Not yet true dawn, and I could feel how hot the day would be in that barren, utterly used–up land that is called the Mihanachakali. There was dust on my lips already, and sweat beginning to rise on my scalp. A few scrawny rukshi birds were beginning to circle high over the Hunters' bodies. I turned away and began to walk — inevitably back the way we had come, there being no other real road in any direction. The old man kept pace with me, pattering brightly at my side, cheerfully informing me, «The coast's what we want — salt water always straightens the mind and clears the spirit. We'll have to go back to Druchank — no help for that, alas — but three days further down the Nai — "
I halted then and stood facing him. «Listen to me," I said. «Listen closely. I am bound as far from Goros and Hunters, from foxes that are not foxes and houses that are not houses as a young fool can get. I want nothing to do with the lot of you, or with anything that is like you. There must be a human life I am fit to lead, and I will find it out, wherever it hides from me. I will find my life.»
«Rather like our recent companions seeking after us," he murmured, and now he sounded like his old taunting self, but somehow subdued also. «Well, so. I will bid you good luck and goodbye in advance, then, for all that we do appear to be traveling the same road — "
«We are not," I said, loud enough to make my poor head ache and my battered ribs cringe. I began walking again, and he followed. I said, «Whichever road you take, land or water, I will go some other way. If I have to climb back into a manure wagon a second time, I will be shut of you.»
«I have indeed misjudged you," he continued, as though I had never spoken. «There is promising stuff to you, and with time and tutelage you may blossom into adequacy yet. It will be interesting to observe.»
«I will write you a letter," I said through my teeth. There would plainly be no ridding myself of him until Druchank, but I was determined not to speak further word with him again. And I did not, not until the second night, when we had made early camp close enough to Druchank to smell its foulness on a dank little breeze. Hungry and weary, I weakened enough to ask him abruptly, «That house — whatever it was — you called it the beast. It was alive, then? Some sort of animal?»
«Say vegetable, and you may hit nearer the mark," he answered me. «They come and go, those things — never many, but always where they grew before, and always in the exact guise they wore the last time. I have seen one that you would take for a grand, shady keema tree without any question, and another that looks like a sweet little dance pavilion in the woods that no one seems to remember building. I cannot say where they are from, nor what exactly becomes of their victims — only that it is a short blooming season, and if they take no prey they rot and die back before your eyes. As that one did.» He yawned as the fox yawned, showing all his teeth, and added, «A pity, really. I have … made use of that one before.»
«And you led me there," I said. «You told me nothing, and you led me there.»
He shrugged cheerfully. «I tried to tell you — a little, anyway — but you did not care to hear. My fault?» I did not answer him. A breeze had come up, carrying with it the smell of the Nai — somewhat fresher than that of the town — and the bray of a boat horn.
«It had already taken the Goro," I said finally, «and still it died.»
«Ah, well, a Goro's not to everybody's taste.» He yawned again, and suddenly barked with laughter. «Probably gave the poor old thing a belly–ache — no wonder!» He literally fell over on his back at the thought, laughing, waving his arms and legs in the air, purely delighted at the image, and more so with himself for creating it. I watched him from where I lay, feeling a curious mixture of ironic admiration, genuine revulsion, and something uncomfortably like affection, which shocked me when I made myself name it to myself. As it occasionally does even now.
«I tried to stop the Goro," I said. «I told him that it was a trick, that you were deceiving him. I begged him not to fall into your trap.»
The old man did not seem even slightly perturbed. «Didn't listen, did he? They never do. That's the nature of a Goro. Just as not wanting to know things is the nature of humans.»
«And your nature?» I challenged him. «What is the nature of whatever you are?» He considered this for some time, still lying on his back with his arms folded on his chest in the formal manner of a corpse. But his eyes were wide open, and in the twilight they were more gray than fox–yellow just then.
«Deceptive," he offered at last. «That's fair enough — deceptive. Misleading, too, and altogether unreliable.» But he seemed not quite satisfied with any of the words, and thought about it for a while longer. At last he said, «Illusory. Good as any, illusory.
That will do.»
I lay long awake that night, reflecting on all that I had passed through — and all that had passed through and over me — since I fled across another night from that place, with the Hunters behind me. Deceptive, misleading, illusory, even so he had done me no real ill, when you thought about it. Led me into peril, true, but preserved me from it more than once. And he had certainly taught me much that I needed to know, if I were to make my way forward to wherever I was making my way to in this world. I could have had worse counselors, and doubtless would yet, on my journey.
My hands and arms pained me still, but far less than they had, as I leaned to nudge him out of his usual twitchy fox–sleep. He had searched out a couple of fat–leaved weeds that morning, pounded them for a good hour, mixed the resulting mash with what I tried not to suspect was his own urine, and spread it from my palms to my shoulders, where it crusted cool and stiff. I had barely touched his own shoulder before his eyes opened, yellow as they always are when he first wakes. I wonder what his dreams would look like, if they were to take daylight substance as a Goro's do.
«Three more days on the Nai brings us where?» I asked him.
Salt Wine
If my business manager and I hadn't been schlepping ourselves and a carload of books from the Bay Area to Las Vegas for a Star Trek convention, this story would not exist. It's a very long drive, and extremely boring, and the night sky was crackling with heat lightning, and we'd run out of Sondheim songs. For conversation's sake, we turned to discussing a possible title for this collection, and after a series of remarkably lame suggestions, the phrase Salt Wine and Secrets suddenly popped up like a slice of fresh toast. Evocative and curiously haunting, obviously it would only work if there were a story called «Salt Wine» in the book. And I hadn't a notion of what salt wine might be, nor what secrets it might engender. I said I'd think about it.
On the way home, a few days later, slogging through a pounding rainstorm, I announced that I just maybe had the beginning of a mini–hint of a story idea. «It's something about merrows, that's all I know.»
I usually get one clue like that per story — the rest is strictly up for grabs. If the Muse is late for work, you start without her.
Looking back at «Salt Wine," I realize that almost every story I've ever written from a first–person point of view has been completely improvised according to the narrator's voice. It's a matter of trusting the source; of assuming that the storyteller knows what he or she is doing, even if I don't, and that the tale will structure itself and tell me when it's done. It's a form of possession, I suppose, but generally a benign one.
So here's Ben Hazeltine, stepping from wherever those voices that visit me live, to tell you a story. There's a secret in it.
All right, then. First off, this ain't a story about some seagoing candy–trews dandy Captain Jack, or whatever you want to call him, who falls in love with a mermaid and breaks his troth to a mortal woman to live with his fish–lady under the sea. None of that in this story, I can promise you; and our man's no captain, but a plain blue–eyed sailorman named Henry Lee, AB, who starts out good for nowt much but reeling a sail, holystoning a deck, taking a turn in the crow's–nest, talking his way out of a tight spot, and lending his weight to the turning of a capstan and his voice to the bellowing of a chanty. He drank some, and most often when he drank it ended with him going at it with one or another of his mates. Lost part of an ear that way off Panama, he did, and even got flogged once for pouring grog on the captain. But there was never no harm in Henry Lee, not in them days. Anybody remembers him'll tell you that.