Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

When I was in Blanko, Fava and I found that when my mind was joined with hers we, and anyone else who was in our company, could travel in spirit. We went to Green; and later Jahlee, the Duko, Hide, and I, with some others, went to the great city of the Red Sun Whorl. We were able to, I believe, because the Duko had been there previously. Let me think.

I am going to write down everything-even the smallest details. Perhaps something will suggest itself, either when I am writing or when I read this over tomorrow.

I persuaded Beroep to take me across the street to Cijfer's. It was a serious violation of the law, he said; he and Aanvagen might lose their boats and even their house if the law found out. We waited until long after shadelow, when the street was almost empty. I was muffled in a thick twill boat cloak with a hood. It is dark gray, and reminds me of Olivine's giving me my augur's robe; what a strange whorl it is, in which we become someone else by putting on new clothes! The prisoner Horn disappeared as soon as Beroep draped him in this exceedingly voluminous cloak, replaced by the nameless captain of a nameless boat. In all the time I sailed with Babbie and Seawrack, I had no such cloak. Now I have no boat, but am equipped for one. No doubt it will soon appear.

In the same way, rubies and red and purple silk made me Rajan of Gaon. We are but the paper; our clothes are the ink.

Across the street we went, with Oreb flying well in advance so that his company would not betray my identity, and to make certain Cijfer would put out the lamps and open her door the moment we arrived.

She had and did. We hurried inside. "My servants away I have sent, Mysire Horn. This you say, and this I have done."

"Come bird!" Oreb was fluttering up the stairwell already. We ran after him-or at any rate Cijfer and I ran, and Beroep labored behind us, puffing and groaning. Up a flight-then another-and into the locked and bolted little bedroom whose window I had studied with Vadsig, and which has been constantly in my thoughts. It seemed as dark, almost, as Blood's villa; I nearly stumbled over the chair to which Cijfer directed me.

"A candle now you wish, Mysire Horn? The shutters closed are. No one can see."

It occurred to me that no one could see me well enough to recognize me even if they had been open, and I recalled Silk's saying that Mucor thought her spirit could not leave her room unless the window was open. I resolved to open the shutters of Jahlee's room, and did afterward, although nothing came of it.

Beroep arrived at the same time Cijfer brought the candle. He would have bent over Jahlee if I had permitted it. I ordered him away with a gesture that I hope brooked no argument, and he dropped gasping into the chair. It was only then, after Beroep had sat down, that I understood how it was that Cijfer served as Jahlee's jailer for so long without realizing that she was an inhuma: the sheet had been drawn up nearly to the top of her wig. "Good thing?" Oreb inquired when I lifted it.

I replaced the sheet, telling him to be quiet. "You've covered her face," I remarked to Cijfer. "May I ask why?"

"So silent she is, mysire. So cold. Like dead your poor daughter is. Seeing her so I do not like."

Not dead," Beroep gasped, "she is?"

"No. She's in a coma-from which I intend to rouse her." I felt confident of my ability to do it, and made the declaration as certain as I could. What if Jahlee, who was been buried alive in Gaon, were buried alive a second time here in Dorp? Who would rescue her then?

"My house the ghosts will leave, mysire, if up she wakes?"

I told Cijfer I was sure of it, and ordered them out; she left obediently and he reluctantly. And what more is there to tell?

Nothing, really.

I sat with her all night, thinking of Green-its ruined city, its swamps and jungles, the rice fields of the villagers, the abandoned tower in the cliff, and the derelict lander in which I died rose before my mind not once or twice but twenty or thirty times; and as far as I am capable of it, I explored their every corner, leaf, and crevice. Two floors below me, where Beroep was talking to Cijfer and drinking the white brandy they relish here, plates fell from a shelf and Cijfer shrieked in dismay. That was a little after midnight, and was far more activity than I myself saw. I opened the shutters and closed them after half an hour during which the room became unbearably cold. I moved the candle from place to place. I poked the fire and fed it fresh wood. I pulled down the sheet and kissed Jahlee's cheek, and took her hand (very clearly the hand of an inhuma) from under the bedclothes and clasped it between my own. It was as cold as ice-no dead woman's could have been colder. In time I warmed it, but Jahlee never stirred.

I prayed again and again, imploring the help of the Outsider and every other god, told my beads, and recalled ten thousand things, from my mother's kindnesses when I was a boy to the way Pig looked and spoke when he rejoined Hound and me at the fire in Blood's villa. I listened to Oreb, and talked to him-mostly to caution him to say nothing about what we were doing. And at last, when I could no longer bear his chatter, I opened the shutters again and sent him out to look for Babbie, something I very much regret now, because he has not returned.

Dawn came and with it Beroep, rather drunk, to tell me that he could risk my absence from his house no longer. So here I sit, having accomplished nothing. But what more could I have done? I wish now that I had thought to cut my arm and smeared Jahlee's lips.

Here is news, perhaps even good news. I hope so. There was an awful brawl downstairs this morning. I listened at my keyhole and soon identified Cook's voice; it was not difficult to guess who she was bawling at, so I pounded on my door and shouted for Vadsig. She was breathless when she arrived and every bit as red of face as Aanvagen, with a livid bruise on her cheek. "I only require that you talk to me awhile," I told her, "and give Cook's temper time to cool. I felt sure you'd appreciate being rescued from that situation, whatever it was."

"Going out I am, mysire. Asking her I am not." This was said in the tone of one who defies the armed might of cities. "Saying all morning she is. Lying, she is. No more than one hour it is, mysire. Less!"

"I believe you."

"Paying me she is not, mysire. A servant like me she is!"

"No doubt she became accustomed to bullying you when you were younger, Vadsig. She must learn from your speech and your deportment that you are growing up."

She nodded vigorously. "All her life a servant she is. So with me it will not be. This she sees. Our own house we will have. Children I will have, and servants like her to wait on us, it may be."

"Aim high, Vadsig. There is nothing to be gained by not doing so."

"Thank you, mysire. Very kind you are." Smoothing her apron, she turned to go. "Your son well is, mysire. Happy he is not, but well he is and love to you by me he sends."

She had gone out and turned the key before my mouth closed. Hide? And Vadsig? What a wonderful whorl we live in!

I have been walking up and down this little room, three steps and turn, worrying about Oreb. If you ever read this, dear Nettle, you will say that I ought to have been worrying about our son; but what is there to worry about? He and Vadsig will or will not marry. I cannot decide that for them, and neither could you; they must decide it for themselves. If they do not, each will regret it sometimes, and nothing you and I could say or do can change that. If they do, each will regret that sometimes, too; and we cannot change that either. So what is there to think about? I wish them both well. So would you, I believe, if you were here with me.

As for Oreb, I am concerned about him but what can I do? When we reached this whorl, he left me for nearly a year. At, this moment he has been gone less than a day. I have prayed that he is safe, and that is all I can do. I hope the Outsider, whose sacrifice Silk once intended Oreb to be, smiles on him.