The Knight

I blinked and the Lady was gone. I remembered then that Bold Berthold had told me they went a lot faster up there and what we saw was years to them. They get killed sometimes (I found that out later) but they never get old and die the way we do.

Then I thought about the highest world, Number One. It seemed to me for that living way up there and looking down on the rest of us would make him proud. After a while I saw where that was wrong, and under my breath I said, “No, it wouldn’t. It would make you kind instead, if there was any good in you at all.” As soon as I had said it, I knew Pouk had heard me, but I do not know what he made of it.

What I had thought was what if it was me and I was all alone up there, with just rabbits and squirrels? Or the only grownup, and the rest were little kids? Sure, I could strut around and show off for them, but would I want to? If one was bad, I could smack him and make him cry. But I was a knight. What kind of victory would that be for a knight?

I decided I would just take care of the kids as well as I could, and I would hope that someday they would get older and be people I could really talk to.

Maybe I nodded off then, or maybe I had already. Anyway I dreamed I was a kid again myself asleep on a hillside. In my dream, the flying castle crossed the sky over my head and made me remember how I used to live in a place where there were swords and no cars.

I woke up because I had been about to fall and went to stand by Pouk. There was a dark cloud way in the west, and I saw a man riding down it. He looked really small because he was so far away, but I saw him as clearly as I have ever seen anything, a man in black armor on a big white horse—the horse’s neck stretched out, and its open mouth and wild eyes. Its hooves just flying. Down the cloud and across the sea, lower and lower until it seemed like it was ru

“Look!” I yelled. “A man on horseback, there in the lowest stars. See him?”

Pouk looked at me as if I had gone crazy.

Kerl sighted along my arm. “The Moonrider, Sir Able? You seen him?”

“I see him now.”

“I never have.” Kerl squinted and peered. “Some do, they say.”

“Right there, two fingers above the water, where the bright star is.”

Kerl peered again, then shook his head. “I can’t, sir. I’ve had Nur point like you and say he seen him plain as day, but I’m not one that has the second sight.”

“I’m not, either.”

From the wheel, Pouk said really soft, “You are, Sir Able, sir.”

I started to say how plain he was and anybody could see him, but all of a sudden I could not see him myself. After that I kept looking and looking. The moon was still like a shining bow, but it was only like it. It was not one, not really. The stars were still there, reflected in the sea, and there were a few clouds and it was really beautiful. I sort of thought I would say here that there was nobody there, that it was all just empty. That would not be true. I knew there was somebody there, maybe a lot of somebodies. Only I could not see them.

I must have looked for about an hour, and then the Aelf came. They were as solid and real as anybody there in the night, some with fishes’ scales and some with fishes’ tails. They were blue, dark blue, but it was not like a certain sky or anything. It was not navy blue or midnight blue or blue black, or anything like that. It was more like the color of deep, deep water than anything else, but that was not it either. It was their own color, and their eyes were like the yellow fire of the sun reflected in ice. They had lonely, lovely, piping voices, and they called out to each other, and to the sea and the ship. I knew most of the words they used, but I could not understand what they were saying and I ca

I stood up, balancing on a merlon, and waved to them, yelling, “Over here! I’m Able!”

They called to one another, pointing, and swam over to the ship, diving in and out of the water and leaping free of it, sometimes as high as the mainmast. Spreading fins like wings. I told Kerl to hang a rope over the side or something and he did, but not many of them used it. They just climbed up the sides, or else jumped up on the deck until there was a crowd of them there.

I pulled off my shirt and the bandage so they could see my wound, and they came up on the sterncastle deck to look at it, asking questions without waiting for answers.

I had to guess at what to say; so I said I wanted to be cured and I would do anything for them if only they would do it. And if they could not, I would still do anything they wanted me to.

“No,” they said. And, “No, no!” And, “No, no, no, brave sir knight. We could not ask you to fight Kulili for us until you were well and strong. Ill and weak you would surely die.”

Another was almost like an echo. “Will surely die ...”

Then an old Aelf came; he looked like a man of thin blue glass, with wild white hair and a tangled blue beard to his knees. All the others stood aside—you could tell he was somebody. He took my face between his hands and looked way down into my eyes. I could not help looking into his when he did that, and it was like looking into a storm at midnight.

When he finally let my face go, it seemed like it had been a long, long time. Hours. “Come with us to Aelfrice” was what he said. “The sea shall heal your wound and teach you to be the strongest of your kind, a knight against whom no knight can stand. Will you come?”

I could not talk, but I nodded.

As soon as I did, there were eight or ten Aelfmaidens tearing at my clothes. They took off my sword belt and Sword Breaker, and everything else, too, and as soon as they got down to bare skin they kissed it, giggling and elbowing each other and having a fine time. One grabbed my right hand and another one got my left, and one jumped up onto my shoulders. It seemed like she weighed no more than a few drops of water, and the long, thin legs she wrapped around my neck were as cold as dew.

All four of us jumped into the sea then. I did not mean to, but I did anyway. It was all really strange. There had been this greasy swell up where the ship was, but before we hit the sea was tossing waves, and they looked as clear as crystal—chimerical, like ghosts in sheets of snow-white foam, ghosts spangled all over with moonlight and reflected stars. There was a shock as if we were jumping into a cold shower, and a roar like a big wave hitting another head-on, and then we were down under all those waves.

“You will not drown,” the one on my left told me, and giggled. I had not even been worrying, but I should have been.

“Not as long as we are with you, Sir Knight.” That was the right-hand Aelf-maiden; she laughed, and the sound of it was like little naked kids playing in some pool the tide had left.

“But we will leave you!” It was the one on my shoulders who said that, and she pulled my hair a little bit to get me to pay attention. “It is what we do!”

All three of them laughed and laughed at that. There was nothing cruel about the way they laughed, but there was nothing kind about it either.

“Garsecg will make us!” they said.

Strange fish swam all around us. Some of them looked dangerous and some looked very dangerous. I did not know who they belonged to then. Deeper down we lost the moon and the starlight, and the whole world of suns and moons and winds seemed really, really far away. I guess it was the way an astronaut must feel; he was so used to those things that he never thought they could be taken away, and when they are he must wonder how he got into this.

I know I did.

Some of the fish down there had teeth like big needles, and a lot had spots or stripes on their sides that glowed red, yellow, or green. I saw an eel that looked like a rope on fire, and some other scary things, and finally I asked the Aelfmaidens if this was where they lived, because it did not seem to me that anybody would if they could live anywhere else.