Gene Wolfe - Lake of the Long Sun

Silk nodded. "Provided that no one requires the Pardon of Pas."

The driver extracted a toothpick from an inner pocket.

"But if somebody does, you got to go, don't you?"

"Certainly." "An' before we ever loaded her in, you'd done for how many pigeons an' goats and such like?"

Silk paused, counting. "Altogether, fourteen including the birds. No, fifteen in all, because Auk brought the ram he'd pledged. I had forgotten it for a moment, although its entrails indicated that I-never mind."

"Fifteen, an' one a ram. An' you done for the lot, an' read 'em, an' cut 'em up, I bet." Silk nodded again.

"An' marched out to the country on that bad leg, readin' prayers an' so forth the whole way. Only now you get to pull your boots off, unless somebody's decided to leave. Then you don't. Have a easy time of it, don't you, you augurs? 'Bout like us, huh?"

"It isn't such a bad life," Silk said, "as long as one gets to ride back."

They both laughed.

"Somethin' happen in there? In your manteion?"

Silk nodded. "I'm surprised that you heard about it so quickly."

"They were talkin' 'bout it when I got there, Patera. I ain't religious. Don't know nothin' 'bout gods an' don't want to, but it sounded interestin'."

"I see." Silk stroked his cheek. "In that case, what you know is fully as important as what I know. I know only what actually transpired, while you know what people are saying about it, which may be at least as important."

"What I was wonderin' was why she come after nobody for so long. Did she say?"

"No. And of course I could not ask her. One does not cross-examine the gods. Now tell me what the people outside the manteion were saying. All of it."

It was practically dark by the time the driver reined up in front of the garden gate. Kit and Villus, who had been playing in the street, were full of questions: "Did a goddess really come, Patera?" "A real goddess?" "What'd she look like?" "Could you see her really good?" "To talk to?" "Did she tell things, Patera?" "Could you tell what she said?" "What'd she say?"

Silk raised his hand for silence. "You could have seen her, too, if you'd come to our sacrifice as you should have." "They wouldn't let us." "We couldn't get in." "I'm very sorry to hear that," Silk told them sincerely. "You would have seen Comely Kypris just as I did, and most of the people who attended-there must have been five hundred, if not more-could not. Now listen. I know you're anxious to have your questions answered, just as I would be in your place. But I'm going to have to talk a great deal about the theophany in the next few days, and I don't want to go stale. Besides, I'll have to tell all of you in the palaestra, in a lot of detail, and you'll be bored if you have to listen to all of it twice."

Silk crouched to bring his own face to the level of the quite dirty face of the smaller boy. "But, Kit, there's a lesson in this, for you especially. Only two days ago, you asked me whether a god would actually come to our Window. Do you remember that?"

"You said it would be a long time, but it wasn't." "I said it might be, Kit, not that it would be. You're fundamentally quite right, however. I did think it would be a long time, probably decades, and I was badly mistaken; but the thing I wanted to point out was that when you asked your question all the other students laughed. They thought it was very funny. Remember?" Kit nodded solemnly.

"They laughed as though you'd asked a foolish question, because they thought it a foolish question. They were even more mistaken than I, however; and that must be plain even to them now. Yours was a serious and an important question, and you erred only in asking of someone who knew very little more than you did. You must never let yourself be turned aside from life's serious and important questions by ridicule. Try not to forget that."

Silk fumbled in his pocket. "I want you boys to run an errand for me. I'd go myself, but I can hardly walk, much less run. I'm going to give you, Villus, five bits. Here they are. And you, Kit, three. You, Kit, are to go to the greengrocer's. Tell him the vegetables are for me, and ask him to give you whatever is best and freshest, to the amount of three bits. You, Villus, are to go to the butcher. Tell him I want five bits worth of nice chops. I'll give each of you," Silk paused, ruminating, "a half bit when you bring me your purchases."

Villus inquired, "What kind of chops, Patera? Mutton or pork?"

"We will let him decide that."

Silk watched as the two dashed off, then unlocked the garden gate and stepped inside. The grass had been sadly trampled, just as Maytera Marble had said; even in the last dying gleam of day that was apparent, as was the damage to Maytera's little garden. He reflected philosophically that in a normal year the last produce from the garden would have come weeks before in any event.

"Patera!"

It was Maytera Rose, leaning from a window of the cenoby and waving, an offense for which she would have reprimanded Maytera Marble or Maytera Mint endlessly.

"Yes," Silk said. "What is it, Maytera?"

"Did they come back with you?"

He hobbled to the window. "Your sibs? No. They were going to walk back together, so they said. They should be here soon."

"It's past time for supper," Maytera Rose asserted. (The assertion was manifestly untrue.)

Silk smiled. "Your supper should be here shortly, too, and may Scylla bless your feast." He turned away, still smiling, before she could question him further.

There was a package wrapped in white paper and tied with white string on the kitchen doorstep of the manse. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands before opening the door. Oreb, who from the scattered drops had been drinking from his cup, was on the kitchen table. " 'Lo, Silk."

"Hello, yourself." Silk got out the paring knife.

"Cut bird?"

"No, I'm going to open this. I'm too tired-or too lazy-to pick apart these knots, but if I cut them I should be able to save most of the string anyway. Did you kill that rat I threw away, Oreb?"

"Big fight!"

"I suppose I ought to congratulate you, and thank you as well. All right, I do." Unwrapping the white paper exposed a collection of odorous meat scraps. "This is cat's meat, Oreb. Having had a bucket of it dumped on my head once, I'd know it anywhere. Scleroderma promised us some, and she's made good her promise already."

"Eat now?"

"You may, if you wish. Not me. But you ate a good deal of that rat you killed. Don't tell me you're still hungry!"

Oreb only fluttered his wings and cocked his head inquiringly.

"I'm not at all sure that so much meat is good for you."

"Good meat!"

"As a matter of fact it isn't." Silk pushed it toward the bird, "But if I keep it, it will only get worse, and we have no means of preserving it. So go ahead, if you like."

Oreb snatched a piece of meat and managed to carry it, half flying and half jumping, to the top of the larder.

"Scylla bless your feast, too." For the two thousandth time it occurred to Silk that a feast blessed by Scylla ought logically to be offish, as the Chrasmologic Writings hinted it had originally been. Sighing, he took off his robe and hung it over the back of what had been Patera Pike's chair. Eventually he would have to carry the robe upstairs to his bedroom, brush it, and hang it up properly; and eventually he would have to remove the manteion's copy of the Writings themselves from the robe's big front pocket and restore it to its proper place.

But both could wait, and he preferred that they should. He started a fire in the stove, washed his hands, and got out the pan in which he had fried tomatoes the day before, then filled the old pot Patera Pike had favored with water from the pump and set it on the stove. He was contemplating the kettle and the possibility of mate or coffee when there was a tap at the Silver Street door.