‘I’m serious enough. There have been signs and wonders. There were maps, too, many of them.’
‘And all different.’
‘So? There were myths, cryptic verses, all the things you’re asking for.’
‘Then we have a quest, ready made.’
‘No. We would have if I could remember it all, but I can’t. It’s all back in the archives at Orena, buried in the dust I blew off them when I was twenty and eager and ready for a quest of my own.’ He scratched the back of his neck with his pipe-stem. ‘That’s really what I want, I suppose; to go back and be twenty again with a quest of my own, full of hope.’
‘You never told me you’d been on a quest.’
‘I wasn’t. I didn’t. I haven’t been. I had a quest, but I didn’t go.’
There was another long silence while Nathan pondered this. Finally he said, ‘How can you have a quest and not go?’
‘Oh, Nathan, you know how it is in Orena. You get born, and all your parents give you birthing beads and you get your red baby shirt. By the time you get out of your baby shirt you have a whole list of things you want to do. And then, by the time you know enough to be ready to start on them, someone asks you to be a parent for a baby they’re planning. That makes you think of your own parents, so you’re off talking to them, all of them, trying to find out how to be a parent so you can do a good job of it. Then, before that job is even half done, someone asks you again. Then, when that’s done, you find your first child coming to you to learn how to be a parent, and suddenly you’re forty years old and it’s time to go out collecting information for the archives. You put things off, each time saying you’ll make one more trip, and the plans you had gather dust. Just the way the little book with all the legends gathered dust. It’s there, somewhere, with all the legends correlated and the maps organized and the verses with notations. If I had gone back fifteen years ago … even ten …’
‘But you never went.’
‘No, I never went. I’ve only been back to Orena, and out again, and back to Orena, and out again.’
Nathan shook his head and finally said gently, ‘If I ever get back to Orena, I’ll look up your quest book, Ephraim. Did you file it any special place?’
‘I suppose I did. I can’t remember, though. Under Q, maybe, in the general archives. A little brown book with my name on it and a stained cover.’
‘I’ll look for it.’
Nathan had quite a bit of time on his hands. He didn’t want to leave Ephraim alone more than was necessary, which meant that any extended trips had to be postponed. Jaer was old enough at fourteen to look after Jaer, but not quite old enough to look after Ephraim. Or so Nathan thought.
So he milked the goats, dried the fruits of the orchard, made cheese, helped Jaer hunt for meat and then smoke it. They kept a good store of food, just in case. Everything about the village had long since been recorded. Ephraim seemed to sleep a lot.
More as a joke, an amusement, than anything else, Nathan began to recreate Ephraim’s quest book. He didn’t tell Ephraim about it, or Jaer, perhaps because he was a little ashamed of the time he spent on it and the amusement he got out of it. He went to Ephraim from time to time, digging out bits and pieces that the old man remembered. Most of it came from the dust-furred documents stored in the ancient cellars of the place. He put in a few cryptic verses to supplement Ephraim’s memory. He included some old maps. He put in a few bits of prophesy which he remembered from other sources and some of the legends he had learned as a child or collected since. Then he did a few pages of scholarly interpretation of the parts he had already written, only a little tongue in cheek. He had fun with it.
Then one morning he went out to shoot a deer and was killed instantly when an overhanging ledge let go to dump several tons of stone on the place he stood. Jaer, who had lagged behind to watch a wood nymph which Nathan did not seem to see, dug down only far enough to learn that Nathan was once and forever dead. Jaer knew well enough what death was. She went to tell Ephraim.
Ephraim tried to get up and got to the place. He rose, took a step or two, and then folded onto the stones as simply as a leaf falling from a tree. He did not get up again. It was well that Jaer knew what death was, for there was suddenly a good deal of it around.
Somehow the body of Nathan was uncovered little by little and dragged back to the tower. Somehow the slight, feathery body of Ephraim was carried down the stairs. Somehow a woodpile was restacked into a pyre and set alight to send streamers of knotted, shuddering smoke on the wind which carried the ashes of the old men to a grave as vast as the earth. Jaer lay upon the sun-warmed steps of the courtyard where they three had often sat together, and alone she prayed to die, hoped to pass into some deathly peace so that the pain might end. She could not breathe, <could not move, could not stop crying. She had known very well what death was, but she had not known what alone was until then. Out of separation and loss she cried, in a way the old men had taught her not to cry.
On the labyrinthine isle of Cholder creatures of the darkness pricked up their ears. In Murgin and in Jowr heads turned
