The Knight

“No ordinary dog can do what you do. No ordinary dog can talk, for that matter.”

“Good dog.”

I groped for some way to frame a question that might get a useful answer but had to settle for, “Why is it you get big when you fight something at night?”

“’Cause I can.”

“When we got Mani, I wanted to think you were like him.”

Gylf growled.

“Okay, maybe I should’ve said I wanted to think he was like you, only a cat. That’s how it seemed lots of times, but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.”

Gylf lay down and offered no comment.

“Mani knows a lot about magic from watching the witch who used to own him. You don’t know anything about magic, so what you do isn’t. I don’t know what it is but I know I need to think about it. Unless you tell me.”

“Can’t.”

“Then maybe Uri can. Or Baki.” I called for them, but neither appeared.

“That’s not good,” I said. “We’ve got to go to Utgard to get Pouk and Ulfa, and get back before Lord Beel’s bunch gets here. We’re going to need Uri and Baki but we may not have them.”

Gylf raised his head. “Think they know? Might know?”

“They might,” I said, “and they might even tell us. The Aelf can change shape.” I paused to think. “Only not in the sunshine. But in Aelfrice, Setr changed into a man called Garsecg, and Uri and Baki had been turned into Khimairas. Or maybe turned themselves into Khimairas. I don’t know which.”

Seeing Gylf’s look of incomprehension, I added, “Flying monsters. Only there’s something wrong about all this. I can’t put my finger on it, but I know there is.”

“Sleep,” Gylf suggested.

I shrugged. “You’re right. I need sleep, and if I sleep I might think of it. Only just ’til dark, all right? Wake me when it starts to get dark, if you’re awake.”

It was dangerous, I thought as I stretched myself on the cool fern. We were within a few miles of the Angrborn camp; if they searched the woods for the mules, they might find us. More likely, the white stallion might be seen and caught and used for a pack horse. But pushing myself, and the stallion, and even Gylf to the point of exhaustion would be worse yet; and the lands nearer Utgard, from what I had been told, would have a lot more giants living in them than this dry hill country did.

As sleep came nearer and nearer, I tried to imagine one of the Angrborn plowing with oxen the way one of our farmers would with a toy tractor. Try as I might, I could not do it.

―――

Water surged about me, carrying me with it. A school of fish like scarlet jewels passed, and met a second school of iridescent silver. They intermeshed, passed. The iridescent fish surrounded me, and were gone.

The girl-face of Kulili lay below me as an island must lie below a bird. Her vast lips moved, but the only sound was in my mind. I made them. I shaped them as a woman molds dough, taking something from the trees, something from the beasts that felled the trees, and something from myself.

I saw her hands then, hands knit of a million millions of thread-worms, and Disiri taking shape as they labored.

That dream was lost among other many others, dreams of death, long before my eyelids fluttered.

But not lost completely.

―――

I woke at sunset, and in less than an hour I was riding north, with Gylf trotting beside the stallion. About the time the moon came up, I said, “I think I’ve got it. Not everything, but a lot of the things that were bothering me.”

Gylf glanced up. “About me?”

“Other stuff, too. I was thinking you only changed at night.”

“Mostly.”

“Yeah, mostly. But not always. Not when you and me and old man Toug fought the outlaws, for instance.”

We went on in silence, the stallion picking his way through the darkness as the moon through the cold sky.

“Do you remember your mother, Gylf? Do you recall her at all?”

“How she smelled.”

“You got separated from her, somehow. Do you remember anything about that?”

“Wasn’t to go.” Gylf’s deep voice sounded thoughtful. “Went anyhow.”

I thought of little kids at home. “You wandered off?”

“Couldn’t keep up. Brown people found me.”

“The Bodachan.”

He grunted assent.

“They bowed to me when they gave you to me. Remember? They tried to hide their faces.”

“Yep.”

“I think somebody in Aelfrice educated me, Gylf. I feel like I was taught a lot there. But I don’t know why, or what I learned.”

“Huh!”

“I don’t even know if I really learned it. Only I think the Bodachan educated you. Trained you, or whatever you’re supposed to say about that. Taught you to talk, maybe. And I think probably they told you about changing shape, how to do it, and you shouldn’t do it in the sunshine, not here in Mythgarthr.”

“Pigs.”

I reined up. “What did you say?”

“Pigs. Smell ’em?”

“Do you think they’re close?” I strained to look about me in the darkness, and sensed rather than saw that Gylf had lifted his head to sniff the wind.

“Nope.”