‘I sort of like “Emerald”, because of your eyes.’
‘I could live with that, yes. I had a very nice emerald once – before I came here. I used to hold it up in the sunlight to watch it glow.’
‘Then you had arms before you became a cat, and hands as well,’ he said shrewdly.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Now would you like to make some guesses about how many and where they were attached to me?’ She gave him an arch look. ‘Stop fishing, Althalus. Someday you’ll find out who I really am, and it might surprise you, but you don’t need to know that right now.’
‘Maybe I don’t,’ he said slyly, ‘but every now and then, you make a slip, and I keep track of those slips. It won’t be too long before I know pretty much what you used to be.’
‘Not until I’m ready for you to know, you won’t,’ she told him. ‘You need to concentrate right now, Althalus, and if I used my real form here in the House, you wouldn’t be able to do that.’
‘That bad?’
She snuggled up against him and started to purr. ‘You’ll see, pet,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’
Despite her rather superior attitude – which Althalus strongly suspected had been a part of her original nature – Emerald was an affectionate creature who always wanted to be in close physical contact with him. He slept on the thickly furred bison robes on the stone bed, and she always snuggled up to him, purring contentedly. Right at first he didn’t care for that, so he made a practice of covering himself with his wool cloak and holding it tightly around his neck. Emerald would sit quite calmly at the foot of the bed watching him. Then, as he started to drift off to sleep and his grip relaxed, she would silently creep up the bed until she was just behind his head. Then she would skillfully touch her cold, wet nose to the back of his neck, and Althalus would automatically flinch away from that surprising touch. That was all she needed to burrow down under the cloak, and she would settle down against his back and purr. Her purring was really very soothing, so he didn’t mind having her there. She seemed to get a great deal of entertainment out of the game, though, so Althalus continued to clench his cloak up around his neck so that she could surprise him in the same way each time they slept. It didn’t really cost him anything, and as long as it amused her . . .
She had one habit, though, that he really wished she’d get over. Every so often, Emerald seemed to develop an overpowering urge to bathe his face – usually when he was sound asleep. His eyes would suddenly pop open, and he’d realize that she had her paws firmly wrapped half-way around his head to hold him in place while she licked him from chin to forehead with her rough, wet tongue. He tried to jerk away from her the first few times, but as soon as he started to move, she’d flex her paws slightly, and her claws would come out. He got the point almost immediately. He didn’t really care for those impromptu baths, but he learned to endure them. There are always adjustments to be made when two creatures set up housekeeping together, and – aside from a few bad habits – Emerald wasn’t really all that hard to get along with.
Although the permanent night which blanketed the far north had taken away anything he could really call ‘day’, Althalus was fairly sure that the routine they followed probably coincided rather closely with the rising and setting of the sun farther to the south. He had no real reason for that belief and no way to verify it, but it seemed to him that it made more sense to think of it that way.
His ‘days’ were spent at the table with the Book open before him and with Emerald seated beside the Book, watching. Their conversations were largely limited to his pointing at an unfamiliar symbol and asking, ‘What’s this one mean?’ She would tell him, and he’d stumble along until he came to another unintelligible picture. The parchment sheets were loose inside the white leather box, and Emerald became very upset if he got them back in the wrong order. ‘It doesn’t make any sense if you mix them up like that,’ she’d scold him.
‘A lot of it doesn’t make sense anyway.’
‘Put them back the way you found them.’
‘All right, all right. Don’t tie your tail in a knot.’ That remark always seemed to trigger one of their little mock tussles. Emerald would lay her ears back, crouch low over her front paws and, with her bottom raised up and swinging back and forth ominously, her tail swished. Then she’d leap on his hand and mouth it. She’d never extend her claws and, though she growled terribly, she never actually bit him.
His best response to that was to take his other hand and thoroughly stir up her fur. She seemed to hate that, since it took her quite a while to comb everything back in place with her tongue.
Since Emerald was a cat – at least for right now – she had a keen sense of smell, and she insisted that Althalus should wash frequently – every time he turned around, it seemed. A large tiled tub filled with steaming water would quite suddenly appear near their bed, and after the first few times, Althalus would sigh, rise from his seat and begin removing his clothes. In the long run, he’d found, it was easier to bathe than it was to argue with her. As time went on, he even began to enjoy soaking in hot water before supper every day.
A peculiar notion came to him that winter, brought on perhaps by the continual darkness. He was still not entirely convinced that he wasn’t crazy, and, as insanity usually was, his had been brought on because he’d missed his time to die – just as the madness of the old man who’d talked to God had been. But maybe he hadn’t missed it after all. What if somewhere back in Hule, or maybe after he’d come up into the mountains of Kagwher, someone had slipped up behind him with an axe and chopped his head open, and he was dead? If it’d happened quickly enough, he wouldn’t have even realized it, so his ghost had just kept on walking. His body was probably lying somewhere with its brains dribbling out of its ears, but his ghost had continued on toward this House, totally unaware that he was really dead. It hadn’t been Althalus who’d encountered the crazy man who talked to God, and he hadn’t really reached the edge of the world and watched the fire of God. That was just something his ghost had thought up. Now his ghost had reached its final destination, and it would remain here in this closed room with Emerald and the Book forever. If his theory were correct, he’d crossed over into the afterlife. Everyone knows that the afterlife is filled with all sorts of strange things, so there was no point in getting excited about a room that stayed warm and comfortable and well-lighted without any trace of fire, and no real need to start bellowing, ‘impossible’ every time he turned around and something unusual happened. The whole business was just his own personal afterlife.
