Once & Future King 05 - The Book of Merlyn

  But they woke him with words, their cruel, bright weapons.

  "Now then, king. We must see to these geese, or the night will be over."

  "Do you feel better?"

  "Has anybody seen the cantrip?"

  "You are looking tired."

  "Have a sip of wine before you go."

  THE PLACE WHERE HE WAS, was absolutely flat. In the human world we seldom see flatness, for the trees and houses and hedges give a serrated edge to the landscape: even the grass sticks up with its myriad blades. But here, in the belly of the night, the illimitable, flat, wet mud was as featureless as a dark junket. If it had been wet sand, even, it would have had those little wave marks, like the palate of one's mouth.

  And, in this enormous flatness, there lived one element: the wind. For it was an element; it was a dimension, a power of darkness. In the human world, the wind comes from somewhere, and goes somewhere, and, as it goes, it passes through somewhere: through trees or streets or hedgerows. This wind came from nowhere. It was going through the flatness of nowhere, to no place. Horizontal, soundless except for a peculiar boom, tangible, infinite, the astounding dimensional

  101 weight of it streamed across the mud. You could have ruled it with a straight-edge. The titanic grey line of it was unwavering and solid. You could have hooked the crook of your umbrella over it, and it would have hung there.

  The king, facing into this wind, felt that he was uncreated. Except for the wet solidity under his webbed feet, he was living in nothing: a solid nothing, like chaos. His were the feelings of a point in geometry, existing mysteriously on the shortest distance between two points: or of a line, drawn on a plane surface which had length, breadth but no magnitude. No magnitude! It was the very self of magnitude. It was power, current, force, direction, a pulseless world-stream steady in limbo.

  Bounds had been set to this unhallowed purgatory. Far away to the east, perhaps a mile distant, there was an unbroken wall of sound. It surged a little, seeming to expand and contract, but it was solid. It was menacing, being desirous for victims: for it was the huge, the remorseless sea.

  Two miles to the west, there were three spots of light in a triangle. They were the weak wicks from fishermen's cottages, who had risen early to catch a tide in the complicated creeks of the salt marsh. Its waters sometimes ran contrary to the ocean. These were the total features of his world, the sea sound and the three small lights: darkness, flatness, vastness, wetness: and, in the gulf of the night, the gulf-stream of the wind.

  When daylight began to come, by premonition, he found that he was standing among a crowd of people like himself. They were seated on the mud, which now began to be disturbed by the angry, thin, returning sea, or else were already riding on the water, wakened by it, outside the annoyance of the surf. The seated ones were large teapots, their spouts tucked under their wings. The swimming ones occasionally ducked their heads and shook them. Some, waking on the mud, stood up and wagged their wings vigourously. Their profound silence became broken by a conversational gabble. There were about four hundred of them in the grey vicinity: very beautiful creatures, the wild White-Fronted Geese, whom, once a man has seen them, he will never forget.

  Long before the sun came, they were making ready for their flight. Family parties of the previous year's breeding were coming together in batches, and these batches were themselves inclined to join up with other ones, possibly under the command of a grandfather, or of a greatgrandfather, or else of some noted leader in the host. When the drafts were complete, there came a faint tone of excitement into their speech. They began moving their heads from side to side in jerks. And then, turning into the wind, suddenly they would all be in the air together, fourteen or forty at a time, with wide wings scooping the blackness and a cry of triumph in their throats. They would wheel round, climbing rapidly, and be gone from sight. Twenty yards up, they were invisible in the dark. The earlier departures were not vocal: they were inclined to be taciturn before the sun came, only making occasional remarks, or crying their single warning-note if danger threatened. Then, at the warning, they would all rise vertically to the sky.

  He began to feel an uneasiness in himself. The dim squadrons about him, setting out minute by minute, infected him with a tendency. He became restless to embrace their example, but he was shy. Perhaps their family groups, he thought, would resent his intrusion: yet he wanted not to be lonely: he wanted to join in, and to enjoy the exercise of morning flight, which was so evidently a pleasure to them. They had a comradeship, a free discipline and a joie-de-vivre.

  When the goose next to him spread her wings and leaped, he did so automatically. Some eight of those nearby had been jerking their bills, which he had imitated as if the act were catching, and now, with these same eight, he found himself on pinion in the horizontal air. The moment he had left the earth, the wind had vanished: its restlessness and brutality had dropped away as if cut off by a knife: he was in it, and at peace.

  The eight geese spread out in line astern, evenly spaced, with him behind. They made for the east, where the poor lights had been, and now, before them, the bold sun began to rise. A crack of orange broke the black cloud-bank far beyond the land; the glory spread, the salt marsh growing visible below. He saw it like a featureless moor or bogland, which had become maritime by accident; its heather, still looking like heather, having mated with the seaweed until it was a salt wet heather, with slippery fronds. The burns which should have run through the moorland were of sea-water on blueish mud. There were long nets here and there, erected on poles, into which unwary geese might fly. These, he now guessed, had been the occasions of those warning-notes. Two or three widgeon hung in one of them, and, far away to the eastward, a fly-like man was plodding over the slob in tiny persistence, to collect his bag.

