In Green's Jungles

Inclito grunted, chewed, and swallowed. "What about yours, Fava? Why'd you tell us about that poor sprat you found in the mountain stream?"

"Because it was the best that I could think of just then, " Fava told him, "and I was first and had to think quickly. Your strego had plenty of time in which to think, and he's much too clever to tell that story merely to win the game."

Inclito's mother said severely, "It's very impolite of you to call Incanto a strego, Fava, when he's denied it. He is our guest."

Mora said, "If Papa won't ask, I will. Why did you tell us that story, Incanto?"

I sipped my wine as I considered my answer. "All the stories tonight have been about duty, or that was how it seemed to me. You were miserable in your palaestra, and Fava thought it her duty to help you, as she did. In her own story, she thought it her duty to rescue the child from his mother, and to look for him when he disappeared."

Inclito nodded. "Mano did his duty, and he was a man who would murder his own brother. There's something I want to ask Fava about that story of hers, though. The boy, Fava. What was it you called him? Bricco. At the end you said he'd never come back to his family?"

Fava nodded.

"But those other sprats, the ones he used to play with, they saw him every so often. They said the Vanished People had stolen him?"

Fava nodded again.

"Well, when they saw him, did the Vanished People bring him back?"

She laughed-a good, merry laugh that left me feeling entirely certain that she was more mature than she appeared. "I should have asked them that. I don't know. Perhaps he escaped from them every now and then, and tried to return to his family and his old life."

"But he couldn't, " I remarked. By that time I felt certain I had been right about her.

Inclito pursued the topic. "There was one of them with the man in Incanto's story. This Bricco sounds like one himself, like he had joined them, almost."

Fava nodded. "That was why the other children associated him with them, I feel sure."

Mora said, "There aren't any, are there, Papa? That's what you always say."

"There are stories." He helped himself to more veal. "We heard one tonight."

"There are the old houses, " Mora said. "Not like ours, but old houses of theirs that nobody wants." Her slow speech may have given her words more weight than she intended. "People see those, and at night they see travelers camping in them, and they imagine there's a town full of them that we can't find."

"Incanto believes in them, " her father declared.

"What do you know about them, Incanto?"

His mother reached across him to prod my arm. "Do eat something. Why, you've hardly touched your food."

To satisfy her I swallowed another bite. "I've been fasting up until this meal. What I've eaten already is more than enough for me."

"You didn't talk about my story." It was her accusatory tone again. "You said all the stories had been about duty. Mine was about ghosts and witchcraft."

"In that case I was mistaken. I apologize, humbly and contritely."

Mora asked, "Do you believe in witchcraft, Incanto? In stregas and stregos, like my grandmother? In ghosts?"

"I believe in ghosts." I recalled Hyacinth's ghost and its effect upon Pig very vividly, but I chose not to mention that memory. "The best man I've ever known told me once, long ago, that he had seen one, the ghost of an elderly man with whom he had lived and whom he had assisted. He wouldn't have lied to me-or to anybody, if he could help it-and he was a careful observer."

I spoke to Inclito's mother. "It was Turco's ghost who did his duty, or that was how it seemed to me. Turco felt that it was his duty as your husband to protect you from Casco, and from two men whom he feared were like Casco, or might become like him. You didn't see that in either of them?"

She shook her head, and I said, "The dead must look at people differently."

Inclito nodded. "I think so too. Men and women, it's the same. A girl is crazy about some man. Her mother likes him too, but she won't say so. Her father knows he's a loafer and a thief. I see it all the time."

Mora told me, "You haven't answered Papa's question about the Vanished People yet, and you haven't said anything about witches. If you believe in ghosts, you have to believe in witches, too."

"I believe that there are people who are called witches by others, " I said. "Some of them may find it to their advantage to help the belief in witchcraft along."

Mora said, "Then you believe in witches but not in witchcraft, " and Fava tittered.

"You may put it like that if you want. I think it's fair. May I ask you a question about your story, Mora? You said that the giant's daughter did badly in her lessons, I believe-or at least you seemed to imply it. Did she do badly in all her subjects? Or only in some."

"The story's over now, " Mora declared.

Fava put in, "I know a girl who gets the answer before the teacher does."

"In arithmetic? I thought so. There are people who do not know all the good qualities they possess. Mora is one, I believe."

Seeing that Inclito's mother was about to speak again, I added, "The man who warned Casco was a strego, a male witch, if you like. How he got into the orchard I do not know, but from what our hostess said it certainly ca

There were nods all around the table.

I said, "I've been called wise several times tonight. I know that I am not, but I'm wise enough to know that strong emotions of any kind often make people act very foolishly. I include myself. When the emotion is a good one-love, for example-they are often foolish in admirable ways. Anger, hatred and greed lead to acts of the kind we heard about in our hostess's story."

Inclito nodded again and swallowed. "Greed for foreign cards, you mean."

"That and food, " I told him. "I had resolved to eat very little tonight, and look at this." While we had been talking, I had practically cleaned my plate. "And various other things as well."

He pointed with his table knife. "You believe in the Vanished People."

"Because I put one in my story? It was only a story, as I told you from the begi

"Because Mora keeps trying to get you to say you don't, and you won't."

I conceded that he was right. "There's another continent on the other side of the sea. Do you know about it? I realize that we're far from the sea here."

"Must be, " Inclito said, "or the backside of this one." He traced a circle through the gravy on his plate.

"People there call the Vanished People the Neighbors. They are conscious of living beside them, and the name they give them reflects that."

I drew breath, conscious of having eaten too much, and conscious, too, that there was more food to come, although I was resolved not to touch it. "As for me, I have walked with them, and sat with them around their fire. Thus I know that they exist. They have gone elsewhere-found a new home circling another short sun. But they have our permission to revisit this one whenever they choose."

Fava's eyebrows went up. "Who gave them permission?" At that moment I was only too conscious that those full, fair eyebrows were in reality nothing more than smudges of color drawn across her forehead.

"I did."

"Have you been there?" Mora wanted to know. "To the continent on the other side of the sea?"

Studying her broad, coarse face, so earnest and intent, I realized that she was not nearly so unhandsome as I had at first thought. Her features suffer in comparison to Fava's, and she is more than a trifle over-fleshed even for her not inconsiderable stature; but there is a hint and more of her grandmother's beauty behind the big, hooked nose and the wide mouth. "What difference does it make whether I say that I have or that I have not?" I asked her. "If I've lied to you about sitting with the Neighbors at their fire, I would lie about my travels, too, wouldn't I? Fishermen lie about their fish, and travelers about the foreign towns they have visited-or at least we travelers certainly have that reputation."