Lucky's Harvest

by Ian Watson

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

When she was a young girl Lucky belonged to a space-going mining commune which came upon an asteroid whose caves concealed the bones of serpentine aliens and humanoids. It was Lucky who discovered that the rock was an Ukko, a mysterious entity which would respond to stories told to it. Centuries later Lucky, altered by the Ukko, is still alive, though capricious and sometimes crazy. By mating with her, her consort Bertel has had his life prolonged for centuries, as will the men who first bed her daughters - Lucky's harvest.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 530

Sample

The banqueting hall was crowded for the Lucky’s Day feast and Osmo himself was a little tipsy when two of the town watchmen marched in a fisherman who had berserked…

Tapestries of trees largely hid the sparkly pink granite walls of the hall. Along its south-western side six tall windows stood pivoted wide open, admitting some breeze. Narrow hangings dangled bannerlike between embrasures. The bright honey of evening sunlight flooded through upon the much wider tapestries opposite. Upon woven horzma trees, and yellovers, and larkeries. Only segments of pink wall caught the eye, towers of rock glimpsed through illusory forest. Black pot-bellied stoves of cast iron stood at the base of each, like mechanical servants who were currently inert and cold – though the sunlit floorboards of waxed yellover glowed. The slim flues of the stoves rose up the rock.

Those walls supported a high tie-beam roof of tough fireproof purple tammywood. Crystal chandeliers dangled from the braced beams, their lustres prisming the sunlight so that they seemed almost to be lit. Perched upon one of those massive beams, a cuckoo bird gazed down at the assembly out of its large yellow eyes. A scrawny hump clad in a plumage of wafery scales of drab mottled green flecked with rust, it was the size of a largish kettle. Its cupped feline ears twitched and cocked as it eavesdropped on mingled noisy conversations.

Osmo wasn’t keen on the bird’s presence up there. To be sure, he could always tell the cuckoo to go away. He could bespeak it away. Probably he wouldn’t even need to shout, since the bird seemed to be listening attentively enough. Yet had it come indoors out of sheer curiosity – or had it been sent here? What was there to spy on at his party? Was the cuckoo awaiting some trouble of which he had no inkling?

From where the bird was perched, at least it wouldn’t shit on the buffet.

Snooping cuckoo notwithstanding, Osmo surveyed his festive hall with satisfaction. Scores of his own people from the keep and from the lakeside town as well as various itinerant visitors sat around refectory tables nursing pots of dark beer, frosty glasses of vodka, and platters which they periodically replenished.

On the upper shelf of the long serving table reposed several succulent lamb’s legs, bedded amidst golden potatoes in the charred, hollowed-out logs in which they’d been baked. Plates of minceballs jostled with pig’s trotters, with hams, with mounds of sliced sausage, black and brown and pink, heaps of meat and fish pasties, and tongues. Toasted, speckled bread-cheese sprawled on wooden platters. One bread-mountain remained intact, a ziggurat of flat, crusty barley loaves, buttermilk loaves, dark sourloaf, rye rounds and oat rolls. A cauldron of black blood soup simmered over a clutch of candles. The lower expanse of the table housed slabs of fish, smoked or boiled or baked in paper, as well as pickled in little barrels or set in aspic. Just then one of the cooks carried in a board with split whitefish nailed to it, broiled and browned. Another brought in a roast goose. The town’s flautist played melodies evocative of rushing streams and cascades, though most of the partiers paid scant attention to the music.

And then there were Osmo’s special guests, at the table on the dais. Inventive Elmer Loxmith had come from the neighbouring keep way across the turquoise lake with his doe-eyed young sister Nikki and his assistant Lyle Melator. From away southeast hailed the dream savant, Gunther Beck, looking very portly. From the southern forests, the lively youngest daughter of the woodlord Tapper Kippan: Tilly. Alvar van Maanen, Osmo’s father, was deep in conversation with Gunther. Three years earlier Alvar had yielded up the lordship of Maananfors to his son to concentrate on writing a history of this world, to be called Chronicles of Kaleva.

