Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

Seawrack glanced at me, her lovely eyes wide. “They want to give you that head.” Standing upon its muzzle, it was nearly as tall as the son, and the spread of its horns exceeded that of my out-stretched arms, as I had found out when we had returned to the carcass.

“You’ll have to take it,” Krait told me, looking up from his scraping; and of course he was right.

Besides, I wanted it. You will not understand, Nettle my dearest darling, although perhaps some others who read this will. It had seemed a grim irony when He-pen-sheep’s son had tied the break-bull’s tail to the belt of the crude leather garment his father had made for me. I had wanted the head-yes, even then-if only to prove to myself that I had actually done what I remembered doing-and the tail seemed only a sort of mockery of that desire, some god’s cruel jest to punish me for my dawning self-satisfaction. You will ask now, and very reasonably, whether I did not want the head of the wallower I shot a few weeks ago as well. I did, but not nearly so acutely; and since no one talked of retaining the heads as trophies, I kept my peace.

When after considerable labor we had the breakbull’s head on board and had waved good-bye once again, Krait took great pleasure in enunciating the obvious. “You can glory in it for a day or three, if the flies don’t get at it. But after that, it will have to go over the side, or we will.”

I muttered something about sawing off the horns, if I could trade for a saw.

“You could have shot them off back there.” He pointed with the scraper. “It would have saved a lot of work.”

Seawrack asked indignantly, “How much work do you think they did, cutting it off and carrying it to the other side, when they couldn’t even be sure that we’d be going this way?” (I had questioned He-pen-sheep about a big river to the north the evening before, but that was surely not the time to mention it.) She turned to me. “Would you settle for the skull with the horns still on it, and no smell?”

I assured her that I would, and gladly.

“Then all we have to do is tow it behind the boat. Not too long a rope, because you don’t want it to go too deep. I’ll show you.”

She did, and I surprised myself and them by lifting the huge thing and carrying it to the stern for her. We balanced it on the gunwale, tied a noose in the rope that Krait had coiled and stowed a couple of hours earlier, tightened it over the horns, and pushed the head overboard. Although we were still making respectable time, it seemed to sink like a stone, and Seawrack had me shorten the rope.

By evening, we were accompanied by a flock (I cannot bring myself to call them a school) of the strangest and most beautiful fish that I have ever seen, each a little bit longer than my hand. They are luminous, as so many fish here are, although I cannot recall any luminous fish in the market in Old Viron. Their heads are scarlet, their bellies an icy white, and their backs, dorsal fins, and tails are blue. All four of their cubit-long pectoral fins (with which they not only glide but fly like birds or insects) are gauzy, and invisible at night. When they flitted around the sloop after shadelow like so many oversized and multicolored fireflies, it really seemed that we were sailing far beneath the waves, with some convenient current swelling our mainsail. Seawrack assured me that they would strip the skull of the last scrape of flesh in a few days, and they did.

And now good night, Nettle my own darling. My night thoughts circle your bed, glowing but invisible, to observe and to protect you. Never doubt that I love you very dearly.

I am not sure how long it has been since I wrote all this about the breakbull’s head. I might guess, so many days or so many weeks, but what does it matter? A week of war is a year, a month of war a lifetime.

I have been wounded. That is why I am back here now, and why I have had the leisure to read so much of this tissue of half-truths. (Of lies I have told to myself.) And it is why I have the leisure to write.

My wound throbs. A physician has given me a pretty little pot containing some dirty, sticky stuff I am to chew, the dried sap of some plant or other. When I chew it my wound is a drum beaten softly very far away, but I cannot think. Everything flows together, dancing with Seawrack in the swirling waves of my thought and taking on unimaginable colors-the play of candlelight on Pig’s blind face as he ate soup, Babbie rushing upon the devil-fish, Nettle screaming with pain and relief as Hide followed Hoof. If I were to take a pinch from the pink porcelain pot now, the wall of this room would blush for my self-pity.

I do not believe I have written this by daylight before. Why not say that was why I had not noticed how much falsehood is in it.

Where to begin?

Nothing about my travels with Seawrack and Krait today. I have too much to recount that is recent. Let us begin with the war.

No, let me spit my bile. Then I will begin with the river. With the Nadi, the town of Han upriver, Han’s invasion, and the first fighting.

Bile: I finished reading this one hour ago, appalled by my own hypocrisy. Particularly sickened by the last few words I wrote before the outbreak of the war. Did I really think that I could lie like that to myself, and make myself believe it? While all the time I was imagining myself Silk, forever thinking of what Silk would do or say? Silk would have been ruthlessly honest with himself, and worse.

No more. My hand was shaking so badly that I laid down the quill just now, raging against myself. I wanted to get up and retrieve my azoth, to press it against my own breastbone and feel the demon beneath my thumb. Wanted to, I say, but I am too weak to leave my chair. Moti came in with a little brass kettle and mint tea, and I could have killed her, not because I have anything against the sweet child, but as a substitute for myself. I handed her my dagger and told her to stab me between the shoulder blades, because I lacked the courage to drive in the point. Bent my head and shut my eyes. What would I have done if she had obeyed?

Died.

My dagger lies on the carpet now not two cubits from this chair, long, straight, and strong. Thick at the back so that it will not bend when I stab someone.

Someone , I say, and mean someone else.

Not stab myself. I will not do that. If I need more courage than I have to live, I will pretend to have it and live anyway. I did that on the battlefield. How frightened I was afterward, and how ridiculous I feel now!

My hands shook. It was all that I could do to keep my voice steady, and perhaps it was not, or not always. I acted the part of a hero. That is to say, I acted as it seemed to me I would have if I had actually possessed dauntless courage. They believed me. What fools we were, all of us, losing battle after battle!

But O you gods of the Short Sun, what a thing it is! What a thing it is to see frightened men stop and reload, and fight again!

They were too many for us. All you had to do was listen to the shooting, three and four shots from them for each one of ours.

Choora . That is the word they use here for this kind of a dagger. I have been trying to think of it. Choora . It sounds like one of my wives, and no doubt it could be a woman’s name as well, a woman slim and straight, with brown cheeks and golden bangles in her ears and nose. Loyally, Choora remained at my side when we charged and when we broke; and if she never drew a single drop of blood, it was my fault and not hers. All hail Princess Choora!

I traded for the big chopping knives in Pajarocu. Maybe I should have given each a name, but I never did. If Choora is a princess, they were a washerwoman and a maid of all work; but there are times when a sturdy girl who will turn her hand to whatever may be needed is better than a princess with a coral pommel.