“They’ll be needing food and warmth after the flight,” Polla warned, brusquely setting the children to play near the fire.
Who, Pellar wondered, the watch-whers, Aleesa, or the children?
“How many Turns have you, anyway?” Polla asked, regarding Pellar carefully.
Pellar hastily pulled out his slate and wrote 13.
Polla read it and laughed, nodding toward the younger woman. “Arella’s nearer your age, she’s only three Turns older.”
Pellar found it hard to believe that the other woman had only sixteen Turns; he would have guessed her nearer to thirty. Life with the watch-whers was clearly very demanding.
“Come sit by me, then,” Arella called, patting a spot near her.
Pellar crossed around the fire and had just sat, nervously, when the watch-whers mated.
Much later, Arella whispered in his ear, “Now you are one of us.”
“He is not one of us,” Jaythen declared loudly the next day, staring angrily at Pellar and Arella but directing his speech to Aleesa.
The old woman looked very tired. She shook her head slowly. “Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps not.” She cast a secretive glance toward Arella. “Time will tell.”
“Mother,” Arella said, “it was a mating flight. He knows.”
Knows what? Pellar wondered. That watch-whers mated? That they were enough like dragons that people felt the intensity of their emotions?
“It might be her last mating flight,” Aleesa said, her voice betraying her own fatigue and sorrow. “If there’s no queen egg…”
Pellar looked up at the mention of eggs. Jaythen and Aleesa both noted it.
“You’re here for an egg?” Jaythen demanded, towering menacingly over Pellar.
Pellar nodded.
“You would steal an egg, why?” Aleesa asked.
Pellar shook his head. He slowly drew out his slate, very aware of Jaythen’s menacing presence, and wrote, “Not steal. Trade.”
“Trade what?” Jaythen growled derisively. He turned to Aleesa. “We’ve been through his pack; he’s got nothing of value.”
Pellar kept a neutral look on his face; he’d known that they had searched his pack the first night he arrived. He had guessed that they would.
“He’d’ve hidden anything of value, Jaythen,” Arella said to the older wherhandler, not attempting to keep her sense of derision from her voice.
“What’s valuable enough for a watch-wher’s egg?” Jaythen demanded.
Pellar felt all eyes on him. Hastily he wrote, “Warmth. Fire. Fuel.”
He passed his slate to Aleesa, who looked at it and frowned, passing it on to Polla.
“Warmth, fire, fuel,” Polla reported.
It was then that Pellar realized that Aleesa couldn’t read. All the other times, he hadn’t realized that she’d let someone else read his slate because she couldn’t; he’d thought she’d done it to prove her authority.
Pellar gestured urgently for the slate. Polla passed it back to him, her brow creased in concern. Pellar made sure that no one else saw what he wrote before he passed it to Aleesa.
Aleesa frowned at it, then passed it to Polla. Polla read it, gasped, and gave Pellar a hard look. Pellar gestured for her to read it. Polla glared at him, then glanced nervously at Aleesa.
“Well?” Aleesa demanded.
“It says, ‘lessons,’” Polla reported.
Aleesa snorted. “In return for which, I’m supposed to teach you how to talk, I presume?”
Pellar stood up, backing away from Jaythen, whose attitude, if anything, had grown more frosty during the exchange. He bowed low to Aleesa, stood up again, and gestured to the children. From inside his tunic, he pulled out his pipes, mimed putting them to his lips, put them back in his tunic, and then made like he was holding a guitar.
“You claim you’re harper-trained just because you can make pipes?” Jaythen asked incredulously. He laughed derisively. “A pretty poor excuse you are for a harper if you can’t speak!”
Pellar nodded and then shook his head, cupping his ear and frowning intently.
“He hears better than those who talk,” Aleesa guessed. She laughed, and not bitterly.
“And he’s got a fire-lizard, Mother,” Arella pointed out. “If he can keep one of those, he’ll be able to bond with a watch-wher.”
Pellar shook his head emphatically and made a waving-off gesture with one hand. He retrieved his slate from Polla and wrote, “Not me.”
“Who, then?” Aleesa asked. “Would you bring a horde upon us?”
