The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (26 page)

“I’m alive,” she said hoarsely, “for Yp likes to think he looks after
me, the bastard.”

“I don’t know about
that,
” said Edarra, laughing. “My!” She
knelt on the deck with her hair streaming behind her like a ship’s
figurehead come to life; she said, “I fixed everything. I pulled you up
here. I fixed the boat, though I had to hang by my knees. I pitched
it.” She exhibited her arms, daubed to the elbow. “Look,” she said.
Then she added, with a catch in her voice, “I thought you might
die.”

“I might yet,” said Alyx. The sun dipped into the sea. “Long-
leggedy thing,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “get me some food.”

“Here.” Edarra rummaged for a moment and held out a piece of
bread, part of the ragbag loosened on deck during the late catastrophe.
The pick-lock ate, lying back. The sun danced up and down in her
eyes, above the deck, below the deck, above the deck...

“Creature,” said Alyx, “I had a daughter.”

“Where is she?” said Edarra.

Silence.

“Praying,” said Alyx at last. “Damning me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Edarra.

“But you,” said Alyx, “are—” and she stopped blankly. She said,
“You—”

“Me what?” said Edarra.

“Are here,” said Alyx, and with a bone-cracking yawn, letting the
crust fall from her fingers, she fell asleep.

At length the time came (all things must end and Alyx’s burns had
already healed to barely visible scars—one looking closely at her could
see many such faint marks on her back, her arms, her sides, the bodily
record of the last rather difficult seven years) when Alyx, emptying
overboard the breakfast scraps, gave a yell so loud and triumphant
that she inadvertently lost hold of the garbage bucket and it fell into
the sea.

“What is it?” said Edarra, startled. Her friend was gripping the rail
with both hands and staring over the sea with a look that Edarra did
not understand in the least, for Alyx had been closemouthed on some
subjects in the girl’s education.

“I am thinking,” said Alyx.

“Oh!” shrieked Edarra. “Land! Land!” and she capered about the
deck, whirling and clapping her hands. “I can change my dress!” she
cried. “Just think! We can eat fresh food! Just think!”

“I was not,” said Alyx, “thinking about that.” Edarra came up to
her and looked curiously into her eyes, which had gone as deep and
as gray as the sea on a gray day; she said, “Well, what are you thinking
about?”

“Something not fit for your ears,” said Alyx. The little girl’s eyes
narrowed. “Oh,” she said pointedly. Alyx ducked past her for the
hatch, but Edarra sprinted ahead and straddled it, arms wide.

“I want to hear it,” she said.

“That’s a foolish attitude,” said Alyx. “You’ll lose your balance.”

“Tell me.”

“Come, get away.”

The girl sprang forward like a red-headed fury, seizing her friend
by the hair with both hands. “If it’s not fit for my ears, I want to hear
it!” she cried.

Alyx dodged around her and dropped below, to retrieve from
storage her severe, decent, formal black clothes, fit for a business call.
When she reappeared, tossing the clothes on deck, Edarra had a short
sword in her right hand and was guarding the hatch very exuberantly.

“Don’t be foolish,” said Alyx crossly.

“I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me,” remarked Edarra.

“Little one,” said Alyx, “the stain of ideals remains on the
imagination long after the ideals themselves vanish. Therefore I will
tell you nothing.”

“Raahh!” said Edarra, in her throat.

“It wouldn’t be proper,” added Alyx primly. “If you don’t know
about it, so much the better,” and she turned away to sort her clothes.
Edarra pinked her in a formal, black shoe.

“Stop it!” snapped Alyx.

“Never!” cried the girl wildly, her eyes flashing. She lunged and
feinted and her friend, standing still, wove (with the injured boot)
a net of defense as invisible as the cloak that enveloped Aule the
Messenger. Edarra, her chest heaving, managed to say, “I’m tired.”

“Then stop,” said Alyx.

Edarra stopped.

“Do I remind you of your little baby girl?” she said.

Alyx said nothing.

“I’m not a little baby girl,” said Edarra. “I’m eighteen now and I
know more than you think. Did I ever tell you about my first suitor
and the cook and the cat?”

“No,” said Alyx, busy sorting.

“The cook let the cat in,” said Edarra, “though she shouldn’t have,
and so when I was sitting on my suitor’s lap and I had one arm around
his neck and the other arm on the arm of the chair, he said, ‘Darling,
where is your
other
little hand?”

“Mm hm,” said Alyx.

“It was the cat, walking across his lap! But he could only feel
one of my hands so he thought—” but here, seeing that Alyx was
not listening, Edarra shouted a word used remarkably seldom in
Ourdh and for very good reason. Alyx looked up in surprise. Ten feet
away (as far away as she could get), Edarra was lying on the planks,
sobbing. Alyx went over to her and knelt down, leaning back on her
heels. Above, the first sea birds of the trip—sea birds always live near
land—circled and cried in a hard, hungry mew like a herd of aerial
cats.

“Someone’s coming,” said Alyx.

“Don’t care.” This was Edarra on the deck, muffled. Alyx reached
out and began to stroke the girl’s disordered hair, braiding it with her
fingers, twisting it round her wrist and slipping her hand through it
and out again.

“Someone’s in a fishing smack coming this way,” said Alyx.

Edarra burst into tears.

“Now, now, now!” said Alyx. “Why that? Come!” and she tried to
lift the girl up, but Edarra held stubbornly to the deck.

“What’s the matter?” said Alyx.

“You!” cried Edarra, bouncing bolt upright. “You; you treat me like
a baby.”

“You are a baby,” said Alyx.

