Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

Hound raised the bottle, then lowered it again without drinking. "Not at all. What do you say we save this for Pig?"

"I doubt that he'll drink it, but it's a kind thought."

"You were saying nobody knows the wine god's name. Isn't that unusual? I thought we knew the names of all the gods, or that the augurs did even if I don't."

"It is unusual, yes-but not unique. I had an instructor once who made a joke about it. We studied the gods a good deal, and spent half a day, perhaps, on Thyone and her dark son. My instructor said that Thyone's son had drunk so much that we had forgotten his name."

Hound chuckled.

"He also said that Thyone's son was the only god whose name we don't know. It was years before I realized that he'd been wrong. We speak of the Outsider, but it's obvious that `the Outsider' can't be his name-that it's an epithet, a nickname."

"Good god," Oreb remarked.

Hound said, "He's your favorite, isn't he? The god you love the most."

"The only god I love at all, if I've ever succeeded in loving him. In a larger sense, he's the only god worth loving. I've been outside, you see, Hound. I've been to Blue and to Green, other whorls quite different from this one."

Hound nodded.

"One goes outside full of high ideals, but one soon discovers that one has left the gods behind, even Pas. I told you how badly things were going in New Viron."

"Yes, you did."

"That's one of the chief reasons, I feel sure. So many of us were good only because we dreaded the gods. The Outsider-this is very like him, very typical of him-has shown us to ourselves. He tells us to look at ourselves and see how much real honesty there is, how much genuine kindness. You're hoping to become the father of a child."

Hound nodded. "A son, I hope. Not that we wouldn't love a daughter."

"There are children who sweep hoping to be rewarded, and there are children who sweep because the floors need sweeping and Mother's tired. And there is an abyss between them far deeper than the abyss that separates us from Blue."

"The gods keep telling us to go. That's what everybody says. I-"

"That is their function."

"I don't go to manteion myself, Horn. It seems to me that the gods ought to go with us, that they owe it to us."

"It must seem to them, I suppose, that we should take them with us gladly, that we owe them that and more."

Hound did not speak, staring into the fire.

"For three hundred years they let us live in this whorl, which they control. Their influence was malign occasionally, but benign for the most part. Scylla is a poor example, but because you know her better than the rest I'll use her anyway. She helped found Viron and graciously condescended to be its patron. She wrote our Charter, which served us so well for three centuries. Don't you think that the people who leave Viron owe it to her to take her along-if they can?"

"Why did you call her a bad example?"

"Because she's probably dead. She was Echidna's eldest child, and seems the most likely to have assisted in her father's murder. She may come back, of course, as he did. We don't call them the immortal gods for nothing."

Hound rose, broke a stick across his knee, and tossed both halves into the fire.

"You're ready to sleep, I suppose, and I'm keeping you up. I'm sorry."

"Not at all. My donkeys are afraid of something tonight, and I'm waiting for them to calm down. If I go to sleep now, they'll be all over the forest when I wake up."

"Have you any idea what may have frightened them?"

"It's wolves, usually. That's one reason I wanted to stop here. I'm sure a whole menagerie of small animals have moved in since the owners moved out, but the wolves haven't taken to denning in here yet, and I don't think they like coming inside the wall. Maybe the ghosts keep them away."

"Perhaps they do. They will keep me away after tonight, I'm sure. Is it really night, by the way? Where would the shade be if the sun were rekindled now?"

"I have no way of telling."

"Nor do I. Oreb, have you seen any wolves since we've been here?"

"No see."

"Something's frightening Hound's donkeys. Do you know what it is? Might you guess?"

"No, no."

"Then as a favor to me, would you go out and have a look around? If you see a wolf-or anything else that the donkeys might find frightening-stay well clear of it and come back and tell us."

Oreb took wing.

"You spoke of ghosts, Hound. I ought to tell you that I saw the woman who is called the ugly daughter in your story. She told me that Silk was in Viron, and that I'd find him there. Please don't ask me to exhibit her to you-"

"I wasn't about to," Hound declared emphatically.

"I cannot control her movements-her appearances and disappearances-though I confess there have been times when I very much wished I could. She's not a bad person, but I find her a frightening one, and I've never been more afraid of her than I was tonight, not even when I sat with her in the hut she and poor Maytera Marble built of driftwood. She was really present on that occasion, really there just as you and I are here. This time she was not, and I spoke with a sort of memory she has of herself."

Hound broke another stick. "You said she isn't a real ghost. That she isn't really dead as far as you know."

"I suppose I did."

"But Scylla is. Are you saying that if Scylla were to appear in the Sacred Window of the little manteion where Tansy and I were mar tied she would be a ghost, the ghost of a goddess? People used to talk about Great Pas's ghost when I was a sprat, and some of them still swear by it."

"I think it likely, but I can't say with any certainty. I know less about the gods than you may be inclined to believe, and in all humility I don't think anyone knows a great deal. We suppose that they are like us, and we read our own passions and failings into them-which was the point of my instructor's joke, of course. If we find our neighbor irritating, we're confident that the gods are irritated by him to an equal degree, and so on. I've even heard people say that a certain god was sleeping and required a sacrifice to wake him up."

Hound started to speak, stopped, and at last blurted, "Horn, do you think it's possible your friend Pig's gone to sleep in another room?"

"It's possible, I suppose, though I doubt very much that it's actually occurred. If it has, it's probably the best thing we could hope for. I pray that it has."

"You're worried about him, too."

"Yes, I am. You're not sleeping now because you're worried about your donkeys. I'm not sleeping because I'm concerned for Pig-and for myself and my errand, to acknowledge the truth."

"This woman who's not a ghost, couldn't she have harmed him? You say she's not a ghost. All right, I accept that. She sounds a lot like a goddess to me, Horn, and a goddess… You're shaking your head."

He sat up straighter and turned away from the fire to face Hound. "She isn't. May I tell you what she is? You may know some or all of it already, in which case I apologize."

Hound said, "I wish you would. And I wish you'd sent Oreb for Pig, instead of worrying about wolves. You don't agree."

"No, I don't. It might conceivably have helped. I don't know; but my best guess was and is that it would have been very dangerous for Oreb-far more so than scouting for wolves, which are unlikely to pose a threat to a bird. He would have been in a confined space with a very large man who has a sword, acute hearing, and an amazing ability to locate even silent objects by sound. If Pig had been enraged by the intrusion, which I judge by no means unlikely, Oreb might have been killed."

"You're saying Pig needs privacy right now."

"I am."

Hound sat down again, crossing plump legs. "Because of something the ghost said to him?"