Keilan-minnai was scolding Radèn for ruining his clothes and Radèn was shouting that she’d ruined his shells and his surprise. Eiryn shuffled as far away from the both of them as she dared because they were making her head spin, but she was too busy trying to hold, sort and clean her favourite shells with just one hand to be very upset that they were arguing. When she found a few more of the long shells that she’d stepped on in the scattered pile, she squeaked in delight. They weren’t the same colour as hers, but still.
“Aren’t they pretty?” she asked holding her treasures out to Radèn and Keilan-minnai. After they’d turned to look at her, she closed her fists quickly, afraid she’d lose some of the shells she’d collected. The way they were looking at her made her a little jittery and she shifted from one foot onto the other.
“I know a story about them,” Radèn started. He’d come closer to see the shell she’d been holding out, but Eiryn noted that he was standing slightly behind her and further away from Keilan-minnai. “Dyrlaimin-minnaoi used to tell it to me.”
“Will you tell it to me?” Eiryn asked. Radèn-minnoi was good at telling stories, but it was Keilan-minnai who answered her.
“Not now, asafai. We need to get back and get ready.”
Eiryn hung her head.
“But perhaps Arèn-minnoi will allow Radèn-doi to tell you a bedtime story afterwards.”
“Would he?” Eiryn asked hopefully.
The woman smiled at her and held out her hand. “Perhaps. Give me your hand, asafai.”
Eiryn hesitated. She couldn’t put her shells anywhere. All she could do was hold them. Keilan-minnai held out the pouch Eiryn had seen earlier and, hesitantly, she dropped her treasures into it. She handed the bag back and took both Keilan-minnai and Radèn’s hands. This time, she closed her eyes before Keilan-minnai started to sing and that helped a little.
“Radèn-minnoi, you should return to your family’s chambers and do something about your clothes and face.” Keilan-minnai’s voice danced over the last of the farakaoina as she spoke. “I’ll take Eiryn-dai back to her uncle.”
Eiryn opened her eyes just in time to see Radèn nod and to give him a hug. He laughed at that, and hugged her back. “I hope you’ll both sit nearby tonight,” he whispered, winked, and left Eiryn alone with Keilan-minnai.
“We’ll leave the shells here for now, asafai,” Keilan-minnai told Eiryn while she was taking them from the pouch. Eiryn didn’t really want to, but they’d be safe in Keilan-minnai’s chambers and she could get them after dinner.
Eiryn stood on her toes to watch Keilan-minnai carefully lay the shells onto a low table. She squeaked when some of them appeared chipped and dove for the one that had a hole in it. She snatched it off the table and turned it around in her hands. Eiryn was certain the hole hadn’t been there before and she didn’t understand how it’d broken.
Keilan-minnai ignored her when she asked about it, putting the rest of the shells down on the table. Eiryn sniffed a little, then put the shell in her hands up to her eye and looked around. The closer Eiryn held it the more she could see through it, which amused her. When Keilan-minnai asked her to, Eiryn reluctantly put the shell down on the table with the others.
“Let’s get your feet washed, shall we? There’s little point in carrying sand all through the corridors and it’s not comfortable in your slippers.”
Eiryn nodded and asked Keilan-minnai to pick her up so the grains wouldn’t ever be lost in the carpet. The woman chuckled and lifted her up. Eiryn held herself very still as she was carried into the bedroom. Keilan-minnai sat her down on the dressing table. Radèn would have said something funny about it.
Keilan-minnai went to fetch the bowl from the washstand, singing softly as she did. The song made Eiryn flinch a little and press her eyes firmly closed; it called forth water. It also sounded only just within Keilan-minnai’s upper range.
When cold touched her feet, Eiryn gave a startled squeak, but Keilan-minnai said nothing. The woman was kneeling and holding the bowl up so Eiryn could splash in it. It did eventually earn her a disapproving look, but by then the bowl was already half as empty as it had been. Eiryn looked down at her lap, so she didn’t see Keilan-minnai walk away. She only heard it, the soft swish of a skirt and the scuff of slippers on the floor. And she could move her feet without hitting against the side of a porcelain bowl, so she did and cried when she swung one too hard against the dressing table.
