On Blue's waters

“Then your anger is misdirected. You should be angry at me. I am.” For an instant (only an instant) I had heard Silk’s voice issuing from my own mouth. I tried to prolong it, but»could not. “What would you like to tell me?”

“Nothing.”

“Then let me say a few things, and after that you’ll have a few things of your own, I feel sure.” I waited for her to object.

When she did not, I continued, “First, the fault was mine, and mine alone. It wasn’t yours or anybody else’s. There was no reason for me to act as I did, and you resisted as fiercely as you could. You have-”

“I shouldn’t have.” It might have been a child, a small girl, speaking. “I hurt you. I know I did.”

“I hurt you a great deal more.” It was so overwhelmingly true that I found it impossible to go on.

“I deserved it.”

“You did not. You never will. You are entitled to be furiously angry with me. That was the second thing I was going to say, al- though I said it already this afternoon. If you had killed me while I slept, no one could have blamed you.”

“I would have blamed myself.”

“It occurred to me that you might before I fell asleep, and to tell the truth I was hoping you would.”

“No!” She shook her head violently enough for her hair to brush my cheek.

“Here is a third thing. I am a fool on a fool’s errand. I’ve been struggling to hide that from myself ever since I set out. To go to the Long Sun Whorl and bring back the strains of corn we need, and an eye for Maytera Marble, and so forth, is reasonable; but it’s a task for a bold and able man of twenty, not for me. Ten or fifteen years ago, I might have been adequate. Tonight I’m worse than inadequate. I’m thoroughly ridiculous.”

“You went because you were afraid they’d want your wife to go if you wouldn’t,” Seawrack reminded me. “You told me about that.”

“She might have done it, to. She’s brave and practical, with a good level head in a crisis. I won’t list my shortcomings-you know them already. I’ll simply point out that that’s not a description of me.”

“But-”

I raised my voice. “As for bringing Silk here, it’s less than a dream; and I very much doubt that Marrow and the rest even want me to do it. A trader named Wijzer told Marrow that to his face in my hearing, and Wijzer was right. All their talk about bringing Silk to New Viron was nothing more than a trick to get me to go. Or to get Nettle to, if I wouldn’t. A cheap and obvious trick that even Hoof and Hide should have seen through.”

Seawrack turned her head to whisper into my ear, so that I felt the warm caress of her breath. “You were right. I have things to say too. Is that all right?”

“Go ahead.”

“When you’re through. You’re going, in spite of all you’ve said. I know you are.”

I sighed; I could not help it. “I’ve told you I’m a fool, and I promised I would. That doesn’t mean you have to come with me. The lander in Pajarocu will probably explode as soon as they try to get it to go fly. Everybody on it will be killed, and it would be better if you weren’t one of us.”

“Is there more you want to say before we both go to sleep, or is it my turn?”

“I’m practically finished. Fourth and last, you’re not a prisoner on this sloop.” I recalled Sciathan the Flier then, and what Silk had said about him after Auk got him out of the Juzgado, and how Nettle and I had re-created that speech in our book. “You are my guest, a guest who’s been treated very badly. You’re free to leave any time-right now, if you like. Or when we reach Pajarocu or any other town.”

I fell silent, and after a time she murmured, “Are you waiting for me to jump into the sea again, Horn?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m not going to yet, and it’s my turn to talk. While you were sleeping I was trying to forget.” I,

“I don’t blame you.”

“Not what you think. I was trying to forget 4he water, and everything I did in it. Every time I remembered something that happened there, I would think of something that’s happened since I’ve been with you, some little thing or something you said, and put it there instead.”

“Can you do that?” I was incredulous, as I still am.

“Yes!” she said fiercely. “So could you.”

It was not the time to express my doubts.

“That’s the first thing I had to say, what I’ve been doing. I wasn’t angry or afraid, the way that you think I was. I was remembering and forgetting.”

For half a dozen gentle rockings of the sloop, she said nothing more.

“The second thing is that I’m one of you. Like you and the boy, but I don’t like him.”

“A human being.”

“Yes. I am a human woman. Aren’t there women who aren’t? What does the Babbie have?”

“A female hus. Not a woman.”

“Well, a woman is what I am. Like your Nettle, or the Tamarind you talk about sometimes. I am a woman, but I don’t know how to.”

I tried to say that I would help her all I could, but it would be much better if she had an actual woman to emulate. If Nettle were with us, for example.

“I’m learning how from you.”

Possibly there is something adequate that could be said in response to that; but I could not think of it, nor can I now.