The nearer trees were decked with orchids, their cloying fragrance spiced by scents of lemon and clove. Though the perfume beckoned, the jungle did not welcome, nor did the water. The scene was not there to be entered but to be observed, like a splendid backdrop for some as yet unplayed drama. Seen thus, with the sun filtered through rising veils, the scene was one of somber loveliness, of profound melancholy, of aching nostalgia, as though I—or everyone—had known this place, in youth, or in dream, or in richest imagining.
I had told the boots to take me to my mother. If she were anywhere near, her presence was hidden from me. Given that I still wore the boots, I could have gone striding off in search of her, but all directions seemed equally magnificent and mysterious, and along with the heady fragrance of the orchids and spices came the stench of swamps, an odor which recommended caution.
Time in this place was not equivalent to ordinary time. Hurry had little meaning. Impatience had none. I resolved to wait upon matters. The cloak hid me well enough that I was not afraid of predators; the sand spit was dry and warm; I had set out not long after supper and I had eaten reasonably well. So I sat down and waited, bringing my book up to date, letting the slow surge of the flood before me lull me into a daylong doze broken only when a tribe of quarrelsome monkeys came down to drink. The water was silent. Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi, Father Raymond had been fond of saying: deep rivers are quietest. He usually said it when the aunts were chattering. Or when I was. This river was quiet enough to be very deep.
When something changed at last, I sensed it only gradually as a remote dissonance adding itself by tiny increments to the sounds of birds and monkeys. A splashing sound. A clattering yet liquid noise. Something upon the water, or within it. Something far off to my right and slightly behind me, in the direction of the water flow, coming upriver though as yet hidden by the towering screen of trees.
Should I become visible or remain invisible? Should I appear miraculously out of nothing? I considered the alternatives without moving as I watched the bow of a great riverboat emerge from behind the jungle, a tall, many-decked boat with two huge wheels at its sides, thrashing its methodical way against the flow, its decks cluttered with folk. In this case invisibility would not aid me. I slipped off the cloak and boots and stood forth in my simple gown to summon attention with my ruffled sunshade.
It was some time before anyone saw me, then everyone saw me at once. The ship shuddered as it changed direction. The riverboat’s whistle screamed, making me put my hands over my ears. A small boat was put over the side and came darting in my direction like a water bug, walking upon its oars. The two rowers ran the little boat up onto the sand and then sat in it staring at me as though I were some kind of exotic animal, though I was no more strange in my way than they in theirs, they being dwarfish and dark-skinned men with narrow ears.
“My name is Beauty, Lady Wellingford,” I told them. “I have been abandoned here and need transportation to the nearest town or city.”
They muttered. I understood them well enough for they spoke a kind of bastard Spanish with a great deal of Latin in it. At last one of them got out of the boat and offered to carry my baggage. I smiled prettily and let him, somewhat astonished to find I had baggage. We got into the boat, they pushed off with the oars, and we went skimming over the water toward the riverboat, which beat slowly at the current, holding itself in place.
The lower deck protruded fore and aft of the upper ones, making the upper decks look rather like the upper layers of a wedding cake set down upon an uncompromising loaf of something darker and more practical, pumpernickel, perhaps. The lower deck carried cargo. The upper ones carried passengers. So much was obvious from the faces peering at me over every rail.
I ascended a ladder to the second deck, then had only time to straighten my skirts before being confronted by the captain, a gold-bedecked, large-headed, stocky person who might as well have been carved out of wood for all the solicitude he expressed.
“Ma’am!” he said, in a threatening tone.
I repeated my self-introduction in a lingua franca of my own, what Spanish I remembered from school plus Latin and a smattering of Saxon and medieval French, at hearing which he glared at the sand spit as though it had been guilty of hatching me of its own malicious will.
“Never before!” he asserted. “I’ve been ferrying people, man and boy, so many years I can’t count, and never before has there been anyone picked up along the way.”
“I have some resources if it’s a question of payment,” I suggested.
He shook his large head, drawing his brows together, considering what this might imply. At last he said, “No need. Traveler in distress is enough reason to stop. Got an empty cabin, so no difference.” And he stalked away, muttering mysterious oaths in what I took to be Hebrew and Greek, shaking his head, plunking his stumplike legs down as though to force them through the planks. Despite his assurances, I did not feel welcomed.
There was time to catch only a glimpse of the other
