Some dust in her eye? Even as I thought of dust she started to rub her eye with a knuckle. She quit, grinned impishly and toddled towards the table, to clutch the edge.
"Oh, who's a big healthy girl?" asked Dad, tousling her curls. (She wasn't particularly big.) "And so well behaved. Do you know, Yaleen, I've hardly heard her cry. Actually," he whispered, "I think she's almost too well behaved at times."
"Not like me, eh?"
"Oh, she gets excited, does Narya. And she looks as if she's taking everything in, bright as a spark. But other times she just sits for hours like a broody hen. You'd hardly know she was there. Got a mind of her own, though, she has. She won't be overfed, even if your mother tries to pack it in. Just as well, or your Mum would have turned her into a roly-poly!"
"Hullo, Narya," I said. "My name's Yaleen. I'm your sister."
Narya gazed up at me in silence.
"She's slow at speaking," Dad confided.
"What about 'wain'? When it rained. And all that. I thought you wrote saying—"
"She began speaking. A few words. Then she stopped—like someone who finds a whistle then throws it away again. Frankly, we're a bit bothered."
"Oh, I expect it's that way with some kids. The ones who hold back are just damming it up. One day it'll all flood forth, then you won't know where you are for chatter." I didn't know too much about this, apart from something I remembered Jambi saying about her own kid. However, it seemed a good idea to say so. What I was thinking to myself was that they oughtn't to have had another baby, so late on in life.
"Ah, she's my big darling, aren't you?" Dad hoisted Narya aloft. "Let's step on home, Yaleen."
Narya clung to Dad's scanty rigging as if sailing him from the top of a mast.
Alas for notions of dandling my little sister on my knee! Alas for the idea I'd gotten from those eyes of hers that she was some sort of soul-sister! As soon as Narya saw me take up residence at home, she did her level best to avoid me. I guess she was jealous. She must have felt I was butting in, out of nowhere, between her and her parents. But she didn't fuss or cry. She didn't hang around, or cling. Quite the opposite! She simply absented herself, in so far as it's possible for a very young child to do so. I thought this was weird, till I finally rumbled her game—cunning creature that she was. My mother and father were bothered because Narya was withdrawn and broody and couldn't talk. And now here was I intruding. Right! So Narya would withdraw twice as much, to force them to come to her and quit lavishing attention on this invading stranger.
Her ploy worked fairly well. Obviously she wasn't so much backward as plain devious. She was a little manipulator. She had already learned what is perhaps the most subtle trick in the game of life: to win by withholding oneself. To reign, by resigning. To triumph by taking cover; by not talking. She would only romp as a special gift, to be carefully rationed out. Since these little gifts of herself were so special, she'd convinced my parents that she was indeed their treasure, their joy.
That's how I saw it—in so far as I saw anything much of Narya during my stay.
Well, sod her!
By now I'd told Mum and Dad the tale of my travels—though I told them far less about my inner feelings during my adventures than I had written in my book. How odd that I felt free to broadcast my most intimate sentiments to all and sundry who might read the book, but couldn't confide these in my own mother and father! On second thoughts maybe this wasn't so curious. Those things which I’d experienced were right outside my parents' scope. I'd been in such extreme circumstances that their questions seemed impossibly banal—on the level of asking a starving man, "Would you rather have mutton or fried fish for supper?" So during my account I stuck to the bare bones of events; and even then there were moments when I almost gave up. ("But what is this Godmind that comes from Eegen?"
"No, no, the name's Eeden. And the Godmind doesn't come from there; it's us who came from there originally." "So why did the Worm—?" "But I just told you that!" And so forth.)
Amongst events to be related was, of course, the fate of brother Capsi; tortured and burnt alive on a bonfire . . . This was the worst part to tell. One of the reasons why it was the worst, was that I was sure I was grinning idiotically as I told it. I simply couldn't find the right expression to wear on my face.
