Gene Wolfe - The Knight

The tower had stood on a rocky island connected to the mainland by a spit of sand and rocks so low it was nearly under the water even at low tide. I must have stared at the waves breaking over it in the starlight for five minutes before I felt sure it was there. It was, and I knew I ought to get off the island while I still could, and find a place to sleep on shore.

I knew it, but I did not do it. For one thing, I was tired already. Not hungry and not particularly thirsty, but so tired that all I really wanted was to lie down somewhere. The other was that I was afraid of what I might find on shore, and what might find me.

Besides, I needed to think. There was so much I could not remember, and what I could remember (you, Ben, and the cabin, and the house where we lived, and those pictures you have of Mom and Dad) was a long, long time ago. I wanted to try to remember more, and I wanted to think about what Parka had said and what it might mean.

So I went back to the sheltered place I had found among the blue stones and lay down. I was barefoot, and it seemed to me while I lay there that I should have had hiking boots, and stockings. I could not remember what had become of them. I was wearing a gray wool shirt without buttons and gray wool pants with no pockets, and that did not seem right either. I had a belt, and a little leather pouch hanging from it by its strings; but the only things in it were Parka’s bowstring, three hard black seeds, and a little knife with a wooden handle and a wooden scabbard. The knife fit my hand like it belonged there, but I did not remember it at all.

The sun woke me. I still remember how warm it felt, and how good it was to be warm like that, and away from the sound of other people’s voices and all the work and worry of other people’s lives, the things the string kept telling me about; I must have lain in the sun for an hour before I got up.

I was hungry and thirsty when I did. Rainwater caught by a broken fountain tasted wonderful. I drank and drank; and when I straightened up, there was a knight watching me, a tall, big-shouldered man in chain mail. His helm kept me from seeing his face, but there was a black dragon on top of his helm that glared at me, and black dragons on his shield and surcoat. He began to fade as soon as I sav him, and in a couple of seconds the wind blew away what was left. It was a long time before I found out who he was, so I am not going to say anything about that here; but I do want to say something else and it will go here as well as anywhere.

That world is called Mythgarthr. I did not learn it ’til later, but there is no reason you should not know it now. Parka’s cave was not completely there, but betweenMythgarthr and Aelfrice. Bluestone Island is entirely in Mythgarthr, but before I drank the water I was not. Or to write down the exact truth, I was not securely there. That is why the knight came when he did; he wanted to watch me drinking that water. “Good lord!” I said, but there was no one to hear me.

He had scared me. Not because I thought I might be seeing things, but because I had thought I was alone. I kept looking behind me. It is no bad habit, Ben, but there was nobody there.

On the east side of the island the cliffs were not so steep. I found a few mussels and ate them raw. The sun was overhead when two fishermen came close enough to yell at. I did, and they rowed over. They wanted to know if I would help with the nets if they took me on board; I promised I would, and climbed over the gunwale. “How’d you get out there alone?” the old one wanted to know.

I wanted to know that myself, and how come they talked funny; but I said, “How would anybody get out there?” and they seemed willing to leave it at that. They split their bread and cheese with me, and a fish we cooked over a fire in a box of sand. I did not know, but that was when I started loving the sea.

At sunset, they offered me my choice of the fish we had caught for my help. I told the young one (not a lot older than me) that I would take it and share with his family if his wife would cook it, because I had no place to stay. That was okay, and when our catch had been sold, we carried the best fish and some others that had not sold into a crowded little house maybe twenty steps from the water.

After dinner we told stories, and when it was my turn I said, “I’ve never seen a ghost, unless what I saw today was one. So I’ll tell you about that, even if it won’t scare anybody like the ghost in Scaur’s story. Because it’s all I’ve got.”

Everyone seemed agreeable; I think they had heard each other’s stories more than once.

“Yesterday I found myself on a certain rocky island not far from here where there used to be a tower—”

“It was Duke Indign’s,” said Scaur; and his wife, Sha, “Bluestone Castle.”

“I spent the night in the garden,” I continued, “because I had something to do there, a seed I had to plant. You see, somebody important had told me to plant a seed, and I hadn’t known what she meant until I found seeds in here.” I showed them the pouch.

“You chopped down a spiny orange,” Sha’s grandfather wheezed; he pointed to my bow. “You cut a spiny orange, and you got to plant three seeds, young man. If you don’t the Mossmen’ll get you.”

I said I had not known that.

He spat in the fire. “Folks don’t, not now, and that’s why there’s not hardly no spiny oranges left. Best wood there is. You rub flax oil on it, hear? That’ll protect it from the weather.”

He held out his hand for my bow, and I passed it to him. He gave it to Scaur. “You break her, son. Break her ‘cross your knee.”

Scaur tried. He was strong, and bent my bow nearly double; but it did not break.

“See? You can’t. Can’t be broke.” Sha’s grandfather cackled as Scaur returned my bow to me. “There’s not but one fruit on a spiny orange most times, and not but three seeds in it. You chop down the tree and you got to plant them in three places, else the Mossmen’ll come for you.”

“Go on, Able,” Sha said, “tell us about the ghost.”

“This morning I decided to plant the first seed in the garden of Bluestone Castle,” I told them. “There was a stone bowl there that held water, and I decided I would plant the seed first and scoop up water for it. When it seemed to me I had watered it enough, I would drink what was left.”

They nodded.

“I dug a little hole with my knife, dropped a seed into it, replaced the earth—which was pretty damp already—and carried water for the seed in my hands. When there was standing water in the hole, I drank and drank from the bowl, and when I looked up I saw a knight standing there watching me. I couldn’t see his face, but he had a big green shield with a dragon on it.”

“That wasn’t Duke Indign,” Scaur remarked, “his badge was the blue boar.”

“Did you speak to him?” Sha wanted to know. “What did he say?”

“I didn’t. It happened so fast and I was too surprised. He—he turned into a sort of cloud, then he disappeared altogether.”

“Clouds are the breath of the Lady,” Sha’s grandfather remarked. I asked who that was, but he only shook his head and looked into the fire. Sha said, “Don’t you know her name can’t be spoken?”

In the morning I asked the way to Griffinsford, but Scaur said there was no town of that name thereabout.

“Then what’s the name of this one?” I asked.

“Irringsmouth,” said Scaur.

“I think there’s an Irringsmouth near where I live,” I told him. Really I was not sure, but I thought it was something like that. “It’s a big city, though. The only really big city I’ve been to.”