The Knight

They came together, and I saw they were really fish. There were little orange fish that glowed like the flames of candles, black fish with huge heads and bad-dream teeth that hung red and blue bait in front of their own mouths, long silvery fish with gills and tails like light bulbs, and big blue fish with rows of blue lights down their sides, and a lot more kinds that I forget. All sorts of reds and yellows and pinks and every kind of color.

Only they were not important. What was important was down under them, and it was white thread, a big, big tangle of white thread, all of it alive and sort of groping. When I first saw it I thought it did not have any shape, but as soon as I thought that, it did. There was a mouth that could have swallowed the Western Trader, and a nose like a hill. Only it was a beautiful nose and a beautiful mouth, too. Pretty soon there were eyes, white eyes that looked blind. They blinked, and they had pupils I could have dived into, and they were blue eyes, and there was color in the cheeks just like roses were blooming there. It was the woman the statue had been made like. Only the statue is usually bigger than the person. Way down in the dark seawater was the real person, and she could have worn the statue around her neck on a chain.

Will you kill me? Still?

In the first place, I did not want to. In the second place, I did not think I could. I said, “I’ll have to try, Kulili. I’ll have to try my best, because I promised I would. But I hope you get away. I hope I won’t be able to do it.”

Now?

“No. These fish of yours could kill me pretty easy, and I haven’t even got a sword.”

May it be long before we meet again.

Chapter 28. Three Years

It was a long swim to the surface. It is funny, but when you have been way deep down it always seems like you are closer to the top than you really are. It is black down where you are, darker than any real night ever gets. You swim up quite a way, and it gets light, you can see things and you think you are only ten or twelve feet down. So you keep swimming up, maybe twenty-five feet, maybe fifty or a hundred. And you do not get to the top and nothing much changes. I felt like I was almost there half a dozen times probably before I really got there.

When I did, it was sort of a shock. For one thing I had not been breathing, and I was used to it. My head came out in the trough between two waves. I breathed out hard, and water ran out of my nose and mouth, and down my chin. And then a big wave hit me in the face. I choked, and when I got my head into the air again, I was making noises like a coffeepot. When I could breathe, I started to laugh.

After that I swam in and out of the waves and had a big time. Probably I played like that for half an hour.

I could see the sun, so I knew I was back in Mythgarthr again, and not in Aelfrice. I also knew that when I had been way deep down with Kulili, that had been Aelfrice. I figured I was pretty close to the island, and whenever I wanted to I could swim over that way and see about the two Aelf girls and Garsecg, and tell Garsecg it was going to take a whole lot more than a spear or a battle-ax for me to kill Kulili, and I really did not want to anyway. When I thought about it, I started hoping that I could trade him another favor for that one. Maybe a couple of them, or three.

Pretty soon I decided that was enough fun, and anyway it might be a long swim to the island, so I had better get started. I jumped up out of the water the way that fish do sometimes and had a look around. After the first one, I did it again, and again after that. The island was nowhere in sight. In fact there was no land anywhere. The only thing I could see was a ship about a mile away. I decided to swim for that because it would at least get me up higher. There was quite a bit of wind then, but the ship was headed toward me on a slant, so all I had to do was cut across to where it would be and wait. I could swim faster than it was sailing anyhow, so catching it was bound to be pretty easy.

I did not recognize it until it was close. A lot of paint had flaked off the forecastle, and some of the gold was missing from the wooden woman with the basket in front. But it was the Western Trader just the same. I could not believe it, even when I climbed up the side.

The lookout yelled something (I do not know what) and slid down the forestay dropping off it in front of me. He sort of goggled at me, then he got down on his knees. “Sir Able! I didn’t know ’twas you, sir. I didn’t know what ’twas, sir. I’m sorry, sir. I never meant no offense, sir. By wind an’ water, I never done.”

“Nor gave any,” I told him. “No sweat. If—wait a minute! You’re Pouk!”

“Aye, sir.”

“You’ve changed. It’s the beard. How long have I been gone, Pouk?”

“Three year, sir. We—I thought you wasn’t never comin’ back, sir. Cap’n didn’t, neither. Nobody done.”