It wasn’t long before Keilan-minnai was back, holding a white towel. The woman looked over her left foot when Eiryn sniffed that it hurt, but that was all. Dai would’ve made it better. Keilan-minnai only dried Eiryn’s feet and put her slippers back on. She could’ve done that herself. Grumpy, Eiryn pushed herself from the table before Keilan-minnai had a chance to pick her up. It earned another yelp because her foot hurt and it startled Keilan-minnai, but Eiryn hadn’t fallen. She was a big girl and could get down things by herself.
Still, when Keilan-minnai offered Eiryn a hand, she slipped hers into it and held tight. She didn’t want to be alone.
“How many people do you need to make stone shiny?” Eiryn asked after they’d spent some time walking in silence. She was skipping beside Keilan-minnai, because she was certain Arèn-minnoi would allow Radèn to tell her a bedtime story about the shells. But the stone around them was shimmering in the lamplight and had reminded her.
“What do you mean?” Keilan-minnai asked. Eiryn was certain the woman was frowning and she had to struggle not to frown herself. It only made Eiryn’s wrinkles deeper.
“Like around us.” Eiryn slipped out of Keilan-minnai’s grasp and ran up to touch one of the walls to demonstrate. “How many people does it take to make things shiny like this. Arèn-minnoi says it takes many people.”
For a moment Keilan-minnai halted and thrummed her fingers against her leg, then she resumed walking and Eiryn soon fell into step beside her again. As they turned a corner, Keilan-minnai asked, “Do you know how many people it took to create Enkeina?”
“What’s that?”
“No one’s ever told you?” Keilan-minnai sounded incredulous.
Eiryn stopped skipping to fiddle with her sash. “No…”
“It’s what keeps us safe and what helped us build Lir. It was made by all the kerisaoina when Lir-minnaoi Enrai’Sarrynna Enroi’Dyrmallen asked them to.”
“How many people is that?” Eiryn didn’t particularly want to hear more of that story from Keilan-minnai. She didn’t like how Keilan-minnai was telling it to her. It made her feel unhappy and dumb.
“Many, many hundreds, asafai.”
“Oh.”
After that, they walked in silence until they got to Arèn-minnoi’s chambers. Eiryn didn’t want to take Keilan-minnai’s hand, so she stuck them into her sash the way she’d seen some people do. It wasn’t comfortable at all. Keilan-minnai knocked on the door. As they waited for her uncle to open it, Eiryn rocked on the balls of her feet. She’d always liked the fact that Arèn-minnoi’s door had a big tree carved into it under his name. She and dai had had a shell on theirs. Keilan-minnai had a flower. She’d have to remember to find out what all the pictures were. She was about to ask Keilan-minnai when the tree-door swung inward and the woman ushered Eiryn inside.
“How was the beach?” her uncle asked, not looking up from his desk. Eiryn hadn’t even heard him sing the door open. Arèn-minnoi had already changed into something more formal. The shirt he was wearing was embroidered with bright colours and spoke volumes. Eiryn wasn’t going to wriggle her way out of eating with everyone else this time. Arèn-minnoi only wore that for important events.
“It was nice,” she answered and stayed so close to Keilan-minnai that she was practically stepping on the woman’s heels. But she didn’t want to be near her uncle when he was so formal. It made her all stiff and fidgety. There was a maid waiting for Eiryn which startled her. Taking hold of Keilan-minnai’s sash, she twisted it around her hands. She didn’t want anyone but Mayry-minnoi to dre
ss her. This was someone she didn’t know and she was already frightened.
After Eiryn screamed when Keilan-minnai tried to intervene, the woman sent the maid away. She thought there might have been an apology involved, but she had her face buried against the back of Keilan-minnai’s legs and she muffled any sounds by stuffing the silks of the woman’s skirt into her ears, so she wasn’t sure.
“Don’t be so silly,” Keilan-minnai coaxed and patted Eiryn on the head. Eiryn was going to be so silly until she was certain the maid had gone and wouldn’t try to dress her. When she was, she let go of her tight hold a little and looked around. Keilan-minnai immediately strode over to the wardrobe and started to look through the contents. “Where are the rest of your clothes?”
