Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

"Chems are made quite differently, of course. Each parent carries half the information necessary to make the parts and assemble them. Now follow me closely, please. When my friend Maytera Marble plucked out one of her eyes-both, as I say, had stopped functioning-she took it out quite easily, and she took it out as a unit. Am I making myself clear?"

Hound said, "Yes. Certainly."

"Both her eyes had gone blind; but they did not go blind at the same moment. If they had, she would have known, I feel sure, that the real trouble lay deeper and new eyes would not permit her to see again. What actually happened was that one failed first, and the other failed a short time afterward. I know that Maytera inherited certain new parts when Maytera Rose died; Maytera Rose was also a sibyl, and was the senior sibyl at our manteion at the time of her death. I do not believe, however, that either eye was among those parts. If I am correct, Maytera Marble had been using the eyes that failed her for more than three hundred years-presumably they simply wore out."

Pig put down his spoon. "Huh. Didn't try ter make herself no new ones, bucky?"

"You're ahead of me, clearly. No, I do not believe she did. If she had, she said nothing about that effort to me, and I feel sure she would have."

"She'd a' tried, h'anyhow. Yer can take such from me, an' lily, ter."

"I agree. Why didn't she at least attempt it? Surely it must have been because she didn't know how, and since new chems clearly require new eyes, they must be among the parts made by the male. If I can find a male chem, I'll try to persuade him to make eyes for her, and give them to me to take back to her."

Pig said slowly, "H'or yer could find a dead 'un, bucky, an' pluck his h'out."

"Yes, provided I can remove them without damaging them." He endeavored unsuccessfully to sit up straighter and square his shoulders. "I've no wish to end your conversation, friends, but I'm very tired indeed, and you say it will soon be shadeup. With your permission, I'd like to excuse myself."

Hound said, "Yes, certainly," and Tansy, "You can sleep in the house, if you'd rather do that. Or I can bring out some blankets for you to lie down on."

"I shall be quite comfortable wherever I lie down, you may be sure." He took three steps back from the table, sank to his knees, and stretched out on the coarse, dry grass.

Pig groped for his sword, found it, and rose. "Wi' yer, bucky. Guid night ter Nall."

"Horn," Hound asked, "would you and your friend like to go with me tomorrow?"

There was no reply.

"I'll be riding one of our donkeys, Pig, and leading the other two. You-now that I see you standing up…"

Pig's chuckle rumbled in his chest. "Nae donkey fer me, but thank yer kindly. Bucky can, an' he'll thank yer better'n Pig. Yer a buck an' a brathair."

Tansy touched Hound's elbow. "The shade's nearly up already, dear."

"I'll wait for them to get some rest," he told her. "We can camp, if we have to."

He turned back to Pig. "But there's something else we ought to talk about. You two haven't known each other long, have you?"

"Have we? We've nae. Met h'up h'on ther road ternight, we did. Yer need nae fash. Yer nae gang ter tittle naethin' what's news ter auld Pig."

"It's just…" Hound glanced helplessly at his wife. "We werewere all sitting there pretending. You and Tansy were, and I was, too. All of us except his bird."

"Good bird!" Oreb's tone declared that matter settled.

Tansy asked, "Do you really know what we know, Pig? You're not from around here."

"Aye."

"I do too. I think so. I-I know Hound better than anybody, and I could tell from the way he opened our house to you, and the way he talked. I think I could, I mean, I did. I really do."

Hound drew a deep breath. "He kept saying and saying he was looking for Calde Silk. But that's Calde Silk right there. That's Calde Silk himself, Pig. You never saw him, but people have told me he's living with his wife in the old manse, quite near here."

"Aye, laddie. Meant ter call h'on him, but he was nae ter home. Door h'open an' wife dead, layin' h'in a box. Felt a' her. Met h'up wi' him an' H'oreb Wafter. Kenned who he was an' he dinna." Slowly and heavily Pig sank to the grass. "Lucky fer Pig, yer say. Huh. Lucky fer him? Time'll say. Pig dinna ken nae more'n H'oreb there."

He lay back, his sheathed sword clasped to his chest. "Yer best ter call him Horn when he wakes. An' rouse me, will yer?"

In a moment more he was snoring. Hound and Tansy stared at each other, but found nothing to say.

He was in a boat, and there was a monster greater and more terrible than the leatherskin below it, its face showing through the long smooth swell. He opened his old black pen case, dipped a black quill into the little ink bottle and began to write furiously, conscious of how short-how terribly short-a time was left to him.

I am just setting out for Pajarocu, he wrote, knowing nothing of what is about to transpire there, not even knowing that my son Sinew has decided to track me down and go to Green with me, or that mygrand- son, Krait, the son of my daughter Jahlee, will soon join me as a son.

The scratching of the quill slowed and died. He stared at the paper. Who was Krait? He had no daughter, no sons.

To the west, a lonely bird flew over the water, black as it crossed and recrossed the sun; he knew the bird was Oreb, and that Oreb was calling, "Silk? Silk? Silk?" as he flew. The bird was too far, its hoarse voice too faint to be heard. He thought of standing and waving, of calling Oreb to him, of lighting the lantern and running it up the mast for Oreb to see, so that the leatherskin or something else in the water would come to him, would come called by his burning prayer at sunset. He thought of looking over the side at the monstrous face beneath the water, of challenging it to emerge and destroy him if it could. He did none of these things.

The boat rocked, becoming the cradle he had made for Hoof and Hide, a cradle large enough for two, so that Nettle, sitting in the sea, could rock the two together, rocking with her left hand while the right drove the quill: Enlightenment came to Patera Silk on the ball court; nothing could be the same after that. The book that they had never been able to begin begun at last, the book that lay behind his effort to make paper, behind the paper-making that had succeeded where nothing else would succeed, the paper-making that had made him the envy of his brothers and the pride of his mother, the papermaking that had been the salvation of the family.

I am just setting out for Pajarocu. Who was Pajarocu and what had he done? He crossed out the words and rewrote them: It is worthless, this old pen case. It is nothing. You mightgo around the market all day and never find a single spirit who would trade you a fresh egg for it. Yet it holds-

Enough. Yes, enough. I am sick with fancies. That was it. That was good. He reached down to turn the page so that he might begin a new one, but there was no need; the one he had written remained blank.

He stood up and shouted, but he could not recall the bird's name and the bird would not come in any case, could not hear him, remained in his pen case no matter how wildly he shouted or how loudly he waved his arms. Something with tusks and shining eyes was swimming to him, swimming east, always and forever east, in a spearstraight line from Shadelow, its wake marked already by faint phosphorescence.

He shouted until Seawrack rose from the sea to comfort him, smoothing his hair with two smooth, white hands. "It's only a dream, Horn, only a dream. If you need anyone, Hound and I are right here."

He wanted her to stay, to lie in their boat with him and comfort him, but she vanished when he tried to hold her, and it was getting dark and Green rising, a baleful jade eye. There were water bottles in the racks; but the boat was gone and the salt sea with it, the sea that was a river called Gyoll in which corpses floated, savaged by big turtles with beaks like the beaks of parrots, the river that circled with whorl, the river over which the stars never set. He had come to the end of that river, and it was too late.