In the mue’s hands the horn was a golden shining. I’ve seen true gold since then; it is much heavier, with a different feel. But I call this a golden horn because I did think of it so for a long time, and the name still suggests a kind of truth. If you’re sure there’s only one kind of truth, go on, shove, read some other book, get out of my hair.
Uneasily the mue let me take it. “Mother’s man’s thing she say.” I felt better when I found the wheel-sign — some priest, some time, had prayed away the spooks. The horn gathered light out of that shady place, itself a sun. “She bring, say I to keep… You blow?” So at least he knew it was a thing for music.
I puffed my cheeks and tried — breath-noise and a mutter. The mue laughed and took it back hastily. “I show.” His wretched mouth almost vanished in the cup, his cheeks firmed instead of puffing. I heard it speak.
I wonder if you know that voice in your part of the world? I will not try to describe it — I would not try to describe an icicle breaking sunshine into colored magic, nor to draw a picture of the wind. I know of only one place where words and music belong together, and that is song.
The mue pressed one of the valves and blew a different note, and then another. He blew a single note to each breath with no thought of combining them, no idea of rhythm or melody. Why, at the first sound my mind had overflowed with songs heard at the tavern, on the streets, at Rambler shows, and far back in the time when fat sweet Sister Carnation sang for me. To the poor mue, music was just notes indefinitely prolonged, unrelated. He could have blown that way all day and learned no more.
I tried to ask where it had come from; he shook his head. “Was it kept hidden?” Another headshake — how should he know? Questions from a world not his, that allowed him no gift but the cruel one of birth. “Did you use it to call your mother?” He looked empty-faced, as if there might be some such memory, none of my business, and he carried the horn back into hiding without answering.
I again saw his hands on that reddish rock, heard it setback in its former place, and knew 1 could find that place in ten seconds, and knew the golden horn must be mine.
It must be mine.
He returned smiling, comfortable now that his treasure was safe… I do claim one trace of honor: I did not again plan to kill him, nor even think of it except for one or two random moments. That’s my scrap of virtue.
The lantern in our cabin is sputtering and my fingers are cramped. I need a fresh nib in my pen — we have plenty of bronze nibs, but I can’t be extravagant. And I’d like a breath of air topside. Maybe I’ll bother Captain Barr or Dion, or remind Nickie we haven’t yet tried it in the crow’s-nest. The night is uneasy; northwest gusts are warm but appear to have a power behind them. The morning came in with an explosion of crimson, and all day long my ears have been tight with a promise of storm. The other colonists — we’ve lately been calling ourselves that — are edgy with it. At the noon meal Adna-Lee Jason broke out crying from no clear cause, explaining it with a mutter about homesickness and then said she didn’t mean that. Maybe I’ll just loaf at the bow, taste the weather my own way, and try to decide whether I mean to go on with this book…
I’m going on with it, anyway Nickie says I am. (It was fine in the crows’-nest. She got dizzy and bit my shoulder harder than she meant to, but a few minutes later she was daring me to try it up there again some time with a real wind blowing. Ayah, she can cook too.) I’m going on with my book but I dread the next few pages.
I could lie about what happened with the mue and me. We all lie about ourselves, trying to diddle the world with an image that’s had all the warts rubbed off. But wouldn’t it be the cruddy trick to begin a true-tale and back off into white-wash lying at the first tough spot? By writing at all I’ve made the warts your business — of course it’s not quite fair, since I’ll never know much about you or your Aunt Cassandra and her yellow tomcat with the bent ear. But hi-ho, or as I remember my Nickie saying on another occasion: “Better spare the mahooha, my love, my carroty monkey, my all, my this and that, my blue-eyed comforting long-handled bedwarmer, spare the mahooha and then we’ll never run short of it.”
When the mue and I were climbing up away from that rock floor, seeing the dirt on his back gave me my idea. I asked him: “Where is water?”
He pointed into the jungle. “I show drink.”
“Wash too.”
“Whash?” It wasn’t his specialty. He might have known the word in childhood. You see my cleverness — start him really washing and he’d be away from home a long time.
“Water take off dirt,” I said.
“Dirt?”
I rubbed a speck off my wrist, and indicated some of his personal topsoil. “Water-take-off is wash. Wash is good, make look good.”
The great idea broke like a seal-oil lamp afire — a great idea, not quite mine. “Whash, be like you!”
I swung out along the grapevine, sick, not just from fear he’d kiss me in his delight. He followed, gobbling words I couldn’t listen to, believing I could work a magic with water to make him man-beautiful. I never did, I never could have intended he should think that.
We traveled downhill, out of the ugly thicket and into clearer ground. I kept track of landmarks. When we reached the bank of a brook I made him understand we needed a pool; he led me through alders to a lovely stillness of water under sun. I shed my clothes and slipped in. The mue watched in amazement — how could anyone do that?
I was sick with knowing what I was about to do; the with grins and simple words and a show of washing myself to explain how it was done. He ventured in at last, beauty of the pool was wasted on me. But I beckoned him the big baby. It was nowhere deeper than three feet, but I dared not swim, thinking he might imitate me and be drowned. I now hated the thought of his coming to any harm through me except the one loss that, I kept telling myself, couldn’t matter — what could he want of a golden horn? I helped him, guiding him to move in the water and keep his balance. I even started the scrubbing job on him myself.
Scared but willing, he went to work, snorting and splashing, getting the feel of it. Presently I let him see me look as if startled at the sun, to tell him I was thinking of time and the approach of evening dark. I said: “I must go back. You finish wash.” I got out and dressed, waving him back, pointing to the dirt stifi on him. “Finish wash. I go but come back.”
“Finish, I be—”
“Finish wash!” I said, and took off. He probably watched me out of sight. When the bushes hid me I was running and my sickness ran with me. Up the easy ground, into grapevine shadows and straight to his tree, up the vine, down behind the briers. I found the red rock at once and lifted it aside. The horn lay in a bed of gray-green moss. I took that too, as a wrapping for the horn inside my sack. I was up over the briers, and gone.
In no danger from the mue if I ever had been, I ran as fast as before, but now like an animal crazed by pursuit. A black wolf could have closed in on me with no effort.