Gene Wolfe - In Green's Jungles

"Don't you hate them, too?" Beneath their heavy, dark brows her eyes were puzzled.

"No, " I said. "Mora, I have been to Green, and I have come back. I know that's hard for you to credit, but it is the truth. I have."

Trying to be helpful, Oreb added, "Good Silk!"

She ignored him. "They say the inhumi kill everybody that goes there."

"I know they do. They're wrong. Haven't you asked her about it?"

Mora's voice fell to a whisper. "We don't talk about that."

"You don't talk about her real nature?"

Mora shook her head, unwilling to meet my eyes.

"How is it that you know?"

"I guessed."

"Have you ever seen her when she wasn't-Fava?"

Mora's "No" was whispered, too. Much louder: "I don't want to. "

"I don't blame you. Mora, there was an inhumu who was a son to me. Can you believe that?"

"No, " she repeated.

"That, too, is the truth. For a long while you did not so much as suspect what Fava was, and for still longer you must have been unsure. It wasn't like that for me. I was in real and imminent danger of death, and he helped me and let me see him as he was. I was so badly frightened that it did not seem strange to me."

"I was in trouble, too."

"I know you were, and that's one reason I don't want Fava burned. One of many."

"It's hard for me to think of you being afraid of anything. Were you really?"

I cast my mind back to the pit; it seemed very long ago. "I was resigned to death by then, I believe. I had lost hope, or almost lost it, yet I was very frightened."

"You said I had to make her go away."

I nodded.

"But this one helped you."

I nodded again. "Then and afterward. He stayed with me, you see. With us. Others saw him as a boy about your age, Mora. I saw the inhumu. That was a part of our agreement-that he would not deceive me as he deceived others. When my real son and I went aboard the lander that would carry us to Green, he boarded it too. I hated him then, just as I had come to hate him while we were on my sloop. Brave men taunt the things they fear, Mora, and he did too."

"She's not afraid of me."

"She should be. You said that if you told your father, he would have her burned alive."

"He'd burn her himself, only she knows I won't. How did you find out?"

"From the story she told, first of all. There was an undercurrent in it, a stream of things left unsaid. Your father sensed it just as I did, though he may not have been conscious of it. He was puzzled because the little boy in the story did not go back to his family, remember?"

Mora nodded.

"We were supposed to believe he was afraid that the mother who had set out to kill him in her desperation would try to kill him again. That didn't ring true, and your father rejected it out of hand, as I did. A boy too young to know his own name could have had only the vaguest notion of his mother's intention, and would have forgotten the entire incident in a day or two. Then Fava suggested that he got away from the Vanished People, who periodically recaptured him. That was ridiculous and made the real answer obvious, as ridiculous solutions frequently do."

Mora nodded again.

"What was the real answer? I won't tell you, Mora. You have to tell me."

Tears coursed down the big, rounded cheeks. "I don't think it happened at all."

Oreb muttered, "Girl cry."

"I think Fava made it up!"

We sat in silence for some time after that. At last I said, "You have a good mind, Mora, and when someone has a good mind it can be painful not to use it."

She sobbed openly then, into her hands at first and afterward into a clean handkerchief, far too small, that she took from a pocket of her gown. When her shoulders no longer heaved, I said, "Krait, the inhumu I loved as a son, told me once that we are their cattle. It's not true, but on Green they have tried to make it true. It doesn't work very well. We milk our cattle, and butcher them when it suits us. But we don't milk them to death in our greed. Last night someone asked why I told the story I did."

"It was Fava." Mora wiped her face with her handkerchief, and when that proved ineffectual, with her sleeve. "You told it so she'd know you knew."

"I did not, because I wasn't certain then. I told it-in part, at least-to find out whether anyone else suspected Fava as I did."

Mora shook her head.

"You're right. No one did. Your expressions told me that you knew and that Fava knew you did, and that neither your father nor your grandmother, whom your friend Fava has been slowly killing, suspected her of being what we know she is."

Mora had whispered earlier. This time her voice was softer than a whisper, so soft that I cannot be certain that I heard her correctly. I believe that she was saying, "I'll be all alone now."

I tried to be as gentle as I could. "There are much worse things than being alone, Mora. You're living through one of them at this moment."

Having written that, it occurs to me that this was why the Outsider sent the leatherskin when I was alone on the sloop and prayed for company. He wished me to learn that loneliness is not the worst evil, so I might teach it to Mora.

How lonely it must be to be a god!

When Krait lay dying in the jungle, I offered my arm, telling him that he could have my blood if it would strengthen him, or even if it would just make death easier.

"I never fed from you."

"I know." My eyes were as full of tears then as poor Mora's wen – this afternoon. I felt myself an utter fool.

"It would make you weak, " he told me, "without making me stronger."

Then I remembered that Quetzal had been full of blood when he had been shot by Siyuf's troopers, but had died just the same about two days later.

"Do you know why we drink blood, Horn?"

"You must eat." That, at least, is what I now believe that I said, with something about the short, digestive tract. I may also have said that every living creature must eat something, even if it is no more than air and sunshine. I believe I did.

"On the night we met, I drank your hus's blood."

"I remember."

"It made a beast of me until I fed again. We feed to share your lives, to feel as you feel."

"Then feed of me, " I said, and I offered my arm as before.

The tips of his fingers slid along its skin, leaving thin red lines that wept tears of blood. "There's another reason. Swear. Swear now that if I tell you, you'll never tell anybody else."

I promised I would not. I am not sure now just what it was I said.

"You've got to swear… "

I leaned closer to hear him, my ear at his mouth.

"Because I have to tell you, Father, so I can die. Swear."

And I did. It was the oath that Silk had taught me aboard the airship. I will not set it down.

Krait told me, and we talked together until I understood the secret and what had happened almost twenty years ago; then Krait, seeing that I understood everything, clasped my hand and begged my blessing before he died; and I blessed him. I recall his face very clearly; it was as though Sinew himself were dying, forced by some mad god to wear a serpent mask. I saw the serpent face, but I sensed the human face behind it.

At the moment of death, it seemed to me that the mighty trees bent over Krait as I did-that he was in some sense their son as well as in some sense mine. I was conscious of their trailing lianas as female presences, wicked women in green gowns with gray and purple moths upon their brown shoulders and orchids flaming in their hair. Looking up in wonder, I saw only vines and flowers, and heard only the mournful voices of the brilliantly colored birds that glide from tree to tree; but the moment that I looked down at Krait again the green-gowned women and the brutal giants who supported them returned, mourners sharing my sorrow.