Soldier of Arete by Gene Wolfe Read Free Book Online

ship, and the sleeping men all vanished. We walked over furrows of new-turned earth in which the worms yet writhed. Before us went a man with grizzled hair, one hand on the plow, an ox goad in the other. Over his bent back, I saw a garden, a vineyard, and a low white house. "You may speak to him if you like," the young woman said, "but he will not hear you." She took another swallow from the skin.
    "Then I will not speak." I wanted to ask her then whether these fields were indeed mine, and if so why the old man plowed them; yet I knew they were, and that the garden, vineyard, and house were mine as well. I even guessed that it was my father who plowed.
    "It will be a good harvest," she told me. "Because I am here."
    I asked her, "How did you do this? Why can't I stay?"
    She pointed to the sun, and I saw that it was almost at the horizon; already the shadows were long. "Do you wish to see the house?"
    I nodded and we went there, passing through the vineyard on the way. She plucked some grapes and ate them, putting one into my mouth. It tasted sweeter than I had thought any grape could, and I told her so, adding that the sweetness must have come from her fingers.
    "It is not so," she told me. "These grapes taste sweet to you because they are your own." In the thick shadows under the vines I could see stars reflected in water.
    Something that was neither ape nor bear crouched beside the doorstep, hairy and uncouth, yet possessing an air of friendship and goodwill, like an old dog that greets its master. Its eyes held golden sparks, and when I saw them I remembered (just as I remember now) how I had seen them dance about the room once when I was small. This hairy being did not move as we approached it, though its golden eyes followed us as we passed.
    The door stood open, so that we entered without difficulty, though I felt we would have passed through it just as easily if it had been barred. Inside a kettle bubbled on the fire, and an old woman sat with her arms upon an old table and her head upon her arms.
    "Mother!" I said. "Oh, Mother!" It seemed to me that the words had been snatched from my throat.
    "Lucius!" She rose at the sound of my voice and embraced me. Her face was aged now, lined, and streaked with tears; yet I would have known it at once anywhere. She clasped me to her, weeping and repeating, "Lucius, you're back. You're back! We thought you were dead. We thought you were dead!"
    And all that time, although my mother held me in her arms as she had when I was a child, I could see across her shoulder that she slept still, her head cradled in her arms.
    At last she kissed me and turned to the young woman saying, "Welcome, my dear! No, you must welcome me if you will, and not me you. This is
    my son's house, not mine. Am I—are my husband and I—welcome here?"
    The young woman, who had been drinking from the skin while my mother and I embraced, swayed a trifle but nodded and smiled.
    My mother rushed to the door, calling, "He's back! Lucius is home!"
    The plowman did not turn, guiding his plow and thrusting at one of his oxen with the long, iron-tipped goad he carried. The sun had touched the muddy fields; I could see our beached ship in the darkness at the bottom of the furrows, so that it seemed that this farm, lit by the dying rays of the sun, hovered over a benighted world that the toe of the plow had reached.
    "We're going now," the young woman said thickly. "Aren't we going to make love?"
    I shook my head, one arm around my mother and my other hand clutching the frame of the kitchen door. They melted as clotted honey does, warmed in one's mouth.
    "Well, I do," she said.
    The last glimmer of sunshine faded, and the air grew cold. Through dark boughs I saw the sea, our dying fires, and the ship lying on the beach. The young woman pressed her lips to mine; I felt then that I drank old wine out of a cup of new-turned wood. Together we sank to pine needles and fern.
    Twice I lay with her, weeping the first and