Sheri S. Tepper - Singer from the Sea

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SINGER FROM THE SEA
by Sheri S. Tepper
[24 jul 2001 – scanned, proofed and released for #bookz]
0: Prologue - Dreamtime
In Genevieve's dream, the old woman lunged up the stairs, hands clutching like claws from beneath her
ragtag robe. "Lady. They're coming to kill you, now!"
She dreamed herself responding, too slowly at first, for she was startled and confused
by the old woman's agitation. "Who? Awhero, what are you talking about."
"Your father's taken. The Shah has him. Now his men come for your blood! Yours
and the child's. They're coming."
The smell of blood was all around her, choking her. So much blood. Her husband,
gone, now her father, taken! Dovidi, only a baby, and never outside these walls!
Genevieve dreamed herself crying, "They're coming after Dovidi? How did the Shah
know about the baby?"
"Your father tell him."
Endanger his grandson in that way? Surely not. Oh, surely, surely not. "I'll get him.
We'll go . . ."
"If you take baby, you both be killed." The old woman reached forward and shook
her by the shoulders, so vehement as to forget the prohibitions of caste. "I take him. I
smutch his face and say he one of us. They scared to look and they never doubt . . ."
"Take me, too ..."
"No. You too tall. Too strange looking. They know you!"
"Where? Where shall I go?"
"I sing you Tenopia. Go like Tenopia. By door, your man's cloak with his sunhelmet,
with his needfuls still there, in pockets." She pulled at the rags that hung from her
shoulders, shreds tied together to make a tattered wrapping. "Take this! You tall for
woman, so you walk past like man. Malghaste man. Go now!"
In her dream, she babbled something about getting word to the ship, then she went,
thrust hard by Awhero's arms, strong for a woman her age. She fled to the courtyard, to
the door through the city wall, a door that stood ajar! She could see directly into the
guardpost outside—empty. Never empty except now! It smelled of a trap!
Beside the door hung the outer robe with its sunhelmet hood lining, behind the door
half a dozen staves stood below a pendant cluster of water bottles, like flaccid grapes.
She shut and bolted the inviting door, snatched the cloak, a staff, a waterbottle, and fled
back through the house to the kitchen wing, calling to someone as she went past the
kitchens to the twisting stairs that only the malghaste used. Awhero had shown her the
hatchway below, and she went directly to it, struggling into the robe as she fled, draping
the rags around her shoulders to make it look as if she were clad only in tatters. As she
slipped through the hatchway she heard voices shouting and fists thundering at the door
she had barred.
She came out in a deep stairwell where coiled stairs led up to the narrow alley. The
alley led to the street. She went up, and out, head down, a little bent, the staff softly
thumping as she moved slowly, like any other passerby. Ahead of her was the narrow
malghaste gate through the city wall, never guarded, never even watched, for this was
where the untouchables carried out the city's filth. The stained and tattered rags marked
her as one of them. Outside that gate a small malghaste boy guarded a flock of juvenile
harpya, their fin-wings flattened against the heat, and beyond the flock was a well with a
stone coping. The area around it was sodden, and she felt the mud ooze over her toes as
she filled the bottle, slung it over her shoulder and walked away on the northern road, still
slowly, as any malghaste might go. She did not run until she was out of sight of the town.
In her dream she was being hunted by dogs. She woke to hear them baying, closer
than before. No. No, not dogs. Arghad's hunters came on wings, not feet, and they had
pursued her for two days, now. The Mahahmbi had no dogs, but their birds-of-prey had
dogs' loyalty to their masters, dogs' ability to track by scent, and they could scream a
signal from the sky when they detected their quarry. She had left her smell behind, on
towels, on clothing, on all the baby's things. There had been much of her to give the
hunters!
Two nights she had moved over the desert, sometimes running, sometimes
staggering,- almost three days she had hidden on the desert sleeping when she could.
