Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

At the time, I knew Hoof (who would so quickly become my husband) only as a friend and fellow student. We lived in Lizard on Lizard, as they say. That is, in the village called Lizard on Lizard Island. My father and my brother are fishermen. My mother and I usually remained ashore, although we assisted them in cleaning and smoking their catch, and sometimes accompanied them to New Viron to sell it.

When I was younger, my mother had wanted me to learn to read, write, and cypher, things she herself could not teach me. She had become acquainted with Nettle and sent me to her to be taught with her sons. For that we paid one large or two small fish per week. This arrangement ended a year before the opening of the present narrative.

We were invited to Hide and Vadsig's wedding, as everyone on Lizard was, and sailed to New Viron to attend. Our boat required recaulking, and my father decided to put it in dry-dock there, where there were ample supplies of tar and tow. Thus we remained there several days after the other guests from Lizard had returned to their homes.

While returning to our boat for the reason mentioned above, I was very much surprised to encounter the tall, white-haired man Hoof and his brother called Father. He was carrying a sack of potatoes, and had slung two large sacks across the shoulders of a tame hus. I think one held apples and the other a ham and other smoked meats.

Having seen me a few days ago at the wedding, he recognized me and congratulated me upon having survived the attack of the inhumi. I told him quite truthfully that I would have perished had Hoof not come to my rescue, and showed him the bandage on my neck. We talked about the wedding and the battle that had followed it in a friendly fashion, and when we reached his boat, he introduced me to Seawrack, who was stowing supplies on it and who plays so large a role in the first volume of this book. Although she was strong for a woman, she had difficulty handling certain things, and I was able to help her as well as the iron-faced sibyl. Lovely though Seawrack was, with her snowy skin, blue eyes, and fair hair, there was something animal about her. It seemed clear to me that she trusted only "Father," and would have put her long knife into any other person as readily as I would gut a fish.

"We will sail tonight," he told me. "Would you be willing to make my farewells to Hoof and Hide? Nettle is making her own, and cannot be bothered with mine."

I hesitated, and he said, "I've been dreading it-in a sense, I have killed their father, though the Outsider surely knows that I never meant him the least harm. I don't want to have to face his sons, and we have a great deal to do before we go. Won't you do it for me?"

"Bird say!" his pet announced.

"I know you did," he said, "but I'd like this girl to do it, too. Will you, Daisy? Will you say good-bye for me?"

I asked where they were going, and Seawrack said, "To find Pajarocu. There will be a lander that can fly there. Or one will come, and if they will not give it to us, we will take it."

"Back to Viron," the old sibyl confided.

And he: "To the stars."

Soon after that I left them and went to my father's boat for my sewing things, thinking only about the wedding and how beautiful it had been before the inhumi attacked. And never thinking at all of these books he left behind on Lizard, which I knew nothing about then but over which I have labored for hundreds of hours now.

The faint, blinking star that old people call the Whorl is fainter than ever. I went outside to look at it a moment ago, and although I could make it out with the telescope, it is no longer visible to my naked eyes.

They are in it, I hope, he and his eerie young woman, Nettle, the old sibyl, and their bird, on course upon a greater sea to strange new islands. Good fishing! Good fishing! Good fishing! Good fishing! Good fishing!