Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

"In an empty room in this dark, empty house? It seems to me that there's very little he could have been doing, other than what I planned to do myself-listen to the silence, touch the walls and the windowsill, and try to guess where the bed and the rest of Hyacinth's furnishings had been."

"I thought Pig hadn't ever been in this part of the whorl before. He said so, I think. So did you, Horn."

"I probably did." He stood, dusting his knees and the seat of his trousers. "We need more wood. With your permission, I'm going to try to find some."

Hound said, "You don't want to talk about this any more."

"You can put it like that if you choose to. I've nothing sensible left to say about it, and I don't like sounding foolish, though I often do. Would you like examples of my foolishness?"

Hound reached for his lantern. "Yes, I would."

"It wasn't Pig I heard, but someone else. That suite wasn't Hyacinth's but someone else's. Pig's connection wasn't with her, but with someone who had occupied her suite before she did."

"Do you believe any of that?"

"Not a word of it. When-if-Pig returns, I may ask, very diplo matically, what Mucor said to him, and why he went to the suite that Hyacinth once occupied. I may-but I may not. I advise you not to question him at all, though I can't forbid it. Are you coming with me to look for wood?"

"Yes." Hound had opened his lantern and was kneeling by the fire to light its candle. "I'll take this, too. If we go outside the wall we ought to be able to find any amount of dead wood, blown out of the trees by that wind."

It was blowing hard when they left the flickering firelight and the smell of woodsmoke, and stepped through the opening that had been Blood's door, a gale with a hint of autumn in it that swung Hound's lantern like a feather on a string.

Hound went at once to his huddled donkeys. "I'm going to bring them inside. It'll pour in a minute or two."

His companion was about to tell him to go ahead, and to remark that the coming storm was probably what the donkeys had been afraid of earlier, when Oreb swooped to a hard landing upon his shoulder, croaking, "Man come! Big man!"

"Pig? Where is he?"

"Big big! Watch out!"

"Believe me, I'll be as careful as possible. Where is he?"

"No, no!" Oreb fluttered to keep his balance in the wind.

"You don't have to come with me, but where did you see him?"

"In back. Bird show." Oreb darted forward, flapping hard into the wind's eye, no higher than his owner's knees. The faint light of the lantern faded and was gone as Hound led his donkeys into the ruined villa.

"Come bird!" Oreb called through the darkness.

"Yes! I am!"

"Good Silk!" The hoarse croak was almost lost in the roaring of the wind. "Watch out!"

His probing staff found nothing until a huge hand closed around him, its grip enveloping him from shoulder to waist.

"Would you have light?" The godling's voice mingled with distant thunder; it was as if the coming storm had spoken.

The man the godling had addressed gasped.

"I will burn this house for you, holy one, if you wish."

He found it impossible to think, almost impossible to speak. "If you tighten your grip, I'll be killed."

"I will not tighten my grip. Will you sit upon my palm, holy one? You must not fall."

"Yes," he said. "I-yes."

Something pressed his feet; his knees, which he could not have kept straight, bent. The hand that had grasped him relaxed, sliding upward and away. He groped the hard, uneven surface on which he had been seated, discovering that it fell away half a cubit to his left and right, found the great fingers (each as wide as his head) curled behind him. "Oreb?"

It had emerged as a whisper; he had intended a shout. He filled his lungs and tried again. "Oreb!"

"Bird here." Here was clearly a considerable distance.

"Oreb, come to me, please."

He was conscious of the wind, cool and violent, threatening with gusts to blow him from his precarious seat.

"Hurt bird?"

"No!" He cleared his throat. "You know I won't hurt you."

"Big man. Hurt bird?"

The deep voice rumbled out of the darkness again. "If you fall…" Lightning gleamed on the horizon. For a fraction of a second it revealed a face as large as Echidna's had been in the Sacred Window so long ago: tiny eyes, nostrils like the lairs of two beasts, and a cavernous mouth. "I cannot catch you."

"Please." He gasped for breath, fighting the feeling that the wind blew every word to nothing. "You said I could have light. If I wanted it. I have a lantern. May I light it?"

"As you say, holy one." It was a hoarse whisper, like a distant avalanche.

He had shoved his own lantern into a pocket when he had seen Hound lighting his; now he fumbled with it and with the striker, nearly dropping both.

"It is very small, holy one." There was a faint note of amusement in the terrifying rumble this time.

"That's all right," he said, with a growing sense of relief. "So am I." White sparks cascaded onto the trembling wick. It was as if there were shooting stars in his hands, like the stars at the bottom of the grave to which Silk and Hyacinth had driven Orpine's body in a dream he recalled with uncanny clarity.

Here we dig holes in the ground for our dead, he thought, to bring them nearer the Outsider; and on Blue we do the same because we did it here, though it takes them away from him.

The yellow flame of the candle rose; he shut his lantern, mesmerized by the end of the godling's thumb, the smoothly rounded face of a faceless man wearing a peaked hat that was in fact a claw.

"You see me." The gigantic speaker sounded faintly pleased.

"Yes. You could see me before."

Slowly the great face descended. Slowly it rose, as a large boat might have in a long swell.

"Like Oreb. Oreb can see even when it seems to me that there's no light at all."

There was no reply, and he wondered whether the godling had heard him. "Oreb's eyes are larger than mine," he continued gamely, "though Oreb is so much smaller. Your eyes seem very small to me, but that's only because they are small in proportion to your face. Each must be the size of Oreb's head."

Rain fell like a lash.

"You speak too fast, holy one," the godling rumbled.

And it must seem to you that we move very fast as well, he reflected. That we dart about like squirrels or rabbits.

"Are you in danger, holy one? I will protect you."

"No." He held up the light, his sodden tunic clinging to his arm. This was better-far better-than the sewer on Green.

"Are you in need, holy one? I will supply you."

"That is good of you." He struggled to make himself heard.

"Bird here!" Oreb landed heavily on his head, and every limb jerked with terror. "Wet wet!" A fine spray of water joined the rain as Oreb shook himself and fluttered his wings.

"Getting in under the fingers, aren't you?"

"Good bird! Good Silk!"

Suddenly contrite, he spoke slowly to the godling. "You've made a shelter for me, and even let Oreb share it. Am I-are we keeping you out in this?"

Again the rumble seemed slightly amused, although he could not be sure he was not imagining it. "I do not suffer, holy one." There was pause in which the huge face, lit faintly from below, regarded him. "Are you in need?"

"No." It was still difficult for him to speak.

"The rest are to stay," the godling rumbled. Its breath, hot, moist, and fetid, pierced the wind; and lightning flashed as it spoke, starkly revealing colorless skin splashed with inky shadows. "Enough have gone. Tell the rest to stay. That is what I have come to tell you. Silk says it."

We have made the experiment, and the experiment has failed. That is the truth, so that is how I must look at it. All my planning-I shall be honest: all my scheming-has gone for nothing. I must devise a new approach.