On Blue's waters

(Marrow did not call his clerk a slave either; nor were the men who carried his apples and flour to my sloop called slaves.)

Buying and selling. Selling and buying, and never looking at the trees of the forest, or the side of the mountains. If we were wise, we would give the rulers of all the towns a stick and a knife apiece, and tell them we will be happy to take them back when they have traveled around this whorl, as Oreb did.

I can describe a tree or a felwolf, but not Blue. A poet might describe it perhaps. I cannot.

With nothing better to do than fish and catalogue the slow changes of the river, I have been thinking about my sons-about Krait on the lander, particularly. They caught him and forced open his mouth. I saved him, and thought that I had lost him forever when he joined the other inhumi barricaded in the cockpit. I wish that he were here now, here in this little boat with Evensong and me.

Evensong asks if it will be all right to stop when she sees a clearing. She wants to prepare my fish for us and cook some rice, she says. If I am any judge of women, she really wants to try the pots and pans she bought for us, enough to cook for all the men on Strik’s big boat. In any case, I said she might; it will be hours before she sights the perfect spot, I feel sure, and we will both be hungry.

Babbie was my slave, no doubt. I could have led him to the market and sold him. But he did not object in the least to his slavery, and in that way freed himself by freeing his spirit. He was my slave, but he could have escaped any time when we were on the river, simply by jumping into the water and swimming to shore. For that matter he could have escaped even more easily on any of the many occasions when I left him to guard the sloop. He never liked being left alone, but he protected the sloop as instructed just the same.

He was my slave, but in his heart we were companions who shared our food and helped each other when we could. I could see farther and better, although he may not have realized that; he could run and swim much faster, and hear better, too. He possessed a more acute nose. I could talk; and despite what Seawrack said, Babbie could only communicate. It did not matter. He was stronger than I, and a great deal braver; and we were there to support each other, not to boast of our superiorities. What would he think of Oreb, I wonder?

And what would Oreb think of him? Good thing? Good hus?

Is this, my Oreb whom I love, my Oreb who has returned to me after more than a year, the true Oreb? Is this really the tame night chough I played with as a boy, waiting in Silk’s sellaria for well-deserved punishment that never came?

“Oreb, why did you come back to me?” I asked him.

“Find Silk.”

“I’m not Patera Silk, Oreb. I’ve told you-and everybody-that over and over.” I ought to have asked him to find Silk for me, but I feel sure he could not unless he discovered some way to return to the Whorl, and I do not want to lose him again. “Where did you go, Oreb?”

“Find god.”

“I see. Passilk? I think that’s what the surgeon called him. Did you find him, and is that why you returned to me?”

“Find Silk.”

“You are free, you know. Patera Silk wouldn’t cage you, and I won’t either. All you have to do is fly off into these trees.”

“Fly good!” He flew from my shoulder to Evensong’s and back, a graphic demonstration.

“That’s right,” I told him, “you can fly, and it’s a wonderful accomplishment. You can soar above the clouds on your own, exactly like we did on the Trivigaunti airship. I envy you.”

“Good boat!”

I offered to take over the steering and give Evensong a chance to rest, if she would tend my pole; but she refused. “You won’t stop no matter how pretty the place is, and I’m hungry.”

“You’re never hungry,” I told her. She must be hungry at times, surely, and she was very hungry the first time we spoke with Hari Mau’s Hannese prisoners; but she never talks about how hungry she is, or admits it when I ask. Set a roast fowl before her, and she will accept a wing, clean the bones until they shine, and announce herself satisfied.

How green everything is after the rains!

We have stopped here to cook our fish and rice, and have decided to travel no farther today. We left Gaon before shadeup, and are not likely to find another place as pleasant as this if we travel on. It is a tiny island now, an isle I will call it, although I feel sure it must have been part of the riverbank before the rains. The river must cover it from time to time and drown any trees that try to take root on it; there is only this soft green grass, spangled with little flowers of every imaginable color that bloom the moment the rainy season ends and set seed in a wink.