The Blue Star

by Fletcher Pratt

II

It was a strange book, cast in the form of a marvellous tale about a young man whose troubles were manifold, and only because he sought at each step to control his actions by reason, as he had been taught; it seemed that reason forever deceived him, because something would arise that was not comprehended in his philosophy, but was born from the natural constitution of an imperfect world. Thus reason always led him into doing evil, from which he would only be rescued by rejecting reason for affection to his fellow-men. Lest the reader should miss any part of the thought, he who had set this down abandoned his romance from time to time to draw a moral, as: “None can turn from vileness to virtue but those unbound by the teaching of the academies that consistency is a virtue.”

Lalette found such interjections an annoyance, but forgave many of them for the beauty of the words, which were like a music; and the great glory of the descriptions of clouds, trees, brilliant night, and all the things that one person may share with all others, but were polluted (said the author) when the one would hold them to himself. Yet the type of the volume made it hard reading, the swing of the lamp made it flicker, so after a time she turned out the light and drifted to sleep.

By morning the ship was leaning through long surges under a grey sky with all her sails booming. It was hard to keep food on the table; at breakfast Captain Mülvedo rallied Lalette hilariously, saying she was so good a sailor he must send her to the masthead to run ropes. Brog smiled at her paternally; the first mate, whose ears moved at the end of a long jaw as he chewed, laughed aloud at the Captain’s light jest, and offered to teach her to direct the steering-yoke. On the deck she felt like a princess (that this adventure would succeed after all, glad that she had done with tortured Rodvard), with her hair blowing round her face and salt spray sweet on her lips. The waters set forth an entrancing portrait of sameness and change; she turned from the rail to see Tegval all jaunty, with his eye fixed bow-ward, balancing lightly.

Said Lalette; “I would be glad to know what witchcraft it was you used to cure me so quickly.”

“No witchcraft, demoiselle,” said he, not turning his head, “but the specific power of love, which wipes out misery in joy. And now no more of this.”

The ship heaved; she would have lost her balance but that he put out a hand to sustain her, and the Captain’s voice bellowed: “Tegval! I will thank you to remember that an officer’s duty is to watch his ship and not the pretty ladies. You will do better in the forward head.”

He had come unobserved upon them; now as the third mate made a croak of assent, he touched his cap to the girl. “No disrespect to you, demoiselle. You know the legend old seamen have, ha, ha, of sea-witches with green hair that speak to the spirit of a ship and witch her to a doom that is yet ecstasy for her crew? Be careful how you handle the people of my ship; for at sea I have the rights of justice and can diet you on bread and water.” He shook a finger and ruffled like a cock, laughing till all the loose muscles of his face pulled in loops.

“But my hair is not green,” said she, falling into the spirit of his words for very joy of the morning (but thinking with the back of her mind—what if he knew I am a witch? and—this one can do nothing for me; why am I here?).

“There was a mate with me once,” he said, “in the old Quìnada at the time of the Tritulaccan war, which you are too young to remember, demoiselle.” He ducked his head in a kind of bow to emphasize the compliment. “Yeh, what a time of it we had in those days, always dodging from one port to another, and afraid we’d be caught by a rebel cruiser or one of those Tritulaccans and finish our years pulling an oar under the lash in the galleys of an inshore squadron. A dangerous time and a heavy time; you cannot imagine the laziness of some of these sailors, demoiselle, who will see their own lives sacrificed rather than keep a sharp watch. I do remember now how we were making into the Green Islands in broad daylight, when I found one of them sound asleep, cradled in the capon-beam forward, where he had been set as a lookout—and in the Green Islands, mind you, where armed vessels would lie in among the branches to pounce on you.

“Yet you shall not think it was an exciting life, demoiselle, for the thing no one will ever believe is that in war you go and go, attending death with breakfast and nothing ever happening, so that it is almost a relief to fight for life. This mate now—what was his name? He was always called Rusty for no reason I could ever plumb, since his head was not rusty at all, but dark as yours—well, Rusty, the mate, you could hardly call him handsome, but he was gay and lively and had a good tongue. Always telling stories he was, of things that happened, and the good half of them happened to other people, though he took the name of it. But bless you, nobody minded, he could carry off the tale so well. I call to mind how one night when we were both together at the home of Ser Lipon, that was our factor, Rusty started right in with the story of a polar-bear hunt in the ice beyond Kjermanash that I had no more than finished telling him about the day before, just as though he had been in the center of it.

