The Unnameables (9 page)

"Book—that's words. On ... pa-a-aper. How does it know wha-a-at you're doing?"

"It doesn't. People, the Councilors, read the Book and tell us what to do."

"They think you'll cut yourself doing fa-a-ancy carving."

"That's not it." Medford felt his headache getting worse. He breathed in some Tonic Root fumes. "I carve. And I cut myself aplenty. I carve bowls and spoons and... 'Tis just ... things have to be Useful. They have to have a Use."

"Useful." The Goatman ran his fingers over the wind swirls he'd made. "Heh. So it's true."

"What's true?"

"I heard about this Useful thing," the Goatman said. "I di-i-idn't believe it. I thought it was an old tale. Heh. When I go home it'll be a ne-e-ew tale."

"Have goatpeople—"

"Goatfolk."

"Goatfolk, beg pardon. Have they been here before?"

The man nodded. "On rambles. Makes a good ta-a-ale, this Naming and Useful."

"What's a ramble?"

But the Goatman pushed himself up from the table and grabbed his staff his eyebrows up in little peaks. "Wha-a-at's this?"

He clip-clopped into the workshop. Medford jumped up, annoyed. The Goatman might cut his finger on a blade. He shouldn't be barging into people's workshops.

The Goatman inspected the chisels and knives lining the wall, each in its own slot on a rack Medford had made. "You carve a lot, I see," he said. He picked up one of the bowls Medford had managed to finish for Twig. "Ni-i-ice work. Smooth."

Medford felt an almost irresistible urge to run into his bedroom and fetch a Useless carving. Nice work, indeed. The Goatman should see what he could really do.

Pride in the Useless be the road to the Unnameable,
the Book said. Medford leaned against the doorjamb. His head still throbbed. He needed to work on Twig's bowl.

He noticed that his rack of mallets, which he kept by the window facing the sea, had blown over in the Goatman's wind. Nothing seemed to have broken. He picked it up, shut the window, and turned to find the Goatman stooping for a better look at the tiny wood chips on the floor, left over from the Pinky bowl.

"These didn't come from tha-a-at," he said, pointing at the bowl on the workbench. "Whe-e-ere's the carving that goes with these?"

"You must be hungry," Medford said. "Come eat oatmeal. Bread. Honey. Eggs."

"I don't eat the young," the Goatman said. He scuffed at the wood chips on the floor, eyebrows in peaks again, but allowed Medford to usher him out of the workshop. "Oats I li-i-ike—no need to cook them. Don't know about honey."

Medford spooned oats into a dish and cut thick slices off a loaf he'd bought in Town. It had cost three of the tokens he'd earned selling his spoons at Boyce's shop and usually would have lasted almost a week.

The Goatman tipped the dish up and poured the oats into his mouth. A lot of them scattered on the floor and the dog lapped them up. They made her sneeze.

The Goatman did know what honey was, it turned out. "Ah. Bee fodder," he said.

All three of them ate slices of bread. Medford put butter and honey on his. The dog wrinkled her nose at the honey but accepted bread with butter. To Medford's delight she took a slice neatly from his hand and chomped it up with barely a dropped crumb.

The Goatman poured honey on his bread until it dripped down the sides, then shoved the soggy mass into his mouth. He had honey and oats and crumbs all over the front of his robe when breakfast was over.

Medford handed him a dish towel in case he wanted to mop up.

"My tha-a-anks to you," the Goatman said. He wiped the honey off his mouth with his white sash, then bit into a corner of the towel and ripped off a mouthful. He chewed it slowly, intent. "Mmm." He swallowed. "Tough, but ta-a-asty."

Medford opened his mouth but shut it again. He couldn't think of what to say, so he made more tea, which they took outside so the Goatman could sit on the grass while he finished off the towel. The dog trotted off into the woods.

"I li-i-ike your bread," the Goatman said. He looked for a clean spot on his sash and blew his nose on it. "Now, about those wood chips. Whe-e-ere is the other—"

"Where do you live?" Medford asked. He knew he should just say, "Those are bowl chips. There is no other carving." Why was that so hard?

"Right now, I live under your porch," the Goatman said.

Oh, the Book,
Medford thought.

"Normally, I live over the-e-ere." The Goatman waved his hand toward Mainland. "A fla-a-atfoot gave me a ... a ... I thi-i-ink he called it a sailboat."

"Do you live in the City?"

