Return to the Whorl

19. THE LAST TIME

Juganu and Scylla wanted to go back to the Red Sun Whorl right away; but Father said there was no point in going from the boat and most likely we would end up back on the river boat if we did, which was not where we wanted. What we needed was a nice safe house where things would be all right the whole time we were gone. That meant we had to go back to New Viron, and what with bad wind and no wind it took three days. Juganu did not like it, but there was nothing we could do about it.

I thought we would go to Uncle Calf's, but Father decided on another place instead, in a good big house that belonged to a lady named Capsicum. Hide had met her already and she never did get over thinking I was him. But she was a nice old lady.

Father explained what we wanted, and she said she had just the place, it was a guest room that only had one window but there were two beds in it. We went in there, and it was a big window but there were bars on it. She did not call them bars and they were twisted around pretty to make a flower in the middle, but they were bars. I grabbed hold and tried to pull them out, and I could not even get them to bend a little.

She went away, and we shut the door and bolted it, and lay down on the beds, Father and me on one and Juganu on the other. After that I stared at the ceiling for a long time and nothing happened. It was about two o'clock and the sunshine in there was pretty bright. It was an interesting ceiling, because somebody had painted it like you were upside-down and looking down at a garden. There was a fountain with Green reflected in it, and those big white flowers that bloom at night, and even a bat. But after a while I got pretty tired of it.

I guess Father did too, because he said, "What are you thinking about Juganu? You're fighting me in some way."

Juganu said he was not, and they talked about that awhile. The bird started to talk, sometimes on its own and sometimes Scylla. I did not like that, and I think Father must have seen it, because he told it to be still. Then he said for Juganu to come over and lie down where I was, and for me to lie down in his bed. I did not like that either, because I was naturally worried about Father. But I did it.

Then he started talking to Juganu about the place we were trying to go to. I never heard him talk like that before, or anybody. I am going to write down all I can remember, but I do not think I can make you hear it the way I did, lying on my back looking at the bat and watching how the room got dark.

"Think of a whorl so old that even its seasons have worn out," Father said, "a whorl on which they had jungles like yours once, with wide-leafed plants and many flowers and huge trees. It is too cold for that in our time, and when the people of that whorl speak of the present they intend five hundred years.

"The sun is red. Shadeup is always cold, and it is cool even when the red sun is at its highest. You can see the stars all day long, unless they are hidden by clouds. Think of a whorl where beggars kill stray dogs for their pelts."

He talked a lot more, and then he said, "What fills your mind's eye, Juganu? Where do your thoughts fly? Be honest with me."

"I was thinking about the whorl you described," Juganu said, "about the whorl we visited, and the boat of the winged woman."

"What else?"

"That I'll be a man like you there, a better man than you, Rajan, because I'll be younger and stronger, as young and strong as your son, and I won't have to feed from him to make me strong. Do you know how we breed, Rajan? We of The People?"

"I know that your eggs must be hatched in sun-warmed water. Nothing beyond that."

The bird said, "Not man. People? Never! No Whorl," and I knew it was Scylla. "No there. Good! Bad things!"

Juganu sat up. "We were there! They brought us! We're everywhere!"

Father made him he back down and told Scylla to be quiet if she wanted to do what the Great Scylla had told her to. She did not say much after that. Maybe not anything.

"How do you breed, Juganu? If it's not too personal, I would be interested to know."

"The man must build a hut for decency's sake," Juganu began in his old, cracked voice. "He selects a good place, a private place where the sun you call short kisses the water. He builds it of little green branches woven together. Weaving is difficult for us but we can do it, and if a man wishes to mate that is what he must do."

Father said, "This is on Green."

"Always on Green. Your waters aren't warm enough for us, and haven't the right life in them. There must be life of the right kind in the water, or the children will starve.

"He builds the hut and trims it with flowers, and he goes away for a day. When he returns there is no one, perhaps, and his flowers have wilted. He takes them far away and throws them into the water, and in the morning he gathers fresh ones, more than before, and trims the hut again. Once again he goes away.

"At evening he returns. The flowers he picked that morning have faded, and the leaves of the green branches from which he built his hut are flaccid and yellow. He destroys it, and carries the withered branches far away to throw in the water. Next morning he begins a new hut, higher and longer and more cunningly woven than the first. Its building requires a day. Next day he trims it with flowers both inside and out. And then he goes away."