My parents took the news as nobly as could be expected. Afterwards Dad even declared, "We should be grateful to the men of Jangali that there won't be any more horrors like that over here. The war was a good thing, don't you agree?"
No, the war had not been a good thing. It had poisoned too many people's lives. I myself had been on the brink of ordering another human being vilely tortured. And what of the west, where the same terrible existence went on as before? Except that now we knew about it. And what of a hundred other things—such as the cosmic war between Godmind and Worm? Loose ends were left hanging everywhere. The world after the war was more like a ball of wool a kitten has been ripping up, than like a garment well repaired! My parents couldn't see any of these loose ends; I could. I nodded and looked at the floor; they took my silence for consent.
And I wondered: who would look at me one day when I was older and would know that I couldn't possibly understand something; and then would lower their eyes, lose interest and give up?
I didn't tell Mum and Dad that I'd written a book. Their off-target comments might have annoyed me.
Maybe it was a reaction on my part to this failure of communication; maybe I thought that I could root out the cause by identifying myself with the mutton and fish of life, the ordinary mundane things. But I found myself wondering whether I ought to marry and settle down and raise a child of my own; a child who would of course, after a few years, be my friend and understand me.
Marry whom: someone who understood me? Or someone who would simply suck me down into the normal business of everyday life?
Should I return to Verrino and propose to Hasso? Ha! Or onward to Aladalia to propose to Tam (assuming that he could shed his mad infatuation)? Ho.
I dismissed this idea. Instead for a while I nursed fantasies of trekking into the interior to live as a hermit and write poetry; not that I had ever written any poems, but presumably that's true of all poets before they start out.
Probably what I ought to do (I decided next) was get back on board a boat and be a proper riverwoman. Ah, but wait! My book would soon be published, and might make me famous. In that case should I change my name and sign on a vessel anonymously, with the riverguild keeping this a close secret? Fat chance of that on our little river! (Our long, long river seemed to have shrunk a lot recently.)
Truth to tell, I was getting a bit scared of my book coming out. When I wrote the book, I hadn't really been thinking in terms of people reading it; so I could afford to tell the truth. But soon the truth would escape into the world on its own two legs—not that this ought to embarrass me, but other people mightn't see things exactly the way I saw them; or see me, exactly as / saw me.
In view of what was to happen I could have spared myself all these emotional squirmings in Pecawar. If I had put a single one of my fanciful schemes into action, though, I would have saved my life.
Two weeks after I returned home, my mother's cousin Chataly died unexpectedly. She vomited in her sleep and choked on some food. Chataly had lived on her own in a tiny spice-farming hamlet a couple of leagues out of town. A neighbour brought the news, so then of course my mother had to go to see about the funeral rites and clear up the house, she being the closest female relative. Mum would need to stay away one or two nights.
Dad offered to go along with her to help; and Mum quickly accepted. Then they both looked at me.
It was me who ought to have accompanied Mum. We all knew that perfectly well, and at first I couldn't fathom why my father had volunteered his services so eagerly; or why my mother had accepted. Unless (grotesque thought) my parents wanted to be alone together overnight in Chataly's house for some sort of second or third honeymoon without any nearb
y toddler to hamper them.
On second thoughts, maybe Dad felt that Mum wouldn't really want me with her? I wouldn't be much aid and comfort. That wasn't a very flattering interpretation.
On third thoughts, maybe they hoped that by leaving me alone with Narya this would force the little girl to come to terms with her big sister—something that my parents couldn't engineer by themselves. And then, of course, Narya mustn't be exposed to death, must she now? Shelter the little darling!
Fourth thoughts were rather like the third, with a twist. Mum and Dad wanted to show their love for me by trusting me to care for their treasure in their absence.
Aha, fifth thoughts! They wanted me to settle down and raise a family. Here was an ideal opportunity to show me the joys thereof.
But whether first, second or fifth thoughts were behind this, the upshot was that I must needs offer to look after the house for a day or two and nursemaid my little sister.
