On Blue's waters

- 6-
SEAWRACK

Ambassadors from a distant town arrived today. It is called Skany, or at least that is as close as I can come to the name. Its ambassadors are three gray-bearded men, dignified and grave but not humorless, who rode mules and were accompanied by thirty or forty armed servants on foot. They had been told that Silk was here, “ruling Gaon,” and wished to invite me to rule Skany as well.

I explained that I did not rule (for I am in reality no more than an advisor to the people here) and that I could not and would not take responsibility for two towns so widely separated.

They then placed several problems before me, saying that these were cases that had arisen in Skany during the past year, and asked me to judge each and explain the principles on which I made my decisions. In one, both parties might well have been telling the truth as they saw it. It could not possibly be decided by someone who could not question them both, and question witnesses as well, and I said so.

I will set it down here.

The people of Skany had been able to leave the Long Sun Whorl only because a wealthy man of their native city had supplied several hundred cards and other valuable parts to repair a lander for them. He did so on the condition that he would be permitted to claim a very extensive tract of land, whose size was agreed upon in advance, to be selected by him. (He was, I believe, one of the three ambassadors, although at no time did they allude to it.) This was done.

This man now desires to marry a young woman, hardly more than a girl, whom he had employed as a servant previously. The bride (as I shall call her) is entirely willing. The difficulty is that a certain poor woman has come forward to claim the bride-price, saying that she is the bride’s mother. The bride herself denies this, saying that her father was left behind in the Long Sun Whorl, and that her mother was a woman (whom she names) who perished when their lander took flight. Perhaps I should say here that it is their custom for the groom or his family to buy the bride from her parents; but that when the bride is orphaned she is bought from herself-that is to say, she receives her own bride-price, which becomes her property.

All this brought Seawrack and the gold she wore to mind vividly; yet her case was in certain respects the very reverse of this one. I had intended to write a great deal about her tonight in any event, and I will do so. The reversals should be obvious enough.

Her pale gold hair was long, as I have said, and in places dyed a misted green by some microscopic sea-plant that had taken refuge there. I am tempted to say that it was her hair that impelled me to name her as I did, but it would not be entirely true; the truth is that her name, which was no word of the Common Tongue, baffled me, and that Seawrack was near to it in sound and seemed to suit her very well.

Her face was beautiful, strong, and foreign. By that last, I mean that I had never before seen anyone with her sharp chin, very high cheekbones, and tilted eyes. Her skin was as white as foam in those days, which made her lips a blazing scarlet and her midnight-blue eyes darker than the night. I noticed her nakedness first, as I suppose any man would, and then the length of her legs and the womanly contours of her body, and only then the gold she wore. It was not until she released her hold on the backstay and waved, very shyly and tentatively, with her left hand that I realized that her right arm had been amputated just below the shoulder. “Hello?” Her voice was just above the threshold of audibility. And again: “Hello?”

That word is one of the most ordinary, and I remember that when I was a small boy Maytera Marble used to ridicule people who used it, saying that we ought to bless those whom we greet in the name of the god of the day.

Or if we were too self-conscious for that, to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good day. But I shall never forget seeing Seawrack as she stood in my old sloop, the way in which she waved to me (she was terrified of Babbie, as I quickly discovered), and the delicious music of her voice when she whispered, “Hello?”

As for what I replied, I may have said, “Good afternoon,” or “Hello!” or “Is it going to snow?” Or any other nonsense that you might propose. Most likely, I was too stunned to say anything at all.

“I am one of you,” she told me solemnly, and I thought that she meant one of the crew of our boat and tried to say something gracious about needing help without mentioning her missing arm. There is a saying among the fishermen, “One hand for yourself and one for the boat.” It means that in a rough sea you are to hold on with one hand and do your work with the other, and as I spoke to Seawrack I could not rid my mind of the idiotic thought that she would be unable to do it.

“Do you like me?”

It was said so artlessly and with such childlike seriousness that I knew there could be only one answer. “Yes,” I told her, “I like you very much.”

She smiled. It was as if a child had smiled, and by smiling had rendered her face transparent, so that I could see the woman she would someday be and had always been, the woman who stands behind all women and stands behind even Kypris, Thelxiepeia, and Echidna. If that woman has a name I do not know it; “Seawrack” is as good a name as any.

Remaining where the smooth green shore dipped underwater, because it was plain that she was badly frightened, I asked where she had come from, and she pointed over the side. “Yes,” I said, “I can see you’ve been swimming. Did you swim here from another boat?”

“Down there. Do you want me to show you?” This was said eagerly, so I said I did. She dove, not stepping up onto the gunwale as I would have, but diving across it with liquid ease.