“I sat with my mouth open, but never saying a word, because it had not happened to me, neither, and beside, the Lipons had a daughter, a pretty little thing named Belella, who seemed as much doting on Rusty as he on her, and it was no part of my game to spoil him, since I was spoken for already, y’ see? So he told the story of the polar-bear hunt and soon enough the two of them were off in an angle of the parlor, and within a week they were married.”

Brog approached, touching his cap. “Your pardon, Captain,” he said. “There is a trouble among those bales of wool. I can find but six marked for your account, whereas by the papers it should be thrice that number.”

Mülvedo frowned. “Ah, pest, I am engaged.” He took Lalette’s arm tight under his own. “See me later, Brog.”

They moved a few steps away, the captain steadying her against the shuddering heave of the sea. “That was his name now, Piansky, though why he should have been called Rusty I never could see. They were married, as I said, after one of those lightning courtships we sailors have to make because we have no time for any others, and they went to live in a big house in Candovaria Square, which the old man had built, and some said it was a cruel waste of money for just the two of them. But I could never follow that, since she was the only daughter, so she would have come into the whole inheritance in time, and she was only getting what would be hers.

“One voyage Rusty missed while they were building their nest, but after that he came back to us, happy as a rabbit, and well he might be with a fine wife, a good home and his fortune made. It was about that time my own wife died; Rusty took me home to be with him while the ship lay over for a new cargo. Dame Belella always had a great deal of wine and a house full of people, different ones always, to whom Rusty must forever be telling some tale of his adventures. She would laugh at the ridiculous parts and look proud over him. They were very gay; at least up to the time of the Tritulaccan war, which I was speaking of.

“I remember going to Rusty’s house after the second or third voyage in that war, and a dangerous running passage it was, too, out with wool to the south and back with goods for the army, but our captain had judged where the Tritulaccans would be, and we never saw a sail of them. That was the passage where we slipped through the Green Islands, as I have said. We reached Rusty’s house late in the evening; the parlor was already full with people sitting drinking round the fire, and Dame Belella stumbled as she got up to embrace him, which shows how much cargo she had taken aboard already, ha, ha. She let him take her place while she sat down on his lap, saying we must be quiet because here was Ensign Glaverth of the Red Shar, who had been on a raid right through the Ragged Mountains, and was just telling about it. I did not think a thing at the time, since this Glaverth was sitting on the floor with his back to a red leather hassock, and besides he was one of those Glaverths from Ainsedel, the family they call the mountain Glaverths, to distinguish them from the ducal branch.

“He was telling how he had requisitioned a bed in a Tritulaccan farmhouse where there was a daughter, and made love to her, so that she told him of an ambush that had been set for the Shar. As I said, I had no hint that Rusty would take it ill till he suddenly interrupted the tale by throwing his cup into the fire and crying that he would have no more of this southern red, which he called hog’s water and traitors’ wine, but wanted the honest fiery beverage of the north.

“Two or three of them laughed and Dame Belella put her finger over his lips, and after that she had called the servitor for fired-wine, she begged this Glaverth to go on with his tale. When he had done and they were all murmuring to ask him questions, Rusty pushed his wife off his lap as though she had been a sack of meal and stood up next to the fireplace, with his own cup in his hand.

“‘You sows of soldiers,’ he said (begging your grace, demoiselle, but he said it so); ‘You sows of soldiers talk of your perils, but they are not real dangers at all, only what you could meet with on a city street and solve with a strong arm or a little straight talk, or’—well, I will not say what else he said, demoiselle, but it was something that made all those in the room to gasp, if you know what I mean, and at least a third of them wearing coronet badges.

