Fava burst out, "What were you called before you came here and became Incanto?"

"Rajan, " I told her. "I've had other names, but I think that's the one you're looking for."

She leaned toward me, so intent on impressing me with her sincerity that she actually allowed her blue-green eyes to glitter in the candlelight. "I'm not looking for you, Incanto. I mean that."

"You are a strego!" Inclito's mother exclaimed.

I said, "I am not, madam. But I intend to cure you if I can. If someone will furnish me with paper when this excellent meal is over, I'll write out some instructions for you. They will not be difficult, and if you follow them exactly as I set them down I believe that you will soon notice an improvement in your condition."

What happened next was so farcical that I hesitate to tell it. Oreb darted through an open window, circled the table, and settled on my shoulder, croaking, "Bird back!" and "Bad thing!"

5

In Green's Jungle

Atteno the stationer has let me stay in his shop again tonight, and furnished me with a pallet he bought today for my sake, a pillow, sheets, and three blankets; but I slept so much yesterday (in a barrel in the alley when the shop was open) that I find I am unable to get to sleep tonight. Unable as yet, I should write.

So here I sit in my usual place in the shopwindow, burning Atteno's oil in his lamp and writing on paper I have appropriated from him, having used up all he gave me earlier while I finished describing Inclito's dinner of night-before-last. It was the most I have ever written in a single sitting, to the best of my memory. Even when my wife and I were composing our book about Silk, I never wrote so long a time without some sort of break or interruption, or wrote so much.

Not a lot has happened since Oreb burst in upon us, although I have received two letters. My friend the shopkeeper (I have got to find some way to repay him for the paper I have taken) was delighted. "People of quality write letters, " he declared as he endeavored to conceal his pleasure. "It's the mark of quality, and a good education." No one in Blanko can set pen to paper without putting the little squares of silver they term "cardbits" here into his pocket, and he is very conscious of it. Since I began this rambling account of my journey back to the Whorl by copying what I remembered of the letter from Pajarocu into it, I will copy them out here as well.

Two young men with huge dogs on leashes just walked past the shop; seeing me behind these panes of bull's-eye glass, they saluted. They had slug guns slung across their backs in the fashion I saw our troopers in Gaon use. I returned their salutes-and at once, without the mumbling of a single spell or the offering of some poor, sad monkey's life to Thelxiepeia, I was fifteen again, and by no means the youngest of General Mint's Volunteers. Once a trooper, always a trooper. No doubt Spider felt the same way, or much more so. We ought to have put something of that in our book, but it is too late now.

War looms-not only for Blanko, but for me. To give myself due credit, I never imagined that by leaving Evensong and her pretty little boat on the Nadi I would throw them off indefinitely. A week? Ten days, perhaps, although it seemed much longer. Very well, I have fought them before, and in place of a slug gun and the black-bladed sword I have Hyacinth's azoth. Let them beware.

I have drawn the three whorls just as I used to in Gaon. Not because I have been away, or slept, or made love to any woman. No, merely because I ceased writing for an hour or so to play with Oreb and wrestle my conscience. But midnight has come and gone-I heard the clocks strike.

How much do I owe my devil-son? I swore I would not tell, and I will not. But what constitutes telling? If I were to take down the big bar on the door and go out into the street, stop a passerby, and explain everything to him as I would like to, that would be telling beyond all doubt. But what if I were to write it here? Who would ever read it?

Fava's letter was badly folded and sealed with a blurred impression of a flower. If this were New Viron, it would surely be her name-flower. Here I cannot say. A wide-petaled, short-stemmed flower badly stamped into pink wax. She did not trust poor Mora to do it for her, clearly.

She is a fellow-pupil at Mora's palaestra, they say, and a very bright one. No doubt she is, but she cannot do well in penmanship, unless she has discovered some cheat beyond my imagining. Both of them wear masks for Mora's family, I believe: Fava is by definition brilliant in all of their classes, and Mora is by definition slow or worse. But it cannot be that simple. Mora would write a small hand, very neat, if I am any judge of women's characters.

She came to the barrel in which I slept in a simple gown, such as she must wear to her palaestra; and yet she wore such small and childish jewelry as she had, and scent, too. What ran through her head as she thus dressed herself to visit me? I can only guess.

First the gown. It was a palaestra day, and she was not quite sure that she could nerve herself to miss her classes. Alternately, she hoped to find me quickly and come late to palaestra. She would merely have been marked tardy in that case, perhaps.

Perhaps. It was a favorite word of Patera Silk's, and I try to avoid it for that reason. What right have I (I ask myself) to Silk's words? Yet I have striven to pattern myself on him in many other ways, most of all in his way of thinking. Can I think like Silk without employing the words he did? If in fact I thought more like Silk, I would have thought of that much sooner. It is nothing to say, "I will be logical." It is everything to be logical, provided that I act from good motives.

Good motives cannot excuse bad actions, as I told Mora. I was stern-I hope not too stern. I know what she is going through, poor child.

And she is a child. "I won't ask you to disrobe, " I said, "because it doesn't matter whether I know. You'll know if I'm right, and that's enough."

She nodded solemnly, sitting cross-legged on the bare ground in front of my barrel, with her clean blue gown spread over her knees. Several persons saw us talking there. What must they have thought?

"The time of maturity varies between individuals. For a few it may be as early as eleven, and there are a few for whom it comes after eighteen. In general, the larger the individual the slower the onset."

I paused to let that sink in.

"In speaking of the size of the individual, I mean weight as well as stature. You are of large stature. You are aware of it, from what I've seen." (I dodged the word perhaps.) "You may even be too acutely aware of it. You are also fleshy, as I am. I try to fight it, though for other reasons. I am not telling you that you must fight it, too. If you are satisfied-"

She shook her head.

"Then you can correct it. If you succeed, you will be a woman sooner. Talk to your grandmother about what it means to be a woman. There will be a flow of blood, and if you are not prepared you may find it deeply unsettling."

She nodded. "Do you think someday I might…?" She dropped her gaze to the ground between us.

"Good girl!" Oreb assured me.

"You're still too young to be concerned with marriage, " I told her. "But yes, I do."

She looked up, and her shy smile was gold.

"Mora, you envy beautiful women. That is natural, but-"

"Like Fava."

"Fava is not a beautiful woman, or even a pretty girl, which is what she pretends to be. You and I know what Fava is."