Yes, writing, indeed.

Mother Johanna was absent, resting upstairs; her blood pressure remained persistently high, a cause for alarm. Otherwise, all seemed well. Fine, excellent.

That cuckoo shuffled closer to the carved king-post linking the beam with the ridge piece of the roof. The bird hopped around. It shut one eye. It cocked its ear towards the doorway which stood open invitingly as well as for extra ventilation. In the paved courtyard outside, a couple of guards armed with lightrifles meandered. The outer gate of the keep also stood open. Unlikely that any uninvited citizen of Maananfors would presume to claim hospitality! The town itself was festive enough already, and probably tipsy enough; later that night bonfires would blaze on the beach. But the outer gate and the heavy tammywood door of the hall remained open for tradition’s sake. Several itinerants, at least, had claimed their opportunity. Some dogs and cats had also sneaked indoors to beg for scraps.

And the cuckoo listened to it all.

‘Do you reckon he’ll show us the stone man later on—?’ This, from the sauna steward, munching a pasty. A phoenix tattooed on his cheek.

‘Get him to speak—?’ The plump bailiff in charge of town tithes, a trotter in his hand.

‘I was told to dust him down personally yesterday—’ The under-housekeeper, a lively freckled widow only thirty years old.

‘How personal does you get, Vivi? Does you polish his tackle? Does it ever twitch?’

‘Oh, Sep, you’re naughty—’

Quitting his seat between Tilly, whom Lyle was entertaining, and the dream savant whom his father was buttonholing, Osmo strolled to stretch his legs and to fetch a freshly chilled glass of spirit. He inhaled the fatty aroma of lamb and the tang of freshly grilled whitefish. Oh, he was conscious of the figure he cut in his embroidered white-silk shirt, his scarlet-striped waistcoat, his breeches with ribbon rosettes at the knee, his vermilion socks and buckled leather shoes. His brass belt-clasp was of a popeyed fish swallowing its own tail. From the belt hung a purse of marks, a ring of keys, and a sheathed knife, as well as a holstered lightpistol of alien manufacture.

Conscious of self – and why not?

Though only of middle height, Osmo had inherited his mother’s sturdy build along with his dad’s grace of countenance. His chestnut hair was richly wavy. The principal blemish on his skin was a black mole on his upper lip, concealed years since by a full moustache. A little pit in one cheek, as of an invisible nail being constantly pressed into the flesh, seemed merely to be an engaging dimple. Otherwise, he was unscarred by contest and conflict.

‘Do you reckon our Osmo has his eye on the Loxmith girl—?’

‘Don’t be silly. She hasn’t enough oomph for him.’

‘Maybe that Tilly Kippan, then? An alliance with the woodmaster?’

‘Our Osmo’s a hero. He’s Kaleva’s best bespeaker, right? That’s why his dad handed over the reins—’

‘Best bespeaker pending the autumn gala—’

‘He’ll romp it. He ought to go for one of Lucky’s daughters.’

‘So should I – if I cared to take the risk!’

‘A bespeaker like Osmo couldn’t possibly become—’

‘Become what? Go on, say it.’

‘Well, the zed word.’

‘I can’t hear you.’

‘I’m not intending to shout.’

‘Zombie, zombie.’

‘Shhh!’

Marriageable Osmo. Weddable Osmo, ah yes. Anguished inwardly by his eligibility. Anguished!

Osmo beckoned to his bondsman Sam Peller, an ashen man seemingly his elder by thirty years, though in reality only by thirty months. Whey-faced, with silvery hair and trim white beard, his eyes of ice-blue, Sam seemed perpetually startled as if he had just met with some appalling echo-ghost and been blanched by shock. Sam was usually excellent at security. Alert, and sensitive as a leper tree.

And it was Osmo himself, as a young teenager discovering his strength, who had bespoken Sam thus, earning a thrashing from Alvar – yet gaining almost mystical respect from Sam, who believed himself to have been strengthened and tempered by young Osmo’s treatment of him; who was sure that he had been granted a species of timelessness whereby he would never really age. For Sam had aged already, in one afternoon, many winters earlier, had he not? And ever since then he had remained the same.

