On Blue's waters (24 page)

I wanted to write that the rest of the night on which Seawrack and I first encountered Krait passed uneventfully, and that I sat up for most of it stroking poor Babbie’s head. There. It is written.

But I should have said first that Seawrack was quite right in thinking that I wanted to question her about the sea goddess she called the Mother. Having found Seawrack exceedingly reluctant to say much of anything about her, I had been trying to get at the truth indirectly. At some fraction of the truth, I ought to have written, and would have if I had not been hurrying ahead. (If Sinew’s impatience was the result of youth, what is mine?)

A fraction of the truth, since even Seawrack, who had been cared for by the goddess since before she could swim, cannot have known everything.

Who, for that matter, could know the whole truth about Sea- wrack? Not Seawrack herself, and that is completely certain even if nothing else is. At the time about which I have been writing, the time before Krait, I had not yet grasped the real riddle; but I will give it here so that you who read may weigh things for yourself. I am not, after all, writing merely to entertain you.

The real riddle concerning Seawrack is this: If the Mother took care of Seawrack in order that Seawrack might lure others, as fowlers use a captive bird, did the Mother send her back among her own kind-among us-so that she might lure more or lure them better? To put it simply, did the Mother suffer a change of heart, or is she pursuing some deep plan that will culminate in our destruction? It is very important that we know this.

The wind picked up before noon, and we cracked along in a way that had me plotting to spread more sail. I was ever a careful, cautious sailor, as I have implied. But the cautious sailor must avoid the sunken rock of overcaution, and it was apparent that additional sail would speed us on our way without endangering us.

After a great deal of squinting at the western horizon, spitting, and pulling my beard (all of which amused Seawrack in a way that gladdened my heart, although I did not say so), I contrived an extension to our mainsail from a stick that I lashed to the boom and a long, triangular strip of canvas whose top I tied to the gaff. It worked so well that I contrived another triangular sail, like a jib, that we set on the forestay in imitation of Gyrfalcon’s boat, reassuring myself by assuring Seawrack that we would take both in the moment the breeze strengthened.

As a result of all this, we sighted the island before sundown. Or at any rate we sighted an island we assumed was the one at which Strik and his crew had watered. I have never been entirely confident that it was in fact the same, although it may have been. Certainly it fit their description, and we found it by following their directions, that is, by sailing close-hauled almost due west. Later I saw that there were many other islands of the same type all along that coast, mountains covered with lush greenery rising out of the sea. By favor of the southwest wind, we quickly discovered a small, sheltered bay on the north side of the island, and a swift, rocky stream at the end of it.

We anchored there and refilled our water bottles, and I sent Babbie ashore and let him trot around and explore the steep green wood. To tell the truth, I was feeling very guilty about having made him stay on the sloop so often when we were going up the coast, and was half minded to leave him there to recover his health as well as his freedom; I felt sure it would be a happier as well as a healthier place for him than my cramped little boat, and I recalled that Silk had tried more than once to free Oreb. Throughout my life I have done my best to imitate Silk (as I am doing here in Gaon), at times with some success.

Perhaps I am getting better at it. They seem to think so, at least. But I had better sleep.

* * *

I should not have stopped last night before mentioning that we lay at anchor in the bay that night. Seawrack and I slept side by side under the foredeck, thankfully without Babbie; and that soon after we lay down she asked whether we would put out again in the morning. From her tone it was clear that she did not want to.

Neither did I; and so I said that I planned to stay another day to hunt, and that with luck we would have fresh meat for supper the next night. To the best of my memory, we had no meat left on board at that time except the shank of the very salty ham that Marrow had given me; and I was thoroughly tired of that, and still more tired of fish.

The following day began bright and clear, and presented me with what I then considered a serious problem, I having not the least presentiment of what the island held in store for me. Seawrack was anxious to go with me, and Babbie was even more anxious, if that were possible-it would have been sheer cruelty to leave him behind. Nonetheless, I was very conscious that if anything happened to the sloop all hope of bringing Silk to New Viron would be gone.

