In my dream tonight, however, that moment never came. I had found gems, or at least smooth stones that seemed gems, in the sand in the hollow of an abrupt bend in the channel. After pocketing a few I ignored the rest, having hoped to find my light there. In my dream they were jewels indeed, jewels as big as pullet's eggs, sparkling from a hundred facets. At the opposite point, where the strengthened current washed away the earth of the bank, I had glimpsed squared stones and shards of pottery among the roots. In my dream, these became strange machines and gleaming weapons, objects of unthinkable power and mystery. The dead children taunted me, and begged, "A cardbit, sir? Just one cardbit, " urged on by Scylla.
Or at least, I believe now that those strange machines and weapons must exist only in my dream tonight, as Active as Scylla and the speaking dead. It may have been, however, that they were actually present, that I saw them and ignored them, refusing to recognize them for what they were; but that my memory has stored them up, and now recalls them to torment me for my neglect. What might we find if we were to dig for those treasures near buildings such as this rambling house of Inclito's?
Tonight, when we told stories around the dinner table, I discovered to my utter astonishment and her consternation that I could enter into Fava's, seeing everything she described and more, and changing the course of her tale. (I must remember to describe all that here.) If there is more to tales than I have ever believed, may there not be more to dreams, too? I will not say that there are treasures in the ruins here because I dreamed them. Madness lies in all such assumptions. But may not they be there, just as my sword was concealed in a wall? (Better yet, as the silver cup must have been hidden somewhere in the ruined Neighbor house near Gaon.) And may I not find some because of my dream?
For a moment at least I had the company I have been wishing for. The kitchen maid, fully dressed, with tousled hair and the indescribable expression of a woman who has been satisfied in love, appeared in my doorway to ask whether I would not like something to eat. Without answering her question, I demanded to know why she was awake at such an hour.
She said that it was necessary for her to rise very early to help the cook make bread, so that we could have freshly baked bread at breakfast, which my host's mother insists upon whenever there is company.
I remarked that she could not get much sleep in that case, asked where she had slept. It struck home. She colored, her cheeks (fuller even than Mora's) blushing so dark a red that I could not miss it even by candlelight, and said that she slept in the kitchen. "I'm going there now."
I refrained from asking from where.
"So I can get you something very easily, Master Incanto, if you want anything, sir."
I told her that I did not, and she fled. The other maid is slender and more attractive.
* * *
I have tried to sleep again, but it is perfectly useless. The nightmare river waits in my mind, ready to pounce the moment my eyes close, its dead people voicing their dead greetings and its dead children crying out to me for help. I do not mean that I dreamed it again. I cannot have, since I did not sleep. But it filled my thoughts most unpleasantly.
Not half a minute after I sat up again, in came the kitchen maid with this tray. This time I was able to speak with her somewhat longer, although she seemed more frightened than ever. Her name is Onorifica, she is the fourth child of seven, and her father owns a smaller, poorer farm nearby. He has bought three heifers (Onorifica says very good ones) from Inclito, and is paying for them with three years' labor from his daughter.
"It's not near as bad as you're thinking, sir. I get plenty to eat and my clothes, and presents sometimes." She showed me a silver ring and a bracelet she thinks is gold. It is actually brass if I am any judge, and was probably made in Gaon, where you can see a thousand like it on any market day.
"And I'll get in a nap after breakfast, sir. Cook and I both will."
I asked her about the others. Decina, the cook, is a permanent servant, paid in foodstuffs that she trades for whatever other things she may require. The coachman and the other farm laborers are paid in the same fashion, and all take a wagon into Blanko once a month to trade for whatever they want or need.
Torda, the other maid, is a distant relation of Inclito's. "A cousin?" I suggested.
"She'd like you to think it, sir. Madame's brother's son was married to her mother. I think that's the way of it. Only he got killed in a war, and she married somebody else, and that when she"-she meant Torda-"got born. It's some story like that, sir. Anyhow she came here in rags, that's what cook says, expecting to be treated like Mora, you know. Only they was always fighting. That was how it was when I came and I've got to go."
