Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

Sit down, Patera.

Auk sat across from me, more dour and more threatening than I ever imagined him when we wrote about his meeting with Silk. I blinked and he was gone, but he soon returned. Eventually I called the owner of the shop over, saying quite truthfully that my head ached, that I was very tired and much in need of company, and that I would be happy to stand him a glass of his own brandy if only he would tell me the gossip of the town.

"A foreigner you are?" He bent over my table, a bald and beefy man of more than forty.

"A foreigner much in need of companionship, mysire," I said.

"A girl you want?"

I shook my head. "Just someone real to talk to. Are you about to close?"

"No, mysire. At shadeup we close, but soon my son comes so sleep I get."

"Most people here don't say shadeup anymore," I told him, "or shadelow, either."

"For this my son at me laughs, mysire." He sat on Auk's stool, to my great relief. "The old place I do not forget. Back I cannot go, but remember I do. Old as me you are, mysire. Why come you did?"

For a moment I could not decide whether to tell him that I was told to (as I was by Silk) or that I was made to (as I was by Hari Mau and his friends); in the end I decided to change the subject and said, "For the same reasons as many others, I suppose. Would you like that drink? If you'll get it I'll pay for it, as I said."

"No, mysire. In my house sometimes, but here never I drink. For my trade ruin it is. From where to our Dorp do you come?"

"New Viron."

"A long voyage it is, but last night another from New Viron to my tavern comes. For you it is he searches?"

"I doubt it. What was his name?"

The shopkeeper scratched his bald head. "This forgotten I have, mysire. What yours is? Him I tell if again he comes."

I smiled and told him, "Horn it is, mysire. To him this you say. Mysire Horn for your company asks. Your townsman he is. With Beroep he is to be found. Help you he will."

The shopkeeper laughed. "Better talking you are, mysire."

"But not perfectly? How would you say it?"

" `For' not you say."

As I sipped from my chipped glass, I struggled to recall just what I had said. "Mysire Horn your company asks?"

"Yes, mysire. That the right way it is. Also must you say, with Beroep to be found he is."

"I see, and I appreciate your instruction. I'll wait a bit before I try again."

"A good man where we are Beroep is." The shopkeeper winked and pretended to drink, then turned gloomy. "Soon ruined he is. Destroyed he is. His boats they want, mysire."

A younger man joined us. "Strik already ruined is."

The shopkeeper introduced him. "My son, mysire. Wapen he is."

Wapen said, "Strik tried will be. Everything they take."

"For what tried?"

Wapen shrugged. "If not wanted it is, too heavy it is."

His father told me, "They us destroy, mysire. One man and another."

"My father's tavern soon they take." The younger man was not tall, but he looked tough; and as he leaned toward me I saw a scar that must have been made by a knife or a broken bottle across one pitted cheek.

"Soon, not now, it is," the shopkeeper said.

"Better the tavern we sell and a boat buy. Back not coming, we are."

I said, "Better destroying those who would destroy you, you are."

The shopkeeper looked around fearfully, but his son spat on the floor, saying, "What more to us they will do?"

Soon after that the shopkeeper left for home, and Wapen excused himself to wait on another patron.

"They're y'are."

I looked around at the swaying woman behind me and said, "Chenille?"

"Tha' lady on Green? No, 's me." Jahlee dropped onto Auk's stool and leaned across the table her chin on her hands. "Guesh my faish's not sho good, huh?"

"Don't smile," I told her.

"I won'. I'sh jush show hungry. I foun' thish woman in a alley."

"Not so loud, please."

"I drank 'n drank, 'n I fell down 'n I knew I better shtop."

"Did you kill her, Jahlee?"

"Don' thin' sho. She'sh big woman." She paused, her eyes unfocused and her nose softening and seeming to sink into her face. "Never wash sho drunk. D'you like it, Rashan?"

I shook my head, wondering how long it would be before she was sober again. It could be a matter of minutes, I decided; it was also possible that what we were interpreting as drunkenness was permanent brain damage.

"I'sh jus' sho hungry," she repeated.

"A part of the blood you drink becomes your own blood. Surely you must know that."

"Washn't thinkin', Rashan. It'sh jush like th' cow." She waited, expecting (as I saw) to be scolded. "Sho then I shed go back to tha' big housh, only I'sh locked up there."

I nodded.

"An' I can' find it but I shaw you."

"Basically you're right," I told her. "We must get you out of sight, and it would probably be unwise to return to Cijfer's."

"My hair'sh crooked?" Her hands went up to it.

"No. But I wouldn't touch it if I were you." Seeing a face I recognized, I called, "Hoof, come over and sit with us."

He came to the table and offered me his hand. "I'm afraid I don't remember you, sir. Are you from New Viron?"

I was worried about Oreb and my trial and a dozen other things; but I could not help laughing, just as I was to laugh a few minutes later when Hide came in with his bruised face and swollen eye, still angry and eager to fight. "Yes, I am," I told Hoof. "I'm your father, and this is your sister, Jahlee."

"Horn!" As he stumbled, dripping, into the cavernous room that had been Blood's reception hall, Hound goggled.

"Bucky?" Pig's blind face looked not quite at him. "That yer, bucky?" Donkeys more than half asleep raised their heads and turned long ears to hear the moist scuffle of his shoes on the scarred and stained parquet floor.

"Yes, it's me." He sat down between Pig and Hound, wiping water from his hair and eyes. "Tired and exceedingly wet."

"Bird too!"

"Yes. Dry your feathers. But not on my shoulder, please. It can scarcely support its own weight."

"A godling had you…" Hound sounded as if he did not believe it himself. "I told Pig."

"Did you? And what did Pig say?"

"Prayed fer yer, bucky."

He glanced at Pig, then laid a shivering hand on one of Pig's enormous knees. "You're wet, too."

"Aye, bucky. Been rainin' h'out there? H'it has!"

He turned to study Hound. "So are you."

Hound did not reply.

"It's raining outside, Pig, exactly as you said. But not in here. There's a tile roof, and tile lasts if it isn't broken."

"H'in through ther winders, bucky."

"Bird too," Oreb remarked.

His owner stroked him. "Do you mean that you fly into the house through its broken windows as the rain does, Oreb? Or that you are as wet as Hound and Pig?"

"Bird wet!" Oreb spread his wings, warming them at the dying fire.

"Indeed you are, and for very the same reason-that is to say, because you were out there with me."

"I wasn't." Hound spoke to the fire. "I've got to tell you that, and there it is. I heard the godling when it spoke to you, and I hid in here, in one of the little rooms off this one, until Pig came."

"I don't blame you."

"I tried to get him to hide too, but he wouldn't. He went out into the rain to help you."

"Good man!" Oreb exclaimed.

"Then you went out to bring him back?"

Hound nodded, still looking at the fire.

"Hung h'on me h'arm," Pig explained.

"I made him listen. And you and the godling were talking, were conversing, really, like a man and his servant. We-I couldn't make out what you were saying. Could you, Pig?"