I went aboard then, and Babbie with me, expecting to see her in the water. She was not there, although for ten minutes if not more I walked from one side to the other, and from bow to stern looking for her. She had vanished utterly.

At last I saw my own reflection (which I had been trying to look past before) and realized that I was covered with the batfish’s blood, dry and cracking by this time, and remembered that I had planned to wash myself in the sea as soon as we got back to the sloop.

I had already begun to doubt my sanity. It occurred to me then that the batfish’s blood had somehow poisoned me, or that I had eaten its flesh-I had actually cut some for Babbie-and so poisoned myself. I questioned him then, and from his answers knew that the young woman I had seen had been real. I had seen and spoken to a young woman with one arm who had worn rings and anklets set with gems, a young woman with a fine gold chain about her waist.

“Red earrings, too,” I told him. “Or pink. I caught a glimpse of those through her hair. They may have been coral.” His look said very plainly, Well, I saw no such thing. “A year or two older than Hoof and Hide, I’d say. Rounded and very graceful, but there was muscle there. We saw it when she dove. And she…”

The complete implausibility of what I was saying crashed down on me, and I pulled off my boots and stockings in silence, jumped out of the sloop, and washed myself and my clothes as well.

Returning, I spread everything in the foredeck to dry. “Do you remember the singing we heard? That was her. It had to be, and she’s as beautiful as she is real.” He regarded me sheepishly for a few seconds, then slunk off to the foredeck and his accustomed place in the bow.

I shaved and combed what remained of my hair, and put on fresh underclothes, another tunic, and my best trousers. The ones I had washed in seawater would be stiff and unpleasantly sticky, I knew, unless it rained so that I could rinse them in fresh. Because the air was sullen and still, I thought it might; and I made what small preparations I could, bailing the sloop dry and breaking out the few utensils I had that could be employed to catch rainwater. After that, there was nothing more to do. Neither the vacant plain of green that seemed almost to roll like the sea, nor the oily sea itself, held anything of interest. I reviewed my brief conversation with Seawrack (whom I did not yet call that) trying to decide whether I might have kept her with me if I had spoken differently. For I wanted her to remain with me. I wanted that very badly, as I was forced to admit to myself as I shaved. It was not only that I desired her. (What man can see a beautiful woman naked and not desire her?) Nor was it that I hoped to take her gold; I would have cut off my own arm rather than rob her. It was that I felt certain she needed my help, which I was very eager to provide, and that I had somehow frightened her back to the troubles she had fled.

The men who had commanded the black boat would certainly have robbed me if they could, and would very likely have killed me as well. They would not have killed an attractive young woman, however. Not if I knew anything of criminals and criminal ways. They would have forced her to join them, as they had no doubt forced the woman I had shot and the rest. They had (so I imagined) taken Seawrack’s clothing so she would not escape; but she had escaped, and had first decked herself in their loot when she could find nothing else to wear-unless I was in sober fact a madman.

She had said, “I am one of you.” I should have welcomed her then, and I wished desperately that I had. I had asked about the boat she had come from, and she had said it was “Down there.”

Her boat had sunk after she got here, plainly; and while she had been waiting for us, she had swum underwater to inspect the wreck. When I had said that I wanted to see it, she had assumed that I would go with her, and so had dived into the sea-after which, something had prevented her from surfacing again.

I recalled the batfish with sick horror. It had been in the tarn, not in the sea; but the tarn must have been linked with the sea in some fashion, since its water had been too salt to drink and it could not have supported a creature as large as the devilish thing we found in it for long.

I baited several hooks, tied them to floats, and set them out around the sloop; and after an hour or so of inactivity which by that time I found very welcome, caught some good-sized fish that I gutted and filleted with the same knife that had killed the batfish. Using what little dry wood we had, I built a small fire in the sandbox, rolled my fillets in cornmeal and cooking oil, and fried the first in the little long-handled pan we always kept on the sloop. “Are you going to eat that?”

I did not actually drop the pan, but I must have tilted it enough for the fillet to slide into the fire. “You’re back!” I had practically broken my neck looking around at her; I stood up as I spoke, and that is when it must have happened. “She made me.”

Seawrack was not in the sloop with me, but she had pulled herself up to look over the gunwale. The music of her voice woke Babbie, and I saw again that she was terribly afraid of him. I assured her that he would not harm her, and told him emphatically that he was not to hurt her or do anything that might alarm her.

“Can I…?”

“What is it?” I asked. “You can do anything you like-with me to help, if you’ll let me.”

“Can I have one of the others?”

“These?” I picked up one of the other fillets, and she nodded.

“Absolutely. I’ll cook it for you, too, if you want.” I glanced at the pan and realized that the one I had prepared for myself was burning on the coals. I added, “Not that I’m very good at it.”

