Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

Silk prayed aboard the Ayuntamiento's boat with Doctor Crane looking on. If he could do that, I can do this.

Jahlee returned, cheerful and eager to talk. Our cool, damp, dark weather suits her. "It's much better than the snow, Rajan. Much! I have to keep moving to stay active, but I've slept so much already. I feel as if I'll never sleep again. And I'm getting hungry. It's wonderful!"

I made her promise that she would not attack children.

"Or the poor. You always say that."

"Very well. Or the poor. No one who doesn't have enough to eat. You'll agree to that, won't you?"

She smiled, briefly displaying her fangs. "I won't bite myself, if that's what you're worried about. Is it all right if I go back and bite the Man of Han?"

"He's dead, I believe."

"They'll have a new one by now. No, seriously, I want a goodlooking woman, someone like me. I won't kill her either."

"Or keep going back to her."

"Not more than once. You've got my word." She rose to go, the very picture of a good-looking young woman herself in her white furs. "Do you think I'd be better as a brunette?"

"Possibly." I considered her. "No, you couldn't be better. No conceivable change would be an improvement."

"Bigger breasts?" She tossed her hips, what Vadsig calls wiggling. "Smaller waist? I want your honest opinion."

"Bad thing!" This from Oreb.

"My honest opinion is that you shouldn't try it. You might break in two."

She laughed. She has a very pleasant laugh, but it seemed to me then that at her laugh our tent became a trifle darker. "I want to have sex with one of you. With one of your women, and feed afterward. Won't that be fun?"

She was baiting me; I waved it aside. "Jahlee, I've been wanting to talk to you about something serious. Perhaps this is the time."

"Do you want me to go? I can't blame you." Lifting her skirt, she danced toward the door of our tent.

"No," I said. "Not at all."

"That's good, because I can't keep it up long." She raised her skirt higher to display her legs. "Pretty, aren't they?"

"Very."

"But not strong. They're as strong as I can make them, though. I need to find another animal I can ride."

"You could have ridden your white mule from Dorp. It would have taken a great deal longer, of course."

She shrugged. "I might not have gotten here at all, and if I had, it would have been-you know."

"Flying."

"Don't say it. It's not wise. Anyway, I would have lost my mule even if I didn't lose my life, and I would have been separated from you. I don't want to be separated from you."

"Any other man or-"

"I don't think so. Anyway, I'm going into town to try to buy a new mule or something, if I can get a boat to pick me up."

I wished her luck.

"Merryn had trouble with animals, too," Jahlee said as she went out.

For some minutes I have been puzzling over that name. My first thought, naturally enough, was that "Merryn" was another inhuma we had known in Gaon; but there could be little point then in saying that Merryn, too, suffered difficulties with animals, since all inhumi do.

When the torturer's apprentice and I went to Jahlee's cell, there was an unhealthy-looking young woman with her, so pale and gaunt I feared that Jahlee had been feeding until I recalled that on the Red Sun Whorl Jahlee could eat (and could not eat) as I did-that the differences between our digestive systems had been erased, so to speak, since neither of us had any.

"This is my father," Jahlee explained to her, "but I don't know who the boy is."

The young woman had smiled, and seeing that smile I resolved not to trust her. "He's my brother," she said. "We're brothers and sisters, we witches and the torturers." Her voice was shrill and unpleasant.

"I brought her," the apprentice told me. "She's a witch," he indicated Jahlee with a nod, "and I thought another one might be able to help her."

Here I want to write that the young witch smiled again; but it was the same smile, which had remained upon her face as if forgotten. "She has no powers."

"You don't know her," the apprentice said.

"I sense none in her, and she says she has none." The witch rose, moving like a woman stiff with age.

"I don't," Jahlee told the apprentice. "I am a perfectly ordinary human woman." The happiness she had in saying it warmed my heart.

"I will go now," the witch announced; he opened the door for her and went out with her, locking it behind him. Through its barred window I heard him say that he wished to show us his dog. Possibly the witch made a reply that I did not hear.

Stepping through the door Jahlee said, "I'd like to see it. I love dogs." I followed her in time to see the witch's gaping mouth and the utter blankness of her large, dark eyes.

(I must remember to ask Jahlee about the secret. I cannot reveal it to Nettle, no matter how much I want her to know and understand. Jahlee could. She seemed in a good mood, and I should have detained her.)

We have a boat! The Outsider, seeing we required one, has arranged that we be given one at no expense and with very little trouble. But I am ahead of my story. This morning I located the house that had been Marrow's. It had been sold, but the new owner kindly referred me to a good woman named Capsicum who is disposing of Marrow's possessions.

"Here is his letter," she said, and showed it to me. I cannot reproduce it here, because I cannot recall the precise phrasing. Suffice it to say that he addressed her as "my darling," with other endearments, and that he asked her to distribute the gifts he listed, and authorized her to retain what remained for herself.

"We were friends for years, and after his wife died there was nobody but me. If it hadn't been for me, he would never have got to be what he did." She sighed; she has eyes the color of a blue china plate in a large, round face, and at the moment it held no more expression than the plate. "He'd still be with us." I asked her to explain, but she would not. "There's no mending it. You were a friend of his?"

"He was the chief of the committee of five who sent me for Patera Silk, and he certainly befriended me afterward."

"The one who was calde when we left?"

"Yes, exactly."

"Did you bring him?"

I shook my head. "I tried, and failed. Please understand meI'm not looking for a reward. I'm entitled to none. But I have the seed corn we needed and would like to turn it over to someone who will make good use of it. I had supposed that when I returned I would make my report to Marrow. Learning that he had passed away, I tried to report to Gyrfalcon. I was unable to see him, and it occurred to me that Marrow might have left instructions for me, some message."

"Do you need money? I might let you have a little." She rose with the help of a thick black stick and went to a cabinet.

"No. I've more than enough for my needs, and my family's."

I had risen because she had; she motioned for me to resume my seat. "What was your name again?"

"Horn."

"I see."

"We live on Lizard-Marrow and the others came there the first time we talked."

She said nothing. She is a large woman, quite stout, with a small mouth and a great deal of white hair.

"I should not have gone. I know that now. At the time I thought it my duty."

"What were you going to make from it?"

"Money?" I shook my head. "I didn't expect any, though I would have taken it if it had been offered, I suppose. But you're right, there was something I wanted-I wanted to see Silk again, and speak with him."

"Do you need a handkerchief?"

She produced one, small and trimmed with lace, and I was reminded poignantly of the big, masculine-looking handkerchiefs Maytera Marble used to carry in her sleeves. I shook my head again and wiped my eyes. "It's the wind, I suppose, or too much writing. I've been writing a lot, mostly by lamplight."