“‘Yah!’ Rusty said, ‘Your Tritulaccan wenches! What could they do at the worst but slip a steel splinter in your back, so that you go to Heaven with the Church’s blessing for the glory of old Dossola? But the harridans we seamen must deal with could cost a man his soul and eternal agony. Even now I may be a lost man—a lost man.’ I remember how he said it, putting both hands to his face with a sob, and somebody dropped a cup. They all thought Rusty taken with wine, d’you see, and so did I, but now he began to tell a long tale, with no sign of winishness at all in his voice.

“It was all of our voyage to the south through the Green Islands and I swear to you, demoiselle, had I heard it before I sailed, I would not have sailed at all, so gruesome he made it, with escapes from storm and Tritulaccan raiders and all this only a prelude to telling of a thing he said happened in the Green Islands, where we lay becalmed one night, and he walked the deck. He said then he heard a sound like far-away singing, and the ship began to move without a wind. Going forward, he said, he saw something like pools of green fire in the water; therefore knew the ship was approached of sea-witches who were carrying her on. Would have let go the brow-anchor, he would, but all the men of the deck watch were staring over the side, so little obeying him that they even shook off the hands he laid on them. The song went to his own heart and he knew that the ship and all in it must soon be doomed; therefore, he, Rusty, who still had some part of his wits, conceived the measure of going forward to say they could have him as a willing victim if they would release the rest. This was accepted, he said. One of the demon women clambered to the ship through the rope-hangings and companioned with him all night, then bade him farewell with the word that he must come to her again.

“Demoiselle, I do tell you that never have I heard Rusty give a tale better. But when it was finished, the Ensign Glaverth took Dame Belella’s hand to bid her good night, saying that he would bring his young cousin over to hear some more of Rusty’s tales, and all the others began to go as well. When all were departed, Dame Belella came to sit on the hassock where the Ensign had been, staring into the fire for a while. ‘Will you never become a man?’ she asked her husband when he would have touched her.

“He looked at her a little. ‘Have I said the wrong thing?’ he asked, and was that not a strange question to put?

“‘The wrong thing, yes,’ she said, looking away into the fire, without as much as turning her head. ‘I couldn’t like it any more, even if it were not true, Rusty.’ I remember that, because I did not understand and still do not.

“He did not say anything more at that time, but I noticed that people were not coming to the house so often as before during this stay of ours in port, and while we were on the next voyage, she sold the place and went out in the west to live. So I think perhaps, it was a good fortune to lose my own wife, though a great sorrow at the time, because people do change and grow apart instead of together.”

A wave-crest came across the bulwarks and wetted the edge of Lalette’s dress a little, so that she moved against the supporting arm. Said she (wondering why he had told her this tale); “But she must have known that he only made it up about the sea-witches.”

“That could be, could be, now. Could be that she was angry with him for saying so much to a coronetted man like that Ensign Glaverth. But I think more like that just all of us want a new bed-partner now and again, and she could not bear it that he thought of it before her.”

15
CHARALKIS; THE DOOR CLOSES

Brog leaned back and lifted up his cup. “As human people age,” he said, “the most important part of the body does gradually move northward from organ to organ, beginning with the feet, on which you will notice a baby’s attention always fixed, and ending with old men who do nothing but sit still and let thoughts go through their heads. Now I have myself reached the comfortable age of the stomach, for which I give thanks.”

“Yaw,” said the first mate through a mouthful of food. “Ye’d put Ser Tegval lower down.”

“A wee lower, yes.” Brog looked at Lalette. “But do not trouble you; in my capacity, I am charged with the duty of bringing all cargo to port as safe as it left.”

A smile twisted his face into the cartography of a river-furrowed mountain chain, and he swivelled round to look hard at Blenau Tegval. The first mate gulped once and said; “Saving always captain’s orders, ser cargo-overseer. Captain has rights on a ship at sea.”

Lalette stood up, her body swaying with the slow drift of the slung lamp overhead, and asked permission to leave, having learned that it should be asked. The laugh began before she reached the deck, Brog’s dry snicker beating time to the first mate’s guffaw. She had so little lost her resentment at their remarks and the suggestion that she was spied upon that when Tegval tapped on her door in the break of twilight as usual, she cried through the wood for him to begone. But the horror of lonely hours took her before she had more than issued the words; she leaped up, opening the door and calling that she must consult him, he was to come in. This was a mistake, too; there immediately arose the question of what she was to consult on; and after a blank word or two, she could do no better than ask what the Prophet’s book meant by denying reason?—when it seemed to her that only a reasonable person would read it at all.

