In Green's Jungles

"I'd rather see you eat it."

I shook my head.

After that we sat in silence for a time, and I began to review what I had already written.

"You know, sometimes I think you really are my father."

"I am."

"Sometimes you talk like him, and sometimes you don't. But he was always writing. He'd work all day in our mill, and eat supper. And then he'd write while the rest of us talked or played games. Sometimes he'd get up while it was still dark, and write until the sun came up, then go out and work."

"I was writing Patera Silk's history," I explained. "His life, insofar as I knew it. When I remembered something fresh while I was working, or when I woke up, I wanted to set it down while the impression was still vivid. Don't forget that your mother wrote too-wrote more than I did, in fact."

"She was making clean copies of what you wrote, mostly."

"She knew many things that I did not-what was said in Patera Silk's final meeting with Councilor Loris, for example, and more than once she suggested ideas and approaches I hadn't thought of."

"Have I ever told you my father's name? Or Mother's?"

I lifted my shoulders again, and let them fall. "I don't recall. What difference does it make?"

"I know I told you I had a brother named Sinew, and a twin brother, and since I told about him I probably said his name's Hoof."

"You may have. It's quite likely."

"Only I don't think I told you Mother's or Father's."

"Your mother's name is Nettle. Mine is Horn."

Hide spooned the last of the ragout into his bowl. "You really are my father, aren't you? Something's happened to you to make you look different."

The happiness I knew at that moment is really indescribable; I managed to say something on the order of "That's it exactly, Son," but I ca

"You looked a lot more like him in that other place."

I nodded. "There was a mirror in the guardroom of the barbican-I suppose the guards there used it to shave. Didn't you realize when you saw me there in the Red Sun Whorl that your search had succeeded?"

"Jahlee looked like a real woman there."

"She was a real woman," I told him, "there."

"A bad woman."

"Because she tried to seduce you? You have to understand that she has been doing that sort of thing for much of her life, inviting men. Promising much more than she could ever give them. She could never let men see her naked, for example, as we did, or even let them come close when she stood in a strong light. We went to the Red Sun Whorl, and suddenly everything she had pretended so long had become the truth; she was giddy with it. Try to put yourself in her place."

"All right."

"Seducing you would have been an evil act, and would have had a bad effect on your moral and emotional balance; but she did not know it. She knew only that she could actually give the love she had pretended she would give scores of men. I hope I'm making myself clear."

"Then she isn't really bad?"

I shook my head. "She is an evil creature, exactly as you said."

"You talked like she was your friend, but she was going out at night, flying-"

"Fly good!" Oreb seemed to feel that he had been excluded from our talk for too long.

"Out of the window of her room to drink people's blood. She said so. She told me so."

"Did she? I didn't know. I knew she must be doing it of course, but I didn't know she had confessed to you."

Hide looked uncomfortable. "It was after we got back."

"I see. She felt obliged to make her restored nature clear to you"

He could not meet my eyes. "Yeah."

"A grave disappointment."

He did not reply, and when he had finished his meal he stood up and began to build this little shelter.

There is a marsh here. Hide says he knew of it, but had hoped the ice would be thick enough for us to cross. It is not, and we will have to go around. Quite large, he says. A great man-killer stalks there two-legged like a man, green and quiet, with fangs longer and thicker than a strong man's arm – but only for me, and only when I do not look for it.

Tonight we talked about the Neighbors. I told him about the ruins on the island, and how I had fallen into the pit there, saying, "No wall was higher than my waist."

"You said there're towers on Green that go up and up, higher than the lander."

I nodded. "There are."

"When we were talking about the trees growing out of the walls, you said the Vanished People built better than we do."

"Better than we do thus far, at least."

"Then the place on that island must have been empty, a long long time."

I tried to read his eyes, as he was trying to read mine-tried to learn how much he knew and guess how much he guessed.

"What happened to them?"

I stared out over the marsh. It ca

Surely we did not all speak at once, although it must have seemed so. Rigoglio himself was almost too weak to speak, the coachman had scarcely spoken since we arrived, and I believe Eco and Terzo held their peace. Perhaps Hide and Jahlee did as well-but Mora, Sfido, and I chattered away like monkeys.

The guard seemed not to hear anything we said, but leveled his long weapon at me. It was not a pike or spear, although it resembled both. "Are you a torturer?"

"What?"

"I said, are you a torturer? Are you in their guild?" He jerked his head to indicate something more distant than the cemetery that shingled the broad hillside behind him with stone.

I said no, not so much to deny it as because I did not understand him.

"The Matachin Tower?"

I shook my head and said that I had never heard of such a place.

"You've got that sword," he pointed to it, "and those clothes."

"I do, but I'm a stranger here."

Morello said, "The Duko's been stabbed." With an expressive gesture, he pointed out the wound.

"We've bandaged him, but he's lost too much blood."

The guard nodded; if he had understood, nothing in his face showed it.

"He needs a physician," Mora declared.

Sfido added, "Or captors with sense enough to let him die."

Morello protested, and Hide stepped between them.

Colonel Terzo blurted, "If our Duko dies, he dies too!," and shot the omophagist a look of venomous hatred.

Mora's eyes flashed. "You're not master here!"

"Tie my hands then, and carry Rigoglio yourself. I say that if Rigoglio dies, he dies!"

Eco growled. His hand was on the hilt.

"I'd sooner set him free," Mora told Terzo angrily, "than let you kill him. I'd sooner give him his knife back and let him kill you."

The guard shouted for silence, Oreb croaked, "No talk," and Jahlee giggled.

"Nobody's killing nobody." The guard turned his strange weapon on the omophagist. "Not unless I give the order."

"Well said," I told him.

"And you-where's your sword?"

I held out my hands. "I have none."

Rigoglio raised his big head as though it were almost too heavy for him to lift. "Our friend is a witch, a strego. As you see."

"That does it!" The guard beckoned to Jahlee. "Are you with them?"

"Do you want me to be?"

He stared at her as if unable to think of a reply, cursing in a monotonous whisper.

"No die!" Oreb was speaking to Rigoglio, and I bent to listen to him, realizing that Oreb had heard something I had not.

"Don't feel pity for me, Incanto." I could scarcely make out the words. "I don't mind anymore."