Orbit 2

“What do you want?” said Alyx.

“Where are we going?” said Edarra. “Are we going to some miserable little fishing village? Are we? Well, are we?”

“Yes,” said Alyx.

“Why!” demanded the lady.

“To match your character.”

With a scream of rage, the Lady Edarra threw herself on her preserver and they bumped heads for a few minutes, but the battle — although violent — was conducted entirely in the dark and they were tangled up almost completely in the beds, which were nothing but blankets laid on the bare boards and not the only reason that the lady’s brown eyes were turning a permanent, baleful black.

“Let me up, you’re strangling me!” cried the lady, and when Alyx managed to light the lamp, bruising her shins against some of the furniture, Edarra was seen to be wrestling with a blanket, which she threw across the cabin. The cabin was five feet across.

“If you do that again, madam,” said Alyx, “I’m going to knock your head against the floor!” The lady swept her hair back from her brow with the air of a princess. She was trembling. “Huh!” she said, in the voice of one so angry that she does not dare say anything. “Really,” she said, on the verge of tears.

“Yes, really,” said Alyx, “really” (finding some satisfaction in the word), “really go above. We’re drifting.” The lady sat in her corner, her face white, clenching her hands together as if she held a burning chip from the stove. “No,” she said.

“Eh, madam?” said Alyx.

“I won’t do anything,” said Edarra unsteadily, her eyes glittering. “You can do everything. You want to, anyway.”

“Now look here—” said Alyx grimly, advancing on the girl, but whether she thought better of it or whether she heard or smelt something (for after weeks of water, sailors — or so they say — develop a certain intuition for such things), she only threw her blanket over her shoulder and said, “Suit yourself.” Then she went on deck. Her face was unnaturally composed.

“Heaven witness my self-control,” she said, not raising her voice but in a conversational tone that somewhat belied her facial expression. “Witness it. See it. Reward it. May the messenger of Yp — in whom I do not believe — write in that parchment leaf that holds all the records of the world that I, provoked beyond human endurance, tormented, kicked in the midst of sleep, treated like the off-scourings of a filthy, cheap, sour-beer-producing brewery—”

Then she saw the sea monster.

Opinion concerning sea monsters varies in Ourdh and the surrounding hills, the citizens holding monsters to be the souls of the wicked dead forever ranging the pastureless wastes of ocean to waylay the living and force them into watery graves, and the hill people scouting this blasphemous view and maintaining that sea monsters are legitimate creations of the great god Yp, sent to murder travelers as an illustration of the majesty, the might and the unpredictability of that most inexplicable of deities. But the end result is much the same. Alyx had seen the bulbous face and coarse whiskers of the creature in a drawing hanging in the Silver Eel on the waterfront of Ourdh (the original — stuffed — had been stolen in some prehistoric time, according to the proprietor), and she had shuddered. She had thought, Perhaps it is just an animal, but even so it was not pleasant. Now in the moonlight that turned the ocean to a ball of silver waters in the midst of which bobbed the tiny ship, very very far from anyone or anything, she saw the surface part in a rain of sparkling drops and the huge, wicked, twisted face of the creature, so like and unlike a man’s, rise like a shadowy demon from the dark, bright water. It held its baby to its breast, a nauseating parody of humankind. Behind her she heard Edarra choke, for that lady had followed her onto the deck. Alyx forced her unwilling feet to the rail and leaned over, stretching out one shaking hand. She said:

Which was very brave of her because she did not believe in charms. But it had to be said directly to the monster’s face, and say it she did.

The monster barked like a dog.

Edarra screamed. With an arm suddenly nerved to steel, the thief snatched a fishing spear from its place in the stem and braced one knee against the rail; she leaned into the creature’s very mouth and threw her harpoon. It entered below the pink harelip and blood gushed as the thing trumpeted and thrashed; black under the moonlight, the blood billowed along the waves, the water closed over the apparition, ripples spread and rocked the boat, and died, and Alyx slid weakly onto the deck.

There was silence for a while. Then she said, “It’s only an animal,” and she made the mark of Yp on her forehead to atone for having killed something without the spur of overmastering necessity. She had not made the gesture for years. Edarra, who was huddled in a heap against the mast, moved. “It’s gone,” said Alyx. She got to her feet and took the rudder of the boat, a long shaft that swung at the stem. The girl moved again, shivering.

“It was an animal,” said Alyx with finality, “that’s all.”

The next morning Alyx took out the two short swords and told Edarra she would have to learn to use them.

“No,” said Edarra.

“Yes,” said Alyx. While the wind held, they fenced up and down the deck, Edarra scrambling resentfully. Alyx pressed her hard and assured her that she would have to do this every day.

“You’ll have to cut your hair, too,” she added, for no particular reason.

“Never!” gasped the other, dodging.

“Oh, yes, you will!” and she grasped the red braid and yanked; one flash of the blade—

Now it may have been the sea air — or the loss of her red tresses — or the collision with a character so different from those she was accustomed to, but from this morning on it became clear that something was exerting a humanizing influence on the young woman. She was quieter, even (on occasion) dreamy; she turned to her work without complaint, and after a deserved ducking in the sea had caused her hair to break out in short curls, she took to leaning over the side of the boat and watching herself in the water, with meditative pleasure. Her skin, that the pick-lock had first noticed as fine, grew even finer with the passage of the days, and she turned a delicate ivory color, like a half-baked biscuit, that Alyx could not help but notice. But she did not like it. Often in the watches of the night she would say aloud:

“Very well, I am thirty—” (Thus she would soliloquize.) “But what, O Yp, is thirty? Thrice ten. Twice fifteen. Women marry at forty. In ten years I will be forty—”

And so on. From these apostrophizations she returned uncomfortable, ugly, old and with a bad conscience. She had a conscience, though it was not active in the usual directions. One morning, after these nightly wrestlings, the girl was leaning over the rail of the boat, her hair dangling about her face, watching the fish in the water and her own reflection. Occasionally she yawned, opening her pink mouth and shutting her eyes; all this Alyx watched surreptitiously. She felt uncomfortable. All morning the heat had been intense and mirages of ships and gulls and unidentified objects had danced on the horizon, breaking up eventually into clumps of seaweed or floating bits of wood.

“Shall I catch a fish?” said Edarra, who occasionally spoke now.

“Yes — no—” said Alyx, who held the rudder.

“Well, shall I or shan’t I?” said Edarra tolerantly.

“Yes,” said Alyx, “if you—” and swung the rudder hard. All morning she had been watching black, wriggling shapes that turned out to be nothing; now she thought she saw something across the glittering water. One thing we shall both get out of this, she thought, is a permanent squint. The shape moved closer, resolving itself into several verticals and a horizontal; it danced and streaked maddeningly. Alyx shaded her eyes.