Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

He said, “That mail would sink you in a minute.”

It was not true, but I agreed. “Will you remain here with Parka and watch my things ‘til I return?”

“Your possessions,” Parka told me, “are not here.”

Nevertheless I stripped, and laid my mail, my leather jerkin, my trousers and so forth on a flat stone, and put my boots beside them. Parka spun on, making lives for we who think we make them for ourselves.

How good it was to swim in the sea! I knew then that much of my sea-strength had left me, for I felt it returning; and although I knew Garsecg for a demon, I wished that he were swimming at my side, as he had in days irrecoverable. It is well, I think, for us to learn to tell evil from good; but it has its price, as everything does. We leave our evil friend behind.

To what I swam I did not know. Seeing nothing ahead, I swam a long way under water, then breached the surface and swam on, still seeing nothing. The bones of Grengarm lay in this sea, and somewhere in it dwelt Kulili, for the bottom of the sea of Mythgarthr (and I felt I was in Mythgarthr still) lies in Aelfrice. I resolved to go to the bottom before I was done, and come to land in Aelfrice, and search there for Disiri. For I did not know then that one finds none but lost loves in the Room of Lost Love, and my love for her—love fiery as the blood of the Angrborn, yet pure—could not be lost, not in the Valkyrie’s kiss or the Valfather’s mead.

Surfacing again, I saw the Isle of Glas. What love, I asked myself, did I lose here? None, surely.

For a time I was filled with thoughts of Garsecg and Uri and Baki. At last it came to me that had I been able to recall that love, it would not be lost. Lady Lynnet, in her madness, had forgotten her parents, her sisters, and her home, had remembered only marigolds and manticores and the fighting tradition of her family, which had been in her blood, not in her wounded mind. Thus it was that although her mind had failed, her hand had itched for a sword, and found one in the whip.

It is not the weapon that wins, no, not even Eterne.

The beaches of the Isle of Glas are like no other. Perhaps they are gems ground fine—certainly, that is how they appear. Nor are its stones as other stones. Its grass is fine, soft, short, and of a green no man can describe; and I believe that Gylf, who could not see colors well, could have seen that one. I have seen no other trees like those along its beaches; their leaves are of a green so dark as to appear black, but silver beneath, so that a breath of wind changes them to silver in an instant. Their bark appears to be naked wood, though it is not.

When I think back upon the moments I came ashore, it seems to me I cannot have had long to admire the beach, or grass, or trees; yet it seemed long then. The sun stood fixed, half visible, half veiled by cloud; and I, with all eternity at my disposal, marveled at the grass.

“Oh, son...”

It was a peasant woman. I had seen many fairer, though she was fair.

“You are my son.”

I knew that she was wrong, and it came to me that if I were to lie upon the ground, and she to bend above me, I would see her in the way I had just recalled her. Then I understood that she was the fairest of women.

“You and Berthold suckled these breasts, Able.”

I said he was not here, and tried to explain that he would not have forgotten her, that he had been old enough to walk and speak when she vanished. “Read this.” She held out the tube of green glass.

Shamefaced, I admitted that I could not read the runes of Mythgarthr, only the script of Aelfrice.

“This is not Mythgarthr,” she said, “it is the country of the heart.”

I unrolled the scroll and read it. I set it down here as I recollect it. You will wonder, Ben, as I wondered, whether she was not our mother as well as Berthold’s and his brother’s. I think that she was both.

“Mag is my name here, and here I was wife to Berthold the Black. My husband was headman of our village. The Aelf cast their spell on it. Our cows birthed fawns. Our gardens died in a night. Mist hid us always, and Griffmsford was accursed. An old man came. He was a demon. I know it now, but we did not know then. I was big with child when he came.

“He said our Overcyns would not help us, and to lift the curse we must offer to the gods of the Aelf. Snari fed him. Berthold said we would not, that we must offer to our right Overcyns. He built an altar of stones and turf, with none but our little son to help. On it he offered our cow, and sang to the Overcyns of Skai, and Cli and Wer with him.

“A turtle with two heads crawled out of the river and bit Deif and Grumma, strangers were on the road by night, and there were howlings at our windows. The old man said we must give seven wives to the gods of Aelfrice. Berthold would not hear of it.

“The old man said I would never give birth until the gods of Aelfrice allowed it. Two days I labored with none but Berthold to attend me. Then I begged the Lady of Skai to take my life if only she would spare my child. I was able to bear him, and I named him Able because of it.

“The old man came to our door. Grengarm, he said, demanded seven fair virgins. There were not seven fair virgins in Griffinsford, and soon he would demand fair woman whether virgins or not, and children too, whom he would eat. I do not know that he told the truth, though I believed him. He told me he would take me to a place where Grengarm would not find me. I said I would go if I might take my children.

“I might take Able, he said, but Berthold was perhaps too big, and he offered to show the place to me so that I might judge if it was a fit place for them. It was not far, and we would return long before either woke. May the Lady and every lady forgive me! I went, thinking Berthold would rock Able if he woke.

“We went to the edge of the barley, and there the old man cautioned me that I must not be afraid but climb on his back. He went on all four like a beast as he said it. I mounted and he flew. I saw that he was a terrible lizard, that he had always been, and the kind face he showed was a mask. I believed him Grengarm, and believed he would eat me.

“He carried me to this island and stripped me naked. Here I remain, so the seamen I tempt may feed Setr and the Khimairae. There are other women, stolen as I was.

“We tempt seamen so the Khimairae will not eat us, but we hide when the old man walks out of the waves, and do not worship him as the Khimairae do. Groa carved an image of the Lady for us, but another came by night and broke it, leaving an image of herself by the pool, beautiful beyond women.

“Groa can write. She has taught me to write as we write here, tracing letters in the sand. This vase I found in the wreck, with the paper and the rest. O Lady of the Overcyns, Lady of Skai, you spared my life. Grant that these writings of mine will come to the eyes of my sons.”

“Years have passed. I am no longer beautiful, and soon the Khimairae will eat me. I have caught Setr’s poison in a cup. I write with it, and with a feather of the great bird. When I have written to the end, I will put this scroll in the vase, and stop it, and drink. None will touch my poisoned flesh for fear.”

I asked whether I might take her scroll to read to my brother. She said that nothing I took from this place would remain when I left it, and cast her scroll into the waves.

After that we sat long on the beach, naked together, and talked of the lives we had led, what it was to live and what it was to die. “I was taken by the Aelf,” I told her, “to be playmate to the queen, for the Aelf live on, but few children come to them and any child born to them is a queen or king, as if every Aelf of the clan were mother or father.”

“You were a king to me,” she said, “and to your father and your brother also.”