The day inched by. Gedricke the Sun-Driver made his slow pass across the sky. He was especially lazy today, dragging his feet, hardly bothering to herd the daylight through the pale expanse of blue. The tiny white clouds raised by his bootheels were scarcely more tangible than concepts. From time to time Fencio cried out or gasped or rattled off a long unintelligible stream of words and syllables that seemed to have no connection to one another. It made Catjoe's skin crawl. The house was dark and airless, swallowed up in the summer heat, and she dared not open the windows because of Fencio's outbursts.
She wondered what her father's advice would be. He was a smart man, a good man, deep-thinking and measured in his opinions, and she respected him intensely. But as long as Fencio was in the house there was no way for her to go and consult with him and, if Fencio were not in the house, there would be no need. Finally Catjoe sat down at the kitchen table, rested her chin upon her folded hands, and simply waited for dark.
It was a long time coming. She crossed and recrossed her legs, left over right, right over left, seeming almost to measure the passing hours with the jerky impatient rhythms of her swinging foot. Even slower behind dark came the arrival of deep night when up and down the streets of Ommerliss the lamps were extinguished and the curtains were drawn against the coming morning. Still Catjoe waited at the kitchen table, listening intently, her long sweat-soaked hair sticking to the backs of her hands. "Now what?" she kept muttering, fingers pounding out tuneless measures on the tabletop. "Now what?" She tried to go over her options but for the longest time she could not come up with even one. There was a raw spot on her lip where she had been chewing all day, and a thin crust of blood at the edge of her mouth. At last she rose and moved quietly back to the bedroom to check on Fencio one more time.
She flipped the light switch and the room was washed in a dingy yellow glow. "Fencio," she began hesitantly, looking everywhere but at the miserable creature that occupied her bed. "Fencio, I'm not a hero. I wish I were. If I were a hero I would know what to do." Her voice was low, tinged with regret. "I don't know what to do."
There was no response. She paced the room, chewing a new sore place into her lip, uncertain that he listened but unwilling to look at him too closely. She looked around herself instead, taking mental inventory of the furniture, the cheap gimcracks, the stained and dirty wallpaper, of everything in fact but the bed where Fencio lay. In the back of her mind she was aware that Fencio's stink was permeating it, wrapping itself around the intricate newel-posts and sinking down through the sheets to the very heart of the mattress. It might never be fit to sleep in again. Catjoe looked beyond it to a magazine picture cheaply-framed and hanging near the window. The chewed spot on her lip broke open and for a moment she tasted blood. "I'd like to help you," she said. "But I don't know how."
Fencio made no answer. There was no sound at all except the dismal night-keening of a stump frog, coming from somewhere just outside the window. "Chee-o, chee-o, chee-o," it said in accusation. Catjoe paused at the low bureau, picking up things and putting them down, feeling stupid and useless. Briefly she picked up her most prized possession, an ancient helvyard tusk that she had had since childhood. The great shaggy beasts still roamed the northwestern plains, although not in the same numbers as they once had. She remembered a time when they had rampaged through the town every spring, grunting and slavering, their huge heavy heads swinging from side to side under their own weight. Now they clung to the edge of a distant horizon and were rarely seen at all.
She held the yellowed tusk lightly in her hand, absentmindedly running her fingers over its smooth worn surface. As a child she had worn it on a thong around her neck, never taking it off, convinced she drew strength from it. For the past several years however it had resided on her dresser top and when she lifted it now its outline remained in a thin layering of dust. Catjoe trailed her fingers through the pale pinkish dust, then inspected her hand, rubbing the fingers together until the dust fell away. "I want to help," she said again. "But I'm no hero. Fencio, if I were a hero- ."
The stump frog sounded again, raising its voice in a sudden victory cry. "Chee-o." That was one less mosquito in Ommerliss to worry about.
Impatiently Catjoe shoved the hair from her face, turning toward the bed, half-facing him but still not daring to really look at him. She was afraid of seeing blame or, worse yet, disappointment. She began to speak very quickly. "If I were a hero, Fencio, I would ride into Trang City myself, and I would gather up troops along the way, and I would vindicate you. I would." She wrapped her arms around herself in impotent protection, nodding her head vigorously. "I would punish Doboro and Cripp for what they've done to you. Or I would take you to a safe place and nurse your wounds myself and make you well. I would protect you. But I'm not a hero. I am a babyshit and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I wish I could help. But I can't. I'm sorry." She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. He said nothing.
Catjoe sighed heavily, washed in guilt. There was a long moment of silence. "I'm giving you up," she said then, and for an instant her voice was very firm and deliberate, as though by saying it loudly enough she could justify it and make it right. Her cheeks were mottled red and white with shame as, her resolve strengthened, she spoke on. "You're not my problem," she said. "There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry." She walked over to the bed and looked down at him, saying again, "I'm sorry."
Fencio lay on his back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. He sucked air through his teeth, gasping damply. The bandanna had inched up again, exposing a thin line of the transparent sheeting, setting Catjoe's teeth on edge. She bent over him to adjust it but, although she obscured his line of vision, he showed no recognition or awareness. Unnerved, she waved a hand in front of his face. "Fencio?"
"Chee-o, chee-o," echoed the frog.
"Fench?" He made no reaction.
Sharply she called his name again. "Fencio!" Nothing.
Catjoe lowered her face directly in front of his, trying to force eye contact, but he continued to stare at a ceiling he could no longer see. "Ah shit," she said, watching him. Then, "God in your heart, God in your heart," blurting it out, chanting it as though it were a spell rather than a blessing. She made frantic little slow-down motions with her fingers. "Don't die here. Don't die here." She stepped away, patted his shoulder helplessly, then moved to the door. Looking back she said forcefully, "You just wait here now and don't die." Then she slipped through the door and was gone.
