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And saw Sefalet sitting beside a gnarled trunk, under a canopy of branches spread wide and low. Everywhere on those boughs gentle hands grew, a woman’s hands, and each missing their smallest finger. Those hands strained to cup Sefalet’s faceless head, to stroke her skull where she might have had hair, to wipe the tears from the backs of her hands.
THE VIRTUE OF THINGS
IS IN THE MIDST OF THEM
2. On the Hexakyk
My first act in this country was this: I lashed my boat at a tidy little dock clung with frozen barnacles and a kind of glistening seaweed covered in crystalline buds that sloshed with a turquoise liquid. I crushed a capsule between my thumb and forefinger and was pleased to find the viscous stuff sweet and clean to the taste. Indeed, only a few drops warmed me quite thoroughly with a winey intoxication. The whole place seemed quite civilized, if empty. Shards of ice floated here and there but on the whole the sea flowed kindly around bleached white boards and jetties. Whoever built these things, I thought to myself as I battened down the sundry aspects of my ship, has no reason whatever not to be hospitable to a traveler. Building a dock is an act of friendship. It says: Come in, sell us things, make eyes at the locals; we will not eat you until after the feast if we eat you at all. We have never heard of your English count nor the Sultan of Egypt nor either of his daughters.
The cold shore extended only a little inland, being replaced immediately by the most generous country, full of long grass and bright sunshine, flowers of blue and violet and gold, and well-kept orchards groaning with round, red fruit so deep a shade of scarlet that I thought the trees might be bleeding—later I would discover I was not far off. The difference between the shore and the meadows at which I found myself marveling was so marked that a line ran through the earth on the one side of which was snow and on the other was summer, as though some fell creature had dug his heel through the world and separated the fertile from the cruel.
Some distance ahead, in the mist that sometimes collects near the close of a warm and pleasant day, I saw two figures standing on the crest of a small hill. I could not make them out in the golden haze, but hailed them and moved further still inland to make their acquaintance and begin an understanding of their country—most importantly who ruled it, and how I could become friends with that fellow. Indeed, if I have any advice for travelers which is applicable in all nations and situations, it is to befriend immediately whatever king, caliph, or pope you can get your hands on most quickly, and if not them at least their brother, daughter, advisor, or dog. Wives are tricky—only for the advanced student.
I cannot say what occurred just then with any accuracy, but no sooner than I stepped toward the pair I stood quite close to them, on that same little crest of hill, and now I saw a large, spreading hedge upon that hill, and as I looked closer at that hedge, it seemed to be thatched of green bones, lushly leaved, but bones nonetheless, and the bone hedge dwindled off in either direction as far as I could see, down from the hill and off into the gentle fields that lay beyond under the deepening golden sunlight. (This was not the wall I spoke of earlier.) I was quite startled but of course showed nothing of the sort—it is not wise to appear too much the rube, wherever one finds oneself.
The pair I had sought looked mildly up at me, smiles on their small faces, for they were but children, a boy and a girl, with large dark eyes and dark hair—the boy’s cropped like a page’s, the girl’s very long indeed, falling nearly to her slender ankles. Their skin was a peculiar color, very nearly scarlet but not quite, tempered with a golden sheen. They wore clothes of deep green and silver, with pearls glinting at their belts. They appeared as the children of nobility usually appear—slightly vacant but ready to be bid by their betters if there is an iced cake or a duchy in it for them. However I have not mentioned their most striking feature, which was that both children, whom I took to be brother and sister, had six arms, three upon each side, arranged in a sort of wheel around their torsos so that the last set of arms rested at the waist. They held hands, by which I mean each hand of three of their arms, and their nails shone very pale against their damask skin.
“Are you lost?” they said together.
“A traveler cannot be lost if he has no destination,” I demurred.
“I don’t think that’s true,” said the girl.
“You can be lost any time. Sometimes you don’t even know how lost you are,” said the boy.
“I have come from the West seeking knowledge of the wide world, adventure if you can spare a cup, a good tale if you can’t, and if you’ve nothing at all, a good rumor about the bad habits of your neighbors I can take home to amuse my friends. I am happy wherever I find such things.”
“Is it very boring in the West?” The girl wrinkled her little nose.
“There do seem to be rather a lot of you all of the sudden,” sighed her brother. “Anyway, our neighbors are truly wicked and terrible, but you don’t want to hear about them—if you say their name it draws their eye.”
“Where are your parents?” I asked the small ones.
“Oh, we don’t have parents,” the female laughed. “Where are your parents?”
“In England—dead as dogs, both of them.” In fact my father lives quite well off his wool and mutton-selling, but I find an orphan, even a grown one, lends a certain amount of tragic dash a sheep-merchant’s son just can’t grasp at.
“Poor lamb,” crooned the boy, his smile odd and crooked.
I had begun to tire of them if I am frank. I have many talents but only a
few are of any interest to children, and the day would go better with me if I had something alcoholic and a bored queen in my sight.
“Who owns this country, children? Who rules it? How far to your lord’s holdings, or better, to a city?”
The children looked at each other, the sun turning their black hair fiery as oil burning.
“We do,” they said together.
“You must be quite a bit older than you look.”
“Oh, ancient,” giggled the girl. “But a lady never tells.”
“And a gentleman says no more,” the boy added, grinning again, and I did not like his grin nearly so much as hers.
“We’re hexakyk, you see. We age very slowly. My brother has had nine wives already, and only five of them were me!”
They flared their six arms rather fetchingly.
