The Unnameables (8 page)

"Aye," Medford said. The man's speech, not to mention the horns and goat shins, made him queasy. But he had to admit the creature had done nothing to threaten him.

He'd never met a stranger before, even one
without
horns. He tried to decide what to say. "Who are you?" and "You talk funny" seemed rude. "Is that a hat?" was no better.

"What is that smell?" Medford said. He felt himself turn red.

But the man didn't seem to mind. "Sti-i-inky rolled in a dead bird," he said. "She likes to sme-e-ell like dead things. The smell fools the pre-e-ey."

The dog wasn't the only stinky one. In fact, the really complex smells belonged to the man. The wet wool socks smell, certainly, and the wet hay and another sort of gamy odor Medford couldn't identify. And something spicy and something rancid and—

"Makes the little cr-i-i-itters think,
Not to worry, only a dead bird walking along.
And then, surpri-i-ise! It turns out to be a dog and ... disgusting things ha-a-a-appen."

"Why do you talk so strange?" Medford said.

"I do not," the man said. His bushy eyebrows twitched together. A gust of wind ruffled his hair, then subsided.

"Beg pardon," Medford said hastily. "Is ... Stinky the name of your dog?"

The man threw back his head and made the most Unnameable sound Medford had ever heard. It sounded like "Bweh-eh-eh-eh-eh." It sounded even windier and grassier than the man's regular speech. "Her na-a-ame," the man said to the sky. "Heh."

"Her name is funny?"

The man beamed as if Medford had said something smart. His teeth were uneven yellow stumps. "I am on my ramble," he said, as if that explained everything.

"You're on ... what?"

"You ask about the dog's na-a-ame. She has none."

"But ... you called her—"

"She sti-i-inks," said the man. "Right now she sti-i-inks. Tomorrow I'll call her something else." He thought about that. "Mi-i-ight not, though."

The dog waggled the tip of her tail, wafting odor.

Medford's brain had rusted up. "So her name changes—"

"She has no na-a-ame," the man said patiently. "I have no na-a-ame. If you must call me something right away ca-a-all me the Goatman, since I am the only goatman here."

"You have no name," Medford said.

"Na-a-ames weigh us down," the Goatman said. "Tie us to a rock."

"No name," Medford said.

"Lock us in a cage. Hold us i-i-in a house."

No name. Horns.

Medford found that he was extremely calm.
Good news,
his brain said.
None of this is actually happening.
He discovered that he was on his feet and walking. He walked up the front steps, across the porch, and through the door to his cabin, shutting it behind him. He walked into his bedroom and shut that door, too.

Then, although it was only afternoon and he had neither eaten supper nor brushed his teeth, he went to bed. He fell asleep immediately with his clothes on.

He slept straight through the night, rolling over exactly twice. The next morning he awoke before sunrise and lay there, confused. It seemed he'd gone to bed unusually early, in his clothes, and with no food. Had he been sick? He couldn't remember.

And hadn't he had a strange dream? A vivid dream, scary. It had purple in it. Hooves. Cordelia's Unnameable Woven Object.

As he did every morning, Medford sat up and wriggled down to the bottom of the bed to lean against the windowsill and watch the day begin. He tucked his blankets around him and looked out.

He knew every root and branch of the woods around his house, but at this hour they were as mysterious as Mainland, black tinged with dull green and bronze. As he watched, a wash of apple pink appeared in the sky behind the trees and the shadows lightened. Soon the world would be familiar again.

At the edge of the yard, beyond the vegetable garden, a white furry figure emerged from the woods. The white stood out against the murky trees, almost gleaming. The dog flopped onto her back, rolling and twisting, feet waggling in the air.

He heard a voice, slightly muffled. "Nightfa-a-arts," it seemed to be calling. "Where a-a-are you, Nightfarts?"

Medford thought he might like to blink but that didn't seem to be possible. The dog rolled to her feet and bounded out of sight. Then she bounced into view again, came to a dead stop, and sneezed with a great shake of her head and scattering of droplets. She trotted off in the direction of the voice.

There was something jaunty about her that made Medford smile. Then he remembered whom she was with.

It hadn't been a dream.