  The sun, as it rose, tinged the quicksilver of the creeks and the gleaming slime itself with flame. The curlew, who had been piping their mournful plaints since long before the light, flew now from weed-bank to weed-bank: the widgeon, who had slept on water, came whistling their double notes, like whistles from a Christmas cracker the mallard toiled from land, against the wind: the redshanks scuttled and prodded like mice: a cloud of tiny dunlin, more compact than starlings, turned in the air with the noise of a train: the black-guard of crows rose from the pine trees on the dunes with merry cheers: shore birds of every sort populated the tide line, filling it with business and beauty.

  The dawn, the sea-dawn and the mastery of ordered flight, were of such intense beauty that he was almost moved to sing. All the sorrow of his thoughts about man, the miserable wishes for peace which had beset him in the Combination Room so lately, these fell from him for the moment in the glory of his wings. He would have liked to cry a chorus to life, and, since a thousand geese were on the wing about him, he had not long to wait. The lines of these creatures, wavering like smoke upon the sky as they breasted the sunrise, were all at once in music and in laughter. Each squadron of them was in different voice, some larking, some triumphant, some in sentiment or glee. The vault of daybreak filled itself with heralds, and this ts what they sang:

  Oh, turning world, pouring beneath our

  pinions. Hoist the hoar sun to welcome morning's

  minions.

  See, on each breast the scarlet and vermillion,

  Hear, from each throat the clarion and carillion.

  Mark, the wild wandering lines in black

  battalions, Heaven's horns and hunters, dawn-bright

  hounds and stallions.

  Free, free: far, far: and fair on wavering wings Comes Anser albifrons, and sounds, and sings.

  HE FOUND HIMSELF in a coarse field, in daylight. His companions of the flight were grazing round him, plucking the grass with sideways wrenches of their soft bills, bending their necks into abrupt loops, unlike the graceful curves of the swan. Always, as they fed, one of their number was on guard, its head erect and snakelike. They had mated during the winter months, or else in previous winters, so that they
tended to feed in pairs within the family and squadron. The young female, his neighbour of the mud-flats, was unmated. She kept an intelligent eye upon him.

  The old man who had remembered his boyhood, watching her secretly, could not help thinking she was beautiful. He even felt a tenderness towards her downy breast, as yet quite innocent of bars; towards her plump compacted frame and the neat furrows of her neck. These furrows, he saw out of the corner of his eye, were caused by a difference in the feathering. The feathers were concave, which separated them from one another, making a texture of ridges which he considered graceful.

  Presently the young woman gave him a shove with her bill. She had been acting sentry.

  "Go on," she said vulgarly. "You next."

  She lowered her head without waiting for an answer, and began to graze in the same manner. Her feeding took her from his side.

  He stood as sentry. He did not know what he was watching, nor could he see any enemy, except the tussocks and his nibbling mates; but he was not sorry to be a trusted sentinel. He was surprised to find that he was not averse to seeming masculine, in case the lady might be watching. He was still too innocent, after all his years, to know that she would certainly be doing so.

  "What ever are you doing?" she asked, passing him after half an hour.

  "I was on guard."

  "Go on with you," she said with a giggle, or should it be a gaggle? "You are a silly one."

  "Why?"

  "Go on. You know."

  "Honestly," he said, "I do not. Am I doing it wrong? I do not understand."

  "Peck the next one. You have been on for twice your time, at least."

  He did as he was bid, at which the grazer next to him took over, and then he walked along to feed beside her. They nibbled, noting each other out of beady eyes, until he came to a decision. "You think I am stupid," he said awkwardly, confessing the secret of his species for the first time in a varied intercourse with animals, "but it is because I am not a goose. I was born a human. This is my first flight among the grey people."

  She was only mildly surprised.

  "It is unusual," she said. "The humans generally try the swans. The last lot we had were the Children of Lir. However, I suppose we are all Anseriformes together."

  "I have heard of the Children of Lir."

  "They did not enjoy it. They were hopelessly nationalistic and religious, which resulted in their always hanging about round one of the chapels in Ireland. You could say that they hardly noticed the other swans at all."

  "I am enjoying it," he said politely.

  "I noticed you were. What were you sent for?"

  "To learn about the world."

  They grazed away in silence, until his own words reminded him of his mission.

  "The sentries," he enquired. "Are we at war?"

  She did not understand.

  "War?"

  "Are we fighting against people?"

  "Fighting?" she asked doubtfully. "The men fight sometimes, about their wives and that. Of course there is no bloodshed, only scuffling to find the better man. Is that what you mean?"

  "No. I meant fighting against armies: against other geese, for instance."

  She was amused at this.

  "How ridiculous! You mean a lot of geese all scuffling at the same time. It would be amusing to watch."

  Her tone surprised him.

