There’s an image Peasimy sees sometimes in the dusk, maybe in the dusk, maybe only in his head, he’s not sure always where things are. But the image is there, somewhere, shining. A glowing thing. Looking at him. Looking at him and shining with its own light. Truth. Shining. He doesn’t know what it is, but he expects to find it. Somewhere. Along this alley, perhaps, between splashes of his boots. Along that street.
And until then, he goes along.
“Aiiiih uhmmmms,” calls the crier.
“Night comes,” whispers Peasimy. “Light comes.”
3
It was six days before Thrasne was left alone and could look at the drowned woman again. Under a grove of enormous frag trees, tied up at the Riverside past Shabber, he was able to lift the net once more. He stood on the owner-house roof, staring at her in lantern light where she swayed in the net. She was dry now. Her hair had fluffed out like fine pamet fiber, a warm, lovely brown. Though he had thought her eyes open when he brought her aboard, they were closed now, the lashes lying softly upon her cheeks as she seemed to sleep. His eyes marked her, measured her, trembled over every part of her, fascinated and aroused. He had to hold his hands behind him to keep from touching her. At last he could stand it no longer. He went below and took a live fish from the cook’s cage where it hung over the side. Carrying this squirming burden, he went back to her to thrust the wriggling thing against her, careful not to touch the part of it that touched her. He laid it on the roof, watching closely, and within moments the front part of it stopped thrashing and began to bump against the roof, moved by the tail, which was still alive. The blight lived in her still. He brought the sprayer up and covered her with a powdery, golden shower before lowering her into the shaft once more. The fish was still bumping, and he shoved it overside with a pole.
“Suspirra,” he whispered down to her. “It’s all right, Suspirra. A few more days’ drying, the good powder will do its work, then you can come out of there … “ Except, he told himself, she could not. Where would he put her? How would he explain?
“Blint, sir, would you mind making me a small payment on my wages?”
“How small, Thrasne? And what do you suddenly find yourself so needy of? Isn’t wife Blint seeing well enough to your food and clothing?”
“It isn’t that, sir. I have a mind to make a large carving, and I’d like to purchase a block of wood from a frag merchant … “
Which block of wood was not easily come by. Some were too crooked and others too straight. Some had harsh graining that would spoil the features, others were too dark. Thrasne found one eventually, at the bottom of the pile, and paid for it with good coin. He put it in one corner of his little room aboard the Gift, knives and chisels ostentatiously by. When he began to carve it, the wood opened up to reveal the Suspirra within. Still, it was a largish thing, life size, and it was longer than he liked before it resembled her, longer yet before it was her, line for line. Then was a long time between towns, during which he was never left alone, so that when he finally came to take the drowned woman from the net, replacing her with the carving-in case he might ever need to hide the real woman again-it seemed a season had gone by.
The drowned woman came gladly to his place, standing in one corner of it as though invited there for dalliance. She looked at him through barely opened eyes, lips not quite curved, as though she were thinking of smiling but had not yet accomplished it.
“Well,” said Blint when he saw her first. “I still say you should be artist caste, Thrasne. Not that I’d like doing without you. Still, that’s a beauty, that is. Pure fragwood, is it? Surely not the hair? That doesn’t look carved?”