I said, “One usually doesn’t, with her,” reflecting that just as I was many in a single body, Tzadkiel was many bodies in a single person.

The captain pointed over the taffrail, where the sea of cloud seemed almost to wash the planking of the tender’s hull. “We’re about to go down into that. When we get under it, you can take off your amulets without freezing.”

For a time we were trapped in mist. In a brown book I took from Thecla’s cell, I have read that a region of mist separates the living from the dead, and that the forms we call ghosts are nothing more than the remnants of this barrier of mist clinging to their faces and their garments.

Whether that is true, I cannot say; but certainly Urth is separated from the void by such a region, and that seems strange to me. Possibly the four realms are but two, and we entered the void and left it at last just as specters visit the country of the living.

Chapter XXVIII — The Village Beside the Stream

I RECALL thinking, as I leaned over the railing and watched dots of red and gold turn to woodlots, and brown smudges to fields of tangled stalks, how strange we should have looked had there been anyone to watch us, a trim pinnace — just such a vessel as might have lain alongside some wharf in Nessus — floating silently down out of the sky. I felt sure there was no one. It was earliest morning, when even small trees cast long shadows and scarlet foxes trot denward through the dew like flecks of fire.

“Where are we?” I asked the captain. “Which way does the city lie?”

“North by northeast,” he said, pointing.

The supplies he was giving us were in long sarcins of about the bigness of a demicannon’s barrel lashed to the base of the bonaventure. He showed us how to carry them, the strap over the left shoulder and fastened at the hip. He shook our hands, and seemed, so far as I could judge to wish us well sincerely.

A silver pont slid from the seam where the deck met the tender’s side. Burgundofara and I went down it and stood once more upon the soil of Urth.

We turned — as I believe no one could have helped turning — and watched the tender rise, righting herself as soon as her keel was free of the soil, bobbing in a gentle swell none but she could feel and lifting like a kite. We had come to Urth through clouds, as I have said; but the tender found an opening in them (I cannot but think it was so we might watch her) and rose through it, higher and higher, until hull and masts were no more than a pinprick of golden light. At length we saw her blossom to a shining speck, like the steel that falls from a file; then we knew that her crew had freed her sails, all of silver metal and each bigger than many an isle, and sheeted them home, and that we would not see her again. I looked away so that Burgundofara would not notice the tears in my eyes. When I looked back to tell her we should be going, I found that she had been weeping too.

Nessus lay north by northeast, so the captain had said; with the horizon still so near the sun, it was not hard to keep our course. We crossed frost-killed fields for half a league or more, entered a little wood, and soon reached a stream with a path meandering along its bank.

Burgundofara had not spoken until then, and neither had I; but when we saw the water, she went to it and scooped up as much as her hands would hold. When she had drunk it, she said, “Now I know we’ve really come home. I’ve heard that for landsmen it’s eating bread and salt.”

I told her that was so, though I had nearly forgotten it.

“For us it’s drinking the water of a place. There’s usually bread and salt enough on the boats, but water goes bad or leaks away. When we come to a new landing we drink its water, if it’s good water. If it isn’t, we put our curse on it. Do you think this runs to Gyoll?”

“I’m sure it must, or to some larger stream that does. Do you want to return to your village?”

She nodded. “Will you come with me, Severian?”

I remembered Dorcas, and how she had begged me to come with her down Gyoll to find an old man and a house fallen to ruin. “I will if I can,” I told her. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stay.”

“Then maybe I’ll leave when you do, but I’d like to see Liti again first. I’ll kiss my father and all my relations when I get there, and probably stab them when I go. Just the same, I have to see it again.”

“I understand.”

“I hoped you would. Gunnie said you were that kind of man — that you understood a lot of things.”

I had been examining the path as she spoke. Now I motioned her to silence, and we stood listening for perhaps a hundred breaths. A fresh wind stirred the treetops; birds called here and there, though most had already flown north. The stream chuckled to itself.

“What is it?” Burgundofara whispered at last.

“Someone’s run ahead of us. See his tracks? A boy, I think. He may have circled to watch us, or fetched others.”

“A lot of people must use this path.”

I crouched beside the footprint to explain to her. “He was here this morning, when we came. See how dark a mark he made? He’d come across the fields just as we did, and his feet were wet with dew. It will dry soon. His foot’s small for a man’s, but he runs with long strides — a boy that’s nearly a man.”

“You’re deep. Gunnie said you were. I wouldn’t have seen that.”

“You know a thousand times more about ships than I do, though I’ve spent some time on both kinds. I was a mounted scout for a while. This is the sort of thing we did.”

“Maybe we should go the other way.”

I shook my head. “These are the people I’ve come to save. I won’t save them by running from them.”

As we walked on, Burgundofara said, “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“You mean anything they know of. Everyone has done something wrong, and I a hundred such things — or rather, ten thousand.”

Because the wood was so hushed and I had not smelled smoke, I had supposed that the place to which the boy had run was a league away at least. The path turned sharply, and a silent village of a dozen huts stood before us.

“Can’t we just walk through?” Burgundofara asked. “They must be asleep.”

“They’re awake,” I told her. “They’re watching us through their doorways, standing to the rear so we won’t see them.”

“You’ve got good eyes.”

“No. But I know something of villagers, and the boy got here before us. If we walk through, we may get pitchforks in our backs.”

I looked from hut to hut and raised my voice: “People of this village! We’re harmless travelers. We have no money. We ask only the use of your path.”

There seemed a slight stirring in the silence. I walked forward and motioned for Burgundofara to follow.

A man of fifty stepped from one of the doorways; his brown beard was streaked with gray, and he carried a flail.

“You’re the hetman of this village,” I said. “We thank you for your hospitality. As I told you, we come in peace.”

He stared at me, reminding me of a certain mason I had once encountered. “Herena says you came from a ship that fell from the sky”

“What does it matter where we came from? We’re peaceful travelers. We ask nothing more than that you let us pass.”

“It matters to me. Herena is my daughter. If she lies, I must know of it.”

I told Burgundofara, “You see, I don’t know everything.” She smiled, though I could see she was frightened.

“Hetman, if you would trust a stranger’s word and not your daughter’s, you’re a fool.” By then the girl had edged near enough the door for me to see her eyes. “Come out, Herena,” I said. “We won’t hurt you.”

She stepped forward, a tall girl of fifteen with long brown hair and a withered arm no larger than an infant’s.

“Why were you spying on us, Herena?”

She spoke, but I could not hear her.