On Blue's waters

It puzzled me; I knew that as we had come nearer Pajarocu, Krait had flown there nearly every night, and I had certainly assumed that he was feeding there. I asked Sinew who had told him so.

“One of these people, when I was hanging around here before. I told him how I got bitten when I was just a baby, and he said they never did it here. His name is He-bring-skin.”

I had already told Sinew how He-pen-sheep and his son had cut off the breakbull’s head for me. Now I said, “It can’t be true. When Seawrack and I visited He-pen-sheep’s camp, his daughter had been bitten the preceding night. I don’t recall her name, but she was extremely weak. Weaker than that woman back there.”

“Only here in Pajarocu,” Sinew explained impatiently. “They never get bitten here. That’s what he said.”

“But foreigners do.”

“I guess. She did.”

We had reached the sloop by then, and were greeted with a snort of pleasure by Babbie. Seawrack came out with her knife in her hand. I had told her to remain aboard and get some sleep if she could, although I do not believe she had actually slept. She asked whether I had seen the woman.

“Yes, and spoken to her, though not for long. She’ll recover, or at least I believe she will.”

“But you are not happy. Neither is Sinew, I think.”

“You’re right, I’m discouraged.” Like old Patera Remora, I groped for a better word. “Humbled. Silk old me once that we should be particularly grateful for experiences that humble us, that humiliation is absolutely necessary if we’re not to be consumed by pride. He was subjected to a shower of rancid meat scraps shortly after he came to Sun Street. Maybe I’ve told you.”

She shook her head; Sinew said, “Sure, Scleroderma did it. You and Mother talked about it a lot.”

“No doubt. Well, I can report that I’m in the gods’ good books, since they’ve provided an unmistakable sign of their favor. I ought to be ecstatic, but I don’t feel particularly ecstatic at the moment.”

Seawrack kissed me. When we parted, I gasped for breath and said, “Thank you. That’s much better.” (I can feel her lips on mine as I write. Seawrack kissed me many times, but in retrospect all her kisses have merged into that one. It may have been the last-I cannot be sure.)

“I don’t see why you’re so down,” Sinew muttered. “We’re here, aren’t we? Pajarocu? This is it. They kept stalling around when I was here before, but now they say they’ll take off any day now.”

“Providential,” I told him bitterly. “It’s almost as if they’d been waiting for us, isn’t it?”

“You think so?” He grunted skeptically, or perhaps I should say thoughtfully. “Why should they?”

“Because there are three of us.”

“Four, with Krait.”

“Exactly. Four, if you count Krait, and three if you don’t. Three of us risking our lives to bring back Silk, when only one of us was sent to do it. That’s bad enough, and I haven’t even begun to deal with that. What depresses me tonight is the quality of the rest, the nature of our companions-to-be. You saw them in there, and you must have seen a good deal of them when you spent a week here earlier. Tell me honestly-what do you think of them?”

Seawrack murmured, “They are not kind. Not like you.”

“You’re wrong about that,” I told her. “I’m one of them, and that’s the most depressing fact of all.” (At that moment, I nearly confessed what I had once done to her in Sinew’s hearing. Whoever has read this knows.)

He said, “What’s the matter with them?” He was challenging me, as he had so often on Lizard.

“They’re drinkers, brawlers, and troublemakers. That man you were with-he said he’d rescued you-the one who took our old boat. What was his name?”

“Yksin. When he was mad at me, he told me it meant alone. He was fixing to go off and leave me then, only I didn’t know it.”

“It’s a good name for him, and it would be a good name for all of them. They’re outcasts who believe that it’s some failing in their fellow townsmen that has made them cast them out.”

A moment later I smiled, and Seawrack said, “You’ve thought of something, what is it?”

It was that forty such men would be quick to seize control of the lander as soon as they suspected that it was not bound for the Whorl. But I did not tell her, then or ever.

Oreb has been pulling my hair. “Go now? Go Silk?” (Or perhaps it is “Go, Silk!” I cannot be sure.) I feel exactly as he does, but Evensong still has not returned. I am going to try to snatch an hour’s sleep.

The clock just struck. The hour is two, to the minute.

It has always been like this for me. Once I have decided to leave a place (as I decided, for example, to leave the hopeless little farm that had fallen our lot) I cannot wait to be away. No doubt I felt just the same way that night, as I sat before our fire in the sloop with Seawrack and Sinew, trying to put my thoughts in order.