She was looking at the one I held and licking her lips, with something utterly wretched in her expression.

“Would you like it now?” I asked. “I know some people enjoy raw fish.”

A new voice said, “Do not give it to her.” It seemed that the words issued from the sea itself.

The top of the speaker’s head broke the water, and she rose effortlessly until the oily swell reached no higher than her waist. I can never forget that gradual, facile ascension. Like the face of Kypris seen in the glass of General Saba’s airship it remains vivid today, the streaming form of a cowled woman robed in pulsing red, a woman three times my own stature at least, with the setting sun behind her. I knelt and bowed my head.

“Help my daughter into your boat.”

I did as she had commanded, although Seawrack needed scant help from me.

“Prepare that fish as you would for yourself. When it is ready, give it to her.”

I said, “Yes, Great Goddess.”

The goddess (for I was and am quite confident that she was one of the Vanished Gods of Blue) used Seawrack’s name, saying, “You must go to your own people. Your time with me is ended.”

Seawrack nodded meekly.

“Do not return. For my own sake I would have you stay. For yours I tell you go.”

“I understand, Mother.”

“This man may hurt you.”

I swore that I would do nothing of the sort.

“If he does, you must bear it as women do. If you hurt him, it is the same.” Then the goddess spoke to me. “Do not permit her to eat uncooked flesh, or to catch fish with her hands. Do not allow her to do anything that your own women do not do.”

I promised I would not.

“Protect her from your beast, as you would one of your own women.”

Her parting words were for Seawrack. “I have ceased to be for you. You are alone with him.”

More swiftly than she had risen, she slid beneath the swell. For a moment I glimpsed through the water-or thought that I did-something huge and dark on which she stood.

Sometime after that, when I had recovered myself, Seawrack asked, “Are you going to hurt me?”

“No,” I said. “I will never hurt you.” I lied, and meant it with all my heart. As I spoke, Babbie grunted loudly from his place in the bow; I feel sure that he was pledging himself just as I had, but it frightened her.

I squatted and rolled her strip of raw fish in the oily cornmeal, put it in the pan, and held the pan over the fire. “Babbie won’t hurt you,” I said. “I’ll make one of these for him next, and then cook another one for me, so that we can all eat together.”

He was already off the foredeck and edging nearer to the fire. “Babbie, you are not to hurt…” I tried to pronounce the name the goddess had used, and the young woman who bore it laughed nervously.

“I can’t say that,” I told her. “Is it all right if I call you Seawrack?”

She nodded.

“This is Babbie. He’s a very brave little hus, and he’ll protect you anytime that you need it. So will I. My name is Horn.” She nodded again.

Thinking of the silver jewelry Marrow had given me to trade with, I said, “You must like rings and necklaces. I have some, though they are not as fine as yours. Would you like to see them? You may have any that you like.” “No,” she told me. “You do.”

“I like them?” I flipped her fillet, catching it in the pan. She laughed again. “I know you do. Mother says so, and she gave me these so you would like me.” She took off her necklace and offered it to me, but I assured her that I liked her more than her jewelry. In the end we put her gold in the box with my silver, from which I gave her an ornamented comb. I contrived a sort of skirt for her as well, wrapping her in a scrap of old sailcloth which I fastened with a silver pin.

That evening, while we were watching the slender column of dark smoke rise and admiring the fashion in which the sparks flung up by our green firewood danced upon the air, she put Babbie’s head in her lap, something I would never have thought of doing. As her left hand stroked it, I noticed the dried blood among the folds of skin on the stump that had been her right arm, and understood why she had been so afraid of Babbie, and whose blood had stained the deck at the bow. “It was not you who sang for us,” I told her. “It was the goddess. I thought at first that it must have been you, but I’ve heard her speak now, and that was her voice.”

“To make you like me.”

“I understand. Like the gold. She wanted to find you a new home. Mothers are like that.”

Seawrack shook her head, but I felt certain I had been right in principle.

So it was, I believe, in the case that the ambassadors from Skany described to me. The woman who had perished when their lander left the Whorl had been the bride’s natural mother. The poor woman who called herself the bride’s mother now had adopted her, or at least considered herself to have adopted her, and when she was old enough had found her a new home in the house of a man of wealth and position. Each was speaking what she believed to be the truth, and to settle the affair between them it would be necessary to determine the degree to which a real adoption had taken place. Had there been any attempt to record the adoption with someone in authority? Did the poor woman’s natural children (if she had any) consider the bride their sister? Did the poor woman habitually speak of her as her daughter? And so on.

Seawrack’s situation differed in that she considered the sea goddess her mother-much more so, I would guess, than the goddess considered Seawrack her daughter. Accepting the gold, I had accepted Seawrack; it was her dowry. The goddess’s song, however, had not been payment but a species of charm (I am using the word very loosely) to soften our hearts and insure Seawrack a more friendly reception next time.

