Gene Wolfe - Return to the Whorl

Then the bird came and talked to me. That was not as nice as it sounds. For one thing, it was afraid. It would not come near enough for me to touch it. For another, I was talking to the girl too. She was not there to see, but she was there. The bird was up forward on the cabin deck, which is what we call the roof of the little cabin (it is planked and tarred like a regular deck and plenty strong enough to stand on) about halfway between me and Babbie. I could see it hopping around. I could not see the girl, but I knew she was in there. This is hard to explain.

Out on the water there were the stars and quite a bit of light from Green; for nighttime it was really pretty bright, but there was sort of a shadow between the side and the water. Green was halfway up over to starboard. So to port there was this shadow, and I felt like she was down there, watching and listening, and she could make the bird talk for her when she wanted to.

I had whistled to it, and it had whistled back. I could whistle better than it could, but it could whistle louder than I could, so for a little while we had fun like that. I would whistle "Tomcod's Boat," and the bird would whistle back the first three or four notes.

"Like bird?"

"Sure," I said. "But I'd like you better if you liked me better." I knew it would not understand, but it was somebody to talk to.

"Good bird!"

I said, "Sometimes, maybe."

That made it mad and it said, "Good bird!" and "Bad boy!"

"If you're such a good bird, what were you doing out on the bowsprit with Scylla?"

That was the first time. The bird said, "I bad?" but I knew it was not really the bird talking.

I admit I had to think about it. In the first place I did not like her. Then too, I felt like Father and Juganu and I, and even Babbie and the bird, had been real on the big river boat, but she had not been. I had not liked that. Then on our boat I felt like we were really real but she was not real at all. She could not make us see her or talk without Father's bird. Maybe none of it had to do with her being bad, but I felt like it did. So I said, "Well, you're sure not good, Scylla."

"Good girl!"

"Sure you are," I said. To tell the truth I was hoping she would leave the bird in charge and never come back.

"You good? Good Hoof? Like Silk?"

I figured there was no use fooling around with who is Silk? I knew shaggy well who Silk was. "No. He's a better man than I'll ever be."

"Your pa? Tell lie!"

"If he told them who he is, they'd want to make him calde and Gyrfalcon would kill him."

"Good Silk!" She laughed, sort of bubbling and giggling.

"Bad Scylla," I told her. "Why don't you go fishing?"

"He kill? Kill pa."

I said, "I don't think so."

"Good girl! Not kill!"

"Oh, sure. Well, you wanted Auk to kill that old fisherman for you once. I read all about it."

"My man!"

I said, "Maybe. But you don't own me."

She laughed some more and got me real mad. I said, "Nobody ought to own other people, and if they do they shouldn't kill them unless they've done something terrible. Besides, you tried to kill your father. That's why you've got to hide. You wanted to and if you had you'd be a murderer. I think you are anyway."

The bird whistled, and I thought she had gone away. We whistled back and forth, then it said, "We slaves. Pas own."

I said, "That's the way Sinew used to talk."

"Who?" I think it had surprised her.

"Our other brother. He's older than Hide and me. Father says he's still alive on Green and has two sprats, but he used to talk like that a lot. Our real father would try to get him to help in the mill, and there would be big fights. Or he would start some kind of work and go away, so our father would have finish it, or Hide and me would."

"Like slave!" That had gotten to her. "Pas say. I do."

I said, "He was your father. He fed you and gave you a place to live, and clothes."

"I fed! Eat sheep. Eat boy."

"Like Juganu."

She let the bird talk a while after that, and I tried to get it to come to me, but it would not. "Bad boy! No, no!"

Pretty I stopped trying. I let out a reef in the mainsail, and trimmed it a little.

"Kill bird?"

I said, "You think I'd wring your bird's neck if I could catch it?"

"Yes!"

I spat.

"You would!"

I showed the bird my slug gun. "See this? If I wanted to kill you, I could just shoot your shaggy bird and throw it over the side. It would take about ten seconds. Only I'm not going to do it. Or wring its neck, either. In the first place you stole it. It's Father's bird. Besides, just because I don't like somebody doesn't mean I want to kill them. That's what you gods used to do, from what I hear. But I'm not like you."

"No need," she said. "I die."

"Sure, when the bird does."

Juganu said, "Tomorrow. Didn't the Rajan tell you?"

I had not known he was back, but he was right at my elbow.

"We're going back tomorrow. I wanted to go back at once, but he wouldn't agree. We'll have to find the grave of Typhon's daughter Cilinia. It's in a place called the Necropolis."

I said, "What for?"

"That will be the last time. The Rajan said after that I might as well leave you, and I probably will."

I wanted to know if he knew why Father wanted to go to Cilinia's grave, and the bird said, "Why ask?"

"He made an agreement with Scylla," Juganu told me.

"What was it?"

Juganu shrugged and sat down on the gunwale. His arms had gotten short and round again, and his legs and his feet were not big and flat anymore like they are when they fly. He was just a little old man, naked, with blood on his breath; and I thought how if it had been Jahlee she would have made big tits to tease me. He said, "I thought you might know."

I said I did not.

"Would you tell me if you did?"

"Unless he said not to."

The bird laughed. I had heard it laugh before, but I did not like it.

"He made an agreement with that monster in the water," Juganu said again. "Favor for favor. He told me that much. He promised to take Scylla to the grave. That was his part of their bargain, but I don't know hers."

I was thinking about finding the grave. "It's been three hundred years. That's what they say."

Father was coming up out of the cabin, and he said, "It's been much longer than that, but I have a friend who knows the place like the back of his hand."

I am stopping here so that the others can write for a while. It has been a lot of work, a lot more than I expected. So I will let them tell about what Juganu did and all that. I will just help. I will get Daisy to go over this and fix it up, too. Or Hide and Vadsig would.

"Yer come ter see auld Pig. 'Twas good a' yer, bucky." Pig's beard and shaggy hair were gone, but his head was still huge.

"No, Pig." Pig's visitor shook his own much smaller head, knowing that Pig could not see it. "I came so that you might see me."

Pig touched the bandage above his nose, the self-sterilizing pad that had replaced his gray rag. "They winna take h'it h'off, bucky. Gang ter do h'it yerself?"

He looked at the nurse in the glass, who nodded. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Pig. I am."

His fingers located the knot, and he slipped one slender blade of the surgical scissors beneath it. "Silk found scissors like this in the balneum, and later Doctor Crane used scissors of the same kind when he treated Silk. I don't know why that should touch me, but it does." Savoring the sensation, he cut.

"Bucky…"

"If you cannot see, you will be no worse than you were."

The nurse said, "And we'll find out why, and fix it." There was a warmth in her voice that made each word a benediction.