John Crowley - Otherwise: Three Novels by John Crowley

In memoriam
J.B.C.

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

The Blacks:

King Little Black

The Queen, his wife

Black Harrah, the Queens lover

Young Harrah, his son

A bastard son of Farin the Black

The Reds:

Red Senlin

Red Senlins Son (later King)

Sennred, Red Senlins younger son

Redhand

Old Redhand, his father

Younger Redhand, his brother

Caredd, his wife

Mother Caredd

Fauconred

The Just:

Nyam, whose name is called Nod

The Neither-nor

Adar

The Grays:

Mariadn, the Arbiter

Learned Redhand, Redhands brother and later Arbiter

Endwives, Ser and Norin

And a nameless one from Elsewhere
called variously

Visitor

Secretary

Recorder

Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook?

Or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

Will he make a covenant with thee?

And wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?

Lay thine hand upon him,

Remember the battle, do no more.

JOB

ONE

VISITOR

A fter the skirmish, two Endwives found him lying in the darkness next to the great silver egg. It took them only a moment to discover that he was neither male nor female; somewhat longer to decide whether he was alive or dead. Alive, said one; the other wasnt sure for how long; anyway, they took him up on their rude stretcher and walked with him nearly a mile to where a station of theirs had been set up a week before when the fighting had started; there they laid him out.

They had thought to patch him up however they could in the usual way, but when they began working they found that he was missing more than sex. Parts of him seemed made of something other than flesh, and from the wound at the back of his head the blood that flowed seemed viscous, like oil. When the older of the two caught a bit of it on a glass, and held it close to the lamplight, she gasped: it was aliveit flowed in tiny swirls ever, like oil in alcohol, but finer, blue within crimson. She showed her sister. They sat down then, unsure, looking at the figure on the pallet; ghastly pale he was in the lamplight and all hairless. They werent afraid; they had seen too much horror to fear anything. But they were unsure.

All night they watched him by lamplight. Toward dawn he began to move slightly, make sounds. Then spasms, violent, though he seemed in no painit was as though puppet strings pulled him. They cushioned his white damaged head; one held his thrashing arms while the other prepared a calming drug. When she had it ready, though, they paused, looking at each other, not knowing what effect this most trusted of all their secrets might have. Finally, one shrugging and the other with lips pursed, they forced some between his tightclosed teeth.

Well, he was a man to this extent; in minutes he lay quiet, breathing regularly. They inspected, gingerly and almost with repulsion, the wound in his head; it had already begun to pucker closed, and bled no more. They decided there was little they could do but wait. They stood over him a moment; then the older signaled, and they stepped out of the sod hut that was their station into the growing dawn.

The great gray heath they walked on was called the Drumskin. Their footsteps made no sound on it, but when the herds of horses pastured there rode hard, the air filled with a long hum like some distant thunder, a hum that could be heard Inward all the way to the gentle folded farmland called the Downs, all the way Outward to the bleak stone piles along the Drumsedge, outposts like Old Watcher that they could see when the road reached the top of a rise, a dim scar on the flat horizon far away.