So Mum and Dad explained to Narya that they had to go away to visit someone for a couple of nights. Narya just stared at them, nodded once or twice and sucked her thumb. By then it was late afternoon, and within the hour they were gone. Nor did their actual departure seem to bother Narya one little bit. She even waved goodbye from the door with a certain panache.
I was left alone with her, well before any possible bedtime. What to do? Read her a story? Or ten stories? Play games? Stick her in a comer to mope? At least I didn't need to check whether she was wetting herself; Mum had said that Narya's bowel and bladder control were excellent.
"Shall we have something yummy to eat?" I suggested; and fled to the kitchen. Narya didn't follow me, so I pottered about inventing a new sort of spice pudding, all the while keeping one ear cocked for noises of breakage, screams or whatever. Silence reigned, except amongst the pots and pans.
After half an hour I got guilty and searched for her. Oh yes, that's the way she played her game; didn't I know it? Feeling like a fool I went looking. I hunted through the downstairs first, then checked the back stoop in case she'd slipped out through the screen doors into our little walled garden.
I loitered outside a while, pretending that I was looking for her.
Pecawar gardens tended to be mostly dry; and in ours we had a "mountain range" consisting of shapely black boulders set around a white pebble "lake". Half a dozen large knobbly barrel-gourds occupied the sandy "plains" on either side of this lake. These gourds were a glossy green, striped with bright orange and yellow zigzags. When I was a young girl I used to make believe that the gourds were bulbous cities banded with rows of windows aglow with light— cities somewhere out in the desert where nobody from the river- shore had ever been. The barrel-gourds were desert plants which grew very slowly; these ones might have been a century old. When I was even smaller I thought the gourds were the heads of monster- people buried up to their necks in the garden; and when the sun went down I was a bit scared of stepping outside. As soon as I discovered the quayside and the river, of course, our garden became a totally boring place.
While I stood there pretending to look for Narya, I recalled my childish fancy, and I half expected to see my sister hunkered down by one of those monster-heads whispering to it: her only confidant, sole recipient of words from her. I fantasized how I might greet Mum and Dad on their return with the glad (or sick) tidings, "She does talk, you know! She talks to the gourds in the garden." Whereupon Mum and Dad could paint their faces green and orange to try to communicate with Narya by pretending to be vegetables . . . However, she wasn't lurking in the garden.
I went back indoors, bolting the screens behind me, and I mounted the stairs. When I was younger these had been of bare waxed planks, but now they were thickly carpeted, no doubt in case Narya took a tumble. I found her sitting on the floor of Capsi's old bedroom, which was now her room. Her head was cocked, listening to the breeze tinkle some wind-chimes by the open window. The night was warm so that there was no point in shutting the window in case she caught a chill, though the thought did cross my mind (worry, worry).
Capsi's pen-and-ink panorama of the opposite shore was still tacked to the wall. Someone (Dad, I presumed) had added lovable colourful baby animals romping here and there. Giant baby animals, dwarfing the terrain of that one-time never-never-land over in the west.
"You okay, Narya?"
Narya deigned to notice me; she nodded.
"Nice eats, soon," I said encouragingly. "Yum-yum." I think it was myself I was encouraging.
* * *
Presently we ate the pudding, which wasn't too bad at all, and we drank some hot cocoa. Then I hunted out some kiddy tale for Narya to endure. I think "endure" best describes the way in which Narya received this treat: with a mixture of stoic boredom and vague tension as to how soon the story would be finished.
By now it was deep dusk, so I announced, "Off to dreamland with you!" and saw her to bed with a kiss on the brow.
I wondered what to do with myself. I tidied up a bit, then trimmed the oil lamp and settled with a book of poems by Gimmo of Melonby, who lived a few hundred years ago. Gimmo the Tramper, who wandered up and down our river shore singing his ballads for coins or a supper.
I must have dozed off. A noise woke me: creak, bump.
Narya must be up and wandering. . . .
I was about to go and check, when in the doorway to the kitchen . . . stood a man.
