Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

I said that in my opinion there were evil gods as well as benevolent ones, and recounted my experience the week before with the leatherskin, ending by saying, “I had prayed for company, Maytera, and for a wind, to whatever gods might hear me. I got both, but I don’t believe the same god can have sent both.”

“I-you know that I’ve become a sibyl again, Horn? You must because you’ve been calling me Maytera.”

I explained that Marrow had told me.

“With my husband and I separated, and no doubt separated permanently-well, you understand, I’m sure.”

I said I did.

“We had begun a child, a daughter.” She sighed again. “It was hard, dreadfully hard, to find parts, or even things we could make them from. We never got far with her, and I don’t suppose she’ll ever be born unless my husband takes a new wife, poor little thing.”

I tried to be sympathetic.

“So there wasn’t any reason not to. I couldn’t have my own child anymore, the child that had been my dream for all those empty years. Since I could not, I thought it might be nice to teach bio children like you again, the way I used to when I was younger. The ordinances of the Chapter let married women become sibyls, His Cognizance said, under special circumstances like mine, provided that the Prolocutor consents. He did, and I took the oath all over again. Very few of us have ever taken it more than once.”

I nodded, I believe. I was paying more attention to Mucor, who sat silently with the apple untouched in her lap.

“Are you listening, Horn?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”

“I taught there in New Viron for a good many years. And I kept house for His Cognizance, which was a very great honor. People are so intolerant, though.”

“Some are, at least.”

“The Chapter has fought that intolerance for as long as I’ve been alive, and it has achieved a great deal. But I doubt that intolerance will ever be rooted out altogether.”

I agreed.

“There are children, Horn, who are very much like little Babbie. Not verbal, but capable of love, and very grateful for whatever love they may receive. You would think every heart would go out to them, but many don’t.”

I asked her then about Mucor, saying that I had not realized it would take her so long to find Silk.

“She has to travel all the way to the whorl in which we used to live, Horn. It’s a very long way, and even though her spirit flies so fast, it must fly over every bit of it. When she arrives, she’ll have to look for him, and when she finds him, she’ll have to return to us.”

I explained that it was quite possible that Silk was here on Blue, or even on Green.

Maytera Marble shook her head, saying that only made things worse. “Poor little Babbie’s quite upset. He always is, every time she goes away. He understands simple things, but you can’t explain something like that to him.”

Privately, I wished that someone would explain it to me.

“He’s really her pet. Aren’t you, Babbie?” Her hands, the thin old-woman hands she had taken from Maytera Rose’s body, groped for the hus, although he was far beyond her reach. “He loves her, and I really think that she loves him, just as she loves me. But it’s hard, very hard for them both here, because of the water.”

For a moment I thought she meant the sea; then I said, “I assumed you had a spring here, Maytera.”

She shook her head. “Only rainwater from the rocks. It makes little pools and so on, here and there, you know. My dear granddaughter says there are deep crevices, too, where it lingers for a long time. I’ve had no experience with thirst, myself. Oh, ordinary thirst in hot weather. But not severe thirst. I’m told it’s terrible.”

I explained that a spring high up on the Tor gave us the stream that turned my mill, and acknowledged that I had never been thirsty as she meant it either.

“He must have water. Babbie must, just as she must. If it doesn’t rain soon…” She shook her head.

Much too late, I remembered that the uncomfortably large object in my pocket was a bottle of water. I gave it to her, and told her what it was. She thanked me effusively; and I told her there were many more on my boat, and promised to leave a dozen with her.

“You could go down and get them now, couldn’t you, Horn? While my granddaughter’s still away.”

There had been a pathetic eagerness in Maytera Marble’s voice; and when I remembered that the water would not be of the smallest value to her, I was deeply touched. I said that I did not want to miss anything that Mucor said when she came back.

“She will be gone a long, long time, Horn.” This in her old classroom tone. “I doubt that she’s even reached our old whorl yet. There’s plenty of time for you to go down and get it, and I wish you would.”

Stubbornly, I shook my head; and after that, we sat in silence except for a few inconsequential remarks for an hour or more.

At last I stood and told Maytera Marble that I would bring up some water bottles, and made her promise to tell me exactly what Mucor said if she spoke.

It had been morning when I arrived, but the Short Sun was already past the zenith when I left the hut. I discovered that I was tired, although I told myself firmly that I had done very little that day. Slowly, I descended the path again, which was in fact far too steep and dangerous for anyone to go up or down it with much celerity.

At the observation point I have already mentioned, I stopped for a time and studied the flat stone on which I had found our fish. It was sunlit now, although it had been in shadow when I had failed to see them; I told myself that they had certainly been there whether I had seen them or not, then recalled their vigorous leaps. If in fact they had been there when I had looked down at the sloop, they would certainly have escaped before I reached them.

As I continued my descent to the inlet and my sloop, I realized that it actually made no difference whether they had been there when I looked or not. They had certainly not been present when I had tied up. Even if I had somehow failed to see them, I would have kicked them or stepped on them.

Mucor had been in my sight continuously from the time I had encountered her outside her hut, and Maytera Marble from the time I had gone in. Who, then, had left us the fish?

I rinsed the sack that had held the fish, put half a dozen water bottles into it, and spent some time peering down into the calm, clear water of the inlet, without seeing anything worth describing here. One fish had regained the water, as the other two surely would have if I had not caught them in time. It had been forced to leap back onto the rock almost immediately.

By what?

I could not imagine, and I saw nothing.

Maytera Marble was waiting for me outside the hut. I asked whether Mucor had returned, and she shook her head.

“I have the water right here, Maytera.” I swung the sack enough to make the bottles clink. “I’ll put them anywhere you want them.”

“That’s very, very good of you. My granddaughter will be extremely grateful, I’m sure.”

I ventured to say that they could as easily live on the mainland in some remote spot, and that although I felt sure their life there would be hard, they could at least have all the fresh water they wanted.

“We did. Didn’t I tell you? His Cognizance gave us a place like that. We-I-still own it, I suppose.”

I asked whether their neighbors had driven them away, and she shook her head. “We didn’t have any. There were woods and rocks and things on the land side, and the sea the other way. I used to look at it. There was a big tree there that had fallen down but wouldn’t quite lay flat. Do you know what I mean, Horn?”