Which wouldn’t really prevent Sam Peller from aging more so, once a couple more decades elapsed. Which wouldn’t prevent Sam from dying…Yet, as Osmo was aware, Sam’s superstition was essential to his whole concept of himself.

Some beer had spilled down the front of Sam’s full-sleeved shirt, staining the white embroidery, no doubt when he’d clanked pots with an acquaintance, since Sam always held his own drink well.

‘Osmo?’ (Ah, that mystic gleam of duty in Sam’s eye. He had been blessed.)

Osmo nodded up in the direction of the cuckoo. Any Juttahat activity that I don’t know about?’

Sam shook his head and for emphasis tapped the communicator clipped to his belt. ‘Scouts haven’t sent word of any.’ ‘If only we had a few more of the things.’ ‘Scouts?’

‘Communicators, Sam. Communicators. Ones made by nimble Juttahat hands for their serpent masters.’ But really, this was so much hot air – a sop to Sam’s loyal paranoia. The scouts in question were a few scamps whom Sam had ‘trained’. Probably they were ensconced in some outlying farmhouse, flirting with the daughters of the house.

Sam frowned. ‘For all we know, the Isi may be able to eavesdrop on our calls. Maybe that’s why they let us have bits of equipment. The Trojan horse trick.’

‘Earth ought to supply us with more gadgets. Not just with dribbles of extra population.’

‘Earth’s scared of what happens here, if you want my view. Earth doesn’t want to spark war in its only colony.’

‘Pah, Kaleva’s as much a colony as yon cuckoo is a tame pet.’

To be sure, an Earth Resident and her staff were based at the shuttleport. However, the current incumbent, Penelope Conway, didn’t in the remotest degree administer Kaleva. She or her officers toured occasionally. No one knew what they reported to utterly distant Earth.

‘In my opinion,’ said Sam, ‘war’s essentially a human concept. Did lions wage war back on Earth? Did whales?’ Sam voiced many opinions. Sam sustained his identity by a shell of such assertions built around the dark hollow in himself which hid his lost youth.

Osmo hoisted an eyebrow. ‘How much do you actually know about those creatures?’ Lions, whales…

Sam’s smile was wry. ‘What I mean is, the aliens don’t play war, or else they could probably put paid to us all. They play games with us from time to time, using their Juttahat slaves. Hell, they even trade us some weaponry. I think we ought to keep an eye on the Brindled Isi.’

‘Why? They never caused us any trouble.’

‘That’s why we ought to watch them.’ He glanced significantly at the cuckoo.

Shrugging, Osmo returned to his guests.

‘Now that I’m really into my Chronicles,’ Alvar was confiding to Gunther, ‘it’s rather bemusing to discover the way in which certain events repeat themselves obsessively with variations. To the extent that I can be sure of our history…!’ For the feast, Alvar had donned a striped jacket of black and gold, with a scarlet silk sash around his waist suggestive of some regal award; yet there were ink stains on his fingers which he hadn’t been able, or hadn’t troubled, to clean.

Gunther nodded. The pattern repeats within the pattern, doesn’t it just? Beware that telling your stories doesn’t lock us in to a cycle of repeating our whole history, to our disadvantage this time round. I’m trying to escape from that.’ At three hundred years old the dream savant was so youthful in looks especially now that he was plumping out. A cherubic chubbiness softened a once sharp face. He had certainly been putting on weight of late. Remarkably so. Already he had accounted for sizeable helpings of baked lamb, pasties, minceballs, fish and bread, and he was eyeing the serving table ruminatively even as he talked to Alvar. His brown shirt and breeches weren’t remotely party gear but at least served to contain his increasing girth.

Gunther’s blond hair lapped loose and long upon his shoulders. His grey eyes alone hinted at haunting depths. Gunther’s wife had died two centuries earlier, and it was rumoured that he was trying to resurrect her in his dreams; that this was his secret project.