Did it work? I believe that I would have welcomed Seawrack without it, but would I? I was conscious that I was, at least in some sense, betraying Nettle; but what was I to do? Leave a maimed and friendless young woman alone in the middle of the sea?

She was frightened that night, and in pain from her amputation. I held her; and we slept, for the few hours that either of us slept, with my arms around her and her back to my chest.

Too often I have merely glanced at the last sheet before I began to write, and taken up my narration, as I believed, from the point at which I left it the day before. Or as has sometimes happened, from the week before. Today I have read everything I have written already about Seawrack, growing sicker and sicker as I came to appreciate my own failure. I am going to start over.

Seawrack, as I have said, was waiting for us in the sloop. When I was a boy in Viron and I heard from her own lips how Chenille had wandered naked through the tunnels, I had longed to see her like that. She was, as I tried to make clear in the book Nettle wrote with me, a large and muscular woman, with big shoulders, a sharply denned waist, amply rounded hips, and large breasts. At that time, I had never seen a naked woman, not even Nettle, although I had caressed Nettle’s breasts.

When I saw Seawrack in the sloop, it was as if I were a boy again, shaking in the grip of wonder. Perhaps it was the spell of the sea goddess’s song, although I do not think so. If there was magic in it, the magic was in Seawrack’s body, so tenderly and so sleekly curved, in her face, and most of all in her glance. She was a woman, but did not yet know that she was a woman. She had left childhood behind, but had taken all that is most attractive in children with her. Seeing her as the boy I had been would have, I would have given anything in the whorl to have her love. And I felt certain that I would never have it.

Soon I was to gaze upon the sea goddess of the Vanished People. Perhaps she was Scylla in another form, as Silk once confided to me that Kypris was becoming another form of the Outsider, whose many forms had spoken to Silk that unforgettable noon on the ball court as a crowd speaks, while one whispered to his right ear and another to his left.

Here I am reminded irresistibly of Quadrifons, Olivine’s god, he of the four faces. Is it even possible that he is not a form of the Outsider as well? Considering Olivine, and the life she lived as a species of ghost in the Caldé’s Palace, I do not think so. And if Quadrifons (whose sign of crossroads may well have become Pas’s sign of addition) was in the final reckoning none other than the Outsider-which now seems certain to me-might not the Mother be Scylla as well?

Perhaps.

But I do not really believe it. In a town one cobbler, as the saying goes, and in another town another; but they are not the same cobbler, although they own similar tools, do similar work, and may even be similar in appearance.

This is what I think, not what I know:

Having the sea, as we in Old Viron did not, the Neighbors had also a goddess of the sea. She may have been their water goddess as well, as Scylla is at home; I cannot say.

Perhaps all gods and goddesses are very large; certainly Echidna was when I saw her in our Sacred Window. Our gods, the gods of Old Viron, dwelt in Mainframe. I saw Mainframe in company with Nettle and many others, and even what I saw was a very large place, although I was told that most of it was underground. It may be that our gods did not come among us except by enlightenment and possession because they were too large to do so; even the godlings that they send among the people now are, for the most part, immense. A man may like insects. Some men do. A man who likes them may make them gifts, giving a crumb soaked in honey or some such thing. But although that man may walk, he may not walk with his pets the insects. He is too big for it.

So it is, I believe, with the Mother. She dwells in the sea, and Seawrack spoke of hiding at times within her body as one might speak of taking shelter in the Grand Manteion, the Palace, or some other big building. Possibly the Mother’s worshippers cast their sacrifices into the waves instead of burning them. (I do not know, and offer the suggestion as a mere guess.) What seems certain is that her worshippers were the Vanished People, whom I did not then call the Neighbors; and that they are gone, although not entirely gone.

She waits.

For what I do not know. It may be for her worshippers to return again. Or for us to become her new worshippers, as we well may.

Or perhaps merely for death. She shaped herself, I believe, a woman of the Vanished People so that they would love her. We are here now, and so she shaped for me a woman of my own race-a woman beside whom Chenille would stand like a child-who could sing and speak to me. Beneath it the old sea goddess waited, and was not of our human race, nor of the race of the Vanished People, whom I was to come to know.

I once had a toy, a little wooden man in a blue coat who was moved by strings. When I played with him, I made him walk and bow, and spoke for him. I practiced until I thought myself very clever. One day I saw my mother holding the two sticks that held his strings, and my little wooden man saluting my youngest sister much more cleverly than I could have made him do it, and laughing with his head thrown back, then mourning with his face in his hands. I never spoke of it to my mother, but I was angry and ashamed.

