The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 101

They chattered among themselves about how confident they were, awaited my approval. Longfaeroe finally waved them to silence and became somber. He seemed the most certain of what he had to do, and of me. He asked me what decisions I had reached in my solitude, for surely I had been talking with the Almighty.

“Not that, you wouldn’t understand,” I said curtly, in a voice more Grandfather’s than mine. I tested it again. “No burning bush, no Angel of the Lord either.”

“The Almighty came into David’s heart,” he said.

“So he did. That was David. I have my own ways,” I said, then added slowly, “There will be a change of course. Into the wind.”

“Where away, Grim?” said Germanicus.

“Signal Malody,” I said. “Bring us about for the Falklands.”

I am aware now that my conversion from shepherd boy to shepherd, from follower to master, cannot be explained by this Norse fairy tale of a shape-changed sibyl, a talking albatross. I did not trouble my men and women—for that is what they had become, my people—with the scene, and it is not without hesitation that I relate it here. It is a secret long kept, once broken, never again until here. If it appears contrived, this is not intentional. I am not concealing, evading, beguiling. I believe wholeheartedly that albatross was Lamba Time-Thief. I continued shaken by the fact of it afterward, still am. I cannot now prove that she, it, that bird, was my mother. There is much about that self-consciously mysterious female who was my mother that I have already recorded that I cannot demonstrate as verified fact—that is, verified by other observers. For example, I have said that Lamba first spied me in her magic hand-mirror late in the evening of the spring equinox of 1973. This is not another’s opinion. It is my conjecture, based upon circumstantial evidence. She did have a magic hand-mirror. I saw it on her belt that night at Sly-Eyes’s party; Israel said he saw it on her belt the night she confronted Peregrine. I also know that Norse sibyls used such mirrors like the crystal balls of other pagan traditions, in order to see the future. Also, I do not know why she was moved to call out Skallagrim Strider’s name at my conception, nor why she persisted with his legend twenty-two years later at Sly-Eyes’s party. There was no significant connection between the Norse Fiddles and the Norse outlaws on Iceland. They appear as far apart as an elephant seal and a Norse wolf. Why, then, was Lamba moved to burden me with such an arcane, fantastic portent? There does not seem to be an answer—unless, of course, one accepts witches and ghosts and curses and magic as what they could all be: in history. In other words, Lamba really was a sibyl, she was able to thieve time, she did tell me the truth.

And while I am asking such unanswerable questions, why did Lamba choose Peregrine? (I pause to muse at this, and now see something I have never seen before: Did Lamba then have prescience that she had a bird’s shape inside her, and did Lamba see something avian and predatory in Peregrine? He was a man in desperate, angry flight. Or could it be, the joke of it, that Lamba heard Peregrine’s name called out at the mickey mouse club by Israel, and just pounced, albatross on falcon? If this speculation seems to mock Lamba, so be it; she mocked me in her selfish, spooky, presumptive way, never said she loved me, as I never said I loved her, still cannot.)

More seriously, most seriously, why did Lamba curse herself with the role of witchcraft? Abigail said it was her fear of Grandfather. Wise men might suggest that it had to do with the desertion of Zoe, Lamba’s twisted way of both emulating and defying her scold of a father. All credible, I admit. I declare now simply that Lamba elected herself, regardless of why. She said, I am this, I know this, what else either will follow or will not. Such conduct is arrogant, is dangerous, is also as rich a way as I can think of to plunge oneself into history.

This might be the deeper explanation of my transformation into despot for those aboard King James and Candlemas Packet. I knew who I was, and where I was from, and the faces of the people who had raised me healthy and good-natured. I had sufficient learning to judge this man just, that man less just. I trusted my own heart, and my heart’s desires. Yes, I could have known more, much more; I was deficient in Education, Genius, Gravel, Fortune, in every Thing, like the men who Lazarus had told me dared to lead early America into rebellion and republicanism. Still, there was a moment, on King James’s, quarterdeck, when I said to myself: now, Grim Fiddle, now, you have what you have, take hold, assume, ascend, lead. I felt charged. I felt magical. I elected myself. And it so happened that I believed that this moment was coincident with the coming of the albatross. I stepped onto the small stage of my destiny and spoke my first truly humorous lines in the comedy. Mother talked back, quip to quip, to quest.

More grandly, perhaps it did not signify what election I chose for myself; I could have voted for fisherman, pilgrim, hermit. I elected to lead. I chose to lead as a king. Or it was chosen for me, or it happened and let another say that it did not. I declare: As Lamba said she was a sibyl, as Lamba committed her being and her only son, Grim Fiddle, to a quest for that portentous fancy of hers, Skallagrim Strider, so Grim Fiddle said he was master of those exiles, so Grim Fiddle committed himself and his charges to a quest for Grandfather, and whatever else that would follow. I laid claim; I gathered my due; I plunged