On Blue's waters

“Ingratitude. Rampant everywhere.” Remora shook his head. “But we-ah-digress. Yes, digress. You came by, um, sea. This is established. You must have observed that most of this-ah-fo-reign whorl. Concealed. Not like home, eh? You conceive that its former- um-population dead, eh? Extinct. Everyone does, even, er, myself. Ask how I know, and I am-ah-constrained to respond that I do not. I, um, assume it. You-ah-similarly? Synonymously, eh?”

I nodded, wondering how to ask him what I most desired to know.

Now I must ready myself to cut the throat of a stonebuck for Echidna, and prepare my homily.

I see that I have mentioned my prayer on the sloop without saying anything substantive about it.

The truth is that I grew frightened. The Short Sun was setting without the least hint of a breeze, and the fishing line I had put out had caught nothing. With the water and food I had brought, I could spend one more day sitting in an idle boat with some comfort, but after that the matter would become serious. I had been thinking about the gods, as I have indicated already. I decided to venture a prayer. After all, if the gods I addressed did not hear it, was that my fault or theirs? The only question was which I should address, and I soon found that I could make convincing arguments for three.

First, Pas. He was the greatest of all, and it seemed that Silk might have influence with him. Silk had been my staunch friend, as well as my teacher.

An even better case might be made for Scylla. I had come from her sacred city, where I was born; and I was trying to reach New Viron, which is her town as well, at least nominally. Besides which, she is the goddess of water, and I was on the water and would soon be in need of drinking water.

Last the Outsider, whose case was nearly as good. Of the three, he seemed most apt to hear my prayer. No god, perhaps, had much reason to think well of me; but he had more than any other. Also, he had been Silk’s favorite, and when Silk did not say that he trusted no god at all (which to tell the truth he frequently did) he said that the Outsider was the only god he trusted.

To be safe, I decided to address all three jointly. I knelt, and found myself tongue-tied. How could I address those three as a group? Pas might or might not be Silk, in part at least. Sinew had been quite correct about that. From what Auk and Chenille had told Nettle and me, Pas’s daughter Scylla was willful, violent, and vindictive. If ever a goddess seemed apt to resent being put in second place, it was she.

The Outsider seemed to me at that time as faceless and mysterious as the god or gods of the ancient inhabitants of this whorl we call Blue. He was, moreover, the god of outcasts and outlaws, of the broken and discarded. I considered myself neither an outcast nor an outlaw; and far from being discarded, I was about to undertake a mission of utmost importance for my town. Such being the case, what could I find to say to him? That I had no claim on his benevolence, but hoped for his help without one?

In the end, I prayed to whatever god might hear, stressing the helplessness and hopelessness we settlers felt, who had left our manteions and their Sacred Windows behind us, with so much else that we held dear, in obedience to Pas. A wind from the west, north, or east would be of greatest service to me, I told the hypothetical god. I had to go to New Viron, and eventually reach Pajarocu-a town quite unknown to me-before its lander lifted off. The feeblest breeze would be more than welcome, if only it would move my boat.

Had I ended my prayer there, I might have saved myself an infinity of fear and dismay; but I did not. Out of my heart I spoke of my loneliness and of the feelings of isolation that had swept over me as I waited half a day and more for a change in weather. Then I promised to learn all that I could about the Outsider and the gods of this whorl, to honor Pas and Scylla most highly if I ever returned to the whorl in which I was born, and to do anything in my power to bring them both here if they were not here already. I also (but this was to myself) solemnly swore to buy sweeps when I got to New Viron; and I recited every prayer that I could recall.

All this, as you may imagine, occupied quite some time. When I lifted my head at last, it was already shadelow, with only the smallest crescent of the Short Sun visible above the western horizon. Day was passing; but something else had gone before it, or so I felt. For what must have been half a dozen minutes, I watched the Short Sun set and looked about me, hoping to learn what it had been. The sloop seemed unchanged, with only a trifle more water in its bilge than there had been after I had bailed it. The sky was darker, and its few clouds ruddy in place of white, but that was only to be expected. The dim and distant shore of Main (I thought of it as distant, at least) was nearly black now, but otherwise the same.