“Think you so?” Vanimen asked. “Why?”
Pavle clapped his shoulder and said, most gently, “I wish I did not. Too much beauty and wonder will perish with the halfworld, and I’ve a feeling that whatever replaces them will have less in common with humanity than it did.”
Faint through walls came the sound of cathedral bells. “Hark,” Pavle said. “The time of yon ringing was ordered not by sun, moon, or stars. A clock has taken that part, a hard, artificial thing, devoid of mystery.
“In my own lifespan I have seen wax the power of bombard, rocket, sapper. In them is the doom of knighthood, which-Ar-thur, Orlando, Ogier, Huon-ever linked warriors to the Other-world.
“Wilderness melts away before ax and plow. Meanwhile every-thing that matters is forgathering in the cities, where all is man-made and the smallest hob-sprite can find no home.
“Yearly farther, in yearly greater numbers, ships ply the seas, guided by compass and astrolabe rather than birdflight, landmarks, a mariner’s sense of oneness with the billows. They will round the earth someday, and Christian steeples rise above the last places where Faerie had refuge.
“For the earth is a globe, you may know, of measurable size. The very tracks of the stars are being measured, closer than the ancients could, and learned men are calculating the architecture of the universe. Their schemes have no room for awe or magic.
“Look here.” Pavle sought the table and picked up two lenses in a wire frame. ‘This is something I heard was newly invented in Italy, and sent for. As I’ve aged, my eyesight has been failing me at short range, till I could scarcely read or write. Today I slip this thing over the bridge of my nose, and it’s almost like being young again.” He handed them to Vanimen. “A beginning,” he foretold. ‘The progenitor of instruments which make vision keener than an eagle’s, closer than a mole’s. My descendants will turn them outward on the heavens, inward on themselves. Perhaps God will then terminate the world, lest men question His ways too closely. Or perhaps not. But sure I am that they will have ques-tioned Faerie out of it.” .
The mennan stared at the spectacles. He held them in his palm as if they were freezing cold.
“Therefore,” Pavle finished, “are you not well advised to accept your fate, gratefully, and seek your home in Paradise? “I won’t press you, save that I must have your decision within a few more months. Think. Go back to Skradin and tell your folk. Speak, too, with that priest in the zadruga whom Ivan esteems.
Ask him to pray for you.” ‘
Alone, Father Tomislav knelt. Winter night engulfed him, still and bitter, making the clay floor gnaw at his knees. He could barely glimpse Christ on the Cross, above the altar, by the light of a candle he had lit to the saint whose name his church bore, and whose effigy he beseeched.
“Holy Andrei,” he said, his voice as lost as the flame, “you were a fisherman when Our Lord called you to come follow Him. Did you ever afterward long back to the sea. . . just the least bit, maybe? Waves alive around you, a salt wind, a gull gliding-oh, you know what I mean. You didn’t regret your ministry. Nothing like that. But you remembered, sometimes—didn’t you? I myself miss the water shiny at the foot of Zadar, and going out in a boat-what a romp, what bigness and freshness!-and me a land-lubber born.
“You should understand how the merfolk feel. It isn’t their fault they have no souls, and so can’t properly crave salvation. The paynim among humans don’t crave it either, do they? God made the merfolk for His seas. If they forget the nature He gave them, well, I suppose they could still breathe down below, that kind of thing, but what use would it be? Like a man forgetting how to walk. They’d never learn again aright, I think.
“Mostly, though, the sea’s been their life, their love. Yes, love. Even a dog can love, and the merfolk have minds as good as any man’s. Would I choose to forget my Sena? No. The mem-ories hurt, but I cherish them. You know that, as many Masses as I’ve offered for her soul’s repose.