At least he was willing to travel. Tilly Kippan’s father, a more recent longlife than Gunther, stayed holed up in his forest redoubt, protective of his extended years, using strange trees as his allies and guards.

‘Tilly giggled at some joke of Lyle’s, and touched his hand. Lyle smirked, perhaps hoping to creep to her bed that night. Affected by this, Osmo toasted Nikki Loxmith with his glass and winked flirtatiously, then felt regret, for her brother Elmer grinned back jovially, and raised his own glass as though Osmo’s gesture had obviously encompassed both of them. As indeed it must have done. For Elmer was Osmo’s friend, his colleague, as well as his neighbour, merely separated by the width of a lake. At the sight of Nikki in happy harmony with her brother, a squirm of ill-directed lust had possessed Osmo momentarily. Nikki was only a kid, who returned his gaze innocently, fawnlike, seeing Osmo as a kind of elder brother too.

Whatever the circumstances, Osmo vowed to himself, I must never let myself attempt to seduce Nikki. Could he perhaps wed her one day? No, no, and no. Nikki wasn’t what he sought…

Anguish panged him: a provoking, taunting itch.

‘What was that Earthbird called?’ he interrupted his father hastily. ‘The one which could repeat words?’

Alvar recollected. ‘Parrot. Or mynahbird.’

‘Not cuckoo?’ asked Tilly, diverted from Lyle. The presence of a cuckoo was provocative.

‘No, we call these Kalevan birds cuckoos rather than parrots because—’

‘—because we felt compelled to call them cuckoos,’ stated Gunther. ‘And the reason for that is that there were cuckoos in the old stories – but no parrots.’

‘Because,’ Alvar said pedantically, ‘a fellow can usually summon a cuckoo by shouting coo-coo-coo’

‘If it isn’t snooping already. Maybe the cuckoos feel compelled to act as gossips. But sometimes it seems to me, my friend, that they’re a cunning species which has a long-term strategy of spying on us – on humans and Isi serpents alike – protected by our taboo about harming them. And where did that particular inhibition come from? From the cuckoos themselves?’

‘To my knowledge,’ said Alvar, ‘no cuckoo has ever spoken to anybody on its own account about whatever might concern a cuckoo. Unless you know otherwise?’

An unkempt chocolate-and-cream spaniel – one of the hopeful intruders – approached Osmo, wagging its tail. It opened its jaws. It uttered awkward words. ‘Give…food? Give me food?’

Osmo shuddered. ‘Sam Peller!’ he called out; and his bondsman hurried to the dais.

‘Sam: take this mutant creature outside.’ Osmo searched for a word which the spaniel wouldn’t understand. ‘Exterminate it.’

‘Give food…lord?’ begged the dog.

‘Osmo!’ protested Tilly. ‘The poor thing isn’t doing any harm.’ T don’t trust mutant animals.’

‘Is that because you can’t “exterminate” the cuckoo?’ she enquired pertly.

‘Cuckoos aren’t mutants,’ said Alvar. ‘A mutant is a freak among its kind. Cuckoos are all the same as each other. It’s their nature to gossip.’

‘They must have been so bored before we came to this world,’ said Tilly.

‘Heel,’ ordered Sam, stooping to grab the spaniel by the scruff. The dog submitted to restraint.

‘Please,’ appealed Tilly, ‘let me have the dog. Give it to me as a Lucky’s Day gift. I’ll take it home with me.’ Broad-featured, and of generous brow, Tilly’s loose tresses of hair were a golden blonde. Her green gown was entirely embroidered with leaf patterns in varying hues so that she seemed to be the very spirit of woodland. A necklace of dark red garnets, cut in broad flat cabochon style, gleamed like capsules of full-bodied wine against the verdure. But no, she was not what Osmo sought.

How could he refuse his guest? Especially not Tapper Kippan’s daughter. Kippan who had taken the risk of marrying one of Lucky’s daughters, and who had been blessed with long life as a consequence…

‘Sam: take that out and kennel it on its own until the lady leaves our keep.’

