image in my head of a certain
smile, a certain woman. That I tried to fall in love with so many women, but
could not, would not, not with her arm by my side.
***
In time, I gained notoriety
for my skills. When docked, sailors from other ships would come to me for
bandaging or physicking, giving themselves over to my mismatched hands. My
masculinity had never seemed brutish to me, but laid against her delicate
fingers, I could not help but find myself unsubtle. Or, at least, could not
help but believe she would find them so. And, indeed, the arm never touched the
other hand if it could avoid it, as if to avoid the very thought of its
counterpart.
I settled into the life
easily enough–every couple of years on a new ship with a new crew, headed
somewhere ever more exotic. Soon,any thought of returning to the city of my
birth grew distant and faintly absurd. Soon, I gained more knowledge of the
capriciousness of sea than any but the most experienced seaman. I came to love
the roll of the decks and the wind’s severity. I loved nothing better than to
reach some new place and discover new peoples, new animals, new cures to old
ailments. I survived squalls, strict captains, incompetent crews, and boardings
by pirates. I wrote long letters about my adventures to my parents, and
sometimes their replies even caught up to me, giving me much pleasure. I also
wrote to Lucius once or twice, but I never heard back from him and didn’t
expect to; nor could I know for sure my letters had made it into his hands, the
vagaries of letters-by-ship being what they are.
In this way thirty years
passed and I passed with them, growing weather-beaten and bearded and no
different from any other sailor. Except, of course, for her arm.
At a distant river port, in
a land where the birds spoke like women and the men wore outlandishly bright
tunics and skirts, a letter from my mother caught up with me. In it, she told
me that my father had died after a long illness, an illness she had never
mentioned in any of her other letters. The letter was a year old.
I felt an intense
confusion. I could not understand how a man who in my memory I had said goodbye
to just a few years before could now be dead. It took awhile to understand I
had been at sea for three decades. That somewhere in the back of my mind I had
assumed my parents would live forever. I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t even
cry.
Six months later, slowly
making my way back to my mother, another letter, this time from a friend of the
family. My mother had died and been laid next to my father in the basement of
the Preservation Guild.
It felt as if the second
trauma had made me fully experience the first. All I could think of was my father.
And then the two of them working together in their bungalow.
I remember I stood on the
end of a rickety quay in a backwater port reading the letter. Behind me the
dismal wooden shanty town and above explosions of green-and-blue parrots. The
sun was huge and red on the horizon, as if we were close to the edge of the
world.
Her hand discarded the
letter and reached over to caress my hand. I wept silently.
***
Five years later, I tired
of life at sea–it was no place for the aging–and I returned home.
The city was bigger and more crowded. The medical school carried on as it had
for centuries. The mages’ college had disappeared, the site razed and replaced
with modern, classroom-filled buildings.
I stored my many trunks of
possessions–full of rare tinctures and substances and oddities–at a
room in a cheap inn and walked down to my parents’ bungalow. It had been
abandoned and boarded-up. After two days, I found the current owner. He turned
out to be a man who resembled the Stinker of my youth in the fatuousness of his
smile, the foulness of his breath. This new Stinker didn’t want to sell, but in
the end I took the brass key, spotted with green age, from him and the bungalow
was mine.
Inside, beneath the dust
and storm damage, I found the
smile, a certain woman. That I tried to fall in love with so many women, but
could not, would not, not with her arm by my side.
***
In time, I gained notoriety
for my skills. When docked, sailors from other ships would come to me for
bandaging or physicking, giving themselves over to my mismatched hands. My
masculinity had never seemed brutish to me, but laid against her delicate
fingers, I could not help but find myself unsubtle. Or, at least, could not
help but believe she would find them so. And, indeed, the arm never touched the
other hand if it could avoid it, as if to avoid the very thought of its
counterpart.
I settled into the life
easily enough–every couple of years on a new ship with a new crew, headed
somewhere ever more exotic. Soon,any thought of returning to the city of my
birth grew distant and faintly absurd. Soon, I gained more knowledge of the
capriciousness of sea than any but the most experienced seaman. I came to love
the roll of the decks and the wind’s severity. I loved nothing better than to
reach some new place and discover new peoples, new animals, new cures to old
ailments. I survived squalls, strict captains, incompetent crews, and boardings
by pirates. I wrote long letters about my adventures to my parents, and
sometimes their replies even caught up to me, giving me much pleasure. I also
wrote to Lucius once or twice, but I never heard back from him and didn’t
expect to; nor could I know for sure my letters had made it into his hands, the
vagaries of letters-by-ship being what they are.
In this way thirty years
passed and I passed with them, growing weather-beaten and bearded and no
different from any other sailor. Except, of course, for her arm.
At a distant river port, in
a land where the birds spoke like women and the men wore outlandishly bright
tunics and skirts, a letter from my mother caught up with me. In it, she told
me that my father had died after a long illness, an illness she had never
mentioned in any of her other letters. The letter was a year old.
I felt an intense
confusion. I could not understand how a man who in my memory I had said goodbye
to just a few years before could now be dead. It took awhile to understand I
had been at sea for three decades. That somewhere in the back of my mind I had
assumed my parents would live forever. I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t even
cry.
Six months later, slowly
making my way back to my mother, another letter, this time from a friend of the
family. My mother had died and been laid next to my father in the basement of
the Preservation Guild.
It felt as if the second
trauma had made me fully experience the first. All I could think of was my father.
And then the two of them working together in their bungalow.
I remember I stood on the
end of a rickety quay in a backwater port reading the letter. Behind me the
dismal wooden shanty town and above explosions of green-and-blue parrots. The
sun was huge and red on the horizon, as if we were close to the edge of the
world.
Her hand discarded the
letter and reached over to caress my hand. I wept silently.
***
Five years later, I tired
of life at sea–it was no place for the aging–and I returned home.
The city was bigger and more crowded. The medical school carried on as it had
for centuries. The mages’ college had disappeared, the site razed and replaced
with modern, classroom-filled buildings.
I stored my many trunks of
possessions–full of rare tinctures and substances and oddities–at a
room in a cheap inn and walked down to my parents’ bungalow. It had been
abandoned and boarded-up. After two days, I found the current owner. He turned
out to be a man who resembled the Stinker of my youth in the fatuousness of his
smile, the foulness of his breath. This new Stinker didn’t want to sell, but in
the end I took the brass key, spotted with green age, from him and the bungalow
was mine.
Inside, beneath the dust
and storm damage, I found the
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