This tray she brought me holds a cup and saucer, a little pot of very good tea, sugar whiter than I was accustomed to in Gaon, half a lemon, and enough cherry tarts for four or five persons. I am drinking the tea, but I intend to leave the tarts for Oreb. That business about fresh bread for breakfast suggests a substantial meal.
Looking back over what I wrote an hour ago, I find my speculations on the motives of the Neighbor on Green who recruited me to clean his sewer. Let us try another, one I think deeper and more difficult.
Why (I asked) did he not do it himself? I am going to propose two theories; neither or both may be correct. The first is that the Neighbors find it hard to move some kinds of objects. So it seems to me after the dealings I have had with them. I do not think that they are here in the sense we are, even when they are standing beside us. This is only speculation, but I believe they may be able to move natural objects such as sticks and stones, and things that they themselves made when Blue and Green were their homes, better than other things. The silver cup they gave me (which I am very sorry I left: behind), the door the Neighbor opened for me when I was confined on Green, and the sword and light he gave me are all examples. We human beings are native to the Long Sun Whorl, and not to Blue or Green; and so the tangled corpses of so many hundreds of us would have presented a Neighbor with great difficulties, if I am correct.
Second, he wished me to see (and to smell and touch) those bodies. He might have freed me in many ways, and made me the leader of my fellow prisoners in many ways, too. But I cannot think of any other way in which he could have been half so effective. The horror of the inhumi that I had when I set out from the Lizard had been blunted by living with Krait on the sloop. If the Neighbor wanted to renew it as much as it could be renewed, he chose the most effective possible way of doing it.
I believe, however, that his true goal was to give me a realistic understanding of what we faced.
Before moving ahead, I ought to double back to the time after Mora left me. I've written nothing about that.
When I received the letters, it struck me that if I was going to ride out here with Mora and Fava it would be of value to know at what time their palaestra ended. I asked directions and walked over to it, and fin ding the coachman already waiting for them, I wrote Inclito a note thanking him for his invitation and saying that I could not come that day but hoped to come the next, and asked him to tell his coachman to allow me to ride with Mora and her friend.
The owner of the stationery store had invited me to share his supper; it was a simple meal of bread and soup, and I surprised and pleased him and his wife by eating little of either and amusing them with stories of my journey to Viron with Pig and Hound. Before we ate (as! should have said in the beginning) they asked me to invoke the gods. I blessed our meal in the name of the Outsider, making the sign of addition as solemnly as I would have when I was a boy, and talked about him for a few moments afterward. There is a great hunger for the gods here on Blue, I believe; but without their presence it lacks a focus.
Onorifica came back, perspiring from her bread-making but with her hair in better order. She had appeared frightened when she carried my tray in, her eyes darting around the room; I had thought that she was afraid of Oreb and had assured her that he was gone. This time she seemed more resolute; I made her sit down and offered her one of her own tarts.
"Cook was like to die at me for that, sir." She sat gingerly, picked up a tart in both hands, and nibbled at it like a fat squirrel.
I remained silent.
"She's afraid of you, sir. Swears she won't show her face in the kitchen door as long as you're here."
Of course I said that she had no reason to be, although I wondered how true it was; it seemed barely possible that his cook was the spy Inclito felt certain he was harboring.
"They're afraid of you in town, too, sir. Terrible afraid's what I hear."
I asked whether she had been there, and when she said she had not, how she knew.
"Coachman says, sir." She paused, worried (I believe) that she might be getting her informant into trouble. "He's got to come straight back after he drops them off in the morning, sir, and he does."
"But in the afternoon he has time to-" Gossip clearly would not do. "Talk to people there, assuming that he arrives a little early."
"That's right, sir."
"When I rode out here, Onorifica, Mora and Fava told me that their teachers had been quizzing them about me all day."