Gene Wolfe - The Urth of the New Sun

The wind snapped my cloak like a banner and made our lateen foresail flap like the wings of some monstrous bird as the tapered yard bent again and again to spill the blasts. The foresail had been reefed to the last point, and with every gust Alcyone shied toward Gyoll’s rocky shore like a skittish steed. The mate stood with one hand on the backstay, watching the sail and cursing as monotonously as a barrel organ. When he caught sight of me, he stopped abruptly and mouthed, “May I speak with you, sieur?”

He looked absurd doffing his cap in that wind; I smiled as I nodded. “I suppose you can’t furl the foresail without making her harder to steer?”

It was just at that moment that the full fury of the storm descended on us. Though so much of her hamper had been struck or reefed, Alcyone was laid on her beam ends. When she righted herself (and to the glory of her builders, she did right herself) the water all around us was boiling with hail, and the drumming of the hailstones on her decks was deafening. The mate sprinted for the overhang of the sundeck. I followed him and was startled to see him fall to his knees as soon as he had gained its shelter.

“Sieur, don’t let her sink! I don’t want it for me, sieur, I got a wife — two babies — only married last year, sieur. We—”

I asked, “What makes you think I can save your ship?”

“It’s the captain, ain’t it, sieur? I’ll see to him, soon as it gets dark.” He fingered the hilt of the long dirk at his side. “I got a couple hands that’s sure to stand by me, sieur. I’ll do it — I swear it to you, sieur.”

“You’re talking mutiny,” I said. “And nonsense.” The ship rolled again until one end of the main yard was under water. “I can no more raise storms—”

I was addressing no one. He had bolted from beneath the overhanging deck and vanished into the hail and pouring rain. I seated myself once more on the narrow bench from which I had watched the ship loaded. Or rather, I rushed through the void as I had been rushing through the void since Burgundofara and I had leaped into the black emptiness under that strange dome on Yesod; and as I did, I made the lay figure I moved with strings that might have strangled half Briah sit upon the bench.

In the space of a dozen breaths, or a hundred, the mate returned with Herena and Declan. He knelt again, while they crouched at my feet.

“Stop the storm, sieur,” Herena pleaded. “You were kind to us before. You won’t die, but we will — Declan and me. I know we’ve offended you, but we meant well and we beg you to forgive us.”

Declan nodded mutely.

I told them all, “Violent thunderstorms are common in autumn. This one will soon pass, like other storms.”

Declan began, “Sieur…”

“What is it?” I asked him. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t speak.”

“We saw you. She and I did. We were up there where you left us when the rain came. The mate here, he ran. You walked, sieur. You walked, and the hail didn’t hit you. Look at my clothes, sieur, or hers.”

“What do you mean, Declan?”

The mate mumbled, “They’re soaked, sieur. So’m I. But feel your cloak, sieur, feel your cheeks.”

I did, and they were dry.

When it is confronted with the incredible, the mind flies to the commonplace; the only explanation I could think of was that the fabric was of some extern weave that could not be wet, and that my face had been shielded by the hood. I pushed it back and stepped out into the waist.

With my face turned to the wind, I could see rain streaming toward my eyes and hear the whizzing hail as it passed my ears; but no hailstone ever struck me, and my face and hands and cloak remained dry. It was as though the words — the foolish words, as I had always believed — of the munis had become truth, and all I saw and heard was mere illusion.

Almost against my will, I whispered to the storm. I had thought to speak as men speak to men, but I found that my lips produced the sounds of soft wind, of distant thunder rolling among the hills, and of the gentle tympanation of the rain of Yesod.

A moment passed, then another. The thunder rumbled away, and the wind fell. A few hailstones, like pebbles flung by a child, plopped into the river. I knew that with those few words I had called the storm back into myself, and the feeling was indescribable. Earlier I had somehow sent forth my feelings, and they had become a monster as wild as I was then, a monster with the strength of ten thousand giants. Now they were only feelings again, and I was angry again as I had been angry before, and not least angry because I was no longer certain where the line ran between this strange, sordid world of Urth and myself. Was the wind my breath? Or was my breath the wind? Was it the rush of my blood or the song of Gyoll that sounded in my ears? I would have cursed, but I feared what my curse might do.

“Thank you, sieur. Thank you!”

It was the mate, kneeling again and ready to kiss my boot if I had been ready to permit it. I made him rise instead and told him that there was to be no murder of Captain Hadelin. In the end I was forced to make him swear it, because I could see that he — like Declan or Herena — would cheerfully have acted in what he felt to be my cause in direct disobedience to my orders. I had become a miracle monger whether I liked it or not, and miracle mongers are not obeyed as are Autarchs.

Of the remainder of that day, as long as the light lasted, there is little to say. I thought much, but I did nothing but wander once or twice from the quarterdeck to the forecastle deck and back, and watch the riverbanks slide by. Herena and Declan, and indeed all the crew, left me strictly alone; but when Urth seemed about to touch the red sun, I called Declan to me and pointed toward the eastern shore, now brilliantly illuminated.

“Do you see those trees?” I asked. “Some are in ranks and files like soldiers, some in clusters, and some in triangles interlaced. Are those orchards?”

He shook his head sadly. “I’d my own trees, sieur. Nothing from them this year but green apples for cooking.”

“But those are orchards?”

He nodded.

“And on the west bank too? Are those orchards as well?”

“The banks are too steep for fields, sieur. If you plow them, the rain washes everything away. But they do well enough in fruit trees.”

Half to myself I said, “Once I stopped at a village called Saltus. There were a few fields and a few cattle, but it wasn’t until I got farther north that I saw much fruit.”

Hadelin’s voice surprised me. “Strange you should mention that. Dock at Saltus in half a watch, sieur.”

He looked like a boy who knows he is to be beaten. I sent Declan away and told Hadelin he had nothing to fear, that I had indeed been angry with him and with Burgundofara too, but that I was angry no longer.

“Thank you, sieur. Thank you.” He turned aside for a moment, then looked back, meeting my eyes, and said something that required as much moral courage as anything I have ever heard. “You must think we were laughing at you, sieur. We weren’t. In the Chowder Pot, we thought you’d been killed. Then down in your cabin, we couldn’t help it. We were pulled together. She looked at me and me at her. It happened before we knew. Thought we were going to die, after, and I s’pose we nearly did.”

I told him, “You have nothing more to worry about.”

“I’d best go below and talk to her, then.”

I went forward, but soon discovered that close-hauled as we were the view was actually better from the quarterdeck, which was higher. I was standing there, studying the northwestern bank, when Hadelin came back, this time bringing Burgundofara. When she saw me, she released his hand and went to the farther side of the deck.