Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“Put your arm around me. Hold me tight.”

I did, holding her as I had when Cloud first mounted into the sky. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not.” Ulfa sighed. “When I left—it seems like a long, long time ago...”

“It was.”

“That’s Glennidam!” She pointed. “There’s our house!” I nodded, and slowed Cloud to a walk.

“I used to think you and I would be married, and we’d come back here, a knight and his lady, riding together on one horse. Hiding myself in bushes beside the road to sleep, lying there with leaves and sticks in my face, I’d think like that so I wouldn’t be afraid. It won’t happen.”

“No,” I said.

“I wouldn’t want it to, not anymore. I love Pouk and Pouk loves me. But this is close—as close as I’ll get. We’re going to have children. We want them, both of us do. When they’re old enough to understand, I’ll tell them about Utgard and how I left it, riding with you on this gray horse, between clouds like cliffs, and the moon so close I could touch it. They’ll think I’m making it up.”

A gust swayed Cloud, and her mane flew like a banner.

“They’ll think I’m making it up,” Ulfa repeated, “and after a while so will I. Hold me tighter.”

I did.

“This is the moment of my life, the golden time.”

Neither of us spoke again until Cloud’s hoofs were on solid ground. I dismounted and dropped her reins, and lifted Ulfa from the saddle. She said, “Thank you. I can’t ever thank you enough. I won’t even try, but I’ll tell about you as long as I live.”

“Have I ever thanked you for the clothes you sewed for me? Or apologized for taking your brother?”

“Yes, and it doesn’t matter anyway.”

I turned to go, but she caught my arm. “Won’t you come in? There’ll be food, and I’ll cook what we have for you.”

“I don’t want to leave Cloud outside in this.”

“Just a moment. Please? Warm your hands at the fire before you go.” I hesitated; then nodded, seeing what it meant to her.

The door was barred. She led me to the back, to the door through which I had left the house long ago, and fished out the latchstring with a twig. The kitchen in which her mother had cowered was dark, though a fire smoldered on the hearth. Ulfa fed it fresh wood and knelt to puff the flames. “It seems too small!”

The autumn wind moaned outside as she opened a door to reveal two pigs, headless and gutted, hanging by their hind feet. “My father’s butchering already. I can roast slices on a fork as fast as you can sit down.”

Warming my hands as she had suggested, I shook my head.

“Sit anyway. You must be tired. I’ll cut some bread—”

Gylf, who had followed us, said, “I’d like that meat.”

Ulfa looked at him in some surprise. “Did you do that?”

I shook my head.

“I know that cat can talk. I’ve heard it.”

The wind moaned in the chimney, stirring the ashes.

“Raw pork’s not good for dogs. Not good for anybody.” She threw wide the doors of a tall cupboard and found bones with a good deal of meat on them. “Ma was saving these for soup, I’m sure, but I’ll give them to your dog.”

There was no reply. I was already outside, and for a moment there can have been no sound in the kitchen save the creaking of the hinges of its door, which swung back and forth, and then (caught by a gust of wind) slammed shut.

One sunny afternoon I had jogged through this field on the same errand, a field full of barley. The barley was reaped now. I ran on stubble, my left hand clutching Eterne to keep her from slapping my thigh. “Disiri? Disiri?”

There was no answer; and yet I felt an answer had come: the leaves had spoken for her, saying here I am.

“Disiri!”

You can’t find me.

I stopped, listening, but the leaves spoke no more. “I can’t,” I admitted. “I’ll search the seven worlds for you, and turn out Mythgarthr and Aelfrice like empty sacks. But I won’t find you unless you want to be found. I know that.”

Give up?

“Yes, I give up.” I raised both hands.

“Here I am.” She stepped from behind the dark bole of the largest tree; and although I could scarcely see anything, I saw her and knew she was tall as few women are tall and slender as no human woman ever is, and too lovely for me to understand, ever, exactly how lovely she was.

My arms closed around her, and we kissed. Her lips were sweeter than honey and warm with life, and there was nothing wrong that mattered because there was nothing wrong we could not mend; and there was love as long as we lived, and love did matter, love would always matter.

We parted, and it seemed to me that we had kissed for centuries, and centuries were not long enough.

“You have the sword Eterne.” Her voice smiled.

I gasped for breath. “Do you want her? She’s yours.”

“I have her already,” she said, “because you have her. Know you why she is called Eterne?”

“Because she’s almost as beautiful as you are, and beauty is eternal.”

We kissed again.

“You’re older,” she said when we separated. “Your hair is giving up your temples.”

“And fatter. I can forgive you anything.”

She laughed. Her laughter was bells of delight. “Even a younger lover?”

“Anything,” I repeated.

“Then I will have a younger lover, and he will be you.”

The wild wind whirled about us, and I wrapped my cloak around her as I had wrapped it around Ulfa. “I could make myself younger, but it would be by the power of Skai.”

“Really?” All the merriment of all the maidens was in her laugh.

“I’d have to go back then, honoring my pledge.”

“Yet you ride among clouds.”

“Cloud bears me up. I do not bear her.”

Our lips met; when we parted we were lying upon moss. “The game is nearly over,” she whispered. “That is what I came to tell you. Did you think it would go on forever?”

When Gylf found me, I was sitting alone, wrapped in my cloak and weeping. “I ate,” Gylf said. “We ought to go.”

I nodded and rose.

Cloud was waiting in the village street, her rump to the wind. On her, I rose higher and higher until I was above the storm; but the wind blew hard even so and it was very cold. When at last we reached the camp in Jotunland I found I could scarcely dismount, and nearly fell.

“No more night riding,” I promised, and Cloud nodded happily, and filled my mind with thoughts of sunlit cloud-mountains, mountains ever changing because they are ever new.

“Ya wanna blanket, sar?” The voice was Uns’. “I been keepin’ ya fire goin’.”

I nodded, and the truth was that I wanted a blanket and a fire badly; but I said, “You’re supposed to be serving the queen, Uns. Not me.”

“Her’s sleepin’, sar. Her don’ want me. I’se sleepin’, ta, most a’ th’ time. On’y I’d rouse ‘n t’row onna stick.”

“Thank you.” I took off my helmet and rubbed my scalp with fingers stiff with cold. “But you must sleep. It’s only a little before sunrise.”

“Soon’s I help wit’ ya boots, sar.”

Knowing that I should have removed them myself, I sat and let Uns pull them off; and while Uns was brushing them, I struggled out of my mail. “I need clean clothes,” I said sleepily. “I can get some in Utgard, I suppose.”

“Take ‘urn off ‘n I’ll wash ‘um inna river fer ya,” Uns declared. “Dry ‘um at th’ fire real quick.”

The temptation was too great.

“Uns?”

“Yessar?”

“A woman told me my hair was receding, that it was leaving my temples bare.”

“Yessar.”

“It’s true.” Naked, I stretched myself on blankets Uns had spread near the fire and pulled them over me.