Through last night, the wind had been from the south, and she had fled into it, blinking its
grit from her eyes. This morning, the third morning, it had swung around, coming from
the west, and she had lain down on the lee side of a dune, in the shade cast by a line of
bone bushes, her head to the north, her feet to the south as Tenopia had done, aware, even
through her exhaustion, of the symbolism of the act. Tenopia-songs paid much attention
to the interior meanings of simple things. Tenopia: the heroine of women's songs sung by
the malghaste in Mahahm-qum.
Lying with her feet away from the city signified that though matters of her mind were
in the city behind her, her survival lay in moving away. Dovidi was behind her, and pray
heaven he was safe. The menfolk were there, perhaps, if they were not dead. She could
do nothing about any of them, but she might save herself. Any hope of doing so lay
south, toward the refuge of the malghaste. If her mind struggled with this, her feet did
not, for they staggered southward while she was only half awake, into the long shadows
east of the stone dike that belted the base of the dune.
Long ago, when this world had been volcanic, the edge of a huge surface block had
been thrust upright to make a mighty rampart running north and south. Within the block,
layers of igneous rock had been separated by thicker layers of softer, sedimentary stuff,
now much worn away to leave paths sheltered from the wind by parallel walls, stone
lanes she could use now as Tenopia had used them long ago.
North was the sea, where the shepherds pastured their flocks on the seaweed washed
ashore by the sea winds. East or west was desert scattered with hidden oases, already
occupied by Mahahmbi. When Tenopia had gone southward, however, toward the pole,
she had found refuges along the way. If one went far enough, the malghaste said, one
might find Galul, mountainous Galul, with forests, shade, flowers, running water.
Perhaps it was true. Or, perhaps it was only a prisoner's myth, the Mahahmbi idea of
heaven, achieved as a reward for some unthinkable virtue.
Though the rag-tatters over her sand-colored robe were the best camouflage she could
have, though her feet left no lasting tracks in the windblown sand, still she stank of fear,
of stale sweat, and of the breastmilk down the front of her bodysuit that had soured
before drying. Now the stiffened fabric chafed her with every step, and the odor floated
on the still air for the winged hunters to sniff out. When Tenopia had come this way, she
had sung to nga tahunga makutu matangi, the wizards of the winds, asking their help in
confusing her trail. She knew no invocation to bring the tahunga makutu to her aid. She
would have to rely on her own two feet.
The dunes rose higher on her left, the sand ascended in the path she followed,
eventually it rose to the top of the walls, burying the stone lanes. She took a sighting
south, on a distant outcropping, and held to that direction, swerving only briefly between
two thorny mounds, around another, hearing the shrieks from the heavens fade behind
her. The hunters were going off at a northeasterly tangent, getting farther away. When the
stone dike reemerged it was only a shallow ridge, rooted in the ribbon of shadow along
its eastern side. She slipped into the shade, her feet plopping into it as fish into water,
feeling the coolness rise to her knees, hips, to her waist as the wall loomed higher,
topping her head at last and continuing to rise in erose scallops and notches. A few yards
to her left a parallel wall emerged from the sand, and before long she moved in a blessed
corridor of shade and calm air, away from the forge of the sun, the huffing bellows of the
wind.
Both the shadowed lane and the hunters' misdirection were blessings. Perhaps the
wind wizards had decided to help her without being asked. Or perhaps Awhero had sent
someone into the desert with a sack of the baby's diapers, to draw the hunters away.
Several times Genevieve had heard either men or birds frighteningly close, but they had
always turned aside. She caught her breath at the memory of panic, yesterday's fear
adding to this moment's weariness. She bent to ease a sudden pain in her side, aware of
an overwhelming thirst. She reached for her waterbottle . . . Gone. Left where she'd been
sleeping!
She collapsed against the stone, head falling onto her knees, arms wrapped around her
head, holding herself together, denying the terror that threatened to erupt in hysterical
screaming or laughter or shouts of nonsense. Think, Genevieve, she told herself. Think.
The bottle had only a swallow or two left in it, not worth going back for. Besides, if the
men gave up on their current line of search and backtracked into the wind, they could still
come across her trail before dark. Also, when Tenopia had escaped from the Shah of
Mahahm-qum, she had reached a sanctuary on the third evening. This was Genevieve's
third evening, and she might already be within sight of the place the old woman called te
marae, he wahi oranga. Water or no, better go on than back.
