But it wasn’t a real town at all, the captain thought. They didn’t live like people, these witches of Karres — it was more like a flock of strange forest birds that happened to be nesting in the same general area. Another thing: they appeared to be busy enough — but what was their business?
He discovered he was reluctant to ask Toll too many questions about it. Toll was the mother of his three witches, but only Goth really resembled her. It was difficult to picture Goth becoming smoothly matured and pleasantly rounded, but that was Toll. She had the same murmuring voice, the same air of sideways observation and secret reflection. She answered all the captain’s questions with apparent frankness, but he never seemed to get much real information out of what she said.
It was odd, too! Because he was spending several hours a day in her company, or in one of the next rooms at any rate, while she went about her housework. Toll’s daughters had taken him home when they landed; and he was installed in the room that belonged to their father — busy just now, the captain gathered, with some sort of geological research elsewhere on Karres. The arrangement worried him a little at first, particularly since Toll and he were mostly alone in the house. Maleen was going to some kind of school; she left early in the morning and came back late in the afternoon. And Goth and the Leewit were plain running wild! They usually got in long after the captain had gone to bed and were off again before he turned out for breakfast.
It hardly seemed like the right way to raise them. One afternoon, he found the Leewit curled up and asleep in the chair he usually occupied on the porch before the house. She slept there for four solid hours, while the captain sat nearby and leafed gradually through a thick book with illuminated pictures called “Histories of Ancient Yarthe.” Now and then he sipped at a cool green, faintly intoxicating drink Toll had placed quietly beside him some while before, or sucked an aromatic smoke from the enormous pipe with a floor rest, which he understood was a favorite of Toll’s husband.
Then the Leewit woke up suddenly, uncoiled, gave him a look between a scowl and a friendly grin, slipped off the porch and vanished among the trees.
He couldn’t quite figure that look! It might have meant nothing at all in particular, but -
The captain laid down his book then and worried a little more. It was true, of course, that nobody seemed in the least concerned about his presence. All of Karres appeared to know about him, and he’d met quite a number of people by now in a casual way. But nobody came around to interview him or so much as dropped in for a visit. However, Toll’s husband presumably would be returning presently and -
How long had he been here, anyway?
Great Patham, he thought, shocked. He’d lost count of the days!
Or was it weeks?
He went in to find Toll.
“It’s been a wonderful visit,” he said, “but I’ll have to be leaving, I guess. Tomorrow morning, early…”
Toll put some fancy sewing she was working on back in a glass basket, laid her strong, slim witch’s hands in her lap, and smiled up at him.
“We thought you’d be thinking that,” she said, “and so we… you know, Captain, it was quite difficult to decide on the best way to reward you for bringing back the children.”
“It was?” said the captain, suddenly realizing he’d also clean forgotten he was broke! And now the wrath of Onswud lay close ahead.
“However,” Toll went on, “we’ve all been talking about it in the town, and so we’ve loaded a lot of things aboard your ship that we think you can sell at a fine profit!”
“Well, now,” the captain said gratefully, “that’s fine of—”
“There are furs,” said Toll, “the very best furs we could fix up — two thousand of them!”
“Oh!” said the captain, bravely keeping his smile. “Well, that’s wonderful!”
“And the Kell Peak essences of perfume,” said Toll. “Everyone brought one bottle, so that’s eight thousand three hundred and twenty-three bottles of perfume essences!”
“Perfume!” exclaimed the captain. “Fine, fine — but you really shouldn’t—”
“And the rest of it,” Toll concluded happily, “is the green Lepti liquor you like so much and the Wintenberry jellies. I forget just how many jugs and jars, but there were a lot. It’s all loaded now.” She smiled. “Do you think you’ll be able to sell all that?”
“I certainly can!” the captain said stoutly. “It’s wonderful stuff, and I’ve never come across anything like it before.”
The last was very true. They wouldn’t have considered miffel fur for lining on Karres. But if he’d been alone he would have felt like bursting into tears.
The witches couldn’t have picked more completely unsalable items if they’d tried! Furs, cosmetics, food, and liquor — he’d be shot on sight if he got caught trying to run that kind of merchandise into the Empire. For the same reason it was barred on Nikkeldepain — they were that scared of contamination by goods that came from uncleared worlds!
He breakfasted alone next morning. Toll had left a note beside his plate which explained in a large rambling script that she had to run off and catch the Leewit, and that if he was gone before she got back she was wishing him good-by and good luck.
He smeared two more buns with Wintenberry jelly, drank a large mug of cone-seed coffee, finished every scrap of the omelet of swan hawk eggs and then, in a state of pleasant repletion, toyed around with his slice of roasted Bollem liver. Boy, what food! He must have put on fifteen pounds since he landed on Karres.
He wondered how Toll kept that slim figure.
Regretfully, he pushed himself away from the table, pocketed her note for a souvenir and went out on the porch. There a tear-stained Maleen hurled herself into his arms.
“Oh, Captain!” she sobbed. “You’re leaving—”
“Now, now!” murmured the captain, touched and surprised by the lovely child’s grief. He patted her shoulders soothingly. “I’ll be back,” he said rashly.
“Oh, yes, do come back!” cried Maleen. She hesitated and added, “I become marriageable two years from now — Karres time.”
“Well, well,” said the captain, dazed. “Well, now—”
He set off down the path a few minutes later, a strange melody tinkling in his head. Around the first curve, it changed abruptly to a shrill keening which seemed to originate from a spot some two hundred feet before him. Around the next curve, he entered a small, rocky clearing full of pale, misty, early-morning sunlight and what looked like a slow motion fountain of gleaming rainbow globes. These turned out to be clusters of large, varihued soap bubbles which floated up steadily from a wooden tub full of hot water, soap, and the Leewit. Toll was bent over the tub; and the Leewit was objecting to a morning bath with only that minimum of interruptions required to keep her lungs pumped full of a fresh supply of air.
As the captain paused beside the little family group, her red, wrathful face came up over the rim of the tub and looked at him.
“Well, Ugly,” she squealed, in a renewed outburst of rage, “who you staring at?” Then a sudden determination came into her eyes. She pursed her lips.
Toll upended her promptly and smacked her bottom.
“She was going to make some sort of a whistle at you,” she explained hurriedly. “Perhaps you’d better get out of range while I can keep her head under… And good luck, Captain!”
Karres seemed even more deserted than usual this morning. Of course it was quite early. Great banks of fog lay here and there among the huge dark trees and the small bright houses. A breeze sighed sadly far overhead. Faint, mournful bird-cries came from still higher up — it might have been swan hawks reproaching him for the omelet.
Somewhere in the distance somebody tootled on a wood instrument, very gently.
He had gone halfway up the path to the landing field when something buzzed past him like an enormous
