Tales of Nevèrÿon by Samuel R. Delany

Author:Samuel R. Delany [Delany, Samuel R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575119239
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2012-06-17T20:00:00+00:00

Half the tangled roots had pulled from the bank. The leafless tree leaned over the twelve-foot semicircle of sand. Norema and Venn had sat there for an hour once and argued whether the little beach, like a giant copper coin tilted half into the water, was growing or shrinking … how many years ago now? And the beach was the same. Norema sat wedged between the two well-anchored trees, looking out through the branches of the leaning third.

The ship, a-top its reflection, made her think of leaves, stacked one on the other, a breeze making the whole leaf column shiver, dance, but never quite topple.

The ship, dark now on dark water, held it down.

She had been sitting there almost two hours. The sky was blue-black; a few stars scattered the east. One twig of the slant tree lay like a shatter-line across the distant hull (Venn had once taken her to see a puddle of lava high on the mountains, broken by cooling – Venn’s theory – or the mountain goats’ hooves – Dell’s – : some slaggy scar from the fires burning beneath the sea’s floor, whose eruptions – Venn’s theory again – had thrown up all the islands around.) Fire …!

It spurted up the stern. Then it rushed across the waterline. What had happened was that men from the island’s boat (hidden on the opposite bank) had swum up with bladders of oil and smeared the base of the ship (with light oil to the height of an arm), then ringed the ship with a lace (not a single wide ribbon) of heavy oil out to fifteen feet from the hull. (Where had she learned to fire a free-anchored ship? From Venn’s old tale of the Three Beetles and the White Bird; which was probably where the men had learned it, too …) Then you took the cover off a floating tinder-dish in which a lighted rag, rolled in sand and soaked in oil, would smolder for an hour – light the ship at the downwind end, and the lace at the upwind end, then swim for all you’re worth.

Bark bit her hand. Her jaw began to throb. She pushed back against the trunk as leaf after leaf down the column caught, all the way to the base of sand below her.

A story … she thought. The Three Beetles and the White Bird was a tale she had hugged her knees at, leaned forward to hear of its hill-skirmishes and sea-chases, its burnings and battles, its brave feats and betrayals. Reflected there on the flickering waters, it all seemed somehow reversed to … not something horrible. The reason she held the branch so tightly, pressed herself back against the tree, was not from any active fear, but rather from a sort of terrible expectation of emotion, waiting for the sound (amidst the faint crackling she could just make out) of screams, waiting to see figures leaping or falling into the ring of flaming waters. All she actually felt (she loosed her hand from the branch beside her) was numb anticipation.

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