Gene Wolfe: The Knight

Bold Berthold was ill the next day and begged me not to leave him, so I went hunting instead. I was not much of a hunter then, but more by luck than skill I put two arrows into a stag. Both shafts broke when the stag fell, but I salvaged the iron heads. That night while we had a feast of roast venison, I brought up the Aelf, asking Bold Berthold whether he had heard of Aelfrice, and whether he knew anything about the people who lived there.

He nodded. “Aye.”

“I mean the real Aelfrice.”

He said nothing.

“In Irringsmouth, a woman told a story about a girl who was supposed to get married to an Aelfking and she cheated him out of her bed. But it was just a story. Nobody thought it was real.”

“Come here, betimes,” Bold Berthold muttered.

“Do they? Real Aelf?”

“Aye. ‘Bout as high as the fire there. Like charcoal most are, like soot, and dirty as soot, too. All sooty ‘cept teeth and tongue. Eyes yellow fire.”

“They’re real?”

He nodded. “Seven worlds there be, Able. Didn’t I never teach you?” I waited.

“Mythgarthr, this is. Some just say Land, but that’s wrong. The land you walk on and the rivers you swim in. The Sea ... Only the sea’s in between, seems like. The air you breathe. All Mythgarthr, in the middle. So three above and three under. Skai’s next up, or you can say Sky. Both the same. Skai’s where the high-Bying birds go sometimes. Not little sparrows and robins, or any of that sort. Hawks and eagles and the wild geese. I even seen big herons up there.”

I recalled the flying castle, and I said, “Where the clouds are.”

Bold Berthold nodded. “You’ve got it. Still want to go to Griffinsford? Feeling better with this good meat in me. Might be better yet in the morning, and I haven’t gone over to look at the old place this year.”

“Yes, I do. But what about Aelfrice?”

“I’ll show you the pond where they threw fire at me, and the old graves.”

“I have questions about Skai, too,” I told him. “I have more questions than I can count.”

“More than I got answers, most likely.”

Outside, a wolf howled.

“I want to know about the Angrborn and the Osterlings. Some people I stayed with told me the Osterlings tore down Bluestone Castle.”

Bold Berthold nodded. “Likely enough.”

“Where do the Angrborn come from?”

“Ice lands.” He pointed north. “Come with the frost, and go with the snow.”

“Do they come just to steal?”

Staring into the fire, he nodded again. “Slaves, too. They didn’t take us ’cause we’d fought. Going to kill us instead. Run instead of fight, and they take you. Take the women and children. Took Gerda.”

“About Skai—”

“Sleep now,” Bold Berthold told me. “Goin’ to travel, stripling. Got to get up with the sun.”

“Just one more question? Please? After that I’ll go to sleep, I promise.”

He nodded.

“You must look up into the sky a lot. You said you’d seen eagles up there, and even herons.”

“Sometimes.”

“Have you ever seen a castle there, Bold Berthold?”

Slowly, he shook his head.

“Because I did. I was lying in the grass and looking up at the clouds—” He caught me by the shoulders, just the way you do sometimes, and looked into my eyes. “You saw it?”

“Yes. Honest, I did. It didn’t seem like it could be real, but I got up and ran after it, trying to keep it in sight, and it was real, a six-sided castle of white stone up above the clouds.”

“You saw it.” His hands were trembling worse than ever.

I nodded. “Up among the clouds and moving with them, driven by the same wind. It was white like they were, but the edges were hard and there were colored flags on the towers.” The memory took me by the throat. “It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

Next morning Bold Berthold was up before me, and we had left his hide-covered hut far behind before the sun rose over the treetops. He could walk only slowly, leaning on his staff; but he lacked nothing in endurance, and seemed more inclined to talk while walking than he had been the night before. “Wanted to know about the Aelf last night,” he said, and I nodded.

“Got to talking about Skai instead. You must’ve thought I was cracked. I had reasons, though.”

“It was all right,” I told him, “because I want to know about that, too.”

The almost invisible path we had been following had led us to a clearing; Bold Berthold halted, and pointed Skaiward with his staff. “Birds go up there. You seen them.”

I nodded. “I see one now.”

“They can’t stay.”

“If—One could perch on the castle wall, couldn’t it?”

“Don’t talk ‘bout that.” I could not tell whether he was angry or frightened. “Not now and maybe not never.”

“All right. I won’t, I promise.”

“Don’t want to lose you no more.” He drew breath. “Birds can’t stay. You and me can’t go at all. See it, though. Understand?”

I nodded.

He began to walk again, hurrying forward, his staff thumping the ground before him. “Think a bird could, too? Eagle can see better than you. Ever see a eagle nest?”

“Yes, there was one about five miles from our cabin.”

“Top of a big tree?”

“That’s right. A tall pine.”

“Eagle’s sitting there, sitting eggs, likely. Think it ever looks up ‘stead of down?”

“I suppose it must.” I was trotting behind him.

“Then it can go, if it’s of a mind to. The Aelf’s the same.” One thick blue-veined finger pointed to the earth. “They’re down there where we can’t see, only they can see us. You and me. Hear us, too, if we talk loud. They can come up if they want to, like birds, only they can’t stay.”

After that we walked on in silence for half an hour or so, I pursuing almost vanished memories. At last I said, “What would happen if an Aelf tried to stay here?”

“Die,” Bold Berthold told me. “That’s what they say.”

“They told you that? That they couldn’t live up here?”

“Aye.”

Later, when we stopped to drink from a brook, I said, “I won’t ask how they’ve been wronged, but do you know?”

He shrugged. “Know what they say.”

That night we camped beside the Griffin, cheered and refreshed by its purling waters. Bold Berthold had brought flint and steel, and I collected dry sticks for him and broke them into splinters so fine that the first shower of yellow sparks set them alight. “If there wasn’t no winter I could live so all my life,” he said, and might have been speaking for me.

Flat on my back after our meal, I heard the distant hooting of an owl, and the soughing of the wind in the treetops, where the first green leaves had burst forth. You must understand that at that time I believed I would be home soon. I had been kidnapped, I thought, by the Aelf. They had freed me in some western state, or perhaps in a foreign country. In time, the memories of my captivity would return. Had I been wiser, I would have stayed in Irringsmouth, where I had made friends, and where there might well be a library with maps, or an American Consul. As it was, there might be some clue in Griffinsford (I was not yet convinced that was not the name of our town); and if there were none, there was nothing to keep me from returning to Irringsmouth. Half destroyed, Irringsmouth remained a seaport of sorts. Maybe I could board a ship to America there. What was there to keep me from doing it? Nothing and nobody, and a ship sounded good.

“Who-o-o?” said the owl. Its voice, soft and dark as the spring night, conveyed apprehension as well as curiosity.

I too sensed the footsteps by which someone or something made its way through the forest, although one single drop of dew falling from a high limb would have made more noise than any of them.