Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

Afterward I examined the knife with care and found that I had dulled its edge somewhat when I had cut the wood, although not nearly as much as I had feared. Since I have not described it in detail until now, I believe, I shall do so here. The blade was a hand and two fingers in length, two fingers wide, and very thick and strong at the back. It was a single-edged knife made for skinning and cutting up game, not a dagger, and had been forged (both blade and grip) from a single billet of steel by a smith in New Viron, who had followed a sketch that my son Sinew had made for him. The minor god Hephaestus, who in Old Viron we reckoned the patron of all who worked with fire, stood invisible behind Gadwall as he worked, I feel certain. I have heard men speak of better blades, but I have never met with one.

I got a bad fright today. I was to sacrifice an elephant in the temple, this at the urging of the priests, who seem to feel that a large and valuable animal will provide better omens than a sheep or goat. Seeing me await it with the sacred sword in my hand, the elephant appeared to understand what we had intended, and broke free from its weeping trainer, trumpeting and flailing its trunks like muscular whips. I stood as still as any statue when it charged, knowing that to move would be to die. It knocked me down and did a great deal of damage before it could be brought under control again, and I find that I am being hailed as a man of superhuman courage; but I trembled and wept like a little child when I was alone.

So it was after the devil-fish was dead. Perhaps I would have behaved better if another human being had been present, but as it was, my hands shook so violently that I found it very difficult to sheath Sinew’s knife. We like to think (or at any rate I always have) that our arms and legs will not betray us; but in moments like that we learn just how wrong we are. My hands trembled, my knees had lost their strength, and tears I could scarcely blink back threatened to wash the devil-fish’s blood from my face. I tried to joke with Babbie then, to make light of what had happened to us; my teeth chattered so badly, however, that he thought I was angry and stood well clear of me, lagging behind so as to keep me under observation for safety’s sake.

The most logical thing to do would have been to return to the tarn and wash there. The thought filled me with horror, and I promised myself instead that I would wash in the sea; and so I was covered with blood when we returned to the sloop and found Seawrack waiting on board. It is a testament to her courage that she did not scream at the sight and leap back into the water.

As for me, I was ready to believe that fear and the fight with the monstrous bat-fish had destroyed my reason. To see her as I saw her then, naked except for her gold and the waist-length mantle of her hair (which was gold too in places, but in others green), you must imagine first the days and nights at sea and the hours-long walk across that featureless green plain, where it seemed that no one and nothing lived in the whole whorl but Babbie and me.

Ambassadors from a distant town arrived today. It is called Skany, or at least that is as close as I can come to the name. Its ambassadors are three gray-bearded men, dignified and grave but not humorless, who rode mules and were accompanied by thirty or forty armed servants on foot. They had been told that Silk was here, “ruling Gaon,” and wished to invite me to rule Skany as well.

I explained that I did not rule (for I am in reality no more than an advisor to the people here) and that I could not and would not take responsibility for two towns so widely separated.

They then placed several problems before me, saying that these were cases that had arisen in Skany during the past year, and asked me to judge each and explain the principles on which I made my decisions. In one, both parties might well have been telling the truth as they saw it. It could not possibly be decided by someone who could not question them both, and question witnesses as well, and I said so.

I will set it down here.

The people of Skany had been able to leave the Long Sun Whorl only because a wealthy man of their native city had supplied several hundred cards and other valuable parts to repair a lander for them. He did so on the condition that he would be permitted to claim a very extensive tract of land, whose size was agreed upon in advance, to be selected by him. (He was, I believe, one of the three ambassadors, although at no time did they allude to it.) This was done.

This man now desires to marry a young woman, hardly more than a girl, whom he had employed as a servant previously. The bride (as I shall call her) is entirely willing. The difficulty is that a certain poor woman has come forward to claim the bride-price, saying that she is the bride’s mother. The bride herself denies this, saying that her father was left behind in the Long Sun Whorl, and that her mother was a woman (whom she names) who perished when their lander took flight. Perhaps I should say here that it is their custom for the groom or his family to buy the bride from her parents; but that when the bride is orphaned she is bought from herself-that is to say, she receives her own bride-price, which becomes her property.

All this brought Seawrack and the gold she wore to mind vividly; yet her case was in certain respects the very reverse of this one. I had intended to write a great deal about her tonight in any event, and I will do so. The reversals should be obvious enough.

Her pale gold hair was long, as I have said, and in places dyed a misted green by some microscopic sea-plant that had taken refuge there. I am tempted to say that it was her hair that impelled me to name her as I did, but it would not be entirely true; the truth is that her name, which was no word of the Common Tongue, baffled me, and that Seawrack was near to it in sound and seemed to suit her very well.

Her face was beautiful, strong, and foreign. By that last, I mean that I had never before seen anyone with her sharp chin, very high cheekbones, and tilted eyes. Her skin was as white as foam in those days, which made her lips a blazing scarlet and her midnight-blue eyes darker than the night. I noticed her nakedness first, as I suppose any man would, and then the length of her legs and the womanly contours of her body, and only then the gold she wore. It was not until she released her hold on the backstay and waved, very shyly and tentatively, with her left hand that I realized that her right arm had been amputated just below the shoulder. “Hello?” Her voice was just above the threshold of audibility. And again: “Hello?”

That word is one of the most ordinary, and I remember that when I was a small boy Maytera Marble used to ridicule people who used it, saying that we ought to bless those whom we greet in the name of the god of the day.

Or if we were too self-conscious for that, to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening , or good day . But I shall never forget seeing Seawrack as she stood in my old sloop, the way in which she waved to me (she was terrified of Babbie, as I quickly discovered), and the delicious music of her voice when she whispered, “Hello?”

As for what I replied, I may have said, “Good afternoon,” or “Hello!” or “Is it going to snow?” Or any other nonsense that you might propose. Most likely, I was too stunned to say anything at all.

“I am one of you,” she told me solemnly, and I thought that she meant one of the crew of our boat and tried to say something gracious about needing help without mentioning her missing arm. There is a saying among the fishermen, “One hand for yourself and one for the boat.” It means that in a rough sea you are to hold on with one hand and do your work with the other, and as I spoke to Seawrack I could not rid my mind of the idiotic thought that she would be unable to do it.