Pellar gave Aleesa a long, thoughtful look. “Good idea,” he wrote finally.
“Good idea?” Jaythen snorted when he read the slate. “What makes that a good idea?”
“Sell the eggs,” Pellar wrote. “Herdsmen, miners.”
Polla’s eyes widened when she read his response, and her tone was very thoughtful when she told Aleesa, “He’s thinking you could sell the eggs to herdsmen and miners.”
“Sell them?” Aleesa repeated. She looked at Pellar and frowned. “And what would we sell them for?”
“A year’s coal,” Arella answered immediately. She looked defiantly at her mother and then at Pellar. “The chance of an egg for a year’s supply of coal.”
“Chance?” Jaythen repeated.
“They’d have to get by Aleesk,” Arella pointed out.
Aleesa barked a laugh. “I like it!”
“The herdsmen could offer a year’s supply of food,” Polla added, looking at the youngsters huddled together by the fire.
“Or gold,” Jaythen said, his eyes glowing thoughtfully. “Better than marks: You can buy anything with gold.”
Aleesa raised a hand, silencing the group. She gave Pellar a long, appraising look.
“It’s a deal,” she said finally. Pellar’s eyes brightened until she raised her hand. “If you stay here, make the arrangements, and provide for your replacement as harper when the time comes.”
She held out her hand to him. “Will you do it?”
Pellar thought for a moment and then, slowly, took her hand and shook it firmly.
“Heard and witnessed!” Arella declared. From the watch-whers’ cave came a chorus of acknowledgment.
Pellar’s new duties, it seemed, didn’t absolve him of his old duties; he found himself working twice as hard. Arella’s behavior toward him was much warmer and full of playful banter, which was good, as Jaythen seemed to grow more distrustful with every new day.
So it was more than a month before Pellar found the time and the timber with which to fashion the frame of a decent drum. He started with a well-formed section of tree trunk, carefully carved out the center, and slowly expanded the hollow until the frame was only a few centimeters thick. With all the other work he had, the process took him two sevendays.
“What are you doing?” Arella asked him late one night as she watched him carefully rub a rough stone against the outside of the frame. She peered curiously around the fire in the middle of the largest cavern.
Pellar paused, carefully placing his stone tool and work to the side before dragging out his slate, on which he wrote, “Sanding.”
Arella made a face. “I see that, but why?”
Pellar looked at her, picked up the frame, and mimed pounding on the hole where a skin should be. Arella looked at him with a creased brow before she relaxed in comprehension. “You’re making a drum?”
Pellar nodded. Arella crossed around the fire in quick strides and sat down close by him. She leaned in to peer at the drum in his hands and begged, “Teach me how.”
Pellar thought for a moment, nodded, and handed her the frame and rough stone.
Arella looked down at both in awe and then looked up at Pellar. “What do I do?”
“Sand,” Pellar wrote in reply.
The next morning, Pellar set out in search of a good hide for the drum. As he trotted from one trap to the next, he suppressed his irritation at Jaythen trailing him. Grinning, he glanced back
over his shoulder to where Jaythen was hiding. Rather, where Jaythen was trying to hide, for Jaythen’s skills were only slightly better than none at all.
Pellar had taken pains to remain easily tracked in the past several sevendays—although he occasionally applied more of his craft just to learn the limits of Jaythen’s skill. He was always careful never to lose Jaythen for too long, lest the older man guess Pellar’s true abilities.
So far, after three traps, Pellar had nothing to show for his efforts. What he really wanted was a wherry foolish to fly into one of his large aerial traps—wherhide would make an excellent drumhead—but he’d settle for one of the larger furbeasts. What he didn’t expect was half a furbeast and a busted trap. He had barely time to recognize what he was looking at before an arrow flew by his shoulder and landed near the broken trap. Pellar whirled around to see Jaythen waving at him frantically and gesturing for him to run. Pellar had only taken his first confused step when Jaythen stiffened, notched another arrow to his bow, and let it fly—straight at Pellar.
