On Blue's waters

“You needn’t explain any more, Horn. Not about the gun or the chains, I mean.”

I did anyway. I had lived on Lizard too long, perhaps, seeing few people other than you yourself, Nettle darling, and our sons. I said, “I watched him write, copying it out for me, and I couldn’t help seeing how careful he was to keep it back, keep it from smearing his ink. It wasn’t a big chain, Maytera. It wasn’t a heavy chain at all, just a little, light chain with seven little links. The men who unload boats wear much heavier ones. He probably thinks that he’s being treated kindly, and in a way he is.”

“I quite understand, Horn. You don’t have to tell us any more.”

“Once-this is two or three years ago-I talked to a man in town who was boasting about how beautiful a girl he had was. He even offered to take me to his house so that I could see her.”

“Did you go?”

I had but I denied it, one of those lies we tell without knowing why. “I asked him if the chain didn’t get in the way when they made love, and he said no, he made her hold her hands over her head.”

“Is this about Silk? Yes, I suppose it is.” Maytera was silent for a moment. “Like Marl. Marl was a friend of mine back home. Like the clerk, except that he didn’t have to wear a chain. All right, I understand why you think you must bring Silk here. In your place, I suppose I would, too.”

“Even though he doesn’t want to? He wanted very badly to go with us when we left. You must remember that, Maytera-how much he wanted to go with us, how eager he was. He hated all the evil he saw in the Whorl, and he must have hoped that people would be better in a new place.”

She said nothing.

“A lot are. Many of us are. That’s what I ought to say, because I’m one of them. We’re not as good as he would want us to be, but we’re better than we were in a lot of ways. Just thinking about starting fresh in a new place made Auk better, and if he and Chenille landed here-”

Mucor said distinctly, “On Green.”

“They landed on Green?” I turned to her eagerly. “Have you talked to them there?”

My question hung in the air, whispered by the waves at the feet of the cliffs.

At last I shrugged, and went back to Maytera Marble. “Even if they landed on Green, Maytera, they may be better people than the Auk and Chenille we knew, better people than they ever were at home.”

“What I started out to say, Horn, is that even if you cannot bring back a new eye for me, you could still make me very, very happy.”

I assured her that I would do anything I could for her.

“We agree that it will be difficult for you to find a new eye. This is worse, or anyway I’m afraid it may be. But if you should see my husband, see Hammerstone…”

I waited.

“If he’s still alive, if you should run across him, I’d like you to tell him where I am and how very deeply I regret tricking him into marriage as I did. Tell him, please, that I wouldn’t have come here, or brought my granddaughter here, if I had been able to face him. Ask him to pray for me, please. Will you do that for me, Horn? Ask him to pray for me?”

Naturally I promised that I would.

“He didn’t pray at all when I was with him, when we were… It pained me. It gave me pain, and yet I knew that he was being open and honest with me. It was I, the one who prayed, who lied and lied too. I know that must seem illogical, yet it was so.”

Here I tried to say something comforting, I believe. I am no longer certain what it was.

“Now I’m blind, Horn. I am punished, and not too severe a punishment, either. Are you going to tell him that I’m blind now, Horn?”

I said I certainly would, because I would try to enlist Hammerstone’s help in finding new eyes for her.

“And where we are now, my granddaughter and I? Will you tell him about this rock in the sea?”

“I’ll probably have to, Maytera. I’m sure he’ll want to know.”

She was silent for a minute or two, nor did Mucor speak again. I stood up to gauge the force and direction of the wind. The western horizon showed no indications of bad weather, only the clearest of calm blue skies.

“Horn?”

“Yes, Maytera. If Mucor won’t tell me anything more, and won’t tell Patera Silk that I’m going to come for him whether he wants me to or not, I ought to leave.”

“Only a moment more, Horn. Can’t you spare me a moment Or two? Horn, you knew him. Do you think that my husband-that Hammerstone might try to come here and kill me? Is he capable of that? Was he?”

“Absolutely not.” Privately I thought it likely that he would come, or try to, although not to do her harm.

“It might be better if he did.” Her voice had been growing weaker as she spoke; it was so faint when she said that that I could scarcely hear her over the distant murmur of the waves. “I still try to pretend that I’m taking care of my granddaughter, as I did when we were on our little farm, and in the town. But she’s taking care of me, really. That is the truth-”

Mucor interrupted, startling me. “I do not.”