It has been a long while since I wrote last. How long I am not sure. I went to Skany as its ambassadors asked, and remained there most of the summer. Now I have returned to this fine, airy house my people here have built for me, which they enlarged while I was gone. The west wing was torn to pieces by a storm, they tell me; but they have rebuilt it and made it larger and stronger, so that I walk there among rooms that seem familiar and feel that I have shrunk.

The storms are worse. Green is great in the sky. Like the eye of a devil, people say; but the truth for me is that it is so large that I look up at it and think on other days, and fancy sometimes that I can smell the rot, and see the trees that are eating trees that are eating trees. I never hear the wild song of the wind without recalling other days still, and how we built our house and our mill, Nettle.

You were the dream of my boyhood. You shared my life, and I shared yours, and together we brought forth new lives. Who can say what the end of that may be? Only the Outsider. He is wise, Nettle. So wise. And because he is, he is just.

I hear the wind’s song now at my window. I have opened the shutters. The flame of my lamp flickers and smokes. Through the open window I see Green, which will be gone in an hour as it passes beyond the windowframe. I want to call out to you that the tides are coming; but no doubt they have come already. It may be that the log walls of our house are turning and leaping in the waves as I write. Time is a sea greater than our sea. You knew that long before I went away. I have learned it here. Its tides batter down all walls, and what the tides of time batter down is never rebuilt.

Not larger.

Not smaller.

Never as it was.

I see that before I left for Skany, that glorious, corrupt town, I wrote of how Seawrack and I slept in the cubby of the sloop, with Babbie sleeping too at our feet, or at least at times pretending to sleep so that he could be in our company; and I said that we did not sleep long.

Nor did we. I remember lying like that, then turning on my back so that both my ears might listen. I wrote about the song of the wind, too; but I am not certain that I had ever really heard it until that night, although I thought I had. To hear the song of the wind truly, as I heard it that night, I think that you must hear it as I did, lying on your back in a rocking, pitching boat upon the wide, wide sea, with a woman younger than yourself asleep beside you.

The wind was a woman, too. Sometimes it was a woman like General Mint, a small woman with a neat, pure, honest little face, a woman in flowing black astride the tallest white stallion anyone ever saw, singing as she rode like a flame before a thousand wild troopers who rode as she did or ran like wolves, firing and reloading as they came and halting only to die.

And sometimes the wind was a woman like the tall, proud women of Trivigaunte, galloping along Sun Street with their heads up and their lances leveled, women singing to their wonderful horses, horses that had always to be held back and never had to be urged forward. And sometimes the wind was a singing woman like the one beside me, a sea woman who sings like her Mother, a woman that no one ever completely understands, with silver-blue combers in her eyes.

As I listened, the wind seemed to me more and more to be all three women and a million more, spurred onward-faster, always faster-by the rumbling voice of Pas. Beneath me, the sloop was lifted by giant’s hand, and rolled so far that Seawrack was tumbled onto me and clutching me in fear while Babbie squealed at the tiller. Outside the shelter of the foredeck, I was drenched to the skin in an instant. It was pitch dark except when the lightning flashed, and the sloop was laid over on her beam ends and in danger of being dismasted. I meant to cut her moorings before they pulled her under, but there was no need. The stakes I had pushed into the damp softness of that mossy shore had pulled free, and we were being driven before the storm like a child’s lost boat or a stick of driftwood, half foundering. I put out the little jib, hoping to steady her and keep her stern to the waves, but had hardly set it before it was carried away.

I will not write about everything that took place that night, because most of it would be of interest only to sailors, who are not apt to be found so far inland as this. I rigged a sea anchor that tamed the diabolical pandemonium of boat and storm to mere insanity; and Seawrack and I bailed and bailed until I thought my arms would fall off of my shoulders; but the sloop never foundered or sunk, or lost a stick. I have never been prouder of something that I myself have made, not even my mill.

What I want to tell whoever may read this is that in the flashes of lightning, which for whole hours were so frequent as to provide a hectic illumination that was nearly constant, I saw the green plain part for us, ripped in two by the fury of the waves, and seeing it so-lifted by great waves at one moment, then crashing down upon the sea again at the next-I knew it for what it was.

At that place in the middle of the sea, the bottom is not leagues removed from the surface; but is, as Seawrack confirmed for me, not more than two or three chains distant from it. Great herbs (I do not know what else to call them) grow there that are not trees, nor grasses, nor ferns, but share the natures of all three. Their tangled branches, lying upon the surface, are draped with the smooth green life over which Babbie and I wandered. It may be that it covers them as orchids cover our trees here in Gaon, or as strangling lianas cover the cannibal trees of Green. Or it may be that they cover themselves with it as the trees of land cover themselves with leaves and fruit. I do not know. But I know that it is so, because I saw it that night. I saw what I had once thought islands torn like banana leaves, and tossed like flotsam by the waves.

