Рафаэль Лафферти - The Best of R. A. Lafferty

“Imagine about the Permata bird that nests on the moon,” Galli said, “and which is the most passionate as well as the noblest-singing of the birds. Imagine about flute notes soaring.”

Willy Jones made this tune to Margaret:

The Nutmeg Moon is the third moon of the year.

The Tides come in like loose Silk all its Nights.

The Ground is animated by the bare Feet of Margaret

Who is like the Pelepah of the Ko-eng Flower.

Willy made this tune in the Malaya language in which all the words end in ang .

“Imagine about water leaping down rocky hills,” Galli said. “Imagine about red birds romping in green groves.”

Willy Jones made another tune to Margaret:

A Woman with Shoulders so strong that a Man might ride upon them

The while she is still the little Girl watching for the black Ship

Of the Hero who is the same age as the Sky,

But she does not realize that I am already here.

Willy made this tune in the Dutch language in which all the words end in lijk .

“Imagine about another flute joining the first one, and their notes scamper like birds,” Galli said.

Willy Jones made a last tune to Margaret:

Damnation! That is enough of Moonlight and Tomorrows!

Now there are mats to plait, and kain to sew.

Even the smallest crab knows to build herself a house in the sand.

Margaret should be raking the oven coals and baking a roti.

I wonder why she is so slow in seeing this.

Willy made this tune in the Welsh language in which all the words end in gwbl .

When the one year was finished, they were mated. There was still the chilliness there as though she would never forgive him for killing her father and stealing her island; but they began to be in accord.

“Here pause five minutes to indicate an idyllic interlude,” Galli said. “We sing the song Bagang Kali Berjumpa if you know the tune. We flute, if I have my flute.”

The idyllic interlude passed.

Then Willy’s old ship, the Feathered Snake, came back to the Island. She was in a pitiful state of misuse. She reeked of old and new blood, and there were none left on her but nine sick men. These nine men begged Willy Jones to become their captain again to set everything right.

Willy washed the nine living skeletons and fed them up for three days. They were fat and able by then. And the three golems had refitted the ship.

“All she needs is a strong hand at the helm again,” said Willy Jones. “I will sail her again for a week and a day. I will impress a new crew, and once more make her the terror of the Spice Islands. Then I will return to my island, knowing that I have done a good deed in restoring the Snake to the bloody work for which she was born.”

“If you go, Willy Jones, you will be gone for many years,” said the dark Dutch Margaret.

“Only one at the most,” said Willy.

“And I will be in my grave when you return.”

“There is no grave could hold you, Margaret.”

“Aye, it may not hold me. I’ll out of it and confront you when you come back. But it gives one a weirdness to be in the grave for only a few years. I will not own you for my husband when you do come back. You will not even know whether I am the same woman that you left, and you will never know. I am a volcano, but I banked my hatred and accepted you. But if you leave me now, I will erupt against you forever.”

But Willy Jones went away in the Flying Serpent and left her there. He took two of the golems with him, and he left one of them to serve Margaret.

What with one thing and another, he was gone for twenty years.

“We were off that morning to satisfy our curiosity about the Big House,” the fellow said, “since we would soon be leaving the island forever. You know about the Big House. You were on Willy Jones Island too. The Jilolos call it the House of Skulls, and the Malaya and Indonesia people will not speak about it at all.

“We approached the Big House that was not more than a mile beyond our perimeter. It was a large decayed building, but we had the sudden feeling that it was still inhabited. And it wasn’t supposed to be. Then we saw the two of them, the mother and the daughter. We shook like we were unhinged, and we ran to them.

“They were so alike that we couldn’t tell them apart. Their eyes twinkled like the compounded eyes of a creature that eats her mate. Noonday lightning! How it struck! Arms that swept you off your feet and set your bones to singing! We knew that they were not twins, or even sisters. We knew that they were mother and daughter.

“I have never encountered anything like them in my life. Whatever happened to the other two soldiers, I know it was worth it to them. Whatever happened to them? I don’t care if they kill me! They were perfect, those two women, even though we weren’t with them for five minutes.”

“Then it was the Badger.”

No, no, no! That’s the wrong story again. That’s not the story Galli told me. That’s part of the story the fellow told me in the bar. His confused account keeps interposing itself, possibly because I knew him slightly when we were both soldiers on Willy Jones Island. But he had turned queer, that fellow. “It is the earthquake belt around the world that is the same as the legend belt,” he said, “and the Middleworld underlies it all. That’s why I was able to walk it.” It was as though he had been keel-hauled around the world. I hadn’t known him well. I didn’t know which of the three soldiers he was. I had heard that they were all dead.

“Imagine about conspiracy stuff now,” said Galli. “Imagine about a whispering in a pinang grove before the sun is up.”

“How can I spook that man?” Margaret asked her golem shortly after she had been abandoned by Willy Jones. “But I am afraid that a mechanical man would not be able to tell me how.”

“I will tell you a secret,” said the golem. “We are not mechanical men. Certain wise and secret men believe that they made us, but they are wrong. They have made houses for us to live in, no more. There are many of us unhoused spirits, and we take shelter in such bodies as we find. That being so, I know something of the houseless spirits in the depth of every man. I will select one of them, and we will spook Willy Jones with that one. Willy is a Welshman who has become by adoption a Dutchman and a Malayan and a Jilolo man. There is one old spook running through them all. I will call it up when it is time.”

“I forgot to tell you that the name of Margaret’s golem was Meshuarat,” Galli said.

After twenty years of high piracy, Willy Jones returned to his island. And there was the dark Dutch Margaret standing as young and as smoldering as when he had left. He leaped to embrace her, and found himself stretched flat on the sand by a thunderous blow. He was not surprised, and was not (as he had at first believed) decapitated. Almost he was not displeased. Margaret had often been violent in her love-making.

“But I will have you,” Willy swore as he tasted his own blood delightfully in his mouth and pulled himself up onto hands and knees. “I have ridden the Margaret-tiger before.”

“You will never ride my loins, you lecherous old goat,” she rang at him like a bell. “I am not your wife. I am the daughter that you left here in the womb. My mother is in the grave on the hill.”

Willy Jones sorrowed terribly, and he went to the grave.

But Margaret came up behind him and drove in the cruel lance. “I told you that when you came back you would not know whether I was the same woman you had left,” she chortled, “and you will never know!”