"Whi-i-ich one?"

"There's more than one?"

The Goatman blinked. "They're a-a-all over the place. I don't live in any of them, though. I live in mountains."

Medford had never seen a map of Mainland. He realized with a jolt that he didn't know much about it, even though his chisels and tea came from there. Even though he was from there himself. He looked out at the sea, cold and deep and impossibly wide. The world must be vast. Far too vast to be captured in one conversation.

Best not to ask about it. Best not to think about it.

The Goatman looked pointedly at the workshop window. "Whe-e-ere is that—"

Better ask about something, though. "Uh ... What's a ramble?"

The Goatman got a look on his face like New Prudy, but allowed himself to be distracted. "Well. Wi-i-inters are long. Once the goats are te-e-ended we have nothing to do. We sit in a she-e-elter and tell tales."

"Tales?" The word reeked of Dexter and Arvid. "Lies, you mean."

"Not lies. Lies deceive. A-a-and they're too much trouble."

"What's a tale, then?"

"Tales explain the world. Organize the sta-a-ars, introduce the ants. Heh. Make fun of my she-cousin, who thinks she's so sma-a-art. Some make their tales up—grasswatchers we ca-a-all them. Anyway, a ra-a-amble is what starts it all."

"But what's a rambler?"

"A journey, that's a-a-all. We just go."

"All of you at once?"

"No." The Goatman snorted, as if Medford weren't so smart after all. "We go alone. But e-e-everyone goes. Four seasons, five. My cousin, she was gone se-e-even, eight seasons. Found a city with shelters big as mountains. The ta-a-ales she brought back..."

Medford tried to imagine what it would be like to leave Island, but his mind just couldn't catch hold of the idea.

"Everyone said, 'Ooo, that she-cousin of yours, she's so bra-a-ave, going to tha-a-at bi-i-ig ci-i-ity,'" the Goatman said, his voice loud and piercingly goatish. "She had a place by the fi-i-ire the whole wi-i-inter she came ba-a-ack and I was by the door."

He sat up, jerking his robe angrily so Medford saw his hairy shins again. Medford tried not to look at them. The dog trotted out of the woods, the fur around her mouth stained dark. She wiped her muzzle on the grass.

"Ugh," the Goatman said. "He-e-ere comes Gory Mouth."

"That's three names she's had since yesterday," Med-ford said. "How do you get her to come when you summon her?"

"She hears my voice. If she wa-a-ants to be with me, she comes."

"But what about you?" Medford said. "You said you don't have a name, either."

"Of course not." The Goatman's eyebrows twitched. "No one summons me-e-e."

"What if there are two goatmen, and I want to tell someone something about you? How do I do that?"

"Say I'm the one wi-i-ith the purple robe."

"The other one has a purple robe, too," Medford said. "And a white sash," he added before the Goatman could speak. "He looks just like you."

"To you, maybe," the Goatman said. "A-a-anyway, you could point."

"The person I'm talking to isn't looking at me."

"Sa-a-ay, 'The one to the south.'"

"You can't keep saying 'the one to the south' and the one with the purple robe,'" Medford said, frustrated. "'Tis too ... it takes too much time."

"Wha-a-at's your rush?" the Goatman said, showing his teeth. "Heh. This na-a-aming of everything. Always a good tale."

"Names are important," Medford said, setting his tea mug down so he could wave his hands around for emphasis. "They tell us who we are and what we do and what everyone else does and where we all belong." He stopped for breath.

"They tell you a-a-all that? What if your name is Abercrombie?"

"Abercrombie? And what, pray, does an abercrombie do?"

"I don't know," the Goatman said. "But it's a name I heard. A-a-and there's O'Neill and Rabinowitz and Thomas and Cha-a-ang and Rashid and—"

"None of those names mean anything. Nobody's named like that."

"Yes, they are," the Goatman said. "Those names are a-a-all over the mainland."

Medford had always figured the Mainland drivers he'd met had names like, well, Driver. But these other Mainland names were nonsense—they didn't tell you a thing. He felt sick.

"Wha-a-at is your name?" the Goatman said.

Medford felt sicker.

"My foster father's name is Carver," he said. "He taught me to carve. And there are Bakers who bake and Carpenters who build things and Potters who make teapots—"

"So your name is Ca-a-arver?"