Eiryn shrugged when Keilan-minnai turned to face her. The maid hadn’t laid out anything on the bed like Mayry-minnoi did and the ones in the wardrobe were the only ones she had. “Oh. We’ll just have to make do with these then,” Keilan-minnai said as she turned back to the wardrobe. Eiryn liked her dresses, and she didn’t like the way Keilan-minnai’d spoken. Her nose itched and she rubbed at it when Keilan-minnai wasn’t looking. Trying to ignore the way the woman kept looking over her shoulder, Eiryn fiddled with the ends of her grey sash as she waited. Janyn-minnoi always looked around like that too.
After far too long and far too many discarded clothes people’d have to fold again, Keilan-minnai exclaimed “Ah!” The woman held up a bright yellow dress that matched the threads in Arèn’s shirt. Eiryn tried not to grimace. “This will do.” Keilan-minnai turned to Eiryn. “Raise your hands, asafai.”
Eiryn did, though not gladly. She’d hidden that dress away in the darkest corner she could find. She’d never liked the colour and she’d hated it even more after Janyn-minnoi had said she looked like a puffer fish in it. Keilan-minnai tugged on the hem to straighten it and Eiryn turned when the woman asked her to. Soon the dress was joined by a blue sash, tied around her waist and left shoulder like Keilan-minnai’s. Eiryn looked down at herself in dismay.
“What to do with your hair…” Keilan-minnai tapped a finger against her chin in thought and seemed oblivious to Eiryn’s fidgeting. “Ah!” The woman spun Eiryn around gently, so that Eiryn couldn’t see her face anymore. She could feel Keilan-minnai combing through her hair, though, humming softly under her breath. Eiryn listened very carefully so she’d remember the farakaoina that Keilan-minnai was using.
“What’s that for?” she asked, burying her hands in the sash to keep them still.
“Arranging your hair.”
Eiryn hoped that it wouldn’t make her look even more like a puffer fish. She didn’t like being called one. Softly repeating the farakaoina to herself, Eiryn tried to mimic it. “Like this?” she asked, her voice faltering only twice, when she’d felt confident she had it right and tried to make her words dance over the farakaoina as she spoke. Eiryn liked combining them with conversation. It was more challenging and fun, but also quite hard.
“Just like that. I’m very proud of you, asafai. Go show Arèn-minnoi how you look.”
Before skipping back into the main room and showing her uncle what Keilan-minnai had done, Eiryn turned and hugged the woman. She still hated the dress, but surely Keilan-minnai had done something very nice to her hair. Eiryn didn’t want to see what, though. Just in case.
“Look, Arèn-minnai!” Eiryn spun around to show him and he said it looked very nice. She wasn’t quite sure that she believed him because he seemed distracted, but that was all right. She had to tell him about the beach and the shells she’d found and how some had broken and the farakaoina she’d just learned. Even though she still had to learn what it did and she still needed to record it in her practice book. She nodded, for emphasis, when she explained that, because she didn’t want her uncle to think she didn’t feel it was important. Dai’d always told her it was.
Arèn-minnoi smiled. “Is there something you want to ask?”
Eiryn was a little upset by his lack of interest in what she was telling him, but she did have something to ask him. “Can Radèn-minnoi tell me a bedtime story?” she asked, hopefully.
Her uncle didn’t answer her at once. “We’ll see what we can do about the story. We should be going.” He paused and added, “I am glad to hear you had a good time.”
Eiryn barely managed not to pout, but she managed. She did look very unhappy as Arèn-minnoi and Keilan-minnai both took one of her hands in theirs and led her into the corridors to the banquet hall. She had to skip between them to keep up with their longer strides, but that eventually helped her feel better. Skipping was fun, and she resumed chattering about her shells and the way the sea had looked and what it had done. She didn’t mind that Arèn-minnoi and Keilan-minnai were talking to one another in hushed voices. She didn’t mind that they weren’t paying attention to her either. She only wanted to talk and remind herself that all was well. If she heard her own voice, she couldn’t hear dai’s so loudly.
When they reached the banquet hall’s great entrance, the two adults let go of Eiryn’s hands and she stopped skipping. The doors were just translucent enough to make out the blurry shapes of people moving behind them. Eiryn fidgeted. They’d never stood waiting before the doors for so long. Both her uncle and Keilan-minnai were looking very serious and very regal. Eiryn did her best to copy them, but she was sure that all she managed was to look ridiculous. At least she tried, even though she wanted to hide behind Keilan-minnai’s legs. The woman never asked more of Eiryn than that she try her best, and the girl didn’t know what her uncle thought.