Pellar dived to the right out of the arrow’s path, landing hard on his shoulder, curling up as soon as he hit the ground, and turning around to face the sounds coming from behind him. He pulled his knife from the top of his left boot and cradled it in both hands close to his chest while coming up to a crouch, for the volume of the sound told him he was facing something big and fast. And the grunting noise told him it was a wildboar—one of the most dangerous creatures on Pern.
Pellar only had an instant to spot Jaythen’s arrow sticking out of the wildboar’s left eye before he dove to the side and flung himself atop the wildboar. It lurched under his weight and squirmed to dislodge him. Pellar wrapped his numb right arm around the beast’s haunches and dug deeply into the wildboar’s neck with his knife. The boar squealed and bucked, throwing Pellar off.
Pellar fell hard, banging his head on a rock and rolling over another with his sore shoulder. He would have screamed out loud if he could. His face pinched in pain, he grabbed the rock his head had hit on the way down and threw it at the wildboar.
“Are you mad?” Jaythen yelled in the distance. “Run!”
But Pellar shook his head, knowing that even as injured as the wildboar was, he was too slow to outrun it.
The wildboar charged toward him, its good eye blazing balefully.
Pellar dodged to the left just in time, grabbing at his knife as he did. The knife wouldn’t dislodge, but that was fine with him: He was hoping to drive it deeper. With a sudden squeal, the wildboar’s legs splayed out from under it and it fell to the ground.
Jaythen rushed up. “Did you kill it?”
Pellar shook his head. Jaythen threw him a puzzled look, which cleared up as he saw that the beast was still breathing.
“You cut its spine,” Jaythen surmised, drawing his own blade and deftly delivering the mercy blow. The wildboar gave one last surprised sigh and collapsed.
Pellar exhaled heavily, carefully wiped his blade, returned it to his boot, pulled out his slate, and wrote, “Hide mine.”
Jaythen snorted when he read the note. “It’s yours,” he declared. He gestured at their kill and said with a broad grin, “There’s a sevenday’s eating here.”
Pellar nodded, smiling in return. Wildboar made great eating.
With a laugh, Jaythen patted him on the shoulder and declared, “Now you’re one of us.”
Arella took charge of the carcass as soon as Pellar and Jaythen brought it in. Pellar was surprised to see how deft she was with a knife, even more so when she presented him with a perfectly cut hide. She also took great pains to get as much blood on Pellar as herself, dragging him off to the nearby bathing pool as soon as she’d set the meat to smoking.
Pellar played and cavorted with her but refused to be drawn into anything more serious, pointing to his various injuries. Arella’s angry frown was immediately replaced by a tender look and she insisted on bandaging him when they were done with their ablutions and had returned to the main cave of what Pellar had started to think of as the wherhold.
“So when are you going to arrange these trades?” Aleesa demanded at dinner that evening. Her abrupt manner was as close to praise as he’d ever heard from her.
Pellar held up a hand politely, finished chewing his food, fished out his slate, and wrote, “Eggs.”
“You know I can’t read,” Aleesa told him curtly, sliding the slate toward Arella. Pellar grabbed her hand, caught her eyes, and shook his head slightly. Gently he pulled the slate back and carefully drew three small ovals piled on top of each other. He slid the slate back to Aleesa and gave her a challenging look.
“Eggs?” Aleesa said, glancing at the drawing. Then she glanced up at the letters above. “That says eggs?”
Pellar nodded. Aleesa glanced down at the writing once more, her gaze intent on absorbing and remembering every aspect of the letters before her.
After a moment, Pellar touched her hand and gestured to get the slate back. He carefully rubbed out the letter “s” and two of the three ovals and slid the slate back to Aleesa.
“Egg?” Aleesa guessed. When Pellar nodded, she squinted at the slate, examining it carefully. “That little squiggle at the end, that makes the ‘sss’ sound?”
Pellar nodded, smiling encouragingly.
“That’s the letter ‘s,’ Mother,” Arella told her.
Pellar nodded and gestured for the slate again. Aleesa released it with just a hint of reluctance. Pellar acknowledged her expression and carefully erased the letters and drawing. He wrote the letter “s” and handed the slate back to her, this time handing her the chalk as well.