I was about ready to go away myself by then, but Father was lying there very quietly waiting to hear more. Their bed was only about two cubits from mine, and he was lying on the side nearest me. So I could see his face pretty good just by turning my head, and he looked like he was hearing something important.

"This time a woman has come," Juganu said. "She is lying in his hut. How does he know? By a thousand signs, and none. Perhaps some small plant that he spared for the beauty of its foliage has been trodden upon. Perhaps she has taken a single blossom from his hut to wear.

"He knows. He reshapes himself then, becoming a man both young and strong. Within-"

I said, "You can't do that." It got me a look from Father.

"She has made herself such a woman as young men dream of. You have told me about your daughter Jahlee, how lovely she was. Your son has told me, too. That is how the woman looks when he sees her in the dimness of the hut he built and made beautiful for her. All these things, you understand, are their promises to each other. Their promises concerning the children they will have. You, Rajan, will understand what I mean by this. Your son will not, and should not."

Father said, "Yes, I understand. Please continue."

"In his hut they love as men and women love. There is a game they play. I think, Rajan, that you can guess what that game is."

His pet said, "Tell bird."

"He is a human man for her, and she is a human woman for him. He tells her that he came to Green on a lander, as human men do, and she tells him that she ran away from her father's house and happened upon his beautiful hut. It is not a lie."

I wanted to say that it was, but Father said, "No, it isn't. I understand. It is a drama."

"Exactly. They are the audience as well as the actors. I have been an actor, Rajan."

Father said, "I understand," again.

"This lasts all night. In the morning, when the sun's hot kisses fall on the water, they say, `We must wash ourselves after so much love.' They swim together, and she releases her eggs and he his sperm, and it is over."

Neither of them said anything after that. The bird talked a little, but it was not Scylla and did not make sense. Finally I said, "Father wanted to know what you're thinking about that keeps us from going where we want to go, Juganu."

Father told me to be quiet, and I said, "Well, I think he ought to. You're going to take him somewhere where he can be a real man. I think he owes it to you to tell you."

"He has," Father said, and that shut me up.

I do not know how long it was before Father started talking again, but it was a long time. I guess he was thinking of what to say. When he started again his voice was so quiet I could hardly hear.

"Soon it will be evening," he said. "If we still haven't gone, we'll go up onto the roof of this house. Standing on the tiles I will point and you will peer until at last you see a certain dim red star. It's a long, long way from here. Think of it now, the sky like black velvet strewn with diamonds in the bottom of a grave, and among the diamonds a minute drop of blood.

"There is a whorl circling that star, an ancient whorl. On that whorl, Juganu, there is an old city you have seen, and through it a river. Its waters are turbid and foul, and seem scarcely to move. You know that river; you have sailed on it. There are women in that river, women who swim up from the sea. I do not speak of the feignings of the sea goddess, but of real women. Some are as tall as towers, some no larger than children. Their hair is green and streams behind them when they swim, their nipples black, and their eyes and lips and nails as red as blood.

"Steps wet and black with river water lead from the river to a street of crumbling tenements. There are women in nearly every room of those tenements, women who will sell their bodies for a round piece of stamped metal. Some are beautiful, and many are less than beautiful in ways you may find attractive."

He said more about that, but I do not remember most of it, and I am not going to write it.

Then he said, "Follow the street higher, and you meet with the iron gates of their necropolis. It is to that necropolis, that silent city of the dead, that we go; but first we must visit the lander beyond it, the ancient lander where the torturers ply their trade. The torturers are men, but there are fair women among their prisoners. They are helpless and afraid, confined to underground cells and grateful-those who have not lost their reason-to anyone who befriends them. Many were the concubines of the calde of the city, and these are the fairest of the fair. Day after day they groom and perfume themselves for the rescuer of whom they dream, the rescuer who for most will never come. Tall and fair they think him, and a thousand times they have practiced the kisses they will give him… the caresses that have made him their own…"

Father stopped talking, and it seemed to me that he had stopped a long time ago someplace a long way from where I was. I opened my eyes and saw daylight and stars, like there were stars painted on the ceiling instead of the white flowers, and broken stuff like glass. I sat up just as the bird flew through the break, and the first person I saw was the girl that had been inside it. Here I wish I could really say how she looked. It was not exactly happy and was not exactly angry either. She looked the way a person does when all the deciding and worrying is over, and her eyes could have burned right through you.

