Gene Wolfe - In Green's Jungles

He managed to smile as he struggled to his feet. "I can walk, Master Incanto. For a while anyway."

"Leave him here with the boy to guard him," Morello suggested, "while the rest of us look for help."

Mora sheathed her sword. "What if we don't find any?"

"There are more of them here," I told her. "More who are watching us, and listening as we speak. I feel their eyes, as your husband did earlier."

Sfido nudged Eco and whispered, "Having a nice honeymoon?"

Overhearing him Mora said, "It's had its good and bad, but I've got to admit this is the low point so far."

"For which Jahlee, the Duko, and I are all to blame," I told her. "I was about to say that if we were to leave Rigoglio and Cuoio here, they would be attacked-probably as soon as we were well away, certainly after nightfall. No, His Grandeur must come with us, walking if he can, carried if he cannot."

I had begun walking myself as I spoke, and they followed me, Morello and Terzo beside their Duko to assist him.

"Oreb!"

He dropped to the ground at my feet, neither bird nor dwarf.

"Have you seen people in this place? Not people like this man we've tied up, but normal people, people like us?"

He bobbed his head. "Flock men! Flock girls! See god?"

"No, not there. Lead us to them, please. The Duko requires a physician."

"Big wet! Come bird!" He flew.

One ruined street led to another, and that to a third. Eco and Mora hurried ahead after Oreb; I lagged, staring horrified at that desert of abandonment and decay, and soon got the position I wanted, beside Hide and behind the Duko, Terzo, and Morello.

Jahlee joined me there, naked still save for her long hair. "You did this, didn't you?"

I shook my head.

"I'm not angry, I'm very grateful. You have a wonderful, wonderful father, Cuoio. I'll never be able to repay him for all he's done for me."

Hide nodded, his face guarded.

"But you said it was me and you and Duko Rigoglio, Incanto. I don't think he had anything to do with it, and I know I didn't. I've never lied to you. I hope you know that."

I told her that not being a complete fool I knew nothing of the sort.

"All right, once or twice, maybe, when I had to. Will you lie to me if I ask a straight question?"

"Not unless I must."

"Fair enough. Could you take us back? Right now?"

Hide turned to look at me, startled.

"I don't know," I said. "Perhaps. I believe so."

"And I-?" Jahlee glanced at Hide.

"You're prettier now," he said.

"You will be again what you were, unless I am very much mistaken," I told her. "I cannot be certain, but that is certainly my opinion. Hide, you must remember that there were an old woman and a young one living in the farmhouse in which we stayed."

He nodded.

"The old one was presumed to be the farmer's mother, and to own the farm. You brought in a chair for her, saying that she should not have to stand in her own home."

"Sure."

"I may have told you that both were called Jahlee. I know I told Mora that."

Hide nodded. "Everybody says the young one was named for her grandmother."

"They are the same person-the person who is walking with us-and an inhuma."

Jahlee hissed. "My secret! You swore!"

"I swore I wouldn't tell unless I was forced to. I am forced to now. Hide is my son, and you will seduce him if you can. Don't deny it, please. I know better."

Giving her no time to reply, I spoke to Hide. "Honesty compels me to tell you that Jahlee is not an inhuma at present. She is a human being here, exactly as we are, and I believe for the same reason. But if we return to our real whorl, and I believe that we will, she will be again what she was before we came. Someday soon you will take a wife, as I did when I was younger-"

I felt a strange confusion, and having no mirror looked down at my thick-fingered hands, turning them this way and that.

"You look different." With more penetration than I had ever given him credit for, Hide had discerned my thoughts. "Maybe we all do."

I shook my head. "You don't."

"You really look a lot more like my real father here. You're taller than he was and older, but you look more like him than you used to."

"You were lying when you called him your son! I should have known! "

"He is my spiritual son," I told Jahlee, "and I was not lying-though he himself believes I was. I was going to say, Hide, that you will soon marry. I was a year younger than you are when your mother and I were married. Go clean to your marriage bed. It is better so."

"Yes, Father." He nodded slowly.

I turned to Jahlee. "I can take us back, or at least I think it likely that I can. If I do, I believe that you will be what you were. Do you wish me to do it now?"

"No!"

"Then watch your tongue, and put on clothing when you can find some."

Oreb sailed over our heads, a miniature airship. "Big wet!"

"He's right." Jahlee pointed, and I caught the glimmer of water ahead.

It was a mighty river, the largest I have ever seen, a river so large that the farther bank was nearly invisible. A wide and ruinous road of dark stone ran beside the water, which lapped its edges in places, leaving the great, dark paving blocks slimed and filthy in a way that recalled the sewer on Green. Guided by Oreb, we followed this ancient road, walking upstream as nearly as I could judge and forced to adjust our steps from time to time by wide gaps in its spalling, rutted pavements.

In a troubled voice, Hide said, "If we went back, we could take the Duko to a doctor in Blanko, couldn't we?"

"No!" Jahlee caught his arm. "Please, Cuoio. Think of me."

"He's trying not to," I told her, "but finds the effort futile. We could indeed take Duko Rigoglio to a physician in Blanko, Hide, a daylong ride for a well-mounted man. Will he still have his wound if we return to Blue, do you think? A knife wound he can show to a physician?"

He glanced quickly at me, surprised, then looked away.

"We are spirits here. Watch." I extended my hand, and my black-bladed sword took shape, floating before us until I reached out and grasped it-and felt it grasp me in return. "My staff has been left behind," I told Jahlee, "and it is better to have something, perhaps."

Hide slung the slug gun with which he had been guarding our prisoners and touched my arm. "If you can do that, Father, can't you heal the Duko?"

"I doubt it, but I will try."

Rigoglio must have heard us; I saw him look back at us-by then he was walking with his arms over his friends' shoulders-and the pain in his eyes.

"Would you want him back on Blue," I asked Hide, "with his spirit wounded and bleeding inside him, invisible to us and beyond our help? That is what befell certain mercenaries, who fought for me in the City of the Inhumi."

"I don't understand any of this, Father."

"It's very likely no one does." I softened my voice still more. "I wanted to take us to Green, where Sinew is. I wanted to see him again, as I still do, and I wanted you others-you and Duko Sfido particularly, and Mora and Eco as well, after they providentially appeared-to see what real evil is, so that you might understand why we on Blue must come together in brotherhood before our own whorl becomes what Green already is."

I fell silent, forced to think myself about what I myself had just said.

Hide and Jahlee came in together while I sat here wondering how to begin the next stage of my account. I asked them to summarize what we had seen and done.

"I learned why women weep," Jahlee said; and Hide, "We took the Duko home to die."

I could not do better, and in all honesty most of my notions were worse. "We visited the hill of ruined landers" was the best of mine, perhaps; but it did not satisfy me.