He shivered. He tried to imagine himself walking out onto the porch and ... doing what? Saying what? It was too much. He buried his face in his pillow, inhaled the oily earthiness of the fleece inside. He pulled the covers over his head.

Someone knocked on the front door. He waited. Whoever it was knocked again.

Trouble doth not depart,
the Book said.
Face it, thou.
Medford threw back the covers and swung his feet to the floor. He had shoes on, he discovered.

When he opened the door, the Goatman was leaning on his staff in the dim morning light, gazing out to sea. "Nice da-a-ay," he said when Medford stepped out onto the porch. "No wind."

Medford swallowed and freed up his voice. "I don't mind wind," he croaked. He swallowed again. "A breeze, anyways. I like the leaves to move."

"You do?" The Goatman turned around. Apparently Medford had said something smart again. "Can you make it do what you wa-a-ant?" He leaned forward on his staff, examining Medford's face.

"Make
what
do what I want?" Medford asked, backing up.

"The wi-i-ind," the Goatman said. His eyes were the most startling blue, even brighter than Prudy's. "The breeze. Can you make it do what you wa-a-ant?"

"Cry mercy, of course not," Medford said.

The Goatman sighed and turned back to the ocean. "Neither can I," he said.

Change the subject,
Medford's brain said. "Wouldst thou take tea?"

"Everyone e-e-else can do it," the Goatman said. "Not me, though. Call it up, I can do tha-a-at. But then it does what it wa-a-ants. And I can't make it go awa-a-ay."

"Perhaps some bread and butter?" Medford said.

"I don't understa-a-and. I think all the right things, move my ha-a-ands right."

"With honey, perhaps."

"In the city they ha-a-ave gizmos for it. I looked in a window and a lady poked her finger at a thi-i-ing with blades and then she had wi-i-ind in her face."

Ah,
Medford thought,
'tis a Mainland thing, like a motorwagon.
"So you poke something with a finger," he said.

"Almost," the Goatman said. "I do this." He faced the ocean, then stuck his forefinger in his mouth to wet it. He held the finger up, waggled it a little as if beckoning someone who was already paying attention.

Medford heard a distant
whup-whup-whup
coming from Mainland. He looked out at the water, which was smooth as varnished Sapwood at this early hour.

Except—Medford went to the porch rail and squinted—except for what looked like a little herd of whitecaps far out to sea. The disturbance was speeding toward Island, moving faster the nearer it got. The waves were unusually tall for being so far out, getting taller as they neared land. The Pitch Trees lining the field across the road began to dance.

"Uh-oh," the Goatman said.

Medford barely had time to say "What...?" Then a blast of wind hurled him to the floor and back against the side of the cabin. He could hardly open his eyes, the wind was so strong. The Goatman was beside him, flung against the door, his robe up around his waist. It occurred to Medford that this would be a good chance to see how far up the goat parts went but he couldn't keep his eyes open long enough.

The dog yelped, sounding far away. Something crashed inside the cabin. Medford remembered that he'd gone to bed yesterday without closing up his workshop.

And then the wind was gone, just like that. Medford kept his eyes shut, afraid to move. The Goatman was muttering to himself. He rustled and creaked, getting up. "Like ye-e-esterday i-i-in that boat," Medford heard.
Creak-creak-rustle.
"Only a-a-all in one place."

Medford opened his eyes, focused on the porch rail. His head hurt where it had banged against the cabin wall and his shoulders felt bruised. A hand came into view, the palm grimy, the nails long and thick and yellow, with matted gray hair between the knuckles.

"He-e-ere," the Goatman said. "Let me help you."

The hand hovered there. If Medford touched it, the world would tilt.

The Goatman snorted. He threw down his staff hauled Medford to his feet, and staggered back against the porch rail.

Medford's head throbbed.
Tea with Tonic Root,
he thought. There were fresh roots in the cupboard.

"My sta-a-aff." The man was scowling, clinging to the rail.

Medford started to hand him his staff. It was the goat head at the top that stopped him, one of four carved in such deep relief that the horns looked round. Below them, various swirls danced and curled and whirled down the staff.

The swirls are the wind,
Medford thought. He frowned at himself and shook his head. Wind is invisible—how could something look like wind?

"Bweh-eh-eh-eh," the Goatman said.