Father sat up then, and Juganu. Juganu looked the same as on the river boat, but Father looked the way he had in Capsicum's big house, only younger. Before he had looked a lot like our real father, and Hide says that is the way he always looked on the Red Sun Whorl. Now he did not. He looked serious, but he had two eyes again and they just shone. He got up as if he did not weigh anything, and helped me up.

The girl said, "That it?" and pointed.

Naturally I looked where she pointed. There was a little paved place down below with a post in the middle, and on the other side of it a pretty big wall that had fallen down in one place to where it was just a pile of slabs.

On the other side was a cemetery so big it seemed like the whole whorl had to be dead and buried in it. There were graves with every kind of monument, statues of men crying and women crying and I guess of the people who were dead and all sorts of things, and pillars with things on top. Between them were trees and bushes and grass, and little narrow paths that looked white. I found out later that they were made of bones. It all went on for a long way down the side of the big hill, and past it you could barely make out the buildings Father had talked about, and the river.

The girl had taken hold of his arm and was trying to pull him over to the hatch in the middle of the floor, but he would not go. She said, "We here! Why wait?"

He said, "For shadelow, of course. Do you imagine that we can simply go down there and wander about?"

He always wore that black robe that he had the corn in, but it was different, and it started changing more right then while I looked. The main thing was that it kept getting blacker and blacker. It got so black I thought it could not get any blacker, then it kept on getting blacker after that until it looked like what Azoth did when the blade came out and cut through that boat. Finally it was like it was not there at all, but like you were blind in the part of your eye that was looking at it.

There was a hood, too, with red trim on it.

Juganu went over and lifted the hatch while Father and the girl were arguing and said he was going down but if he got caught he would not tell about us. Father explained that they could not hold him anyway, and helped him make one of the black robes for himself and a big straight sword that was sharp on both sides, and told him the name of his friend and told him to send him up if he met him.

Juganu went, and for a long time nothing happened. Father talked to the girl, but I did not pay much attention. Mostly I looked at the other landers around ours, and the river and the city. I will not try to tell about it, because I could not. You could not imagine it, no matter how hard you tried. Some of the buildings were like mountains, but in it they were not huge or even big, they were just bumps. Father used to talk sometimes about the jungle where Sinew was, how dangerous it was. But that city looked worse to me, leagues and leagues and leagues of stone and brick, and millions and millions and millions of people that were worse than any animal. I would have gone home right then, if I could.

The bird came back saying, "Good place! Good hole!" I never did like it much, and I think it was afraid of me because I look like my brother but I am somebody else. Anyway, I liked it less after that, and I am not sorry that it went with him.

Then a boy came up. He was one of the apprentices. From the way Father had talked, I thought he was going to be my age, but he was younger. He was pretty big already, though. You could see he was going to be tall.

We sat on the floor then, Father, the girl, the boy, and me. The boy asked Father about his book, whether he was still writing it. Father said, "No, I've put it aside forever. If my sons or my wife wish to read what I have written, they may. But if they want it finished, they will have to finish it themselves. What about yours? The last time we spoke, you said you were going to write someday. Have you begun it?"

The boy laughed and said, no, he was going to wait until he had more time and more to put in it. Then he said something I have remembered a lot. He said, "I won't put you in it, though. No one would believe you."

It is exactly the way I feel about Father. I knew how right it was as soon as I heard it, and it is still right. The others are going to write all the other parts of this, about the wedding and all that. My part is almost over with. So I am going to try to say it, to tell you about Father the way he seemed to me right here. Even if you do not believe me, even if you think that what I say cannot have been true, you will know anyway that I thought it was. It will let you see him the way we did, a little.

Father was good.

That is the hard part to explain to everyone, and it is the thing my aunt is trying to explain, too. If you meet her and she starts telling you about him, how scary he could be, and things moving themselves and the Vanished People coming down the street and knocking on her door, that is what you have to remember if you want to understand.

If somebody frightens people, everybody thinks he has to be bad. But when you were around Father you were practically always scared to death, scared that he might really find out one day the way you were and do something about it.