“You want me to write the letter?” Aleesa asked. Pellar nodded. Aleesa frowned, then bent over the slate, carefully sliding the chalk on the slate. She muttered to herself as she drew and finally looked up, holding the slate toward Pellar with a sour look.
“Mine doesn’t look as good as yours,” Aleesa said.
Pellar held up one finger.
“You’re saying that it’s my first?”
Pellar nodded.
Aleesa pursed her lips, but Pellar’s face burst into a smile as he danced his finger up and down in front of her and cocked his head invitingly. He held up two fingers, then three, four, and finally five.
“You want me to try five more times?”
Pellar nodded.
Aleesa’s lips thinned rebelliously, and Arella smiled at her and mimicked, “‘Five times to learn, Arella.’”
Aleesa frowned and stuck her tongue out at her daughter playfully. She turned back to Pellar, bit back some comment, and carefully drew four more copies of the letter.
When she was finished, Pellar examined her handiwork carefully and then nodded emphatically, not failing to note the slight sigh of relief that Aleesa tried to keep hidden from him.
And so began Aleesa’s education.
In the days that followed, though both she and Pellar found themselves exasperated by their mutual difficulty in communicating—his in speaking and hers in reading—neither one would permit it to sour or break their bargain.
“‘I go soon,’” Aleesa repeated nearly ten sevendays later. She shook her head at Pellar. “Shouldn’t it be: I’ll be going soon?”
Pellar nodded in agreement but pointed at the slate.
“Oh, I see,” Aleesa said. “The slate’s too small.”
“Be sure not to use that drum of yours until you’re far away,” Jaythen warned.
“And be prepared to run—you’re likely to draw every one of the Shunned upon you,” Aleesa added.
Pellar nodded understandingly. They had discussed his plans in detail over the past several sevendays. Jaythen had been the first to point out that if in the watch-wher eggs they had something to trade, they also had something for the Shunned to steal.
“I’m convinced they get a lot of their money from trading in fire-lizards’ eggs,” he had said.
“Hunting birds,” Pellar had written in response, opening hi
mself to a long line of questioning from Aleesa, Jaythen, and Arella in which he explained his encounter with Halla, Tenim, and Tenim’s hawk. Arella had drawn him out, and Pellar had found himself explaining about the flowers and the tragedy at Camp Natalon. Tears welled in his eyes as he recounted how he’d found the small snow-covered mounds.
“Working underground!” Jaythen exclaimed when Pellar explained the expected watch-wher’s role.
Aleesa took on the abstracted look that Pellar had come to recognize meant she was communicating with her watch-wher. “Aleesk says that watch-whers like the dark and would enjoy it,” she reported a moment later.
“Dask did,” Pellar wrote in response.
“Very well,” Aleesa said. “You may tell this Zist of yours that we’ll trade. A winter’s worth of coal for a chance at an egg.”
“Chance?” Pellar wrote back.
“Whoever wants it has to get it from Aleesk,” Aleesa replied with an evil grin. “I’ll let her have the final say.”
“Fair enough,” Pellar had written in reply.
“When will you go?”
“Tomorrow,” Pellar wrote back.
“Tomorrow it is, then,” Aleesa agreed. Beside her, Arella gave a sob and raced out of the main cavern. Aleesa followed her daughter’s anguished departure with her eyes and looked back to Pellar. “She is hoping that when you come back, you’ll stay.”
Pellar nodded.
“And?”
Pellar shook his head sadly.
“It’s a hard life with the watch-whers,” Aleesa said with a sigh. Her eyes twinkled as she added, “It has its compensations, like mating flights, but I won’t deny it’s hard.”
She caught his gaze and held it with her own.
“You could make it better, though,” she told him.
Pellar’s mouth quivered, but finally, he shook his head, wiped his slate clean, and wrote on it, “Shunned.”
Aleesa read it and nodded slowly. “You don’t like putting flowers on graves.”
Pellar nodded.
“You’re a good lad, Harper Pellar,” Aleesa said. “I’ll not force you, but remember this—you’ve a home here if you want.”
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