“Ah, no,” said the third mate, sitting down and taking her hand in his (which she did not mind). “It is the failure of human reason and human love that drives us to the higher love.”

(Though she thought this might be true in her own case, and could even look forward with a little exaltation to the new life in Mancherei, she was unwilling to break the talk by admitting it, so) she said; “But Blenau, how can this higher love make up to us for sorrow?”

On this he somewhat unexpectedly demanded to know whether she believed in another life than that visible, and it was at her lips to say that a witch could hardly do otherwise when he saved her by hurrying on:

“Well, then, this other life itself must be Love for us, since we are its children; and since this is so, it will replace all we have lost, and more beautifully, as one does for a child. If you have lost a lover—as I think you must, or you would not be for the Myonessae—it is only that you may find a better.”

(To Lalette it seemed that this was hardly more than half true, and ice-cold counsel for a smarting heart); she started to say something, but just then the door was tapped, and here was Brog, with a smile that showed all his teeth.

“Ah, little demoiselle, I thought to entertain you from being alone, but see there was no need for my trouble.”

He leaned against the wall, babbling at a great rate and not without salt, seeming to take delight in Tegval’s frown, which also filled Lalette with so much amusement that she felt herself sparkling at Brog’s conceits on such matters as—can a fish swim backwards? The young man grew grimmer, and at last rising, said he must rest if he were to be a good officer in the night watches. Brog did not stay long after.

It was still early in the night; she lay back among the covers to consult with the book again, but after her good cheer in the company, found the volume mere gloominess and dull as could be. Wondering what her manner of life in Mancherei would be like if all were ordered by such a volume, and feeling the despair of a bird bruising its wings against a cage of circumstance, she found happiness forever elusive. This escape and that slid across her mind, but all was either dream or half-dream; and as the rising wind began to rock the ship, she fell asleep.

Waking was blended with wonder that one creak among the many from the straining vessel should have roused her; then she became fully sentient, catching the reason. That single sound had come from her own door. Her lamp had gone out. “What do you wish?” she called on a rising note, and in the black heard three waves slap the ship before there was an indrawn breath and an answer not higher than a whisper; “Dearest Lalette, I have come to be your lover.”

Tegval. “No,” she said. “I do not wish it.”

He was close. “But you must; to refuse the gift of love is to lose all. You are of the Myonessae.” (Oh, God of gods, again, she thought; do men want nothing but my body? The temptation flashed and passed to give him this and live within the confines of her mind.)

“No, I say. I will cry out.” She writhed away from his touch, but he found her in the narrow space, the arm pinned her close and his head came down on her breast as he said, thickly; “But you must, you must. I am a diaconal and I have chosen you. I will tell them in Mancherei.”

His grip was so strong that it paralyzed, but he did not for the moment attempt to go further. Scream? Would she be heard above the rocking wind? “No,” she said, “no. Ser Brog will hear. The Captain.”

“It is the watch to daybreak. No one aboard will ever know.”

“No, no, I will not,” replied Lalette, (feeling all her strength melting), though he did not try to hold her hands or to put any compulsion upon her but that of the half-sobbing warm close contact, (somehow sweet, so that she could hardly bear it, and anything, anything, was better than this silent struggle). No water; she let a little moisture dribble out of her averted lips into the palm of one hand, and with the forefinger of the other traced the pattern above one ear in his hair, she did not know whether well or badly. “Go!” she said fierce and low (noting, as though it were something in which she had no part how the green fire seemed to run through his hair and to be absorbed into his head). “Go, and return no more.”

The breathing relaxed, the pressure ceased. She heard his feet shamble toward the door and the tiny creak again before realizing; then leaped like a bird to the heaving deck, night-robed as she was. Too late: even from the door of the cabin, she could see the faint lantern-gleam on Tegval’s back as he took the last stumbling steps to the rail and over into a white curl of foam.

A whistle blew; someone cried: “A man lost!” and Lalette was instantly and horribly seasick.