Return to the Whorl

From a branch some distance from our fire, Oreb called, "Bird say. Say girl."

I looked up at him. "What are you talking about?"

"Say girl. Silk go. Go wet!" He flew, quickly vanishing in the dark sky; and Hide ventured, "Maybe he wants to tell Mother we're coming home."

"Perhaps he does. May I ask how your dream ended?"

"Well, I hid my eyes like I said, and after that I looked for a long, long time. Sometimes I saw those tall men. They would be standing still next to something else tall, like one of the cupboards or a big clock or something. But I knew they weren't playing and I wasn't supposed to see them at all, so I pretended I didn't, and went on looking."

"Did you find anyone?"

"Yeah. It took a long time, but I finally did. I opened this one big cabinet, and there was one of the dolls." He fell silent, his face troubled.

"I would think you would have been happy."

"I was. It was just a doll, though. Like a baby, only somebody had carved a face sort of like that one on your stick. Only this was a baby's face, and painted pink. Younger than Bala's baby. You couldn't even tell if it was a boy or a girl."

I said I doubted that it made any difference.

"I guess not. I took it and carried it like a real baby, and tried to go back to base. The place where I'd counted?"

"I understand. Could you find it?"

"Huh-uh. I looked and looked, only I couldn't find them. You know, the little table, and the chairs the dolls had been in. So finally I sat the doll down in a corner and said you're it. I explained about hiding eyes and counting, and looking for people, and then I ran away and hid. There was this great big long sofa with lots of legs, I don't know how many but eight or ten, maybe, and I got down on my stomach and crawled under it."

"Go on."

"There was a little girl hiding under there already. At first I thought it was the one with yellow hair, but it wasn't."

I nodded and said that I was delighted to hear it.

"Then I thought it was the other one, Mora. Only it wasn't her either."

"Who was it?"

Hide looked troubled, and seemed unable to meet my eyes. "I don't know."

"Was that the end of your dream?"

"Almost. We didn't talk, just pushed up close and held on to each other. We were both scared."

"In a game of hide-and-seek? What were you afraid of?"

"Being found, I guess. I was in front and she was in back against the wall, and I wanted to say if she sees me I'll go out and be it, and they won't know about you. Only I didn't. And pretty soon I could hear the doll, walking slow and looking in all the cabinets. And then I woke up and woke you up."

"To ask what your dream meant."

He nodded. "Yeah."

"But there is something about your dream you aren't telling me. Who was the girl under the sofa?"

"I don't know."

"Have you told me everything you remember about her?"

"What did it mean, Father? Do you know?"

"I might guess, I suppose-but I have no intention of guessing until you're willing to tell me everything you remember about it. Are you?"

"I'll think about it," he said, and lay down.

The sea was to his left, cliffs of wet black rock topped with dark and lofty trees to his right. At times he climbed over tumbled stones and fallen trunks. At others, he walked stony beaches with water lapping at his boots. He had gone a long way already and felt he had a long way to go still, although he could not have said how far, or where he was going. A single bird swooped and wheeled over the sea; once it cried hoarsely and he stopped to look up at it, touched by some memory to which he could not put a name.

At last he saw a house, small and primitive, with walls of big timbers and a steep roof of wooden shingles that were curling now, warping from the sea's salt spray and the Short Sun's heat. He made for it, aware that in some fashion he had left the beach, that he was wading, or perhaps walking inland. There was sand under his feet as he approached the house, sand mixed with chips of bark. He tried to rid his boots of it before he went inside, kicking the step gently with his left foot, then his right. He stepped inside…

And was home. The table at which they had eaten was there, armless chairs for Nettle and himself, stools for the boys. When Marrow and the rest arrived to ask him to go back to the Whorl, there would not be chairs enough for all of them, and someone would carry out the heavy wooden storage box that he had built for winter clothes, and someone else would sit on that.

But Marrow and the rest had not yet come to ask him to go. There was a child asleep in a basket now, the old wicker basket Nettle had woven for herself before they left the farm that had been their share of Blue, the land given them for coming because everyone had wanted land and livestock, even those like themselves who had less than no idea what to do with it. The sleeping child was Sinew. He knew it before he saw its face, before he saw the small silver ring the child wore, or the white stone in the ring.

The inhuma came, a bent and haggard figure that was not a woman, in a gown contrived of yellowing rags. She recalled Jahlee. Had Jahlee come to Blue for the human blood she needed and returned to Green, then come to Blue again? How long had she starved under the stone in Gaon?

The inhuma bent to drink, and he turned his head away and found himself crouching on the sand beside an earlier Horn who was seated on a blanket beside Nettle. Her right hand was in his; with her left, she pointed to a fish jumping far away, invisible against the setting sun but leaving silver circles on the calm swell of the sea. The fear of another pregnancy hung over them both, invisible as the fish but more real.

Nettle said, "Did you ever see anything so beautiful?"

He whispered in Horn's ear. You.

"When we were on the airship… Do you remember? I went up there alone. Up on the roof of the gondola. I never told you."

"I would have come with you."

"I know. But you were still asleep, and anyway I wanted to do it by myself, just once. It was the day before we got back to Viron, I'm pretty sure."

"It must have been cold," the Horn beside her said.

And he, the walker beside the sea, knew that Horn was thinking of the winter not long past that would soon come again, and the donkey frozen in the little hut he had built for it, and himself standing over it with his knife thinking that there had been some mistake that it could not be real, the donkey had been so young, not yet a year old, and it could not be happening; but back in the log house on the beach Jahlee had drunk her fill. Her fangs had vanished. She had licked the child's face and neck, and had wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, a ragged, painfully thin figure with famished eyes who melted through the doorway and was gone.

"It was, but not as cold as it was in Viron down on the ground once we got there. You couldn't see much sun, because the airship was sailing down the sun."

"I remember," the Horn beside her said.

"Just the same, I knew when the shade started to go up. I could see it in my mind, and the first light came down like gold dust."

The Horn beside her may have spoken then. Or not. If he did, the walker beside the sea crouching next to him did not hear him. In a moment the sun will be down. The stars will come out, and the wind grow cold. You will go inside and find Sinew, and it will never be the same again. Clasp her to you now. Tell her you love her now, before it is too late.

It was desperately urgent that he speak-desperately urgent that he be heard and understood. He rolled his head from side to side on the soft, crushed stems of the wheat, conscious that no sound issued from his lips.

His eyes opened. He sat up. It had been so real, all of it; but a dream, only a dream, and it was black night still.