Something climbed into our sloop that night that was neither a beast nor a man, and was not a thing of the sea nor a thing of the land, nor even a thing of the air like the inhumi. I hesitated to write of it, because I know that it will not be believed; after thinking it over, I understand that I must. How many travelers’ tales, although full of wise advice and the soundest information, have been cast aside because among their thousands of lines there were two or three that their readers could not be brought to believe?

If you do not believe this, believe at least that I believed that I saw it. And Seawrack also saw it. She confirmed for me that she had, although she did not like to speak of it. Babbie saw it, too, and rushed at it; it laid hold of him as a man might lay hold of a lady’s lapdog, and would, I believe, have thrown him over the side and into the raging water if Seawrack had not prevented it. In appearance it was like a man of many arms and legs, long dead and covered over with crabs and little shellfish and other things; and yet it moved and possessed great strength, although I think it feared the storm as much or more than we. I do not know how such a monstrous thing came to be, but I have thought about it again and again, and at last settled on the explanation that I offer here. If you find a better one, I congratulate you.

Imagine that one of the Vanished People gained great favor with one of his people’s gods, those gods who are said by us to have vanished too. Or who, at least, we think of as having vanished. This god, let us suppose, offered his worshipper a great gift-but only one. Silk, I believe, might say that this worshipper was in truth no favorite of the god’s but merely thought he was. Many times our own gods, the gods of the Long Sun Whorl, punished those they hated with riches, power, and fame that destroyed them.

Offered such a gift, may not this man of the Vanished People have chosen a life without end? The immortal gods have it, or are said to. Given the gift that he had chosen, he may have lived for centuries enjoying food and women and fine days and, in short, everything that pleased him. Perhaps he tired of all of it at last. Or perhaps he merely discovered at length that though he himself could not die, the race that had given him birth was dwindling every year. Or perhaps he simply chose, in the end, to abide with the goddess who had favored him. In any event, he must have cast himself into the sea.

All of which is mere speculation. No doubt I have rendered myself ridiculous even to those who believe me. Remember, please, that those who believe me are not themselves ridiculous-I saw what I saw.

The storm had come out of the northeast, as well as I could judge. It left us out of sight of land, and some considerable distance south of the place at which it had found us, as well as I could judge from the stars on the following night. We had no way of knowing how far west it had driven us, but sailed west-northwest hoping each day to sight land.

Water was a constant concern, although Seawrack required very little. We caught such rain as the good gods provided, taking down the mainsail and rigging it in such a way as to catch a good deal and funnel it (once the sail had been wet enough to clean it of salt) into our bottles. In fair weather, when there was little wind or none, all three of us swam together beside the sloop. I found, not at all to my surprise, that Babbie was a better swimmer than I; but found too, very much to my surprise, that Seawrack was a far better swimmer than Babbie. She could remain under the water so long that it terrified me, although when she realized that I was both concerned and astonished, she pretended she could not. One night when I kissed her, my lips discovered her gill slits, three, closely spaced and nearer the nape of her neck than I would have imagined. I asked her no questions about them, then or later.

At first she said nothing about the goddess she called the Mother. After nearly a week had passed, I happened to mention Chenille, saying that although she had known nothing of boats, she had understood Dace’s perfectly when Scylla possessed her. Seawrack seized upon the concept of divine possession at once and asked many questions about it, only a few of which I could answer. At length I said that she, whose mother was a goddess, should be instructing me.

“She never said she was,” Seawrack told me with perfect seriousness.

“Still, you must have known it.”

Seawrack shook her lovely head. “She was my mother.”

At that point I very nearly asked her whether her mother had not demanded prayers and sacrifices. “We used to give our gods gifts, when I lived inside the Whorl,” I said instead, “but that was not because they required such things of us. They were far richer than we were, but they had given us so much that we felt we ought to give them whatever we could in return.”

“Oh, yes.” Seawrack smiled. “I used to bring Mother all sorts of things. Shells, you know. Lots of shells and pretty stones, and sometimes colored sand. Then she would say that my face was the best gift.”

“She loved you.” At that moment, as at so many others, I felt I knew a great deal about love; my heart was melting within me.

Seawrack agreed. “She used to look like a woman for me and hold me in her arms, and I used to think the woman was the real her and make her bring the woman back. She looked like a woman for you too. Remember?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll never forget that.”

“When I was older, she would just wrap herself around me, and that was nice, like when you hold me. But not the same. What do they ask gods for, in the Whorl?”

“Oh, food and peace. Sometimes for a son or daughter.”

“For gold? She said you liked it.”

