The Wildside Book of Fantasy: 20 Great Tales of Fantasy by Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe, Robert E. Howard, Paul di Filippo, Lin Carter, Tanith Lee, Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffmann Price, Thomas Burnett Swann, Brian Stableford, John Gregory Betancourt, Brian McNaughton, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Clive Jackson, Darrell Schwetizer, Achmed Abdullah

lovable —but sometimes you seem to look right through them. You are always searching for things or going somewhere—if you aren’t asleep. What I’m saying is, you won’t stand still to be loved.”
    “But that’s because of my faith,” I protested. “Etruscans, you see, have a terrible fear of death. Most of us go, we believe, to a region of fire and demons. That’s why we hurry so much—one man gives banquets, another races a chariot, another wanders. We want to forget the demons.”
    “Forget the demons,” he said, “but not Atthis.”
    I looked at the river and the sea. Somewhere a woman waited for me to find her, a sorceress and a queen. Was she worth the dream and the long wandering, the loss of Atthis? Perhaps. But now I was with my friends, the best of whom I had hurt by hurting Atthis. I lifted him onto the bulwark and, with my arm, shielded him against the gathering twilight and the darkness in my own heart.
    * * * *
    We sailed southward along a coast of forest steppes, where spiny trees, a little like the olive, sparsely strewed the sand. In the small protection of trees, antelopes sought concealment from lions with tangled manes and rawboned bodies. Luck, or at least high spirits, had left us. We sailed slowly, fearful of hidden shoals; we counted dolphins, frolicking in the water, and wished for Atthis. Once, at a great distance, I saw a whiteness on the horizon. Atthis? No, I was seeing what I wished to see. It was foam or a trick of light. No one mentioned her name, but Astyanax looked wistful and Aruns stared at the waves, and I knew what was in their hearts. We had lost our friend.
    At night we heard drums and wondered if the natives, who never showed themselves, were signaling our approach to Circe. Or perhaps they beat us a warning: strangers, beware. In desperation we questioned the will of the gods. Aruns, like many Etruscans, knew the arts of augury: reading the liver of a sheep and interpreting the flight of birds or the color, shape, and direction of lightning. In a fringed robe and pointed cap, with a curved stick in his hand, he faced the south and looked for a sign. We had no sheep to yield us its liver; we had seen no birds for several days; but the gods, if indeed they had not forsaken us, might speak through lightning. We waited. The drip of our water clock measured the passage of time. Seconds. Minutes. An hour.
    Aruns shook his head. “The gods are sil—“
    Blood-red lightning flashed to the right, three times in quick succession.
    “Ah,” he groaned. “The triple lightning of Tinia. Danger awaits us.”
    * * * *
    The forest steppes became desert, humping into the sea like the yellow Nile at flood time. We lived on cheese and a few bony fish, for even the waters were barren. The parties we sent ashore saw nothing but horned vipers and scorpions. There was no rain; we drank our wine unmixed. The sand, blowing from shore, covered our deck with dry coarse grains and scratched our eyes until they reddened and watered. Heat drained us like fever. In the shade we stripped to the skin; in the sun we covered our heads and bodies to prevent exposure.
    One morning a vessel barred our path: a dugout canoe with a square sail set on sprits. Twenty paddles flashed in rapid unison and the captain, hurling commands, stood in the bow. The rowers were black and very short—three feet or less, I judged—with enormous heads and Negroid features.
    I thought of the pygmies in Homer, the little black men who warred with the iron-billed cranes. But these were women, even the captain, bare of breast, long of hair, with blue paint on their faces. I raised my hand in the universal salutation of good will.
    But the pygmies called no greeting. At their sides they wore wooden tubes which looked like blowguns, and they never looked up from their oars.
    “Change course,” I shouted to Aruns. “Head for the deep!”
    We jibbed and ran with the wind. The dugout changed its course. The pygmies strained