Gene Wolfe: In Green's Jungles

"I could go with you, " the Neighbor told me. "I could open the sewer myself, without your help. It is only fair that I tell you that."

I said, "In that case, I'm doubly grateful to you for freeing me."

"If I were to help you, it would become clogged again."

He was waiting for me to speak, so I nodded.

"So it seems to me, though I may be mistaken. It will almost certainly become clogged again, even if you do as we ask. That is the most probable outcome, unfortunately."

"But not for years, perhaps, " I suggested.

"That is correct, and does not matter. What does matter is that it may never be clogged again if you open it."

I believe I smiled, and I am afraid I smiled bitterly. "Do you think I've got miraculous powers?"

"If you do not know, " he told me solemnly, "I do not know."

We turned in to a building even less whole than most of the buildings in that ruinous city, a roofless shell whose floors were littered everywhere with broken stones, and I asked whether we could get into the sewer from there.

"No. We could have entered the sewer from the underground room in which you were confined, and the point at which you will enter it is a long way from here. Would you object if I were to touch your face? I consider it advisable." I consented, and he anointed both sides of it with a sweet-smelling oil whose perfume seemed to me to come from a whorl more distant than the three I knew of. It suggested strange thoughts, thoughts so overpowering at the time as to be waking dreams. That may have been its purpose.

I have been talking with the stationer. His name is Atteno, as Inclito said. I asked whether it would be all right for me to sleep here in his shop tonight, and promised I would take nothing without his permission. He says he will make up a little bed for me, by which I assume he means he will loan me blankets. Quite a change! Still, I am not sorry that I left our blankets with the girl from Han, although I have been sleeping in my robe ever since. I tore it in two places going through the forest, but that good woman mended it for me.

Atteno says that Inclito is a very important man. He was terribly impressed when I told him that Inclito was coming for me. He asked whether I could "do things." I was not sure what he meant by it, and told him I could do a few, at which he looked wise and went away. "Good man!" says Oreb.

Here I feel the way that the Neighbors must feel around us. We are ready to believe that they are practically minor gods-that they know everything and possess all manner of mysterious powers; but they must seem perfectly ordinary to themselves. The one I have been writing about (he never told me his name) said to me at one point, "You think that I know everything about you and your son."

I denied it. "I thought the Neighbors I spoke with on Blue might have told you about me, that's all."

"You seemed the most likely, " he said, and did not say what it was I was most likely to do or to be.

When the bronze tablet opened and I saw the swords, I hesitated to touch them.

"Will you choose, " he asked me, "or should I choose for you?"

I said that it would better for him to choose, since I did not know who or what I was going to fight.

"I hope you won't have to fight at all. I don't think that you will. Do you want me to choose for you anyway?"

"I'm sure you must know more about these than I do."

He nodded and selected one. It would be easy to sketch, but I do not believe it will prove easy to describe. Let me try.

The blade was black, I suppose with age. I do not think the designs on it were writing, but I cannot guess what they were. It was widest toward the point, and sharply pointed. It narrowed toward the hilt in a concave curve, which gave it something of the appearance of a sickle in spite of its straight back.

But I have described it as I saw it when I drew it. I ought to have written first that it was in a black sheath of some hard, warm material I did not recognize, to which was attached a sword belt of many thin straps.

"Do you like it?"

I had unsheathed it before he spoke and was looking at the blade. I said, "It feels like a piece of my arm."

The sun is up, and I should look for another place to sleep. I slept very little last night, Inclito having brought me back here very late, and I having eaten too much of his good dinner. It was the first meal I have eaten since the soup in Cugino's village, I believe, and so I told myself that I would have to be careful, and found that I had not been careful enough when it was too late to do anything about it. Silk told us once that experience is a wonderful teacher, but one whose lessons come too late. I have found that true all my life.

Inclito drove up in a carriage, as I should say, and I got into it with him as soon as I had written arm, still waving the sheet to dry the ink. "You have the bird, " Inclito said. He sounded pleased.

I said something about not being able to escape him, to which Oreb himself contributed, "Bird stay!"

"When I saw you at the river you had the bird, but it flew away. I thought I was wrong. It was not your bird."

"I'm his, if anything," I told Inclito, which is the simple truth.

"The people here, " he laughed self-consciously, "they think you're a witch. It's because of your bird. They believe these things."

I said that they had been very kind to me, and that although I had been among them only two days I was already very fond of them. "People here enjoy their lives, " I explained to Inclito, not particularly clearly, "and people who do are always good people, even when they're bad people."

"They like you too, but your clothes frighten them. The black color."

"This?" I was about to tell him it was an augur's robe, but there seemed little point in saying so.

"They think it means you hurt people if you want to. Your bird's black, too. Red like blood."

"Good bird!"

Inclito smiled. "That's what they hope. A good bird. Witches got pet animals. Cats mostly only not all the time. Familiares. You know?"

He looked at me inquiringly, and I shook my head.

"It means the animal's in the witch's family. Sometimes it's really his father or his mother. Something like that. You think it's funny. So do I. I got a pet too. A horse. Not one of those. He's not my father, just my horse."

I repeated that Oreb wasn't mine.

"You got that white hair, so they think sometimes you hurt people maybe, but bad people."

He laughed. "Even if they're good."

I told him that I was too weak and sick to hurt anyone, and that I had no weapons in any case; it was a lie, of course, but the truth was and is that I have no intention of using Hyacinth's azoth.

By that time we had reached the town gate, I believe. It was closed and barred, as he tells me it always is after shadelow, but the guards saluted him and opened it as soon as he reined up.

As we clattered through, he said very positively, "I asked you to dinner because I like you."

Oreb muttered, "Good man?"

I nodded, having no doubts about that.

"You're here. You want to eat? I want to feed you. But there's more."

I said, "I was afraid of that."

"You got no reason. I want our people to see you with me. Then they think you're on our side. So they don't hurt you. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, " I told him. "In fact, it's very kind of you. I understand the open carriage now, and your driving so that both of us are seated up here."

He laughed again, such a loud and booming laugh that I half expected it to be echoed by the dark fields around us. "I always drive myself. I got a coachman to do the work, but I drive. I like it. I like the open air. I like the sun, the wind."

"So do I, in fine weather like this. May I ask who's on the other side?"