‘You’re kind,’ Lyle murmured in Tilly’s ear. Elmer’s assistant wore a roan tunic of maroon-dyed sheep’s leather dappled with grey, a garment which would hide minor stains or burns caused by engineering work. Gold-rimmed spectacles sat on a somewhat snubby nose, now lending intensity to his hazel-eyed gaze, now emphasizing an air of nonchalant expertise. His hair was a frizzy auburn corona.

‘Well, I pity such stray creatures,’ Tilly said. ‘They’re different from their kin, yet they have to live as their kin do…until they eventually die, a little bewildered.’

Was Tilly implying that she pitied her own father? Maybe she might feel that way, so as not to blame Tapper Kippan for the fact that she herself would only live as long as any ordinary mortal would.

‘If it’s to be my dog,’ said Tilly, ‘it needs…reassurance.’ ‘Dog, or bitch: which is it?’ Osmo asked Sam, who investigated. ‘Bitch, Lord Osmo.’

‘Tilly quit her chair and knelt by the spaniel. Fondling its ears, she gazed into its hopeful eyes.

‘What is your name?’ she asked slowly and clearly. ‘Your name?’

The spaniel considered.

‘Out; it replied. ‘Out. Out.’

‘Out,’ repeated Tilly thoughtfully. ‘Very well, I’ll call her that exactly. Osmo, could you possibly bring yourself to proclaim for my dog? To proclaim her a happy life with me in the woods? And maybe a family of puppies?’

‘Not puppies, Tilly. One of them might talk.’

‘That’s a rare mutation.’

‘A freak one.’

‘Unlikely to affect her children.’

‘Mightn’t her pups seem rather dumb to her? Disappointing? Won’t she fail as a mother?’

‘Oh, very well, no puppies. That’s probably wisest. But please do proclaim.’

Osmo sighed. To proclaim for a mutant bitch, at his banquet…

‘If that’s the wrapping you’d like on the gift, tender Tilly!’

At a signal from Osmo the flautist fell silent (and hastened to avail himself of drink and meat). Most of the feasters paid attention, in particular one good-looking young man wrapped in a grey travelling cloak. Sam tugged the spaniel round to face Osmo, who marshalled himself inwardly. Soberly. Willing away any fuddle.

‘What is the origin of this dog?’ Osmo asked loudly. His tone was slurred. ‘Originally it comes from the wolves of Earth. Alas, its genetic pattern was twisted in transit through mana-space to Kaleva. Mana-space played a joke on its gene line. Ninety-nine of its kind are born true. One is a freak which can talk and is no true dog at all – nor potentially part-way human – but only a wretched oddity.’

Understand the origin of a thing, and you can control that thing. Origin; then destiny.

Usually so! Destiny could sometimes twist as mischievously as had the genes in this spaniel’s ancestry. The young man in the audience scrutinized Osmo studiously.

‘This dog was called Out because that was what people had always shouted at it. One day it came to a court during a festival where a cuckoo was listening. A kind young lady claimed the dog and took it along with her to the forests further south to live with her. The dog Out would live long and happily and would eat well with her, and she would be the only family it wanted.’

And at this moment, perhaps, Out became barren.

‘Out: this is spoken.’

Spoken somewhat cursorily – yet adequately.

‘Now, Sam,’ said Osmo, ‘kindly take that thing out to kennel.’

‘Wait a moment!’

Unclasping her necklace, Tilly descended a second time from the dais to fasten the chain of gems around the spaniel’s neck. The dog shook itself, reorganizing the gift. Some of the carbuncle stones disappeared within the beast’s coat.

‘Now Out has a collar!’

‘What a precious dog.’ Osmo smiled at Tilly. She flushed momentarily and nibbled her lip, as if taken by surprise, now, by what she had just done. Perhaps this seemed a rebuke directed at Osmo, when she should have been thanking him.

‘I can’t bespeak,’ she said lightly, recovering her spirits. ‘I can at least enhance my dog a little.’

‘I fear,’ was Osmo’s reproachful reply, ‘mutation doesn’t enhance a creature.’

