Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

He sat up. The well-remembered walls of the pit encircled him, walls marked with dank crevices opening on ruinous passages half filled with earth and stones. "It's dirt up here," a voice behind him rasped. He turned and saw Spider sitting behind him on the tumbled column, Spider in conversation with small girls in starched frocks. "It's all dirt," Spider repeated, and added, "I can tell from how it's made."

He asked politely how he could find Hyacinth.

"Down there." The blond girl pointed. "She's down there like Spider and me."

The dark girl nodded. "Down there where you're going, and she can't ever come back. Take a cake for the dog."

Spider nodded, too, saying, "It's dirt down there. I can tell from how it's made." Spider took something green from his pocket and handed it over. It was one of the crawling green lights that lined the tunnels, and it began to crawl across his palm, gleaming in the hot sunshine until he closed his fingers around it. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you very much."

"Oh, you ain't thanked me yet," Spider told him. "You'll thank me when you're down there."

He knelt and wiggled through the opening and back onto his boat, where the crawling green light he had put upon the ceiling was Green rising in the east, a baleful eye. Pig was seated in the stern, his hand upon the tiller and Oreb on his shoulder. "Good Silk," said Oreb. Pig removed the dirty gray cloth that had covered his eyes; and when it was gone, he, who had supposed that he could see, could actually see.

And Pig's big, bearded face was Silk's.

"This is really very kind of you," he told Hound when he had washed and sipped the mate Tansy made for him, "but won't we be getting a late start?"

"Yes," Hound conceded, "but it doesn't matter much. Usually I start before shadeup, as Tansy will attest, I'm sure, because she always gets up too, even though I tell her not to, and makes breakfast for me."

Tansy laughed. "I go back to bed after he leaves."

"If I have good weather," Hound continued, "and drive the donkeys for all I'm worth, there's a nice old inn in the middle of the city that I stop at. It's not too terribly expensive, and I'm right there to start my buying the next day."

"I understand."

"But even if we left this instant, we couldn't possibly reach the city before shadelow. So we'll camp along the road someplace, or stay at a country inn I know about. It's not as nice as the one I usually stay at, but it will save us a few bits, and if we rough it beside the road, that will cost nothing. Either way, we'll finish the trip tomorrow, and I'll start my trading tomorrow afternoon."

Tansy asked, "Shall I cook something now for you two, or wait till Pig wakes up?"

"Wait," Hound told her. "He'll eat more than Horn and me put together."

"Then I'd like to show Horn our shop. Can I?"

Hound looked at him, shrugging. "Do you want see it? It's very ordinary, except for being so small."

Tansy said, "But it's where we work, so it's not ordinary to us. It's ours, and the others aren't."

Their shop was on the village square, a very short distance from the little house on the edge of the village in which they lived. He stayed respectfully behind them as they mounted its three steep steps and unlocked its door.

"I don't think we'll have any customers this early," Tansy told him, "but if we do, we'll sell them whatever they've come for, and then lock up again when we go. I'll open up for the day after you and Hound and Pig leave."

"You said it was small." He paused to look around at the shiny pots and pans suspended from the ceiling, the barrels of nails and the hammers and saws hung from nails in the walls. "But it's bigger than our house on Lizard, and we raised three children in that house."

"There are rooms up above, too," Tansy told him. "My father used to rent them out. We tried to, but we couldn't find anybody who wanted them."

Hound said, "There are so many empty houses these days. Anybody who wants a house can just move in."

"So we keep the extra stock up there, and there's a bed so Mother can nap when she gets too tired. We should have brought you here last night, then you could have slept in a bed."

"My father had a shop like this in the city. I shouldn't say like this, really, because his wasn't as big. He sold paper and quills and ink, and account books and so forth."

Hound's eyebrows went up. "That might not be a bad idea for us. You can't buy paper here in Endroad. I'll see what a ream goes for in the city."

Tansy said, "Nobody here will want that much."

"Of course not." Hound's voice was brisk. "One bit for two sheets of paper and one envelope. We'll have a big bottle of ink, too, and sell it by measure."

"You couldn't sell quills here," Tansy said. "Just about everybody hunts, or keeps geese and ducks."

"Or both," Hound added. "Look at this maul, Horn. I made it myself, so it cost us nothing, and we've got it priced at nine bits, which is what you'd have to pay for a maul like this in the city. The head is elm and the handle's ash. I finished them both with pumice and flax-seed oil."

"That doesn't burn well in lamps, but it's a good polish for wood," Tansy said.

He accepted the maul and carried it to a window to admire it; and she, somewhat timidly, stepped closer and pushed up the sleeves of his plain brown tunic. "What happened to your arms?"

He glanced down at their soiled bandages. "I cut myself somehow. I want to say reaching into some brambles, because they are injuries of that sort; but I don't remember exactly how it happened."

Hound said, "Some of those look pretty nasty."

"I saw them when he took the maul," Tansy said. "I'm going to take those off and put something on the cuts, Horn, and then I'll tie them up again for you. Sometimes somebody cuts himself in here, so I keep bandages and things upstairs." She hurried to the narrow stair at the back of the shop.

He told Hound, "I'm putting you to a great deal of trouble."

"We're glad to do it." Hound took the maul and restored it to its place on the wall. "I just wish we could do more for you, and that my father could be here to help. He'd like to, I know."

As Hound spoke, Oreb swooped though the open door to perch on the handle of a scythe. "Stand up. Big man."

"Pig's awake, you mean?"

Oreb's scarlet-crowed head bobbed. "Pig up."

"In that case, we ought to rejoin him as soon as possible."

"Go shop," Oreb explained. "Bird say. Say shop. Pig go."

Hound chuckled. "You know, I'm starting to understand him. Is your friend coming to meet us here, Horn?"

He nodded, hearing Tansy's small, swift feet again upon the stairs. "I only hope he can find it."

"If he could find his way to Viron from the East Pole, he can find our shop in this village."

"Roll up your sleeves," Tansy ordered; and then, "Wait, I'll do it for you. Hold out your arm. This may hurt."

"I hope so."

She glanced up at him. "You do? Why?"

"Because I feel that I've done something wrong, that I've failed a test of some sort and deserve to be punished."

He paused, recalling the kitchen and the woman who had tied the bandages Tansy was cutting away with scissors. "Did I say something last night about not remembering when I slept last? That's incorrect; I slept in a field of new wheat. I dreamed about Nettle sitting on the beach, and trying to warn her-trying to warn somebody anyway, and failing."

"Poor Silk!" Oreb flew to his shoulder.

"Yes, poor Silk indeed, with no one but a fool like me to search for him. He may or may not need help, but every god knows New Viron and I do."

"Hold still," Tansy directed. "This isn't the first time you've hurt your arm, is it? That's an ugly scar."

At the door a new voice asked, "You say you were the only 'un lookin' for Calde Silk, stranger?"