I was not going to tell why I did not like his bird, but I will just to get you to understand. It was not really a nice bird at all. It was dirty, and it did not sing. It was noisy sometimes when I did not want it to be, and it would eat fish guts and rotten meat. After I got to know Father (this was in Dorp and on Wijzer's boat) I could see that the bird was exactly like me, except that it was a bird and I was a person. Father knew exactly how bad we were but he loved us just the same. Deep down, I think he loved everybody, even Jahlee and Juganu. He loved some people more than others, our mother especially. But he loved everybody, and until you meet somebody like him, you will never know how scary that was.

He was good, like I said up there. He was probably the best man alive, and I think that when somebody is really, really good, as good as he was, the rules change.

"A long time ago," he told the boy, "this girl was a sort of princess here on your whorl. Her name was Cilinia. Have you heard of her?"

The boy said he had not.

"She died here many years ago-many centuries, I believe. Now she must find her grave."

"You're ghosts." The boy looked around at us. He was not afraid, or if he was he did not show it. But he did not smile, either. He did not have a good face for smiling, anyway. "When you were here before you said you weren't."

"That was because you meant the spirits of the dead," Father explained. "My son and I are not dead, and neither is Juganu, the man who sent you to us. This girl is, however, and we must help her. Will you help us?"

He did, too. He took us to an old stone building where there were lots of coffins. They were supposed to be up on stone shelves, but most of them were not, and a lot were empty.

"Here," the girl said, and she went into the darkest corner. I did not think there was anything there, but Father was making a light with his hand, and she was right. There was a little coffin only about half the size of the others in there, pushed way over. There were spiderwebs all over it, so it was a lot easier to miss than to see.

She looked down at it awhile, and Father asked if it would be better if he put out his light. She said no, but he closed his hand until it was almost dark. Finally she said it was no good, we would have to take the lid off for her. It took a special tool, but Father made one and gave it to the boy. He said that since the boy was the only one who was really here, it at would be better if he did it.

The boy asked, "I'm just pretending you're really here?" But Father had stepped back into a corner and would not answer him. (It seemed right then like Father was not much more than a shadow and a little gleam of light, like there was a chink in the wall there that let the sunlight in.) Finally I said, "That isn't quite it either. You better take out those screws like Father told you." I am not sure the boy heard me, though.

He did it anyway. I do not think the tool Father had made felt right, because he kept stopping to look at it. He would use it awhile, maybe taking out one. Then he would stop and study it, and shut his eyes, and study it some more. So it took a while, but eventually the last one was out and he looked around for Father and asked if he should take the top off.

Father was on his knees drawing the sign of addition over and over the way he did sometimes and did not answer, but the girl said, "Yes! Oh, yes! Do it!" That was funny, because I could see the boy could hear her but could not see her.

I went over so I could look inside, and the bird sat on my shoulder. It was about the first time he was that friendly, and I was not so sure I liked it. I am still not sure.

Only it was not as easy as we thought it was going to be. The lid stuck and I had to kneel down at the other end and wrestle with it. The boy could see me then and hear me too, and I could see he felt better about that. It told me something about the way we were in the Red Sun Whorl that I had not known before. We got more real there when we did things with people who were really there. When we did not, we got less real, even to each other.

Maybe even to ourselves, but I am not sure about that.

Just the same, I think that when Father wanted to bring us back that was what he did. He thought about us, and not at all about the Red Sun Whorl, and somehow, by what he said and the way he acted, he made us think that way, too.

We got the lid off after a lot of fooling around. We thought for a while there might be some kind of secret catch, but it was just stuck. There were metal corners on the box part and on the lid, and they had rusted together. When they came loose, the girl got a lot more real and even pushed us away. Her face was just terrible. It was like the only thing in the whole whorl she wanted was inside the coffin.

Maybe it was, but she did not get it right then. There was a casket (I guess that is what you call it) inside all soldered out of sheet lead. The boy had a little knife and he cut the lead for her, along the big end and down both sides. We grabbed hold of it then and were able to peel it back.

There was not much inside, just some dirt and hair and old bones, and a little jewelry. Not much. I thought the boy would take the rings and so forth, but he did not. After I had seen the inside I looked back up at the girl to see what she thought of it, and she said, "I died young. It can't have been long after I was scanned for the Whorl." She was talking to Father then, not to me, and she had stopped talking like his bird.

He opened his hand all the way. It got so bright it hurt my eyes. The bird has this thin filmy sort of eyelid he uses in bright sun, and next time I looked at him he had it.

Then Father said, "I imagine so, Cilinia." From the way he said it, you knew it was the last thing he would ever say to her. I wish I knew how to do that with my voice. I have tried it, but for me it never sounds right.