A tall man with a freckly face and bald head. A few bunches of gingery hair were sprouting from the sides of it. Spectacles were perched upon his nose. I hoped I hadn 7 woken up at all, and was just dreaming.
Vain hope. Doctor Edrick was dressed in baggy trousers tucked into fork-toed boots, and wearing a scarlet jerkin. These were jun- glejack clothes, obviously looted from some dead soldier. In one big hairy fist he held a metal tube with a handle: a pistol, pointed at me.
Edrick had let his erstwhile toothbrush moustache sprout out into great drooping ginger horns.
"That's clever of you, Doctor Edrick," I said, as steadily as I could. "You haven't skulked. You haven't crawled. You've swaggered about in stolen clothes. You haven't shaved your moustache off—you've grown a dog's tail on your face, instead."
He kept the pistol pointed at my chest. "It's easier to travel, Yaleen, if you stride along the high road, and pay your way in coin of the country."
His voice sounded altered. He'd shed the accent of the west, their funny broad way of pronouncing words. His accent still wasn't any of our accents, but it would serve to fool most people here in the middle reaches who would assume, by his clothes, that he was from Jangali.
"I've been watching this house for a while," he said. "And now you're alone. How timely. How lucky that your parents took a trip."
"You didn't . . . kill Chataly, did you?"
"Ah, so someone died? No, there are certain limits to my energy and ingenuity. Whatever errand your parents went on is none of my doing. 'Lucky for your parents,' is my meaning. Lucky not to be here, during what must come to pass." He moved slowly into the room.
Suppose I hurled the book of Gimmo's poems at the lamp? Aye, and burned the house down with Narya asleep upstairs. . . .
"Don't move," warned Edrick. "Or I'll shoot to cripple you. For a start."
I didn't move.
"My dear Yaleen, I underestimated you once—and I shan't make that mistake twice. You were an agent of the Satan-Snake all along, weren't you?"
"What, me? Certainly not!"
"I suppose it let you ride downstream in its jaws as a favour pure and simple?" He snorted. "Oh yes, you were spotted; and I knew at once. Then, how do we explain your oh-so-innocent revelation of a certain snake-poison we could use? Or how conveniently you stumbled upon my men—who would bring you to me, and not to some Brotherhood cellar where the truth could really have been squeezed out of you! You fooled me, Yaleen. I don't take kindly to being fooled."
"I didn't! Honest."
How much could I tell him? Without giving him valuable information about the cur
rent, the ^Tfl-store, the Godmind?
"I'll grant," he went on, "that the Snake may well enter into compacts with its witches. If they serve it well, it will repay them with services in turn. In which case, my main problem would seem to be how to motivate the witch in question so that she'll really beg the Snake to do something for her, hmm? Beg the Snake, for instance, to quit the river once again? For a while?"
"Long enough for you to escape?"
"Long enough for whatever I have in mind."
"You could have crossed the river easily enough if you'd walked north instead of south."
"How so?"
"The head of the current halted at Aladalia. That's beyond—"
"I know where Aladalia is."
"It didn't go all the way downstream." No harm, surely, in telling him that? "You needn't worry about your captured troops. When we've cleared up the mess they made, they'll be sent north then over to the other side. You could be repatriated too."
"How very considerate. But maybe I want to make the Snake perform a few tricks, just as you did? I require a tool for this purpose; a key to unlock the Snake. You. "
"How did you know I'd be here in Pecawar?" I was playing for time. I guess people always play for time, even when it'll make not a scrap of difference.
"You described your home to me; you located it, remember? 1 decided that part of your tale wasn't a lie, since a dollop of truth always smooths the way. So where does someone head for after a dangerous secret mission and a war? Where but home, to rest? Fair gamble! It paid off. Let's move on to more important matters."
I had to chance my hand. "Look, Doctor, you're quite wrong about me. But I've learnt something about your so-called Satan- Snake that's pretty important. You ought to listen before you do anything rash." (Why ever should I call him "Doctor"? He was only a Doctor of Ignorance!)
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