“We do,” I admitted. “Every human being wants gold-every human being except you. Because they do, gold is a good friend to those who have it. Often it brings them good things without going away itself.”

“Has my gold brought you anything?”

I smiled. “Not yet.”

“It’s old. You say that old things are always tired.”

“Old people.” I had been trying to explain that she was much younger than I, and what that would mean to both of us when we found land, and people besides ourselves. “Not old gold. Gold never gets old in that way.”

“Mine did. It wasn’t bright anymore, and the little worms were building houses on it. Mother had to clean it, pulling it through the sand. I helped.”

“She must have had them a long time. Possibly for as long as you lived with her.” Privately I thought that it must have been a good deal longer than that.

“Can I see it again?”

I got the box out for her, and told her she could wear her gold if she wished, that it was hers, not mine.

She selected a simple bracelet, narrow and not at all heavy, and held it up so that it coruscated in the sunshine. “This is pretty. Do you know who made it?”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” I said, and wondered as I spoke whether she would tell me. “It could have been brought from the Long Sun Whorl on a lander; but I would guess that it is the work of the Vanished People, the people who used to live here on Blue long before we humans came.”

“You’re afraid of them.”

It had been said with such certainty that I knew it would be futile to argue. “Yes. I suppose I am.”

“All of you, I mean. All of us.” She turned the bracelet to and fro, admiring it, then held it in her teeth to slip over her wrist.

“The Long Sun Whorl was our whorl, our place,” I told her. “It was made especially for us, and we were put into it by Pas. This was their whorl. Perhaps it was made for them, but we don’t even know that. They’re bound to resent us, if any of them are still alive; and so are their gods. Their gods must still exist, since gods do not die.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Where I used to live, the greatest of all goddesses tried to kill Pas. Wise people who knew about it thought that she had, although most of us didn’t even know she’d tried. Then Pas came back. He had planted himself, in a way, and grew again. Do you know about seeds, Seawrack?”

“Planting corn. You told me.”

“He re-grew himself from seed, so to speak. That’s what a pure strain of corn does. It produces seed before it dies, and when that seed sprouts, the strain is back for another year, just as it was before.”

“Do you think the Vanished People might have done that?” From her tone, it was a new idea to her.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I have no way of knowing what they may or may not have done.”

“You told me the seed waited for water.”

“Yes, for rain, and warmer weather.”

Babbie ambled over to see what Seawrack and I had in the box, snuffled its rings and chains and snorted in disgust, and returned to his place beside the butt of the bowsprit. I, too, looked away, if only mentally. My eyes saw bracelets and anklets of silver and gold, but I was thinking about Seawrack’s implied question. Assuming that the Vanished People were capable of coming back in some fashion, as Pas had, what might constitute warmth and rain for them?

Would we know, if they returned? Would I? At that time I did not even know what they had looked like, and so far as I knew, no one did. Doubtless they had been capable of making pictures of themselves, since they had certainly been capable of constructing the great building whose ruins we had discovered when we arrived; but any such pictures-if they had ever existed-had been erased by time, on Lizard and in the region around Viron at least. Seawrack, who appeared so fully human, had gills beneath the golden hair that hung below her waist. Were those gills the gift of the goddess, or the badge of the original owners of this whorl we call ours? At that time, I had no way of knowing.

“I think I see another boat.” She rose effortlessly, pointing at a distant sail.

“Then we’d better get these out of sight.” I began to shut the lid.

“Wait.” As swiftly as a bird, her hand dipped into the box. “Look at this, Horn.” Between thumb and forefinger she held a slender silver ring, newly made in New Viron. “I like it. It’s small and light. All that gold made it hard to swim, but this won’t. Will you give it to me?”

“Certainly,” I said. “It’s a great pleasure.” I took it from her and slipped it on her finger.

In the light airs that were all we had that day, the other boat took hours to reach us. I had ample time to break out my slug gun and load it, and to put a few more cartridges in my pockets.

“Are you going to fight with that?” I had told her about the pirates.

“If I must. I hope I won’t. Sailors are usually friendly. We trade information, and sometimes supplies. I may be able to get us more water.” I hesitated. “If they’re not friendly, I want you to dive into the sea at once. Don’t worry about me, just swim away to-to someplace deep where they won’t be able to find you.”

She promised solemnly that she would, and I knew that she would not.

It was a much larger boat than mine, two-masted and blunt-bowed, with a crew of five. The owner (a stocky, middle-aged man who spoke in a way that recalled Wijzer) hailed us, asking where we were bound.

“Pajarocu!” I told him.

“Riding light you are,” he said, clearly assuming that we were traders too.