I considered leaving Babbie on board, as I had there; but how much protection could a young hus provide? A young hus, I should have said, who had by no means recovered all his strength? Against a sudden gale, very little. Against the crew of some other boat that put in to water as we had, just enough to get him killed.

I also considered asking Seawrack to stay. But if bad weather struck, the best thing she could possibly do would be to furl the sails (and they were furled already) and remain at anchor in the little cove we had found, which the sloop would do by herself. As for protecting it from the crew of another boat, how much could one young woman do, without a weapon or a right arm? Against honest men, the sloop would require no protection. By the other kind she would be raped, killed, or both.

For a second or two, I even considered remaining behind myself; but Seawrack could not use the slug gun, and might easily find herself in danger. In the end, we all went. No doubt it was inevitable.

It was a silent, peaceful, lonesome place whose thickly forested slopes seemed to be inhabited only by a few birds. Mighty trees clung to rocks upon which it seemed that no tree could live, or plunged deep roots into the black soil of little hidden dales. On Green one finds trees without number, monstrous cannibals ten times the height of the tallest trees I saw on the island; but they are forever at war with their own kind, and are troubled all the while by the trailing, coiling, murderous lianas that have seemed to me the living embodiment of evil ever since I first beheld them.

There was nothing of Green here save the huge trunks, and bluffs and rocky outcrops resembling Green’s distant, towering escarpments in about the same way that a housecat resembles a baletiger. In one, we discovered a deep cave with its feet in clear cold water, a dry cave with a ceiling high enough for a man to have ridden a tall horse into it without bowing his head or taking off his hat; and we spoke, Seawrack and I, of returning there after we had brought Silk to New Viron. We would build a wall of stout logs to close the entrance, and live there in peace and privacy all our days, plant a garden, trap birds and small animals, and fish. Was it really criminal of us to talk in that fashion? I knew that it could never be, that Nettle and my sons and the mill would be waiting when I came back to the Lizard.

And that even if I did not return, it could never be. Seawrack, I feel sure, did not. So it was wrong of me, was cruel and cowardly, to share her snug dream and encourage her in it. I must be honest here. It was, as Silk would say, seriously evil. It was a crime, and I was (and am) a monster of cruelty. All that is true, but give me this-I have done worse, and for half an hour we were as happy as it is possible for two people to be. The Outsider may condemn me for it, but I cannot regret that half hour.

If it is true that in some sense Silk and Hyacinth remain forever beside the goldfish pond at Ermine’s where I sought them, may not Seawrack and I live in the same sense in a certain dry cave among towering, moss-draped trees on the island that will always be “The Island” to me? I have said that I can be cruel because I know it for the truth; and I know too that the universe, the whorl of all whorls, can be much crueler. I hope it is not cruel enough to deprive even the smallest and most ghostly fragment of my being of the happiness that Seawrack and I know there.

There came a moment when I wanted to return to the sloop. We had seen no game and no sign of any; we were all tired, and Babbie, who had ranged ahead at first sniffing and snuffling here and there, lagged behind. What was worse (although I did not say it) was that I was not sure of the way back to the sloop; and I was afraid that we would have to strike the shore of the island wherever we could reach it, and try to follow it until we found the little bay to the north in which we had anchored. We were tired already, as I have said, and had not yet begun what might be a very long walk. It seemed more than possible that we would not be able to locate the sloop before shadelow.

Seawrack pointed to a ridge, not very distant but only just visible through the trees. “You wait here,” she said, “and let me go up there and see what’s on the other side. You and Babbie rest, and I’ll come right back.”

I told her that I would go with her, naturally, and took pains to lead the way.

“There’s so much sunshine,” she said as we climbed that final slope. “There can’t be any trees there. Not big ones like these.”

I told her it was probably a good-sized cliff, that we would see trees below it, and that we might have a fine view of the island and the sea around it. What we really saw when we topped the ridge was less dramatic but a great deal stranger.

