On Blue's waters

Here I am reminded irresistibly of Quadrifons, Olivine’s god, he of the four faces. Is it even possible that he is not a form of the Outsider as well? Considering Olivine, and the life she lived as a species of ghost in the Caldé’s Palace, I do not think so. And if Quadrifons (whose sign of crossroads may well have become Pas’s sign of addition) was in the final reckoning none other than the Outsider-which now seems certain to me-might not the Mother be Scylla as well?

Perhaps.

But I do not really believe it. In a town one cobbler, as the saying goes, and in another town another; but they are not the same cobbler, although they own similar tools, do similar work, and may even be similar in appearance.

This is what I think, not what I know:

Having the sea, as we in Old Viron did not, the Neighbors had also a goddess of the sea. She may have been their water goddess as well, as Scylla is at home; I cannot say.

Perhaps all gods and goddesses are very large; certainly Echidna was when I saw her in our Sacred Window. Our gods, the gods of Old Viron, dwelt in Mainframe. I saw Mainframe in company with Nettle and many others, and even what I saw was a very large place, although I was told that most of it was underground. It may be that our gods did not come among us except by enlightenment and possession because they were too large to do so; even the godlings that they send among the people now are, for the most part, immense. A man may like insects. Some men do. A man who likes them may make them gifts, giving a crumb soaked in honey or some such thing. But although that man may walk, he may not walk with his pets the insects. He is too big for it.

So it is, I believe, with the Mother. She dwells in the sea, and Seawrack spoke of hiding at times within her body as one might speak of taking shelter in the Grand Manteion, the Palace, or some other big building. Possibly the Mother’s worshippers cast their sacrifices into the waves instead of burning them. (I do not know, and offer the suggestion as a mere guess.) What seems certain is that her worshippers were the Vanished People, whom I did not then call the Neighbors; and that they are gone, although not entirely gone.

She waits.

For what I do not know. It may be for her worshippers to return again. Or for us to become her new worshippers, as we well may.

Or perhaps merely for death. She shaped herself, I believe, a woman of the Vanished People so that they would love her. We are here now, and so she shaped for me a woman of my own race-a woman beside whom Chenille would stand like a child-who could sing and speak to me. Beneath it the old sea goddess waited, and was not of our human race, nor of the race of the Vanished People, whom I was to come to know.

I once had a toy, a little wooden man in a blue coat who was moved by strings. When I played with him, I made him walk and bow, and spoke for him. I practiced until I thought myself very clever. One day I saw my mother holding the two sticks that held his strings, and my little wooden man saluting my youngest sister much more cleverly than I could have made him do it, and laughing with his head thrown back, then mourning with his face in his hands. I never spoke of it to my mother, but I was angry and ashamed.

It has been a long while since I wrote last. How long I am not sure. I went to Skany as its ambassadors asked, and remained there most of the summer. Now I have returned to this fine, airy house my people here have built for me, which they enlarged while I was gone. The west wing was torn to pieces by a storm, they tell me; but they have rebuilt it and made it larger and stronger, so that I walk there among rooms that seem familiar and feel that I have shrunk.

The storms are worse. Green is great in the sky. Like the eye of a devil, people say; but the truth for me is that it is so large that I look up at it and think on other days, and fancy sometimes that I can smell the rot, and see the trees that are eating trees that are eating trees. I never hear the wild song of the wind without recalling other days still, and how we built our house and our mill, Nettle.

You were the dream of my boyhood. You shared my life, and I shared yours, and together we brought forth new lives. Who can say what the end of that may be? Only the Outsider. He is wise, Nettle. So wise. And because he is, he is just.

I hear the wind’s song now at my window. I have opened the shutters. The flame of my lamp flickers and smokes. Through the open window I see Green, which will be gone in an hour as it passes beyond the windowframe. I want to call out to you that the tides are coming; but no doubt they have come already. It may be that the log walls of our house are turning and leaping in the waves as I write. Time is a sea greater than our sea. You knew that long before I went away. I have learned it here. Its tides batter down all walls, and what the tides of time batter down is never rebuilt.

Not larger.

Not smaller.

Never as it was.