Father had gotten a lot solider-looking when the light got bright. I do not know about me and the bird, I was not paying much attention to us just then, but the girl got all wispy.

After that, she went. It was like she was water in a bowl, and the dirt in the lead casket was the ground, and somebody we could not see was pouring her out. Maybe the light was.

When she was gone, Father closed his hand again. The boy wanted to know if he should put the lid back. Father said yes, and, "I can't say what may happen if you open it again. Probably nothing. Still, I advise you not to."

The boy said he would not. He screwed the lid back down, which did not take nearly as long as it had to get it off, and we shoved it back in the corner again.

When it was done, the bird said, "Bad thing. Bad girl." You could tell it was not quite sure she was gone.

I thought that was funny and said something about it to Father, and he said, "Nor am I. Back on Blue, she may possess Oreb just as she did; and in fact, I think it more likely than not, though I hope I am wrong."

After that we went back outside. It was practically night, what old people call shadelow, the time when there are shadows everyplace. There was a great big rosebush growing right by the door of the stone building with about a hundred purple roses on it. I had not noticed the smell when we came in, or anyway I do not think I did. But when we went out I noticed it a lot. The night seemed to bring it out, and it was almost like it followed us. Maybe we got it on our clothes. It was sweet but heavy, the kind of smell you like at first, but after a little while it makes you tired. Now, just about anytime I smell anything like that I think about the girl, and the dirt that was inside the lead box. She was right at the mean stage a lot of girls get in, but she would probably have gotten over it when she got older. She might have turned out to be a pretty nice person after all.

While we were walking, the boy told Father he wanted him to see his dog. He said he had wanted to show it to him the last time Father was here, but Father had not gotten to see it, so could he show him now? Father said sure.

That got me to thinking about what we were doing now instead of the girl and whether she had really gone away. I mean died, because that is what it was, I know. So I asked if we were just going back to the tower to see this dog, and I said that if that was all it was maybe it would be better for us to go home.

Father said, "We've accomplished the task we set out to do, but the most difficult part of our trip remains, my son. We must persuade-or force-Juganu to return with us."

I wanted to say, "Don't you think Juganu will want to go?" but that would have been dumb because I could see from what he had said that he did not. So I said, "You told him what would happen if he didn't."

Father did not say anything. If you asked him a question that really was a question he just about always answered some way, I think because he was so polite. But if you just said something like that to show you would like to know something, pretty often he did not say anything back. By that time I knew all about that so I did not do it very often anymore.

The boy said, "Do you want to look for your friend first, or see Triskele?"

"Both," Father told him.

After that, nobody said anything until we got to the little gate. Then the boy knocked and called out, "We are returning, Brother Porter!"

That was the torturer at the gate, a big fat man with a big sword. He stared at us through the little window, and it was the first time it soaked through to me that I should have had a black robe and a sword too, like Father had helped Juganu make.

So I made them as fast as I could while he was looking at me, and it was probably a mistake. The sword was not sharp, for one thing, and the robe was really just kind of a black sheet tied around my neck, and I still had on the tunic that Mother had made for me back home. Brother Porter opened the gate for us anyway, but he was trembling so bad that Father stayed behind to talk to him and sort of tell him it was all right.

The boy and I went on. Father made a little motion to say we ought to, and I think that was right, because the boy helped me with my robe and I found out I could make my sword sharp by pinching my fingers together and running them down the edge. I tried to make my tunic go away, too, but it would not, so the boy showed me how to pull my robe together and keep it that way, the way a real torturer would. We went back in the tower after that and down into the Juzgado part, because I had asked the boy if there were women torturers, and he said no. So I was pretty sure that was where Juganu would be. I thought maybe I could find him and get him to go back, and that would save a little time. Besides the boy said it was where his dog was.

Pretty soon we heard Juganu's voice. It was noisy down there, with somebody yelling or screaming all the time. But in a way it was quiet, too, because nobody was listening. When somebody talked the way Juganu did, just the way a person usually does so that somebody else will hear him and understand what he said, it sort of stood out. We went to the room he was in and looked through a little window pretty much like the one in the gate, and he was in there with a nicelooking woman.