THE END

I
t was a circular valley entirely free of the mature trees that had formed the forest of the mountain slopes, and filled instead with the bushes, vines, and saplings that had been absent there, green, lush, and saturated with an atmosphere of
newness
that I really cannot describe but was immediately conscious of. After hours of climbing through the airless antiquity of the forest, it was as though we had been awakened from the deepest of sleeps with a bucket of cold water.

Seawrack cried, “Oh! Look! Look!” and pressed herself against me. From her voice, she felt wonder and even awe; but she shook with fear, and at that moment, I was ignorant of the cause of all three.

“The walls, Horn. Their walls. Don’t you see them?”

I blinked and looked, then blinked again before I was able to make out one curving line of masonry practically submerged in the rising tide of leaves.

“I know places in the sea where there are walls like those,” Seawrack told me. Her voice was hushed. “ ‘Underwater’ is what you say.”

I started down, followed reluctantly by Seawrack and even more reluctantly by Babbie. “Human beings, people like you and me, people from the
Whorl
, can’t have built this. It’s too old.”

“No…”

“It was the Vanished People. It had to be. There’s a place near New Viron, but I don’t think it’s as old as this. And Sinew says he found an altar in the forest. I told you about that.” Answered only by silence, I glanced over my shoulder at Seawrack and received a fear-filled nod.

“Sinew’s altar was probably in a chapel of some kind originally, a shrine or something like that. This was a lot bigger, whatever it was.” I stopped walking, having nearly tripped over a line of crumbling glass not much higher than my ankle.

“You wanted to go back.” The fear had reached her voice. “So do I. Let’s go back right now.”

“In a minute.” The glass was deep blue, but seemed more transparent than the clearest glass from Three Rivers. I picked up a piece, feeling absurdly that it would show me the place as it had been hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years ago. It did not, but the valley I saw through that fragment of blue glass appeared more brightly sunlit than the one my naked eyes beheld.

“There’s nothing left here,” Seawrack murmured. “These are old, ruined, broken things nobody wants anymore, not even the trees.”

“Something kept trees from growing here for a long while,” I told her. “Some chemical they put in the ground, or maybe just a very solid, thick pavement underneath this soil. It can’t have been many years since it gave out. Look at these young trees. I can’t see even one that seems to be ten years old.” Silently, she shook her head.

“I’ve been trying to guess how this blue glass works. It’s as if it sees more light from the Short Sun than we do and shows it to us. Here, look.”

“I don’t want to.” Seawrack shook her lovely head again, stubbornly this time. “I don’t want to look at their trees, and I don’t want to look through their glass. Babbie and I and going back to your boat.”

“If we could-” In my surprise, I dropped the glass, which shattered at my feet.

“What is it?”

I had been looking down into the valley as I spoke, and thanks to the blue glass I had seen motion. I pointed with my slug gun. “That bush shook. Not the big one, but the little one next to it. There’s some kind of animal down there, a pretty big one.”

“Don’t!”

I had taken a step forward, but Seawrack caught my arm. “Let me tell you what I think. Please?”

I nodded.

“I don’t think it was a-a medicine they poured on the ground, or stone underneath, or anything like that. I think they lasted longer here.”

It was a new thought to me, and I suppose my face must have shown my surprise.

“Out on this little island, so far from all the other land people. For a long time they mended the walls and painted them, and dug up the trees and wild bushes. Ten years, is that what you said?”

“Yes.” Another bush a little farther from us than the first had trembled ever so slightly, a ghost of motion that would have been easy to miss.

“Ten years ago, they gave up. There weren’t enough left to do it anymore, or it was too much work that didn’t make sense. I know you think I’m stupid-”

“I don’t,” I told her. “You’re naive, but that’s something else entirely.”

“You think I’m stupid, but I can think of people, people like us? Two-legged people like you and me and all the people on that boat living here, and there wasn’t anybody else anywhere. We’d mend our boats and the walls we’d built for a while, and then somebody would die, and there’d be more work for everybody who was left. And somebody else would die. And pretty soon we’d stop, but we wouldn’t be dead, not all of us. The last of us wouldn’t die for a long while.”