Scarcely had Sam Peller departed with the spaniel than two blue-clad men of the town watch hustled a bruised prisoner into the hall. The man’s bound hands were streaked with blood. The cuckoo flapped its scaly wings and cocked its head attentively.

‘We’re sorry to butt in, sir,’ began one of the watchmen, who sported lavish side-whiskers.

‘That’s all right, Marko. What happened?’

The prisoner stood moodily, a manic twitch to his stance. A slight individual, though with strong arms. A large black mole high on one cheek stared like a coaly supernumerary eye. The fool had tried to disguise this with a surrounding tattoo of a florid brooch, in which this would be the gem, of jet. The effect was of bloodshot eyelids.

‘Hans Werner here stabbed Anna Vainio’s cousin, then the girl herself,’ explained Marko. ‘Midriff and face. They’ll both pull through, but the girl might be badly scarred on the cheek. Cousin had a tendon severed in his hand while warding Hans off.’

‘Damnation! An outburst of desire and jealousy, I suppose?’

Marko nodded. ‘Girls don’t look at Hans because he looks back with that black blem. Hans lost control. People are inflamed, so we had to act right away.’

‘Quite right, Marko. You, Hans Werner: do you hear me?’

Hans jerked and nodded.

‘Why did you stab Anna Vainio and her cousin? Don’t give me the anecdotal reason. Give me the true deep reason. Why?’

For a few moments it seemed as though there might be no answer, but then Hans cried out, ‘I had to! The knife came into my hand. My hand slashed at them.’

‘Your hand slashed at them.’

‘My hand. My right hand.’

‘Why were you carrying the knife?’

‘I’m a fisherman, Lord Osmo. A knife is natural.’ Hans’s gaze dropped momentarily towards Osmo’s own sheathed dagger. ‘We must master our compulsions, Hans Werner. Often we are too much like fish caught on a hook, dragged by the mouth. Our mouth must regain mastery,’ The prisoner was a fisherman on the lake floored with bright blue pebbles, and he had tried to gut his rival and then the girl he desired. If his male member couldn’t enter her, his blade could.

‘How much more so with our passions and our grievances, Hans Werner! Hear me: their blood is on your hands. Your signature is on her face, carved by your hand. His hand is lamed, and your name is Hans.’ The decision was obvious to Osmo. He could smell the vodka in his glass, or was it on his breath? No matter. He contemplated his silver cygnet ring, with a tiny swan of death embossed on it. His thoughts were as crystal clear as the vodka. His own spirit was calm and focused. The hall was entirely hushed.

The fisherman shivered as Osmo spoke. ‘So therefore the bones of your knife hand shall be stone. The flesh shall be as rock. For ever. Your hand shall become a fossil of its former self. I fuse your fingers and your thumb.’

Hans listened, with head bowed.

‘I petrify your tissue,’ Osmo told him. T crystallize your blood to veins in marble. Your stone hand shall never fall off, nor shall you hack it off, for the wires of your nerves would agonize then, and blood would spurt from the stump without ever clotting. You will carry your stone hand around till you die. This is beginning now. The hardening starts. For this is spoken. And the moment that you assault anybody else unless ordered to by a lawful authority, your left hand will likewise turn to stone.’

Hans Werner groaned as his right hand, still bound to his left, became grey and hard and heavy to above the wrist. His left hand strained to support the weight.

Watchman Marko and his colleague nodded. The punishment would satisfy the people. In the silence a young man unknown to Osmo began to clap slowly. Spurred by this applause, other party-goers banged their beerpots upon the tables in appreciation – while the fisherman was led out to continue his life in Maananfors as best he could.

As if to compensate for the business of the garnets, Tilly was nodding a qualified assent to Osmo’s justice; Elmer’s sister looked enthralled, though disconcerted.

Yet the cuckoo did not take wing. It stayed. Osmo hesitated, then drained his glass.

‘I’ve another reason for traveling,’ Gunther confessed to Alvar. ‘My nephew Cully has gone missing,’ The dream savant had piled his plate in the meantime with potato pasties and black sausage.

‘Cully? Cully? Is this something I ought to know about for the Chronicles?’