"Oh, beg pardon." Medford handed the man his staff. A question, an important one, caught in his windpipe.

"My uncle ca-a-arved the goat heads," the Goatman said. "I did the wind swirls." The blue eyes were kind, although there was a tinge of ... what was it, foreignness? Creatureness?
Unnameableness,
Medford's brain suggested.

He ignored his brain. "Would you like a cup of tea?" he asked.

The Book says one should never turn a visitor away hungry. I say, Capability C. Craft never lived down the road from Martin Candlewright, who turns up at dinnertime regular as the tide.

—Journal of Colby Tailor, 1966

M
EDFORD REGRETTED
inviting the Goatman into his cabin. It would have been better to have thanked him for his visit, walked inside, and shut the door. The Goatman would have gone away and Medford would be working on a new bowl for Twig right now.

The Goatman stood in the middle of the kitchen, leaning on his staff and watching Medford the way you'd watch the first flea of summer. This made Medford so edgy he almost dropped the teapot, a Transition gift from Clarity. It didn't help that the sink pump wasn't working right—three pumps for one squirt of water. For some reason Medford found this embarrassing.

The dog kept nudging Medford's hand with her nose. He gingerly stroked her forehead, the only part of her that looked to be free of bird chunks. She sat down, closed her eyes, and sighed. While he made the tea she stayed where she was, gazing up at him.

Maybe she liked him.

He found he minded her smell a little less.

Not much less.

Medford poured the tea through a strainer into two mugs, then put the strainer down on the counter next to the sink. The Goatman grabbed it and lapped out the mass of soggy leaves. "Mmmm," he said. "Li-i-ike a pricker-bush."

Medford didn't often wash the tea strainer. He decided he would have to do that before the next pot of tea.

The Goatman peered into the mug Medford gave him as if the tea were alive and unpredictable. "What do I do with thi-i-is?" he asked.

"Drink it," Medford said. "'Tis good."

The Goatman sniffed the tea and stuck out his tongue to touch it. He twitched. "Ow. Hot," he said. He shot an accusing look at Medford.

'"Twill cool. Really," Medford said. "You'll like it. Sit down, if it please thee."

The Goatman set his tea mug on the floor and lowered himself awkwardly to sit next to it. He put down his staff and cupped his mug in both hands.

"Wouldn't you like a chair?" Medford pointed to the table and three chairs under the porch windows.

"Bweh-eh-eh," the Goatman said. He used his staff to haul himself up onto his hooves and inspected the chair facing the windows, brow furrowed. He lowered his hindquarters onto the seat and perched on the edge, unable to sit all the way back.

Medford grated Tonic Root into his tea and opened the window before joining his guest at the table, hoping he wasn't being rude. The dog curled up at the Goatman's feet, so what had been separate smells became one united stench. Medford breathed through his mouth rather than his nose. That helped.

He wanted a closer look at that goat-headed staff, which was leaning against the table. "May I?" he asked, reaching for it.

"Of course," the Goatman said. He kept sniffing at his tea, poking it with a finger, sipping a little, sniffing at it again. "Hot colored wa-a-ater," he whispered.

The wind swirls on the staff were rough in places, Medford saw. He could see where the blade had slipped or gotten caught in the grain and gone wrong. The goat heads, though, emerged from the wood as if they'd grown there. They looked as if they had goat bodies hidden behind them in the staff. Medford could see individual strands of hair in their beards. How could anyone carve so delicately? With his thinnest blade and a lot of practice, perhaps he could—

Medford caught himself.
This,
he thought,
is how the Unnameable creeps up on you.
He could hear Deemer Learned's voice in his head, reading from the Book: "
Does
it feed us? Warm us? Shelter us? Then is it good. If it does none of these things, turn away.
"

The Goatman was watching him. "Do you ca-a-arve?"

"No," Medford said and felt his face turn hot. "I mean, aye. Well, not like this. This ... isn't allowed." He'd never uttered such a broad, general lie before.

"Allowed," the Goatman said. "What's allowed? Who allowed? Allo-o-o-owed. Allowed-allowed-allowed." He made the word sound foreign, almost comic.

"The Book doesn't allow, doesn't let us ... It says we can't do some things," Medford said. "It says some things are bad for us."