Soon his big boat lay beside our small one. Lines from bow and stern united the two, we introduced ourselves, and he invited us aboard. “In these waters not so many boats I see.” He chuckled. “But farther than this I would sail a woman so pretty to see. Whole towns even, not one woman like your wife they got.” One of his crew set up a folding table for us, with four stools.

I asked how far we were from the western continent.

“So many leagues you want? That I cannot tell. On which way bound you are, too, it depends. North by northwest for Pajarocu you must sail.”

“Have you been there?”

He shook his head. “Not, I think. To a place they said, yes, I have been. But to Pajarocu?” He shrugged.

I explained about the letter, and brought my copy from the sloop to show him.

“One it says.” He tapped the paper. “Your wife they let you bring?”

Drawing upon Marrow’s argument, I said, “One, if all the towns they have invited send somebody, and if all the people who are sent arrive in time. We don’t believe either one is likely, and neither does anybody else in New Viron. If there are empty places, and we think there will be, Seawrack can come with me. If there aren’t, she can wait in Pajarocu and take care of our boat.” I tried to sound confident.

The sailor who had set up our table brought a bottle and four small drinking glasses, and sat down with us.

“My son,” Strik announced proudly. “Number two on my boat he is.”

Everyone smiled and shook hands.

“Captain Horn?” the owner’s son asked. “From the town of New Viron you hail?”

I nodded.

So did Strik, who said, “To that not yet we come, Captain Horn. Looking for you somebody is?”

My face must have revealed my surprise.

“Just one fellow it is. Toter’s age he is.” (Toter was his son.)

“Us about Captain Horn he asked. Alone in a little boat he sails.” The corners of Toter’s mouth turned down, and his hands indicated the way in which the little boat was tossed about by the waves.

“When asked he did, Captain Horn we don’t know.” Strik pulled the cork with his teeth and poured out a little water-white liquor for each of us. “This to him we say, and in his little boat off he goes.”

“You’re from the mainland yourselves? The eastern one, I mean. From Main?” I was trying desperately to recall the name of the town from which Wijzer had hailed.

“Ya, from Dorp we come. New Viron we know. A good port it is. Word to you from somebody back there he brings, you think?”

I did not know, and told him so. If I had been compelled to guess, I would have said that Marrow had probably sent someone with a message.

Seawrack asked how long we would have to sail to find drinking water.

“Depends, it does, Merfrow Seawrack. Such weather it is.” Strik spat over the side. “Five days it could be. Ten, also, it could be.”

“It isn’t bad for me.” She gave me a defiant stare. “He makes me drink more than I want to, but the Babbie is always thirsty.”

I explained that Babbie was our hus.

“You suffer too.” She sniffed and tasted Strik’s liquor and put it down. “You pour it into your glass, then back into the bottle when you think I’m not looking.”

I declared that I saw no point in drinking precious water that I did not want.

“A little water I can let you have,” Strik told us, and we both thanked him.

Toter told us, “If for two or three days you and your wife due west will sail, a big island where nobody lives you will find. Good water it has. There last we watered. Not so big as Main it is, but mountains it has. A lookout you should keep, but hard to miss it is.”

“We’ll go there,” Seawrack declared to me, and her tone decided the matter.

Two days have passed, and now I have re-read this whole section beginning with my encounter with the monstrous flatfish with disgust and incredulity. Nothing that I wanted to say in it was actually said. Seawrack’s beauty and the golden days we spent aboard the sloop before Krait came, the water whorl that with her help I glimpsed, and a thousand things that I wished with all my heart to set down here, remain locked in memory.

No doubt such memories cannot really be expressed, and certainly they cannot be expressed by me. I have found that out.

Let me say this. Once when I was swimming underwater in imitation of her, I saw her swimming toward me, and she was swift and graceful beyond all telling. There are no words for that, as there are none for her beauty. She caught my hand, and we broke the surface, up from the divine radiance of the sea into the blinding glare of the Short Sun, and the droplets on her eyelashes were diamonds.

You that read of all this in a year that I will never see will think me wretched, perhaps-certainly I was wretched enough fighting the inhumi and their slaves on Green, fighting the settlers, and before the end even fighting my own son.

Or possibly you may envy me this big white house that we in Gaon are pleased to call a palace, my gems and gold and racks of arms, and my dozen-odd wives.

But know this: The best and happiest of my hours you know nothing about. I have seen days like gold.

Seawrack sings in my ears still, as she used to sing to me alone in the evenings on our sloop. Sometimes-often-I imagine that I am actually hearing her, her song and the lapping of the little waves. I would think that a memory so often repeated would lose its poignancy, but it is sharper at each return. When I first came here, I used to fall asleep listening to her; now her song keeps me from sleeping, calling to me.

Calling.

Seawrack, whom I abandoned exactly as I abandoned poor Babbie.

Seawrack.