The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 26

dressed magnificently, a dark mantle adorned with polished stones, a gem necklace, a touchwood belt from which hung several lambskin pouches, black calfskin boots, and a lambskin hood. Her head was shaved, as was popular then among the spooky. I was enchanted, as were the partygoers. And as she danced, faster and lighter, clapping her hands while the hag banged her staff on the deck, the sibyl seemed to descend into herself. Watching her was like being drawn into a cave, or a chasm, or something misty, ashen, foreboding. It was as exhilarating as it was frightening. She danced so passionately that it did not seem a carnival act, more as if she were pleasing herself and we were being permitted to attend. She was erotic and fierce. She was magic. After all this time, recalling that dance, I confess truly, she was stupefying. If you can hear me now, Mother, you were very, very good.

A short time later, my dogs and I sneaked up to the house and then inside the service entrance. Because the servants were also fascinated by the show on the sun deck, the kitchen was empty. We were untroubled getting into position outside the pantry door. I could hear the sibyl singing warlock songs to charm the spirits of the dead. She had a striking voice, fragile, authoritative, wounded, woeful. I concentrated on interpreting her words as best I could with what I knew of Old Norse. I supposed it was part of her act. She sang of “black seas,” and “red seas”; she sang of “islands reaching to the sun” made of “wind and blood”; she sang of “black and hurt half-men.” When she stopped, the silence was followed with moans.

“Approach and declaim,” said a gruff-voice—the hag.

Sly-Eyes and Asgerd asked trivial questions about love. The sibyl answered one in three in a monotone, not unpleasant, not vital. Several of the fancy boys called out vulgar requests. The hag warned them not to offend the spirits of the dead now gathered here to reveal the future. The hag also warned that it was folly to inquire of one’s own end, as the truth could be ruinous. That rocked the party. Finally, one man dared politics: “Who killed the couple at the rathskeller?” This referred to a recent crime in Vexbeggar that had been distorted into racial bigotry by the press.

“The wretched and the righteous,” said the sibyl.

“Was it Turks?”

“The spirits say the men of the Great City do violence to themselves,” said the sibyl.

“What should be done with the Turks?”

The sibyl refused to answer. The crowd, stirred by her mystery, ventured increasingly dark inquiries. The sibyl replied to a few, always with foreboding imagery. I knew that none understood her learning. They had missed her reference to the “Great City,” which was what the ancient Rus (Norse peoples, for whom Russia was named) called modern Istanbul. I surmised that the sibyl was something more than a trickster. I did not begin to believe that the spirits told her what to say. I thought her quick and clever. That she held the crowd spellbound I explained by considering the black fatalism of the Norse. I was wrong, for then Mother called to me, as casually as if I had always been hers to beckon.

“Skallagrim Ice-Waster, son of Out-Lander, Wolfman and Rune-Carver, seek your destiny.”

I crashed from my hiding place. I felt compelled. My dogs thought me frightened, reacted with sisterly whines. This was too much for the skittish in the crowd, who thought Goldberg’s squeal was an angry spirit of the dead. There were screams. This upset the dogs, who, because I did not calm them quickly, began the wild barking of a wolfpack. I yanked on their harness. Several guests hurtled over us. The dogs panicked. It was not the entrance I had envisioned, stampeding over tables, sofas, screens. We trampled as we were trampled. We caused havoc, the crowd tumbling pell-mell to flee this Norse spirit come to punish his degenerate posterity. It was a wicked prank. I did like it. There had been so little silliness in my last few years, it seemed fair. I bellowed as the dogs howled. I was finally hauled to the ground as Goldberg and Iceberg went for a lake of gooey cream spilled on the sun deck. In the quiet, I measured the field. We had carried the night, and two walls with it. Sly-Eyes lay on a couch, weeping.

“You are not what you could be, Skallagrim Ice-Waster,” said the sibyl—Mother—seated above me. I certainly did not know this was Mother; it seems contrived to refer to her otherwise.

“I hope I didn’t ruin your fee,” I said.

“You are my fee. Speak your face.”

“Do you really know who I am?”

“I know your future. This is not your future,” she said, waving her hand over the destruction. “Your father is your future. Your wolves are your future. Tell me of Skallagrim Strider.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, charged, controlled. I was under a mother’s power, which was such a novel experience for me that I confused it with her magic. It may be true that motherhood has powers beyond the natural, and it may be true that one who experiences his own mother’s nurture discovers the extraordinary. I note here that my mood that night was visionary. It passed, and later I would fall back onto the muddy course of reason; right then I told her what I knew, and many things I did not know I knew, of a Norse outlaw whose name was spoken portentously—in passion and hope—at the moment of my conception.

“Skallagrim Strider was a chieftain, originally from Ireland,” I began. “He was exiled from Iceland for the slaughter of his wife’s family. The legend says that he sailed to the sun with forty outlaws. The legend says that he became King of the South, where his sons still reign.”

“No!” Mother called, leaping from her pillow throne. She was livid, as if I had bungled my education. I