Medford shook his head, dismayed to find that his eyes were stinging. He tried to force the feeling back to wherever such feelings came from. "My name is Runyuin," he said when he thought he could speak. "Medford Runyuin."

"Wha-a-at is a runyuin?"

Medford bent his head so the Goatman couldn't see. "There is no such thing as a runyuin. My name doesn't mean anything. I wasn't born here."

"Why not na-a-ame something after yourself? That tree, maybe."

"'Tisn't the way it works."

Medford heard rustling noises and grunting. The air got smellier. He looked up and was startled to see the Goatman's face inches from his own, his eyes blue and gentle.

"I want to see those ca-a-arvings," the Goatman said. "The real ones, this time."

I made a song today to help us raise the gayble ends of Mistr'ss Cook's house. 'Twas thus: Pull—pull, fellows— pull—pull thy weight. 'Tisn't much, now that I see it writ. But 'twas Useful, so that's what counts.

—Journal of Rowan Carpenter, 1753

A
N HOUR LATER
a dazed Medford Runyuin was standing beside his kitchen table, which was covered with Useless Carved Objects. More Useless Objects were on the counter by the sink. He didn't bring out the seashell bowl with the horn in it. That seemed like too much to deal with right now.

They started with a covered bowl. The handle on the cover was a trio of Sap Tree cones. You took it off to find a squirrel—a Red Furred Nutgatherer, if you were feeling Bookish—curled up inside the bowl, asleep in a nest of Sap Tree needles. Medford was proud of that squirrel. It looked so real that sometimes he thought it was breathing.

Next was a seabird floating on a tiny ocean (also originally a bowl). Medford had kept a dead seabird in the woods for three days so that he could get the feathers right.

The Goatman hovered for a long time over a bird's view of Bog Island that had started out as a platter. Medford had carved a log bridge, an island of trees and Nameless brambles, even the box that held Cordelia's Unnameable Woven Object. He'd worked his knife in under the sheltering branches without breaking off a twig.

The effort had made him sweat. When he'd finished, the carving was so perfect it seemed to him that someone else must have done all that. It couldn't have been him.

Medford giggled, embarrassed, as he unwrapped the next carving from last year's winter shirt. He hardly knew how this one had happened. It was a rolling pin whose handles had turned into human ears. Engraved eyes stared out from the middle of the pin, the eyebrows cocked in surprise.

The Goatman made a sound between a whimper and a whinny. "A gra-a-asswatcher you are," he whispered. The more carvings he saw the twitchier he became. The last two made him shudder as if he had a fever.

One was a bowl with Boyce's face staring out of it, the eyes closed as if in sleep. That had been scary to carve and was so lifelike Medford still wasn't comfortable looking at it. The other was no longer even faintly recognizable as anything Useful, a nice block of Sap Tree wood having turned into Prudy's head and shoulders. Her braids were coiled up at the nape of her neck, the way they'd been at Transition.

"Is that your love?" the Goatman asked, touching her cheek.

"No, no," Medford said. "No, no, no. We grew up together."

Leaning against the table was a collection of decorated walking sticks. One was carved with rocks and seaweed, better than the Goatman's wind swirls but not as detailed as the goat heads. A seabird took flight from the top.

When the Goatman saw that, he lost all control. He grabbed the seabird stick and held it up over his head so the wings almost touched the ceiling. "Bwee-eh-eh," he cried, teetering on his hooves and prancing. "Bweh-eh-eh, bweh, bweh-eh-eh-eh!"

He crooned like a broody Egg Fowl, squawked like a seabird, chattered like a Striped Nutgatherer. He bobbed the stick up and down, staggering all over the kitchen floor. The dog began to whine under the table.

Whup-whup-whup!
Medford lunged forward, thinking he could grab the Goatman to make him stand still.

Too late. The cabin shuddered. The door flew open, slammed against the wall. A blast of west wind hurled itself through the windows like something solid. Medford flung himself to the floor, and the walking sticks fell over, rolled every which way.

The blast caught the Goatman in midprance and he toppled over with a cry Medford could barely hear over the tumult of the wind. The seabird stick flew out of his hands, crashed through one of the eastern windows. The southern windows rattled, then the ones on the north, then the west ones. Medford heard his mallet rack tip over again.

With a loud, final
Whup!
the cabin went silent. Panicky birds twittered in the woods. A piece of the broken window tipped onto the floor and shattered. Medford, facedown with his arms over his head, dared to look up.