Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

The only light came through the open doorway and a god-gate in the middle of the conical roof. For half a minute, perhaps, I stood just inside the door, blinking. A motionless figure in black sat with its back to me, facing the ashes of a small fire that had burned itself out in a circle of blackened stones some time before. Its aged hands clasped a long peeled stick of some light-colored wood. Mucor stood beside it, one hand upon its shoulder, regarding me silently. Beyond them, on the other side of the circle of stones, something stirred; in that near darkness, I heard rather than saw it.

Pointing at the figure in black, I asked, “Is that Maytera Marble?” and her head pivoted until it seemed to regard a place somewhat to my left. The metal face thus revealed was the smooth oval that I recalled so well, yet it appeared somehow misshapen, as if it were diseased.

After a pause that I considered much too long, Mucor said, “This is my grandmother. She knows the future.”

I put down my sack and laid the bacon on it. “Then she should be able to tell me a great many things I want to know. First I have a question for you, however. Do you know who I am?”

“Horn.”

“Yes, I am. Do you remember Nettle?”

Mucor only stared.

“Nettle and I used to bring you your food sometimes when you lived in the Caldé’s Palace.” She did not reply, so I added, “Silk’s palace.”

Maytera Marble whispered, “Horn? Horn?”

“Yes,” I said, and went to her and knelt before her. “It’s me, Maytera.”

“You’re a good, good boy to come to see us, Horn.”

“Thank you.” I found it hard to speak, impossible when I looked at her. “Thank you, Maytera. Maytera, I said I used to take your granddaughter’s food up for you. I want you to know that I’ve brought her some now. It’s only bacon and a sack of cornmeal, but there’s more food on my boat. She can have anything there she wants. Or that you want for her. What about apples? I have a barrel of them, good ones.”

Slowly her metal head bobbed up and down. “The apples. Bring us three apples.”

“I’ll be right back,” I told her.

Mucor’s hand scarcely moved, but it brought me to a halt as I went through the doorway. “You will eat with us?”

“Certainly,” I said, “if you can spare the food.”

“There is a flat rock. Down there. You stepped on it.”

At first I supposed that she intended one of the flat stones that made up the floor of their hut; then I recalled the stone she meant and nodded. “When I tied up the sloop. Is that the one?”

“There will be fish on it. Bring them up, too.”

I told her that I would be happy to, and discovered that it was easy as well as pleasant to step out of that hut and into the sunlight.

The steep path from the more or less level top of the island to the little inlet in which I had moored gave me a good view of it (and indeed of the entire inlet) at one point, and there were no fish on the rock she had indicated. I continued my descent, however, thinking I would bring up the apples with something else in lieu of the fish. When I reached the rock, three fish flopped and struggled there so vigorously that it seemed certain that all three were about to escape. I dove for them and caught two, but the third slipped from between my fingers and vanished with a splash.

A moment afterward, it leaped from the water and back onto the rock, where I was able to catch it. I dropped all three into an empty sack I happened to have on board, and hung it in the water while I got three apples from Marrow’s barrel and tied them up in a scrap of sailcloth. As an afterthought, I put a small bottle of cooking oil into one pocket, and a bottle of drinking water into another.

When I returned to the hut, there was a fire blazing in the circle of stones. After giving Maytera Marble the apples, I filleted the fish with Sinew’s hunting knife, and Mucor and I cooked them in a most satisfactory fashion by impaling fillets wrapped in bacon on sticks of driftwood. I also mixed some of the cornmeal with my oil (I had forgotten to bring salt), made cakes, and put them into the ashes at the edge of the fire to bake.

“How is dear Nettle?” Maytera Marble asked.

I said that she had been well when I left her; and I went on to explain that I had been chosen to return to the Long Sun Whorl and bring Silk here, and that I was about to set out for a foreign town called Pajarocu where there was said to be a lander capable of making the return trip, as none of ours were. I went into considerably more detail than I have here, and she and Mucor listened to all of it in silence.

When I had finished, I said, “You will have guessed already how you can help me, if you will. Mucor, will you locate Silk for me, and tell me where he is?”

There was no reply.

When no one had spoken for some time, I raked one of the cornmeal cakes out of the fire and ate it. Maytera Marble asked what I was eating; that was the first time, I believe, that I realized she had gone blind, although I should have known it an hour before.

I said, “One of the little cakes I made, Maytera. I’ll give your granddaughter one, if she’ll eat it.”

“Give me one,” Maytera Marble said; and I raked out another cake and put it into her hand.

“Here is an apple for you.” She rubbed it against her torn and dirty habit, and groped for me. I thanked her and accepted it.

“Will you put this one in my granddaughter’s lap, please, Horn? She can eat it after she’s found Patera for you.”

I took the second apple, and did as she asked.

She whistled shrilly then, startling me; at the sound, a young hus emerged from the shadows on the other side of the fire, at once greedy and wary. “Babbie, come here!” she called, and whistled again. “Here, Babbie!”

It advanced, the thick, short claws some people call hooves loud on the stone floor, its attention divided between me and the food Maytera Marble held out to it. I found its fierce eyes disconcerting, although I felt reasonably sure it would not charge. After hesitating for some while, it accepted the food, the apple in one stubby-toed forepaw and the cornmeal cake in its mouth, giving me a better look than I wanted at the sharp yellow tusks that were only just beginning to separate its lips.

As it retreated on seven legs to the other side of the fire, Maytera Marble said, “Isn’t Babbie cute? The captain of some foreign boat gave him to my granddaughter.”

I may have made some suitable reply, although I am afraid I only grunted like a hus.

“It’s practically like having a child with us,” Maytera Marble declared. “One of those children one’s heart goes out to, because the gods have refrained from providing it with an acute intellect, for their own good and holy reasons. Babbie tries so very hard to please us and make us happy. You simply can’t imagine.”

That was perfectly true.

“The captain was afraid that ill-intentioned persons might land here and fall upon us while we slept. It’s active mostly at night. From what I have been given to understand, they all are, just like that bird dear Patera Silk had.”

I said that while I had never hunted hus, according to what my son had told me, that was correct.

“So dear little Babbie’s always active for me.” She sighed, the weary hish of a mop cleaning a floor of tiles. “Because it’s always night for me.” Another sigh. “I know that it must be the gods’ will for me, and I try to accept it. But I’ve never wanted to see again quite as much as I do today with you come to visit us, Horn.”

I tried to express my sympathy, embarrassing both myself and her.

“No. No, it’s all right. The gods’ will for me, I’m sure. And yet-and yet…” Her old woman’s hands clasped the white stick as if to break it, then let it fall to wrestle each other in her lap.