Gene Wolfe - In Green's Jungles

"All right, that's where we're going. You can wait for him there. He should be back before dark, but if he isn't, his wife will put you up, probably, if you behave yourself. Do you know her?"

"Slightly. I doubt that she remembers me."

"She's a good swordswoman. When you see her, you'll say she's too fat for it, but she's a good swordswoman just the same. You used to be a good swordsman, or so we heard. I imagine your legs have gone?"

"I've used a sword," I admitted, "though with no great skill. Sinew magnifies my exploits, I'm sure."

"He never talks about you."

She stopped before a log house larger than its neighbors, drew the dagger hanging from her belt, and rapped the door with it.

It was opened by a smiling woman, broader than I recalled her, flanked by two small boys. Maliki said, "We need to come in and talk to you, Bala. Have you got a minute?" I was aware of a slight stench, which I attributed to the boys.

"Yes, yes! Come in! We have fruit. Would you like some wine?"

Maliki shook her head.

"You, sir?"

I thanked her and said I would be grateful for a glass. Hide and Jahlee nodded, and Oreb croaked "Bird drink?" and hopped after us.

"A little water for my bird, please? If you have some that's safe to drink?"

She looked curiously at Oreb, dropped heavily to her knees, and cocked her head as if she were a bird herself. "You're so big! Promise you won't peck Shauk and Karn?"

"Peck fruit!"

Bala looked up at me, her pink face pinker still. "Would he like grapes?"

"Like grape!"

"All right, they're in the bowl. Is he your bird, sir? Will you give him some? Sit down, please. Everybody please sit down."

She hurried away, and Oreb flew to the back of a big chair of smooth, waxed wood to escape the questing fingers of Shauk and Karn.

Maliki sat in a smaller one, leaving two considerable benches for us. "Two boys. They want a girl, naturally, but she never complains."

I had been studying them, recalling Hoof and Hide when they were much younger. "They're not twins."

"No. Shauk is three and Karn must be two now, if I remember Bala's confinements correctly." Maliki leveled her forefinger at Jahlee. "What is your name? I still have not learned it, and I will have to introduce you to Bala."

"You don't like my name here." She looked to me. "Can I give her another one?"

"Of course, Judastree."

"It's Judastree, Maliki."

"I see. And before you changed it?"

"Jahlee."

Maliki addressed me. "You name your woman after flowers in the Common Tongue. We use the high speech here for names and a few other things. Maliki is not really my name, for example. You probably thought it was."

I nodded.

"I am the maliki-woman, the village judge. Your son Sinew is the rais-man, our general if we had a proper horde, if he really is your son. He leads our war band in battle."

"He was always an excellent fighter. I'm sorry he's not here."

"So am I. I would turn this whole matter over to him if he were, but he is out hunting."

Bala, carrying in a tray with glasses and a carafe of wine, overheard this last and looked slightly startled.

"Sinew was always very fond of hunting," I said, "and very good at it. He kept us supplied with meat on Lizard."

Bala put down her tray and pushed a lock of pale hair away from her perspiring face. "You knew him there? He talks about it sometimes, mostly about his mother."

Jahlee said, "Incanto's his father," and Bala stared.

"More precisely, I am his father's ghost," I told her. "We're all three ghosts, in a way-ghosts or dreams. All four, including Oreb."

Maliki snapped her fingers. "That's it! Oreb. I have been going crazy trying to think of it. Have you got me yet, Calde? I know you tried."

I shook my head. "I've no right to that tide."

"No? I intend to call you that anyway, since I can't remember the other one." The corners of her lips lifted by the width of a hair. "Who am I?"

I shook my head.

"I have aged, I know. So have you. It has been nearly twenty-five years."

"Long time!" Oreb spoke to Bala, as well as I could judge.

Maliki did, too. "Sinew's father died here, I believe?"

"We think he must have."

Hide cleared his throat. "Can I talk? I'm Sinew's brother. I really am."

Maliki said, "If the Calde's bird can, so can you."

"So I'm your brother-in-law." He rose and offered Bala his hand. "That makes you my sister-in-law, and these are my nephews." He laughed. "I've never been a uncle before."

She accepted it, and smiled warmly.

"We're not really here, we're really back on Blue. Only we wanted to see how Sinew was, Father and I did, so we came. And Jahlee came with us because she likes this better. And Oreb."

"Horn or Incanto or Silk or whatever his name really is, is your husband's father to the goddess, I suppose," Maliki told Bala. "His father in the sight of Mainframe, or some such claptrap. I just thought of his other title. Patera? Have I got that?" She looked at me quizzically.

"I've no right to that one either, but yes, you do."

"It means father in their own high speech, which they've practically forgotten. Patera, like papa."

Bala sat down. Her smaller son tried to climb into her lap at once, and she lifted him there. After a moment she said, "I wish Sinew were here."

"So do I," Maliki told her, "but I doubt that it would help much."

"And I'm sorry about the smell. Sinew doesn't want me to go down there and clean up, but I'm going to if he won't do it as soon as he comes back. I'll do it now if you'll stand by for me."

Maliki shook her head. "If I had the time I would, but men should do men's work."

"I'll do it," Hide told her. "You can stand by for me if you want to, I guess. What is it?"

"Prisoners." Maliki's face, always severe, was savage. "We got them in the last big fight, and they're chained in the cellar. Six, Bala?"

Bala shook her head. "Five. One died."

"The woman?"

"One of the men. He'd been shot." She put her hand to her own thick waist. "Sinew brought him upstairs, at the end. He was too weak to do anything, but I tried to keep the boys away from him just the same."

"He's dead 'cause he tried to burn our house," Shauk announced and vigorously nodded his own confirmation.

Oreb muttered, "Poor man."

I said, "I take it that the villages here are warring with one another? It isn't greatly different on Blue. Town fights town."

"Where is your lander?" Maliki inquired with studied carelessness.

"We have none. I was going to ask you-I do ask both of you now-if there isn't a lander near here."

Bala nodded. "The one Sinew's father tried to repair. It won't fly."

"I know."

Hide said, "I guess you need somebody to clean up after the prisoners? That's what the smell is? I could get started right now."

Oreb applauded him with flapping wings. "Good boy!"

"You had better leave that slug gun up here," Maliki told him. "Give it to me."

He looked from me to her. "I'll leave it with Father."

"This is my village!"

I took the slug gun Hide handed me and passed it to her. "So it is. You'll return this to Hide, I'm sure, when he has done a man's work."

She nodded, laying the slug gun across her thighs and eyeing Shauk and Karn warily.

Bala said, "I'll show you. Let me get my sword." She and Hide hurried away.

"You came in a lander," Maliki told Jahlee and me. "Most likely today. I knew it as soon as I saw the girl's hair. I want to know where it is."

"If we had, I'd tell you. We arrived today, you're quite correct about that; but not in a lander. We are not real-not really present in the way you are-exactly as my son told you."

She shook her head. "I would have thought that boy would tell the truth."