Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

“I’ve heard talk from the people I do business with, that’s all. I don’t keep track of everybody, no matter what people may think.” Marrow folded both hands on his stick, and regarded me for a long moment before he spoke again. “I doubt I know as much as he does, but she wanted to help out here, teaching the children like she used to. That was why he made her a sibyl again, and she used to mop and dust and cook for him. Only he wouldn’t let the crazy girl in the house.”

I smiled to myself. It would not have been easy to keep Mucor out.

“There was some trouble about her anyhow. About the crazy granddaughter.”

He waited for me to speak, so I nodded. Mucor had often thrown food and dishes at Netde and me when we had cared for her.

“They said she made other people crazy, too. I don’t believe it and never did, but that’s what they said. One day they were gone. If you ask me, the old Prolocutor gave them a shove. He’s never admitted it that I’ve heard of, but I think probably he did. Maybe he gave them a little help moving, too. This is,” Marrow rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, “five years ago. About that. Could be six.”

He rocked back and forth in his big, solidly built chair, one hand on his stick and the other on the finale of the chair arm, where its grip had given the waxed wood a smoother finish as well as a darker tone. “I didn’t put my nose in it, but somebody told me he’d found them a farm way out. To tell you the truth I thought some wild animal’d get the mad girl, the granddaughter, and Maytera’d come back.”

I said, “I take it that didn’t happen. I’m glad.”

“That’s right, you knew them both. I’d forgot. I went to the palaestra in my time, just like you, so I knew Maytera, too, way back then. I never did understand how she could have a granddaughter at all. Adopted, is what everybody says.”

Clearly, Marrow had not read as much of our book as he pretended; I tried to make my nod noncommittal. “Are they still on the farm His Cognizance found for them? I’d like to see them while I’m here.”

Once more, Marrow regarded me narrowly. “Island, just like you. I’m surprised you don’t know.”

When I did not comment, he added. “Just a rock, really. House looks like a haystack. That’s what they say. Up in the air to keep the hay dry, you know how the farmers do, and made of sticks.”

It seemed too bizarre to credit. I asked whether he had seen it himself, and he shook his head. “Driftwood I guess it is, really. Way down south. It’ll take you all day, even with a good wind.”

I slept aboard the sloop, as you may imagine, and so was able to get under way at shadeup. There is no better breakfast than one eaten on a boat with a breeze strong enough to make her heel a trifle. Most of Marrow’s promised provisions had arrived before I finished refitting, and I had purchased a few things in addition; I dined on ham, fresh bread and butter, and apples, drank water mixed with wine, and told myself with perfect truth that I had never eaten a better meal.

He had been surprised that I knew nothing of Maytera Marble (as she was again, apparently) and Mucor, although they lived on an island two days’ sail from mine. The truth, I thought, might well be that I did know something. Boats that put into Tail Bay to trade for paper had spoken sometimes of a witch to the south, a lean hag who camped upon a naked rock and would tell fortunes or compounded charms for food or cloth. When I had heard those tales, lt: had not occurred to me that this witch might be Mucor. I reviewed them as I sailed that day, and found various reasons to think she was-but several more to think that she was not. In the end, I decided to leave the matter open.

Evening came, and I still had not caught sight of the house of sticks that Marrow had described. I was afraid I might pass it in the dark, so I furled my sails and made a sea anchor, and spent the night upon the open water, very grateful for the calm, warm weather.

It was about midmorning of the second day out when I caught sight of the hut, not (as I had supposed it would be) near shore to port, but a half league and more to starboard upon a sheer black rock so lonely that it did not appear to be a separated part of the mainland at all, but the last standing fragment of some earlier continent, a land devoured by the sea not long after the Outsider built this whorl.

Rubbish, surely. Still, I have never been in any other place that felt quite so lonely, unless Seawrack sang.

Three days since I wrote that last. Not because I have been too busy (although I have been busy) and not because I did not wish to write, but because there was no more ink. Ink, it seems, is not made here, or I should say was not. It was an article of trade that you bought in the market when it appeared there if you wanted it, and hoarded against the coming shortage. It had not appeared in the market for a long time, my clerks had very little and most other people-people who wrote, that is to say, or kept accounts-none. Nettle and I had made our own, being unable to find any in New Viron, and I saw no reason why ink should not be made here.

Several trials were needed; but guided as I was by past experience, we soon had this very satisfactory ink. Glue is made here by boiling bones, hoofs, and horns, as I suppose it must be everywhere. We mixed it with the oil pressed from flax seed and soot, and then (it was this that we had to learn) boiled everything again with a little water. It dries a trifle faster, I believe, than the ink you and I made with sap, and so may be a step nearer the inks my father cornpounded in the back of our shop. At any rate it is a good dark black and satisfactory in every other way, as you see.

My father, Smoothbone, made colored inks as well. There is no reason we should not have them, too. It is clearly just a matter of finding the right colored powders to put in instead of soot. I have a bright young man looking into that. My clerks say that they have never seen colored inks in our market here, or in this big pink and blue house we call my palace for that matter. I imagine they would trade very well-which means, I suppose, that I am starting to think like Marrow. Since our positions are somewhat similar, that is not surprising.

Here I am tempted to write about the market in New Viron, and compare it, perhaps, to the one here; but I will save that for some other opening of the pen case.

Now back to the sloop.

There was a tiny inlet on the southeast side of Mucor’s Rock that gave excellent shelter. I tied up there and climbed the steep path to the top carrying a side of bacon and a sack of cornmeal. She did not recognize me, as far as I could judge. To set down the truth, I did not know her either until I looked into her eyes, the same dead, dull eyes that I recalled. The witch had been described to me as being very thin. She was, but not as thin as she had been in the Caldé’s Palace and on the lander afterward-not as thin as the truly skeletal young woman I recalled.

She was said to be tall, too. The truth is that she is not, although her thinness and erect carriage, and her short, ragged skirt, combine to make her appear so.

The Mucor I had known would never have spoken to me first. This one whom I had heard called the witch and the sorceress did, but seemed at first to be recalling an almost forgotten language as she licked her cracked lips. “What… Do… You… Want…?”

I said, “I must speak with you, Mucor.” I showed her the bacon, then patted the sack of cornmeal I was carrying on my shoulder “I brought you these, thinking you might need them. I hope you like them.”

Without another word, she turned and went into the hut, which was larger than I had expected. When I saw that its rough door remained open, I followed her.