She had big eyes that looked like they cried a lot, only she did not look like she was going to cry any more ever just then, if you know what I mean. She looked like life was just so wonderful there in her little room that she loved the whole whorl and nothing could ever make her unhappy again. She looked up at me when I tapped on the door with my sword, but then she looked back at Juganu like looking at anything else was just a big waste of time.

When we had gone out to the cemetery that they called the necropolis, Father and I had just walked though the wall, the bird and the girl flew over, and the boy had climbed it where it had fallen down. And I had been thinking it would probably have been better if we had come back the same way and not gotten the fat man all upset. So right then I tried to see if I could just walk through that door, too, without Father there to tell me how. I tried, and I did it. It worked fine.

There was something funny about being in there just the same. I kept thinking about what if it did not work fine when I tried to go out? What if it did not work at all? I thought about being locked in there like the woman with the big eyes, and never seeing daylight, and what did Father need me here for anyway? He could have left me on the boat with Babbie. When I told the others about that, we all laughed. But it was not funny then. It was hard to keep from turning right around and going out, one of the hardest things I have ever done.

Juganu wanted to know what I wanted, but I think he knew. I said it was time to go, and she cried and held on to him. He said, "Are you saying that we're going to leave this moment? Where's the Raj an?"

So I explained about the dog and said that we would just go down and look at it because the boy wanted us to, and Father would be along soon to see it, and then we were leaving.

He did not say anything to that for a minute. Then he said, "I have to think."

Just then I heard a new voice through the little window in the door. I turned and looked, and it was a man I had not seen before. A big, heavy man with a big heavy face had hold of the boy. He was telling him to come along, and from the way he said it, it sounded like the boy was in for a whipping. The boy said, "I will, Master. I'm sorry, Master. I meant no harm."

Then the bird came yelling, "Watch out! Watch out!" like it did sometimes. The big man stopped to look at it and said, "What's that doing in here?"

"It belongs to Master Malrubius, Master," the boy told him, and the big man he called Master hit him across the face. He did not do it like he was angry with him or anything. He did not sneer either. He just did it, the way you would swat a fly. Then Father came up behind him and put his hand on his shoulder. He turned around and saw Father, and his mouth dropped open. He did not say anything, just backed away. I think he must have run after that, but there was so much noise I could not be sure.

Juganu stayed with the woman with the big eyes, and Father and I and the bird went down to see the dog. It was dark, and there was mud your feet sank into, but a solid floor underneath. The boy said the dog had been hurt and it was better that it was there in the dark because it could rest then and get well. I was not so sure. It was pretty damp.

The dog had blankets though, old torn blankets and lots of rags, and it had tunneled into them and made a little nest for itself. That was good, because it had short hair that did not look warm. Its head was as big as a bull's without the horns, and its mouth could have held my head and bitten down on it like a cherry. I know because it opened its mouth when we came. I think it was saying it was glad to see us. The boy had bread and meat in his pocket. It did not seem like much, but he gave it to the dog and said he would come back with more. It stood up for a minute when he patted its head. It was so big through the chest that it seemed like there was something wrong with it, but I think it was just strong.

What was wrong was that its front leg was gone. The boy had bandaged it where it had been cut off, but blood had soaked through. That dog had been hurt in a lot of other places, too. The boy took the bandages off, and he and Father talked about what to do. I could see that the dog was afraid of Father and liked him at the same time. It lay down again and put its head by his feet and looked up at him and trembled a little. Father said the boy knew a lot more about treating wounds than most people did, and they talked about a woman he had known who got her arm cut off. It did not mean anything to me then.

The boy put new bandages on after that, and we went back. Juganu would not come out of the woman's room, so we went in to talk. Father told him he had to come with us or he would die. Juganu said, "I'm going to stay with Tigridia and free her."

"Free, she'll have you exorcised," Father told him. He took his arm and Juganu went for him. I think he would have choked him to death if I had not been there. He was ten times stronger than he had been when I had pulled him off the mast back on our boat. The woman got in it, and we had a real fight going until the boy ran off and got the key to her room.

Then we went back, Father and me, Juganu, and the bird. When we woke up in Capsicum's house, Juganu just fixed his face and went out. He never said a word to us. We watched to see if he really left the house, and he did. I think he was afraid we would kill him, and I would have if Father had not stopped me.

After that, Hide and Vadsig came with Mother from Lizard for the wedding, so this is everything I have got to write about, the things that I was the only one to see. I will let them and Daisy do the rest. I will criticize like they have been doing to me.