Gene Wolfe: Lake of the Long Sun

"You had no reason to touch him, and he didn't know you. All animals hate the touch of a stranger. Have you ever kept a bird?"

"No, Patera. I had a dog, but she died."

"I was hoping to get some advice. I wouldn't want Oreb to die-although I'd imagine that night choughs are hardy creatures. Hold out your wrist." Horn did, and Oreb hopped onto it. "Good boy!"

"I wouldn't try to hold him," Silk said. "Let him hold you. You can't have had many toys as a child, Horn."

"Not many. We were-" Suddenly, Horn smiled. "There was one. My grandfather made it, a wooden man with a blue coat. It had strings, and if you did them right, you could make him walk and bow."

"Yes!" Silk's eyes flashed, and the tip of the lioness-headed stick thumped the floor. "That's exactly the sort of toy I mean. May I tell you about one of mine? You may think I'm straying from the topic, but I won't be, I promise you."

"Sure, Patera. Go ahead."

"There were two dancers, a man and a woman, very neatly painted. They danced on a little stage, and when I wound it up, music played. And they danced, the little woman quite gracefully, and the little man somersaulting and spinning and cutting all sort of capers. There were three tunes-you moved a lever to choose the one you wanted-and I used to play with it for hours, singing songs I'd made up for myself and imagining things for him to say to her, and for her to say to him. Silly things, most of them, I'm afraid."

"I understand, Patera."

"My mother died during my last year at the schola, Horn. Possibly I've already told you that. I'd been cramming for an examination, but the Prelate called me into his chambers again and told me that after her last sacrifice I would have to go home and remove my personal belongings. Our house-her whole estate, but it was mostly the house-went to the Chapter, you understand. One signs an agreement before one enters the schola."

"Poor Silk!"

He smiled at the bird. "Perhaps, though I didn't think so at the time. I was miserable on account of my mother's death, but I don't believe that I ever felt sorry for myself. I had books to read, and friends, and enough to eat. But now I really am wandering from the subject.

"To hurry back to it, I found that toy in the back of my closet. I had been at the schola for six years, and I doubt that I'd so much as laid eyes on the toy for years before I left. Now here it was again! I wound it up, and the dancers danced once more, and the music played exactly as it had when I was a little boy. The tune was 'First Romance,' and I'll never forget that song now."

Horn coughed. "Nettle and me talk about that some- times, Patera. You know, when we're older."

"Nettle, and I," Silk corrected him absently. "That's good, Horn. It's very good, and you'll both be older much sooner than you imagine. I'll pray for you both.

"But I had intended to say that I cried then. I hadn't at her rites; I hadn't been able to, not even when her casket was put into the ground. But I did then, because it seemed to me that for the dancers no time at all had passed. That they couldn't know that the man who wound them now was the boy who had wound them the last time, or that the woman who had bought them on Clock Street was dead. Do you follow what I'm saying, Horn?"

"I think so, Patera."

"Enlightenment is like that for the whole whorl. Time has stopped for eveiyone else. For you, there is something outside it-a peritime in which the god speaks to you. For me, that god was the Outsider. I don't think I've said much about him when I've talked to the palaestra, but I will be saying a great deal about him in the future. Maytera Mint said something to me this afternoon that has remained with me ever since. She said that he was unlike the other gods, who take council with one another in Mainframe; that no one save himself knew his mind. Maytera Mint has great humility, but she has wisdom, too. I must remember not to let the first blind me to the second."

"Good girl!"

"Yes, and great goodness, too. Humility and purity."

Horn said, "About enlightenment, Patera. Yours, I mean. Is that why somebody's writing things about you getting to be calde?" Silk snapped his ringers. "I'm glad you mentioned that-I had intended to ask you about it. I knew I'd forgotten something. Someone had chalked, 'Silk for calde,' on a wall; I saw it on the way home. Did you do that?"

Horn shook his head.

"Or one of the other boys?"

"I don't think it was one of us sprats at all, Patera. It's on two places. There on the slop shop, and then over on Hat Street, on that building Gosseyplum lives in. I've looked at them both, and they're pretty high up. I could do it without standing on anything and I think maybe Locust could, but he says he didn't."

Silk nodded to himself. "Then I believe you're correct, Horn. It was because I've been enlightened. Or rather it's happened because I told someone about it, and was overheard. I've told several persons now, yourself included, and perhaps I shouldn't have."

"What was it like, Patera? Besides everything stopped, like you said?"

For several tickings of the clock on the mantel, Silk sat silent, contemplating for the hundredth time the experience he had by this time revolved in his mind so often that it was like a water-smoothed stone, polished and opaque. At last he said, "In that moment I understood all that I'll ever truly need to know. It's erroneous, really, for me to call it a moment, when it was actually outside time. But I, Horn,"-he smiled-"I am inside time, just as you are. And I find that it takes time for me to comprehend everything that I was told in that moment that was not a moment. It takes time for me to assimilate it. Am I making myself clear?"

Poor Horn nodded hesitantly. "I think so, Patera."

"That may be good enough." Silk paused again, lost in thought. "One of the things I learned was that I'm to be a teacher. There's only one thing that the Outsider wishes me to do-I am to save our manteion. But it is as a teacher that he wishes me to do it.

"There are many callings, Horn, the highest being pure worship. That isn't mine; mine is to teach, and a teacher has to act as well as think. The old man I met this evening-the man with the wonderful leg-was a teacher, too; and yet he's all action, all activity, as old as he is, and one-legged, too. He teaches swordfighting. Why do you think he is as he is? All action?"

Horn's eyes shone. "I don't know, Patera. Why?"

"Because a fight with swords-still more, with azoths-affords no time for reflection; thus to be all action is a part of what he has to teach. Listen carefully now. He has thought about that. Do you understand? Even though fighting with a sword must be all action, teaching others that kind of fighting requires thought. The old man had to think not only about what he was to teach, but about how he could best teach it."

Horn nodded. "I think I understand, Patera."

"In the same way, Horn, you must think about imitating me. Not merely about how I can be imitated, but about what to imitate. And when to do it. Now go home."

Oreb flapped his sound wing. "Wise man!"

"Thank you. Go, Horn. If Oreb wishes to go with you, you may keep him."

"Patera?"

Silk rose as Horn did. "Yes. What is it?"

"Are you going to study swordfighting?"

For a moment Silk considered his reply. "There are more important things to leam than swordfighting, Horn. Whom to fight, for example. One of them is to keep secrets. Someone who holds in confidence only those secrets he has been told not to reveal can never be trusted. Surely you understand that."

"Yes, Patera."

"And there is more to be learned from any good teacher than the subject taught. Tell your father and mother that I didn't keep you so late in order to punish you, but through carelessness, for which I apologize."