‘I don’t expect so. I hope not!’

‘When you say “nephew”…’

‘I don’t mean it literally. I took his family under my protection. Mother, couple of sisters. They’re direct descendants of mine…and of dear dead Anna. My wife, you know.’

‘I believe I know all the lineage of Lucky inside out, Gunther.’

The dream savant munched dedicatedly. He was definitely gorging himself. Had Gunther become a glutton? Shouldn’t the attraction of food pall somewhat after three hundred years? Really, it wouldn’t do for the host’s father to mention this…

‘You’re wondering?’ asked that man of three centuries. ‘About the difference between memory and history? Is Anna memory to me after so long, or is she history?’

‘I wouldn’t presume—’

‘Yet you wonder. I suppose Anna did become an idol to me quite early. She gave me life as well as love. Long, long life. Almost, it seemed to me, obtained at the cost of her own life, as though she were just some package of elixir which, once opened, must itself begin slowly to decay.’ A potato pasty disappeared into Gunther’s mouth.

Alvar scratched his head. ‘Are you implying that if one of Lucky’s daughters fails to wed, then that girl can retain her own youth permanently? Herself as an alternative to bestowing that vigour on a husband?’

‘So therefore, but for me, my Anna might still be alive today? I very much doubt it! It’s a pointless speculation in my case. Don’t you see? For Anna to outlive me, if that were true – and I only say if – we must needs never have become lovers; never have met; never have known each other. It’s stupid to torment myself along those lines. I’m tempted to suggest, Alvar, that you’re too young to understand the feelings I have. Almost everyone is too young.’

‘My own wife is ailing,’ Alvar reminded Gunther.

‘And you’re already a retired lord, I know, I know.’ Gunther squeezed his glass tentatively as if tempted to crush it, driving splinters into his palm, drawing blood. ‘We were speaking of Cully. I could hardly address him as great-great-greatest-grandson or whatever. Too much of a mouthful. Nephew seemed a lot easier.’

‘Seemed? Do you fear he’s dead?’

‘No. I don’t believe that. He was – he is – a persistent young man. I’m used to thinking in the past tense, Alvar, because the majority of people I’ve known are dead. Dreams, by contrast, have no tenses. Or rather they possess a dream-tense all of their own…which I wouldn’t exactly characterize as an “eternal” one. Not as yet, not as yet.’

‘Your nephew,’ Alvar reminded him.

‘Yes, they lived about twenty keys from my keep. Farming folk. Within my tithe zone, nominally. The father was called Cal. Was, yes, was. He was killed in a senseless brush with some Juttahats belonging, I think, to the Brazen Isi.’

‘Excuse me.’ Alvar pulled out an antique black-bound notebook with marbled endpapers. (On the serving table below, the goose had been reduced to a greasy shell and the femur of a lamb jutted nakedly. The declining sun wore an orange veil of cirrus.) Alvar inked a note, and a query. ‘How long ago was this?’

‘Winter. Five years ago. I took the mother and daughters into my home for a while. The next year, I adopted Cully.’

‘Wasn’t he needed on their farm?’

‘I needed someone of my blood who…could take charge of things…during my absence.’

‘Your absence? Absence? Yet here you are, absent, searching for your nephew.’ Alvar sucked at his pen a few times as if it was a pipe. Obviously Gunther was leaving much unsaid, which he did not intend to confide to a notebook.

‘I thought Cully may have decided to meddle with the Isi for revenge, though he’d sworn not to…May I?’ asked Gunther, and took the notebook and pen.

Alvar’s spidery constipated handwriting cramped many thin angular words on each page, most of them abbreviated. The dream savant squinted, foxed by the condensed script, though he remembered well enough how to read. Turning to an empty page, he quickly sketched a youthful face which was frank and open – broad-browed, bold-eyed – though the corners of the mouth drooped somewhat morosely as if doubt had begun to brood. The portrait’s lips were full and sensual, so the pout made him appear intriguing, even sultry. Cully wore his hair long in his uncle’s style.

‘You’re an artist—’

On the opposite page Gunther swiftly s