All things considered, though, this particular afterlife wasn’t so bad. He was warm and well-fed, and he had Emerald to talk to. He might have wished that there was some of Nabjor’s mead around someplace, or that some sister of the naughty-eyed girl in Nabjor’s camp might pay him a call now and then, but as time went on, those things became less and less important. He’d heard some pretty terrible stories about the afterlife, but if it didn’t get any worse than it was right now, Althalus felt that he could learn to be dead with it – he realized that ‘learn to live with it’ didn’t exactly fit in with his current situation. The one thing that nagged him was the total lack of any possibility of hunting down the man who’d killed him. Since he was now an insubstantial ghost, he wouldn’t be able to hack the rascal to pieces. But then he realized that he might just be able to haunt his unknown assailant, and that might be even more satisfying than butchering him.
He wondered if he might be able to persuade Emerald to agree to that. He could promise her that they could come back here to their private afterlife after he’d haunted his murderer to death, but he was almost positive that she wouldn’t put much store in promises made by the ghost of a man so famous for lying at every chance he got. After he’d thought his way through the idea, he decided that he wouldn’t mention the notion to his furry roommate.
Then the sun came back to the roof of the world, and the notion that he was dead began to fade. Eternal darkness sort of fit in with his concept of an afterlife, but the return of the sun made him almost feel that he’d been reborn.
He could read the Book fairly well by now, and he found it more and more interesting. One thing did sort of bother him, though. Late one spring afternoon, he laid his hand on the Book and glanced at Emerald, who appeared to be sleeping with her chin resting on her paws as she lay on the table beside the Book. ‘What’s his real name?’ he asked her.
Her green eyes were sleepy when she opened them. ‘Whose name?’ she asked.
‘The one who wrote the Book. He never comes right out and identifies himself.’
‘He’s God, Althalus.’
‘Yes, I know, but which one? Every land I’ve ever visited has its own god – or its own set of gods – and they all have different names. Was it Kherdhos – the god of the Wekti and Plakands? Or maybe Apwos, the god of Equero? What is his name?’
‘Deiwos, of course.’
‘Deiwos? The god of the Medyos?’
‘Of course.’
‘The Medyos are the silliest people in the world, Emerald.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘You’d think that the people who worshiped the real true God would have better sense.’
She sighed. ‘It’s all the same God, Althalus. Haven’t you realized that by now? The Wekti and Plakands call him Kherdhos because they’re interested in their herds of sheep or cows. The Equeros call him Apwos, because they concentrate most of their attention on the lakes. The Medyos are the oldest people in this part of the world, and they brought the name with them when they first came here.’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘Off to the south – after they learned how to herd sheep and plant grains. After they’d lived in Medyo for a while, they expanded out into those other places, and the people in the new places changed God’s name.’ She rose to her feet and stretched and yawned. ‘Let’s have fish for dinner tonight,’ she suggested.
‘We had fish last night – and the night before.’
‘So? I like fish, don’t you?’
‘Oh, fish is all right, I suppose, but I get a little tired of it after we’ve eaten it three times a day for three straight weeks.’
‘Fix your own supper,’ she flared.
‘You know perfectly well that I don’t know how to do that yet.’
‘Then you’ll just have to take whatever I put on the table, won’t you?’
He sighed. ‘Fish?’ he asked with a certain resignation.
‘What a wonderful idea, Althalus! I’m so glad you thought of it’
There were many concepts in the Book that Althalus couldn’t understand, and he and Emerald spent many contented evenings talking about them. They also spent quite a bit of time playing. Emerald was a cat, after all, and cats like to play. There was a kind of studied seriousness about her when she played that made her absolutely adorable, and she filled up most of the empty places in his life. Every so often she’d do something while she was playing that was so totally silly that it seemed almost human. Althalus thought about that, and he came to realize that only humans could be silly. Animals generally took themselves far too seriously to even suspect that they were being ridiculous.
Once, when he was concentrating very hard on the Book, he caught a slight movement out of the comer of his eye and realized that she was creeping up on him. He hadn’t really been paying much attention to her, and she’d only let that go on for just so long before she’d assert herself. She came creeping across the polished floor one furtive step at a time, but he knew that she was coming, so he was ready for her when she pounced, and half-turning, he caught her in mid-air with both hands. There was the usual mock tussle, and then he pulled her to his face and held her tightly against it. ‘Oh, I do love you, Emmy!’ he said.
She jerked her face back from his. ‘Emmy?’ she hissed. ‘EMMY!?!’
‘I’ve noticed that people do that,’ he tried to explain. ‘After they’ve been together for a while, they come up with pet names for each other.’
‘Put me down!’
‘Oh, don’t get all huffy.’
‘Emmy indeed! You put me down, or I’ll claw off one of your ears!’