  "Amusing to watch them kill each other!"

  "To kill each other? An army of geese to kill each other?"

  She began to understand the idea very slowly and doubtfully, an expression of grief and distaste coming over her face. When it had sunk in, she left him. She went away to another part of the field in silence. He followed her, but she turned her back. Moving round to get a glimpse of her eyes, he was startled by their abhorrence: a look as if he had made an obscene suggestion.

  He said lamely: "I am sorry. You do not understand."

  "Leave talking about it."

  "I am sorry."

  Later he added: "A person can ask, I suppose. It seems a natural question, with the sentries."

  But she was thoroughly angry, almost tearful.

  "Will you stop about it at once! What a horrible mind you must have! You have no right to say such things. And of course there are sentries. There are the jerfalcons and the peregrines, are there not: the foxes and the ermines and the humans with their nets? These are natural enemies. But what creature could be so low and treacherous as to murder the people of its blood?"

  He thought: it is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.

  Out loud, he said: "I was trying to learn."

  She relented with an obvious effort to be good-natured. She wanted to be broad-minded if she could, as she was rather a blue-stockinp.

  "You have a long way to go."

  "Then you must teach me. You must tell me about the goose-people, so that I improve my mind."

  She was doubtful, after the shock which he had given her, but her heart was not a malicious one. Like all the geese, she had a mildness which found forgiving easy. Soon they were friends.

  "What would you like to know?"

  He discovered, in the next few days, for they spent much time together, that Lyo-lyok was a charming person. She had told him her name at the beginning of their acquaintance, and had advised him to have one of his own. They had chosen Kee-kwa, a distinguished title taken from the rare red-breasted geese whom she had met in Siberia. Afterwards, once they were on name terms, she had buckled to his education manfully.

  Lyo-lyok's mind did not run upon flirtation only. She took a rational interest in the wide world in her prudent way, and, although she was puzzled by his questions, she learned not to be disgusted by them. Most of these questions were based on his experience among the ants, and that was why they puzzled her.

  He wanted to know about nationalism, about state-control, individual liberty, property and so forth: the things whose importance had been mentioned in the Combination Room, or which he had noticed in the ant-hill. As most of these things had to be explained to her, before she could explain herself, there were interesting things to talk about. They conversed amiably, and, as his education prospered, the surprised old man began to feel a sort of deep humility and even an affection for her geese: feelings which Olliver himself have had among the horses. No, she explained to him: there was no state control among the grey people. They had no communal possessions, nor did they make a claim to any part of the world. The lovely globe, they thought, could not belong to anybody except itself, and all their geese had access to its raw materials. Neither was any state discipline imposed upon the individual bird. The story of how a returning ant could be sentenced to death if it did not disgorge some food when asked for it, revolted her. Among the geese, she said, everybody ate as much as he could get hold of, and, if you trespassed upon an individual who had found a succulent patch of grass, he would very properly peck you soundly. And yes, she said, they did have private property besides their meals: a married couple would repair to the same nest, year by year, although they might have travelled many thousand miles between. The nest was private, and so was family life. Geese, she explained, were not promiscuous in their love-affairs, except in adolescence; which, she believed, was as it should be. When they were married, they were married for their lives. Their politics, so far as they had any, were patriarchal or individualistic, founded on free choice. And of course they never went to war.

  He asked her about the system of leadership. It was obvious that certain geese were accepted as leaders—generally they were venerable old gentlemen whose breasts were deeply mottled— and that these leaders flew at the head of their formations. Remembering the queen ants, who, like Borgias, slew one another for the highest place, he wondered how the captains of the geese had been elected.

  They were not e
lected, she said, not in a formal way. They simply became captains.

  When he pressed her on the point, she went off into a long talk about migration. This was how she put it. "The first goose," she said, "I suppose, who made the flight from Siberia to Lincolnshire and back again, must have brought up a family in Siberia. Then, when the winter came upon them and it was necessary to find new food, he must have groped his way over the same route, being the only one who knew it. He witt have been followed by his growing family, year after year, their pilot and their admiral. When the time came for him to die, obviously the next best pilots would have been his eldest sons, who would have covered the route more often than the others. Naturally the younger sons and fledgelings would have been uncertain about it, and therefore would have been glad to follow someone who knew. Perhaps, among the eldest sons, there would have been some who were notoriously muddleheaded, and the family would hardly care to trust to them."

  "This," she said, "is how an admiral is elected. Perhaps Wink-wink will come to our family in the autumn, and he will say: 'Excuse me, but have you by any chance got a reliable pilot in your lot? Poor grand-dad died at cloud-berry time, and Uncle Onk is inefficient. We were looking for somebody to follow.' Then we will say: 'Great-uncle will be delighted if you care to hitch up with us; but mind, we cannot take responsibility if things go wrong.' Thank you very much,' he will say. *I am sure your great-uncle can be relied upon. Do you mind if I mention this matter to the Honks, who are, I happen to know, in the same difficulty? 'Not at all."