On Blue's waters

They then placed several problems before me, saying that these were cases that had arisen in Skany during the past year, and asked me to judge each and explain the principles on which I made my decisions. In one, both parties might well have been telling the truth as they saw it. It could not possibly be decided by someone who could not question them both, and question witnesses as well, and I said so.

I will set it down here.

The people of Skany had been able to leave the Long Sun Whorl only because a wealthy man of their native city had supplied several hundred cards and other valuable parts to repair a lander for them. He did so on the condition that he would be permitted to claim a very extensive tract of land, whose size was agreed upon in advance, to be selected by him. (He was, I believe, one of the three ambassadors, although at no time did they allude to it.) This was done.

This man now desires to marry a young woman, hardly more than a girl, whom he had employed as a servant previously. The bride (as I shall call her) is entirely willing. The difficulty is that a certain poor woman has come forward to claim the bride-price, saying that she is the bride’s mother. The bride herself denies this, saying that her father was left behind in the Long Sun Whorl, and that her mother was a woman (whom she names) who perished when their lander took flight. Perhaps I should say here that it is their custom for the groom or his family to buy the bride from her parents; but that when the bride is orphaned she is bought from herself-that is to say, she receives her own bride-price, which becomes her property.

All this brought Seawrack and the gold she wore to mind vividly; yet her case was in certain respects the very reverse of this one. I had intended to write a great deal about her tonight in any event, and I will do so. The reversals should be obvious enough.

Her pale gold hair was long, as I have said, and in places dyed a misted green by some microscopic sea-plant that had taken refuge there. I am tempted to say that it was her hair that impelled me to name her as I did, but it would not be entirely true; the truth is that her name, which was no word of the Common Tongue, baffled me, and that Seawrack was near to it in sound and seemed to suit her very well.

Her face was beautiful, strong, and foreign. By that last, I mean that I had never before seen anyone with her sharp chin, very high cheekbones, and tilted eyes. Her skin was as white as foam in those days, which made her lips a blazing scarlet and her midnight-blue eyes darker than the night. I noticed her nakedness first, as I suppose any man would, and then the length of her legs and the womanly contours of her body, and only then the gold she wore. It was not until she released her hold on the backstay and waved, very shyly and tentatively, with her left hand that I realized that her right arm had been amputated just below the shoulder. “Hello?” Her voice was just above the threshold of audibility. And again: “Hello?”

That word is one of the most ordinary, and I remember that when I was a small boy Maytera Marble used to ridicule people who used it, saying that we ought to bless those whom we greet in the name of the god of the day.

Or if we were too self-conscious for that, to say good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good day. But I shall never forget seeing Seawrack as she stood in my old sloop, the way in which she waved to me (she was terrified of Babbie, as I quickly discovered), and the delicious music of her voice when she whispered, “Hello?”

As for what I replied, I may have said, “Good afternoon,” or “Hello!” or “Is it going to snow?” Or any other nonsense that you might propose. Most likely, I was too stunned to say anything at all.

“I am one of you,” she told me solemnly, and I thought that she meant one of the crew of our boat and tried to say something gracious about needing help without mentioning her missing arm. There is a saying among the fishermen, “One hand for yourself and one for the boat.” It means that in a rough sea you are to hold on with one hand and do your work with the other, and as I spoke to Seawrack I could not rid my mind of the idiotic thought that she would be unable to do it.

“Do you like me?”

It was said so artlessly and with such childlike seriousness that I knew there could be only one answer. “Yes,” I told her, “I like you very much.”

She smiled. It was as if a child had smiled, and by smiling had rendered her face transparent, so that I could see the woman she would someday be and had always been, the woman who stands behind all women and stands behind even Kypris, Thelxiepeia, and Echidna. If that woman has a name I do not know it; “Seawrack” is as good a name as any.