had vanished. I had complained, most probably to no god at all, of loneliness. I had begged for company. And the only living thing in sight had been taken away. Here was proof of the cruelty of the gods, or of their absence from the whorl to which their king and father had consigned us.

Thinking of it I began to laugh, but was interrupted by a loud plop as my fishing float was jerked beneath the silvery surface. I reached for the line. It broke and vanished before I could touch it, leaving me with two slack cubits or so tied to a belaying pin. I was still staring down at the water when the sloop rocked so violently that I was almost thrown overboard.

The horror of it will never leave me entirely. Looking behind me, I saw great, coarse claws, each as thick as the handle of our ax, scrabbling for hold on the port gunwale and rowling its wood like so many gouges. A moment later the head appeared and shot toward me, the clash of its three jaws like the slamming of double doors. I threw myself backward to escape it, and fell into the sea.

I nearly drowned. Not because of the roughness of the water-there was none-nor because of the weight of tunic, trousers, and boots; but out of sheer panic. The leatherskin would release its hold on the sloop, swim under it, and kill me in a second or two; it seemed completely certain, and paralyzed by terror as I was, I was unable to conceive of an escape and equally unable to ready myself for death. Surely, these were the longest moments of my life.

Sea and air were still, and at last it came to me that the noises I heard resulted from the leatherskin’s continued efforts to climb aboard. It was not swimming swiftly and silently beneath the hull as I had feared, but struggling with idiotic ferocity to go straight to the place in which it had last seen me.

I am a strong swimmer, and I considered the possibility of swimming ashore. I knew it was a league or more away, because it had been almost out of sight when I stood in the waist of the sloop; but the sea was calm and warm, and if I paced myself carefully I might succeed.

An instant more, and I realized that I would have no chance whatever. The leatherskin would follow me over the starboard gunwale, and once it was back in the water was certain to hear my splashings and track me down. However slender it might be, my only chance was to reclaim the sloop the moment that the leatherskin returned to the sea.

By the time I had understood that, I had managed to kick off my boots. Diving so as to make less noise, I swam to the bow, surfaced, and risked grasping the bowsprit Sinew and I had added when it had become apparent that our new sloop would benefit from more foresail.

The sloop was still rocking violently; it was clear that the leatherskin had not given up its struggle to clamber aboard. I waited, trying very hard to breathe without gasping, and heard, and felt, the impact as its great inflexible body crashed to the bottom of the sloop, which sank under its weight until the freeboard was a scant hand.

I pulled myself up, and risked a look.

It was a sight I shall never forget. The leatherskin, one of the largest I have seen, stood with six massive legs and half its weight on the starboard gunwale, over which silver water cascaded. Its long, corded neck was stretched toward the last fleck of the vanishing Short Sun, its mouth so wide agape that every spike of its thousand fangs stabbed outward. Before I could have drawn breath, it had tumbled over the side and back into the oily sea.

The bowsprit was jerked up as if by the mighty hand, and I with it, although I nearly lost my grip. When it plunged down again to strike the sea (for the foundering sloop was pitching as though in a gale) I was able to throw myself onto the foredeck.

By the time I had scrambled to my feet, the leatherskin had heard me and turned back, its head above the surface and its ponderous bulk moving so rapidly below that the sea swirled and frothed above it. Floundering knee-deep, I got the harpoon I had re-stowed that afternoon; and when the leatherskin’s huge claws gripped the starboard gunwale and its hideous jaws had snapped shut upon the barbed head, I rammed the harpoon so deep that its fangs actually tore the skin of my right hand. It fell back into the water, its head dripping bloody foam, and was lost to my sight, the harpoon line hissing after it as it sounded.