Gene Wolfe - In Green's Jungles

I shook my head.

"Anyway, that's why I went across. I gave him some things I'd brought from home, and he poled us across. It took two days."

"And in the course of them, you were bitten by a leech."

"Yeah, a big blue one. It felt soft and slimy, but it was really tough."

I smiled, or at least I tried to. "That is a surprisingly good description of the inhumi. When you know them as well I do, you'll appreciate the justice of my remark."

Jahlee hissed, "Is this your thanks for my hospitality?"

"Fundamentally, yes. It is always a service to prevent someone from becoming worse than she is already."

"I pulled it off," Hide said, "and the place on my leg bled a lot. The inhumi are like that, isn't that what you're saying? They're like leeches?"

"Much more like them than may at first appear."

"Only they can fly, can't they? That's what everybody says."

I nodded.

"Leeches can't. People can't either, except in a lander or something. But we'd like to." He looked at Jahlee. "Could you show me?"

She shook her head.

"I understand about the teeth, but it must be wonderful to fly. It's not like I'd make fun of you or anything."

"No!"

He turned back to me. "I've seen it, but only when I was a long way away. They look kind of like bats?"

"Somewhat."

"Only their wings don't move real fast, I suppose because they're so much bigger. You saw them up close, I bet, on Green."

"Here too. I know I've mentioned Krait to you. He took wing once when he was close enough for me to touch him, because he was very frightened."

"Of you!" Jahlee spat.

"No. I gave him far too much reason to be afraid of me, but it was not of me that he was afraid at that moment."

Hide asked her, "Can you tell me what that trooper was fighting with you about?"

"I…" She fell silent, darting a glance at me. Her face, the face that she had molded and painted for herself, looked less beautiful than angry in the firelight.

"May I tell him?" I asked. "To help complete his education, as you say. It would be good for him to know."

"You don't know yourself!"

"Of course I do. I saw your trooper. Badour, isn't that what you said his name was? In the Bear Tower, as well as you and your bruises. I'm trying to be polite, you see. I haven't pledged myself to keep that secret."

"Then tell me, Father. It sounds like something I ought to know about. You said so yourself."

"I will, if Jahlee won't-or if she tries to deceive you."

She spat into the fire. "What a fool I was to come here!"

"Then go. No one will hold you here against your will."

"I can fly. I'm not your dog, and I won't do my little trick just because you tell me to, but I can."

"Surely you can. I've never denied it. Like Hide, I envy you that ability."

"I might be able to find a way across this swamp. It would be of service to you."

I shrugged. "Oreb's doing that now. Looking for a way across."

Hide said, "Sometime I want to ask you about him, too."

"Why he looked as he did in the Red Sun Whorl? Because he is more nearly human in spirit than he appears, I suppose, and larger, too."

Hide shook his head. "Why he's with us now. Why he was with you when I first met you. I mean, when they said you wanted to see me and gave me a horse and sent me back. I read some of that book you and Mother wrote. I know you didn't think we did, any of us. But we did."

"I'm flattered."

"He was Silk's bird. That's what you said in there. Silk's pet bird."

Jahlee laughed. She has a good laugh, but I found it unpleasant then. "Haven't you noticed that his bird calls him Silk?"

"I am his owner," I explained to Hide. "I feed him, play with him, and talk to him; therefore he calls me Silk, the name he is accustomed to give his owner. Haven't you noticed that he knows very few names? He calls you 'boy,' and Jahlee 'bad thing.' "

Hide nodded. "He doesn't know a lot of words, but he's really good with those he knows."

Jahlee rose. "Useless! Utterly useless! I flew thirty leagues to offer my friendship and my love. What a fool!"

When she had vanished in the darkness, Hide said, "I wonder where she'll go now? Back to the farm?"

I shook my head. "Its rightful owners will have reclaimed it by now, I would think." I sighed and tugged at my beard, my head overfilled with thoughts. "You've complained that I don't teach you enough. If I labor to teach you a little about the inhumi now, and perhaps a bit about the Vanished People-you seem very eager to learn about them-will you listen and store it up?"

He raised his hand solemnly. "I swear by all the gods that there are that I'll remember every word."

"Be careful of what you swear to," I told him. "The thought of your failures will haunt you as you grow older.

"About the inhumi first. They love abandoned buildings. You know what happened in the farmhouse in which we slept. The threat of war drove the family out, and Jahlee moved into it almost at once, perhaps that same day. Duko Sfido and I arrived with our troops and found her occupying it. We assumed that she had a right to be there. I identified her unconsciously one night when I heard her voice without seeing her face, which was then that of a toothless old woman and very different indeed from the starved, sensual face I had seen her wear in Gaon."

"They can just do that? Change the way they look?"

"Correct. They mold their features with their fingers, as a sculptor does a piece of clay, and augment their artistry with cosmetics. What I began to say was that whenever you come upon what appears to be an abandoned house-or anything of that kind-and find that it is not really abandoned, that someone is in fact living in it, you should be very suspicious of that person."

"I will be."

"Fine."

Hide stared thoughtfully into the fire for a moment or two. "Couldn't Jahlee come back with a new face, pretending to be someone we didn't know?"

"Certainly, though I flatter myself that I would see through her imposture before long."

"Could I? I mean, isn't there some way I could tell she was a inhuma?"

"No certain way, unless you saw her feeding or flying." I considered the matter. "Be very suspicious of a man with powder on his face, or anything of that kind, and of a woman who wears more powder, more rouge, and more perfume than is customary." Recalling Fava, I added, "Also of a child who wears any at all. Be careful, too, of anyone who appears not to eat, or to eat very little."

"Somebody animals are afraid of," Hide offered. "Jahlee scared our horses, and Oreb doesn't like her."

"Very good. Most of all, be careful of anyone whose fingers seem clumsy, who has never learned to write or says he or she has not, and has difficulty effecting simple repairs, tying knots, or making common objects from wood. Hands are not natural to them, you see; because they are not, their minds never develop in that way as much as ours do. Imagine a baby who had no hands until he was old enough to make crude ones for himself."

"You said they were like leeches." Hide looked thoughtful.

"No doubt I did. Certainly there are marked similarities."

"When Hoof and I were real little we used to play in the pools up above your mill."

"I remember."

"One time we found a really pretty one, that had a lot of pretty little fish in it, and spotted frogs. Green with blue spots, I think." He fell silent, and looked uncomfortable.

"Yes. What about it?"

"Well, while we were looking at them we saw this one leech, a red one. It was pretty big. It was swimming right at one of the frogs, and me and Hoof yelled for it to look out. You know how kids do?"

"Surely."

"Only the frog didn't pay any attention, and just about the time it opened its mouth I figured out that it thought the leech was a fish, and it was going to eat it."