A wide avenue, Stockade Street, ran all around the city just inside the palings; after the change the new guard would march a hundred paces down that street, and I would hear him go. That spring they were more alert than usual because of a rising buzz of war talk between Moha and Katskil; border towns take a beating in those affairs. At the end of his section he’d meet the next guard and bat the breeze if the corporal or sergeant wasn’t around, and that would leave my favorite spot unwatched. Later on the guards would take longer breaks in safe corners, smoking tobacco or marawan and trading stiffeners,[9] but the first break would suit my needs. Meanwhile I had an hour to wait and spent it unwisely thinking too much about the mue, which made me wonder what sort of creature I was.

I knew of brain-mues, the most dreaded of all, who have a natural human form so that no one can guess their nature till their actions reveal it. Sooner or later they behave in a way folk call the mue-frenzy, or insanity. They may bark, fume, rush about like beasts, see what others do not, lapse (like Morgan III) into the behavior of an idiot child, or sit speechless and motionless for days on end. Or they may with the most reasonable manner speak and obviously believe outrageous nonsense, usually suspecting others of wickedness or conspiracy or supposing themselves to be famous important people — even Abraham, or God himself. When brain-mues reveal themselves this way they are given over to the priests for disposal, like people who develop mysterious discolorations or lumps under the skin, since these are also considered to be the working-out of a mue-evil.

An Old-Time book we have on board describes “insane” people very differently, as sick people who may be treated and sometimes healed. This book uses the word “psychopathic” and mentions “insanity” or “craziness” as unsuitable popular terms. Ayah, and nowadays if you call a jo “crazy” you only mean he’s odd, weird, full of mahooha, a long-john-in-summer, a quackpot. Our Old-Time book speaks of these people with no horror but with a kind of compassion that in the modern spook-ridden world human beings seldom show except to those who very closely resemble themselves.

Well, hunkered in the thicket outside the palisade, I knew nothing of books except as a dusty bewilderment of my schooltime, now past. I thought, with none to console me: Do brain-mues act as I’ve done? No! I said. But the idea lurked in shadow, a black wolf waiting.

Behind the palings a man with a fair tenor and a mandolin was singing “Swallow in the Chimbley,” approaching down a side-street. Skoar folk had been humming that ever since a Rambler gang introduced it a few years before. It made me think of Emmia, less about my troubles.

Swallow in the chimbley,

Oop hi derry O!

Swallow in the chimbley,

Sally on my knee.

Swallow flying high,

Sally, don’t you cry!

Tumble up and tumble down and lie with me.

The evening was hot, heavy with the smell of wild hyacinth, so still I could hear that man hawk and spit after goofing the high note the way you expect a tenor to do if he’s got more sass than education. I liked that.

You can’t live thinking you’re a brain-mue.

Swallow in the chimbley,

Oop hi derry O!

Swallow in the chimbley,

Sally jump free—

Left her smock behind,

Sally, don’t you mind!

Tumble up and tumble down and lie with me.

The singer was evidently the stockade guard’s relief, for now I heard the ceremony of the change of guards. First the old guard hollered at the new to quit making like a Goddamn likkered-up tomcat and get the lead out of his butt. After that, the solemn clash of gear, and a brisk discussion of music, the rightness of the town clock, what the corporal would say, where the corporal could shove it, and a suggestion that the musical new guard do something in the way of sexual self-ministration which I don’t think is possible, to which the singer replied that he couldn’t account he was built like a bugle. I sneaked over to the base of the stockade, waiting out the ceremony. At last the new guard stomped off down the street on his first round — without his mandolin since he had to carry a javelin.

Swallow in the chimbley,

Oop hi derry O!

Swallow in the chimbley,

Sally cry “Eee!”

Catch her by the tail,

Happy little quail!

Tumble up and tumble down and lie with me.

The spider-bite hampered me climbing the stockade, but I made it, the burden in my sack unharmed. I sneaked down Kurin Street to the Bull-and-Iron. Emmia’s window was lit, though it wasn’t yet her bedtime. When I reached the stable, damned if she wasn’t there doing my work for me. She had finished watering the mules, and turned with a finger at her lips. “They think I’m in my room. Said I seen you at work and they took my word for it. I swear, Davy, this is the last time I cover up for you. Shame on you!”

“You didn’t have to, Miss Emmia. I—”

“’Didn’t have to’ — and me trying to save your backside a tanning! Moving away, Mister Independent?”

I squirmed my sack to the floor; my sh!rt sprung open and she saw the smeary bite. “Davy darling, whatever? And here she comes in a warm rush, no more mad at all. “Oh dear, you got a fever too!”

“Orb-spider.”

“Dumb crazy love, going off where them awful things be, if you was small enough to turn over my lap I’d give you a fever where you’d remember it.” She went on so, sugary scolding that means only kindness and female bossiness.

When she stopped for breath I said: “I didn’t goof off, Miss Emmia — thought it was my free day.” Her soft hands fussing at my shirt and the bitten place were rousing me up so that I wondered if my loin-rag would hide the evidence.

“Now shed up, Davy, you didn’t think never no such of a thing, the way you lie to me and everybody it’s a caution to the saints, but I won’t tell, I said I’d covered for you, only more fool me if I ever do it again, and you’re lucky it’s a Friday so you wasn’t missed, and anyway—” There was this about Emmia: if you wished to say anything yourself you had to wait for the breath-pauses and work fast against the gentle stream that couldn’t stop because it must get to the bottom of the hill and there was always more coming. “Now you go right straight up to your bed and I’ll bring you a mint-leaf poultice for that ’ere because Ma says it’s the best thing in the world for any kind of bite, bug-bite I mean, a snake is different of course, for that you’ve got to have a jolt of likker and a beezer-stone[10] but anyway — oh, poo, what did you put on it?” But she didn’t wait to hear. “You take your lantern now, I won’t need it, and straight up to bed with you, don’t stand there fossicking around.”

“Kay,” I said, and tried to hoist my sack without her noticing it, but she could talky-talk and still be sharp.

“Merciful winds, what have you got there?”

“Nothin’.”

“Nothin’ he says and it pushing out the sack big as a house — Davy, listen, if you’ve latched onto something you shouldn’t I can’t cover that for you, it’s a sin—”

“It’s nothing!” I yelled that. “You gotta know everything, Miss Emmia, it’s a chunk of wood I found so to carve you something for your name-day, ’f you gotta know ever’ durn thing, if you gotta.”

“O Davy, little Spice!” She grabbed me again, her face one big rose. I barely swung the sack out of the line of operations before I got kissed.

No one had kissed me since Caron. True, “little Spice” doesn’t mean the same as just “Spice.” But Emmia was keeping hold of me, her fragrant heat pressing — lordy, I hadn’t even known a girl’s nipples could grow firm enough to be felt through the clothes! But something was wrong with me; I was growing limp and scared, stomach fluttering, the spiderbite jumping. “Aw Davy, and I was scolding you so, and you sick with a bite you got account you was doing something for me — O Davy, I feel awful.”