Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

Then I looked around to see if anybody was watching, and I made Hide. That was a lot harder. It was nice to have him with me and be able to sit and talk to him about everything; but it was hard, too, to keep him there, and after a while I let him go. Now he says he cannot remember being there or anything we said.

What it was, was like I remembered him better than I have really remembered anything in my life. As long as I did, he was there with me. But the delta was interesting, everything very green and wrecked ships up on the islands, some mostly buried in the mud and little shacks that did not even seem to know they were just little shacks made out of driftwood where it had been palaces and forts. You saw walls leaning so far it seemed like they couldn't stand another day. And one time I got to looking at an old statue there that seemed to me like if only I could have talked to her it would have been the most wonderful thing in my life, and then I looked around to say something to my brother, and he was nearly gone. He came back fast and said, "Sorry!" Right after that I let him go.

The delta was all swampy, and the water was black. Before I guess I thought it was only black because it was night, but now the Red Sun was up and it was still black. Looking at the delta, that bright green everywhere, I got the feeling that I was looking at a body so old moss was growing on the bones and the hard dead meat of it. About then I saw there was nobody around anywhere, that the little driftwood shacks had nobody in them, and what had happened was the stone forts and palaces had lasted because they had been built the best, and the shacks because there had been people in them not so long ago and they had not had time to fall down. But they were empty now, and the houses and buildings that had been between the palaces and the little shacks had rotted away or maybe burned, and there would never be anybody there again, but people like us.

When we got out of the delta, that was the open sea that they call Ocean. It was like our sea and it was not. If you wanted to look for what was the same, there was a lot. But if you wanted to look for what was different, there was a lot too. The smell was different. The color was not the same, either, but it was hard to say just what was changed. That may have been the dark sky, mostly, and the stars. This sea knew night was coming, when everything would die. There was more foam, and I think this Red Sun Sea had more salt in it.

Out on the bowsprit, the girl started calling. She did not say a name or anything. She did not say any words. It was like people sitting on the sand clicking shells together and sometimes blowing through them. It did not sound bad, it was almost like music. Only you knew she was calling something, and when it came it was going to be bigger than anything and you were not going to like it.

That went on for a long time, so long that I got worried about us back in our boat. I think Babbie did, too, because a couple times he came up to Father and pulled on his sleeve. Babbie never could talk but you generally knew what he wanted. He had tied a piece of rope around him and put the knives Father gave him through it.

Here I want to say something else about them. This may not be the best place, but I want to make sure I say it so everybody who reads this understands and this is where I am writing. After I got shot, when Juganu and Babbie were holding me down, Babbie was trying to smile at me. He is not very good at it and does not try much. This time he did, I think because he knew how much it hurt and he wanted me to see that he was not holding me out of meanness, but he liked me and was trying to help. People hunt huses and shoot them and eat them. Sinew used to a lot, and I have done it myself. But after getting to know Babbie the way I did on the boat I could never do it again.

Anyway, his mouth was sort of open, not just the ends of the lips turned up, and looking in it I saw those knives. They were the big ripping tusks in his bottom jaw. The curve was the same and the shape was almost the same except the knives were longer. The tusks he had here were the knives in the Red Sun Whorl.

If I had been the girl, I would have given up after an hour or so. Maybe not even that long. She did not, and after a while I just wanted to get away from there. I went down in the waist, which was what you call the middle of a boat, and watched Juganu wrestle a sailor.

When I went back up on the foredeck, she was still singing. The bird was on her shoulder, and Father was out on the bowsprit too, maybe four cubits behind her. He called me over, and when I had come as far as the grating, he told me to tell the captain to strike all sail. I took Babbie with me, and the captain did it. After that we just drifted, rolling a little. We were on the open sea, out of sight of land.

People started coming up out of the water up ahead. I borrowed the second mate's telescope to look at them, and they were all women. The ones closest to us were smaller, and the ones farther away were bigger, so they all seemed like they were about the same size. Some of the farthest-back ones were as tall as Father, Juganu, and. me put together. A lot had on black robes and cowls, but some were naked, especially the big ones farther back. The closest ones talked and sang, and called to us. I have never seen or even heard about anything else that was like that.

The girl kept singing to them, and they got quieter and started to come toward us. It was like they were standing on something under the water that moved. The sailors were scared, and I saw them charging the swivel gun and told Babbie not to let them use it, and went forward again. By that time they were all around our boat. Two sort of rose up and talked to the girl and Father then, their robes getting longer and longer as they came up out of the water until they would have dragged behind them clear across the deck if they had been walking on the boat. There was something under them that the women were standing on, if those women had any feet.

I went out on the grating deck again to look at the women, and one looked at me and smiled, and she had little sharp pointed teeth like tacks. Her eyes were all one color and sort of glowed or gleamed under the cowl. I went back as far as the foremast then, which is why I did not really hear anything they said or that Father and the girl said. I wanted to make myself a sword like Azoth, and I did, but it would not work for me, so I put a regular steel blade on it.

After a while the women went back into the water, and Father and the girl came to tell me to tell the captain he could sail again and we would be leaving him for good. He gave me a ruby, too, that I had seen one of the big naked women give him. He said it was real, and the captain would still have it when we had gone. I told him about the woman who had looked at me and smiled and said, "Was that Scylla?" The girl was mad about it.

After that we went home to our boat on Blue.

It was night went we got back, and I said I would take the first watch, because I knew that with all I had to think about I would not sleep for a while. I told Juganu he could have my bunk if he wanted it, but pretty soon he came up and flew away. I knew he was going to look for blood to eat, and I wondered who he would find.

Babbie was the only one on deck with me, but Babbie was asleep. So after that I just sat at the tiller the way you do with my slug gun across my lap and looked at the sea and the sky. It was calm and you could see a lot of stars. Green was up above the mainmast, and it seemed like if we put up the main top it would touch it. Our Green is not as big as theirs, but ours was plenty bright. The nicest thing was to see the reflections of all the stars dancing on the water.

I thought about a lot then. You can imagine. Most of it was things I have already written down. I thought about shooting Juganu when he came back, too; I really wanted to. But I knew the shot would wake up Father and he would know. Even if it did not, he would ask me, and I would not be able to lie to him about it very long.