The doors opened. It took Eiryn a moment to realise they were swinging inward because a pair of servants was pulling them that way and not because of a farakaoina she couldn’t hear. The banquet hall was larger than any room Eiryn had ever seen. She knew that; it wasn’t her first visit. It still made her feel tiny. Candlelight made the walls dance with colour, occasionally broken by tapestries of a single hue. Everyone else was already seated at the tables on one end of the hall. Eiryn had never seen any tables on the great floor, but Orryn-minnaoi had told her it’d been different once, long ago, and even the floor where everyone mingled after the banquet had had several rows of tables. Ao hadn’t told her why that’d changed, though. Ao’d said she’d learn when she was older.
Thinking that perhaps she should have asked what the banquet was about, Eiryn followed her uncle until he told her they’d reached her own seating place. As she sat down, Radèn-minnoi winked at her from the other side of the table. He was a few chairs away, but not as far as he usually was.
Eiryn smiled back shyly and looked around more carefully. Janyn-minnoi was sitting further down the table too, but if he saw her he ignored her marvellously. Even though she knew he couldn’t make any cruel remarks to her now, she was relieved that he didn’t pay her any attention. When the boy moved to take one of the buns on the table, Eiryn winced. Janyn had bruises on his arms too. Just like Radèn.
If she hadn’t been in the banquet hall, she would have huddled on her chair. But she was and people would see. Still, she looked for her uncle and Keilan-minnai, but neither of them were paying her any attention. Her uncle was several seats away from her, but Keilan-minnai was sitting right beside her. Radèn wasn’t paying any attention to her either, even though he was sitting nearby and he could easily have seen her. Eiryn huddled a little anyway; it was going to be a boring evening, and a long one. Servants walked to and fro with carafes and small plates of food. Eiryn wasn’t hungry, but she did wish she could join them. At least she’d have something to do.
Every time she noticed her uncle or Keilan-minnai looking at her, she ate a little bit of her soup, but only then. Most of the time she was playing with her spoon and trying to talk to the people who exchanged one plate of food for another. Everyone ignored her attempts to talk to the servants. Arèn-minnoi was discussing something with Bunbryl-minnaoi; Keilan-minnai and a curly-haired woman Eiryn had never seen before were debating the best way to pre
serve knowledge and Radèn-minnoi was retelling some fight he’d been in. She hated it when he got into fights. He said he only did it because everyone assumed he was weak because he was so pale and he was going to prove them wrong. He’d even yelled at her once for saying she didn’t want him to get hurt.
So Eiryn didn’t try to interrupt his story to tell him off. She just tried to find someone else to talk to. She was the only one left out. It was so noisy all around her that she could barely follow one conversation without another overlapping it. She didn’t think she minded being left out so much, but she did mind the way she couldn’t concentrate. In truth, Eiryn didn’t even know which conversation she wanted to concentrate on and so she tried not to listen to anything at all.
She focused on the bowl of soup she’d barely touched even though everyone else had long moved on to different dishes. It was cold now. Eiryn toyed with her spoon, dreaming of far-off places in the stories that Orynn-minnaoi sometimes told them, with beaches where huge shells washed ashore and people built houses out of them. Though Orryn-minnaoi had never told any stories about those; Eiryn just liked the idea. Maybe the beaches around Lir were made up of broken shells. Maybe the walls were made of bits of broken shell, even though they didn’t feel at all like the sand she’d been walking on. Eiryn thought she could still feel some of it in her slippers if she moved her feet.
While she was lost in thoughts of walls and beaches and how you’d make houses out of big shells, someone started talking to her. Eiryn startled at the sound of her own name and looked up, hastily taking the spoon from her mouth and putting it down on the table. The speaker was Anou-minnoi. She hadn’t even noticed the old man sitting directly opposite her and she felt very awkward about that. She knew her uncle thought the world of him, but she’d never met the man before. Eiryn stared down at the table. She knew it was rude, but perhaps he’d go away if she ignored him.
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