“How’m I ever going to stop if you treat me like one?” shouted
the girl. Alyx got up and padded over to her new clothes, her face
thoughtful. She slipped into a sleeveless black shift and belted it;
it came to just above the knee. Then she took a comb from the
pocket and began to comb out her straight, silky black hair. “I was
remembering,” she said.

“What?” said Edarra.

“Things.”

“Don’t make fun of me.” Alyx stood for a moment, one blue-green
earring on her ear and the other in her fingers. She smiled at the
innocence of this red-headed daughter of the wickedest city on earth;
she saw her own youth over again (though she had been unnaturally
knowing almost from birth), and so she smiled, with rare sweetness.

“I’ll tell you,” she whispered conspiratorially, dropping to her knees
beside Edarra, “I was remembering a man.”

“Oh!” said Edarra.

“I remembered,” said Alyx, “one week in spring when the night
sky above Ourdh was hung as brilliantly with stars as the jewelers’
trays on the Street of a Thousand Follies. Ah! what a man. A big
Northman with hair like yours and a gold-red beard—God, what a
beard!—Fafnir—no, Fafh—well, something ridiculous. But he was
far from ridiculous. He was amazing.”

Edarra said nothing, rapt.

“He was strong,” said Alyx, laughing, “and hairy, beautifully hairy.
And willful! I said to him, ‘Man, if you must follow your eyes into
every whorehouse—’ And we fought! At a place called the Silver Fish.
Overturned tables. What a fuss! And a week later,” (she shrugged
ruefully) “gone. There it is. And I can’t even remember his name.”

“Is that sad?” said Edarra.

“I don’t think so,” said Alyx. “After all, I remember his beard,”
and she smiled wickedly. “There’s a man in that boat,” she said, “and
that boat comes from a fishing village of maybe ten, maybe twelve
families. That symbol painted on the side of the boat—I can make it
out; perhaps you can’t; it’s a red cross on a blue circle—indicates a
single man. Now the chances of there being two single men between
the ages of eighteen and forty in a village of twelve families is not—”

“A man!” exploded Edarra. “That’s why you’re primping like a
hen. Can I wear your clothes? Mine are full of salt,” and she buried
herself in the piled wearables on deck, humming, dragged out a brush
and began to brush her hair. She lay flat on her stomach, catching her
underlip between her teeth, saying over and over “Oh—oh—oh—”

“Look here,” said Alyx, back at the rudder, “before you get too
free, let me tell you: there are rules.”

“I’m going to wear this white thing,” said Edarra busily.

“Married men are not considered proper. It’s too acquisitive. If I
know you, you’ll want to get married inside three weeks, but you must
remember—”

“My shoes don’t fit!” wailed Edarra, hopping about with one shoe
on and one off.

“Horrid,” said Alyx briefly.

“My feet have gotten bigger,” said Edarra, plumping down beside
her. “Do you think they spread when I go barefoot? Do you think
that’s ladylike? Do you think—”

“For the sake of peace, be quiet!” said Alyx. Her whole attention
was taken up by what was far off on the sea; she nudged Edarra and
the girl sat still, only emitting little explosions of breath as she tried
to fit her feet into her old shoes. At last she gave up and sat—quite
motionless—with her hands in her lap.

“There’s only one man there,” said Alyx.

“He’s probably too young for you.” (Alyx’s mouth twitched.)

“Well?” added Edarra plaintively.

“Well what?”

“Well,” said Edarra, embarrassed, “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh! I don’t mind,” said Alyx.

“I suppose,” said Edarra helpfully, “that it’ll be dull for you, won’t
it?”

“I can find some old grandfather,” said Alyx.

Edarra blushed.

“And I can always cook,” added the pick-lock.

“You must be a
good
cook.”

“I am.”

“That’s nice. You remind me of a cat we once had, a very fierce,
black, female cat who was a
very
good mother,” (she choked and
continued hurriedly) “she was a ripping fighter, too, and we just
couldn’t keep her in the house whenever she—uh—”

“Yes?” said Alyx.

“Wanted to get out,” said Edarra feebly. She giggled. “And she
always came back pr—I mean—”

“Yes?”

“She was a popular cat.”

“Ah,” said Alyx, “but old, no doubt.”

“Yes,” said Edarra unhappily. “Look here,” she added quickly, “I
hope you understand that I like you and I esteem you and it’s not that
I want to cut you out, but I
am
younger and you can’t expect—” Alyx
raised one hand. She was laughing. Her hair blew about her face like
a skein of black silk. Her gray eyes glowed.

“Great are the ways of Yp,” she said, “and some men prefer the
ways of experience. Very odd of them, no doubt, but lucky for some of
us. I have been told—but never mind. Infatuated men are bad judges.
Besides, maid, if you look out across the water you will see a ship
much closer than it was before, and in that ship a young man. Such
is life. But if you look more carefully and shade your red, red brows,
you will perceive—” and here she poked Edarra with her toe—“that
surprise and mercy share the world between them. Yp is generous.”
She tweaked Edarra by the nose.

“Praise God, maid, there be two of them!”

So they waved, Edarra scarcely restraining herself from jumping into
the sea and swimming to the other craft, Alyx with full sweeps of the
arm, standing both at the stern of their stolen fishing boat on that late
summer’s morning while the fishermen in the other boat wondered—
and disbelieved—and then believed—while behind all rose the green
land in the distance and the sky was blue as blue. Perhaps it was the
thought of her fifteen hundred ounces of gold stowed belowdecks, or
perhaps it was an intimation of the extraordinary future, or perhaps
it was only her own queer nature, but in the sunlight Alyx’s eyes had
a strange look, like those of Loh, the first woman, who had kept her
own counsel at the very moment of creation, only looking about her
with an immediate, intense, serpentine curiosity, already planning
secret plans and guessing at who knows what unguessable mysteries...