“Oh, the friend died,” she said casually and wearily. “But he rose again.” It was I who gasped, I admit it—Lal made no sound, but leaned against the table for just a moment. Lukassa said, “The friend summoned the Others to help him, and they killed him, but he did not die. The old man—the old man fled away. His friend pursued him. I don’t know where.” She sat down very suddenly and put her head on her knees, and went to sleep.
LISONJE
Well, if you’d just mentioned the legs straight off. I told you, love, I never remember names, only my lines. And the odd historical event, like that child’s legs—such sweet long legs, practically touching the ground on either side of that funny little gray horse he rode into my life. It was one of those moments that you know right then, on the spot, will keep you company forever: me scrubbing yesterday’s makeup off my poor old face (well, I do thank you, most kind) at the rain barrel that stands near the woodshed—and suddenly those legs, just at the bottom edge of my washtowel. I kept raising the towel—like this, slowly, you see—and those dear legs just kept going on and on, all the way up to his shoulders. Nothing but bone and gristle, poor mite, as shaggy as his little horse, and not a handful of spare flesh between them. My own life, it seems to me so often, has been nothing but endless traveling in an endless circle, as far back as I can remember—which means practically the beginning of the world—but I took one good look at him and I knew that not all my silly miles together would amount to a fraction of the journey that boy had come. I do understand a few things besides playing, if I may say so, whatever you may have heard.
Well, we looked at each other, and we looked at each other, and we might be standing there to this day if I hadn’t spoken. What I think is that they had just come to a stop in that inn-yard, the two of them, that neither he nor his horse had a step or a thought or a hope left in them—they were completely out of momentum, do you see, and that is quite the worst thing you can be short of, you may believe me. His eyes were alive, but they had no idea why—there was nothing in them but life, nothing at all. I’ve seen animals look like that, but never people. A sheltered existence, I daresay.
What did I say? Oh, something completely absurd; I’d be ashamed to remember it. Something on the order of, “Know me next time, hey?” or, “Where I come from, staring at a person that long means you’ll have to get married.” Something that stupid, or worse—it doesn’t matter, because I wasn’t finished saying it when he simply toppled right off his horse’s back. Just began listing, as you might say, listing quietly to one side, and kept on listing and listing until he was on the ground. I managed to break his fall and to brace him up against the rain barrel and splash some water on his face. Nothing unusual about that—such of my time as hasn’t been spent on some road or other, rehearsing some play or other, has gone on getting some man or other to sit up and wipe his mouth. Disgusting waste, when you let yourself think about it.
Not that this one wasn’t a nice enough mouth, and a nice face, too. A country face, or it had been once—I was born on a farm myself, somewhere near Cape Dylee, they used to tell me. We moved on the next day, so I can’t be sure, of course. He opened dark country eyes after a bit, looking right into mine, and said, “Lukassa.” Perfectly calmly, quite as though he hadn’t just fainted from hunger and exhaustion. Real people are too much for me sometimes.
Well, by now that was one name I knew as well as my own, and a good deal better than I wanted to, let me tell you. I am quite old enough to have no shame in saying that I have spent as many nights as the next fool listening to someone mumbling and crying someone else’s name until morning. But the choice was my own, ridiculous or not, and that is considerably different from being wakened every night, without exception, for almost two weeks, by that boy Rosseth tossing in the stall next to mine, crooning, “Nyateneri… Lukassa, sweet Lukassa… oh, Lal… oh, Lal … !” Discussing the matter with him had no more effect than kicking him awake—he still bounced up singing in the morning, while the rest of us came to look more and more as though we’d spent all night doing what he was dreaming about. There was talk of murder. I was opposed, but wavering.
“Lukassa has ridden out with her friends,” I said. “They may return tonight, tomorrow, I have no idea. Sit there and I’ll bring you something to eat. Don’t move, stay right where you are—do you understand me?” Because I couldn’t be sure, do you see? I couldn’t be sure whether those unbearable dark eyes saw me at all. “Stay there,” I said, and then I ran to find Rosseth.
He isn’t a bad lad, you know, apart from that obsession of his, which I’m sure he’s grown out of by now, if he’s alive. He went straightaway to filch some scraps of last night’s dinner (which was to be our dinner tonight—the Karsh system of feeding his stable guests), and even managed a cup of rather flat red ale. Meanwhile I appropriated some grain for the horse and a tunic from our wardrobe trunk: the one I wear myself in Lady Vigga’s Two Daughters, where I’m disguised as a man for half the play. We don’t do that one much anymore, unless someone requests it, so the front was practically clean, for a wonder.
When I returned, Rosseth was already spooning soup into our long-legged waif, and a few of the company were lounging about asking questions. He paid none of them any heed, but spoke to me as soon as he saw me, saying, “Friends. How many?”
“As many as you have,” I said, a bit shortly. I must be getting old, when an ordinary “thank you” begins to matter more to me than epic quests after some mislaid princess or other, even when the hero does have the most charming pair of legs for twenty years in any direction. “A black woman”—he was nodding impatiently—“and a tall brown creature, a warrior sort.” Petty of me, I suppose, but there was Rosseth already turning puppy-eyed at the mere thought of them, and now this one, and it was all suddenly irritating. Comes of playing this same story far too many times, doubtless. I said, “My name is Lisonje, and the person feeding you is Rosseth. Can you tell us your name?”
“Tikat,” he said, and went to sleep again. Trygvalin, our juvenile, began giving him brandy, but I made him stop. He makes the stuff himself, and there are towns and entire provinces we can’t return to because of his openhandedness. I said to Rosseth, “He can stay in the loft with you. The landlord won’t know.”
Rosseth just looked at me. He said, “Karsh always knows.” Tikat woke up and announced, “I am from—” and he named a place I couldn’t repeat to save myself. “I have come for Lukassa,” simple as that. All the time we were getting him into the stable, easing his clothes off— there were deep scratches and open sores all over his poor body, and some of those rags were stuck to him by his own caked blood—and washing him as well as we could, he kept saying it, “Tell Lukassa I have come for her.” He’d certainly come the long way around, that country child.
Rosseth said, “We will have to tell Karsh.”
“The boy has no money,” I said. “He hasn’t got anything but his horse and a bit of flesh. Do you think that will be enough for your master?” Time out of mind, we’ve played Corcorua and lodged in this same stable, and I still despise that slouching fat man. He’s no thief—which is absolutely the only reason we stay here—but his virtues end right there, as far as I know. There’s no imagination in him, no generosity, and certainly no charity. He’d give his best room to a family of scorpions—if they could pay—before he lodged one penniless wanderer under his leakiest outhouse roof. Everybody knows Karsh.