She stood up again, putting one foot in front of the other, fighting the urge to lick her
lips. They were already split and bleeding. Licking them only made them worse. The
Mahahmbi wore veils across their faces when in the desert, and they carried unguents for
their lips and eyelids. That is, the men did. Women had no need of such stuff, for women
did not go into the desert. Except for Tenopia. And, come to think of it, she didn't know
what time of day Tenopia had run from Mahahm-qum. Genevieve herself had fled at
noon, or thereabout. She might have another half day to go.
She climbed drifting sand as the walls on either side of her were covered once more.
Beyond the dune was an area of gravelly hills, spotted with thorn. She stopped to take her
husband's locator from the pocket of his robe and check her direction, following the line
into the distance to find a landmark on the horizon. She had come this far from landmark
to landmark, south on south, and thank God for the locator, though now, with the sun
almost on the horizon, she could almost set a track at right angles to the shadows of the
thorn, streaming away to her left, shadows that went down the dune and all the way to the
top of another . . .
Color! At the shadow's end, a flicker of green, seen out of the corner of her right eye.
There, and again. She veered to the left, across the buried walls, and followed her own
attenuated silhouette up the dune, gray granules flowing as she slipped, plunged,
wallowed the last few meters, struggling to the top on hands and knees.
Below was the valley described in Tenopia's song, skullstones and dry bones, a dry
streambed littered with round white rocks. On the south and east, black-streaked cliffs
made a barricade against the sands, underlining bald and wrinkled mountains. Across the
dried streambed the walled refuge squatted ugly as a toad, built of the same stone as the
cliffs and topped by one stubby tower that flew the long triangle of the banner: a licking
flame of green bearing a single gold leaf.
"In desert, hope is small," Awhero had said. "Leaf is sign of hope, small, almost
unnoticed. Yet it holds infinite promise, does it not?" There were no leaves in Mahahm-
qum. The banners of Mahahm were black, with a blazing yellow sun, and there was sun
enough in Mahahm-qum to make ashes of anything living.
Light flashed in her eyes, reflected from the highest window of the tower, only a
glint. Lenses. Someone knew she was here. She paused, wondering if the gate would
open to emit an attacking horde. Or perhaps just one strong man. Either way, she could
do nothing about it. Almost three days of walking in the sand had taken her strength. Too
little sleep and water had taken her resolve. Fear had taken her will. She floundered
downward in another scrambled avalanche and staggered onto the flinty soil of the
riverbed. From there it was only a short distance up the equally hard packed slope to the
walls.
The gate was of heavy, sun-grayed planks, rough hewn from huge trees, fastened with
spikes of iron. The wood had come from somewhere else. Somewhere behind the far
black line of cliffs? From some chasm among those dun-colored mountains? Or maybe
from Galul itself, where water ran and things grew green? Not from hereabout, certainly,
for nothing grew in this desolation except black thorn, bonebush, and blood lichen.
She leaned against the door for a moment, staring at the wall, built of the same ashy
stone as the cliffs, equally cheerless and forbidding. A protruding beam high above her
head ended in a carved skull between whose wooden teeth a bell rope emerged like a
tongue, an oily strand with a loop in the end, slightly above the level of her eyes. Almost
too late she saw the stem of thorn woven through the loop. Unwary or desperate visitors
would pay with agony for interrupting the labors of those within.
Genevieve thrust the crook of her staff through the loop and hauled it down, hard.
After a long pause, she heard a sonorous clang so remote in both space and time as to
seem unconnected to any action she had taken. She tugged again, and again. Two more
long delayed and measured tolls of the distant bell. She said to herself, "We will wait to
see what happens. We will not lick our lips. We will not have hysterics. We will simply
wait to see what happens . . ."
Not much. A cessation of some background murmur that had been unnoticeable until
it ended. A unison of treading feet, which would have been worrisome had they been
approaching rather than retreating. Since the place was not eager to welcome her, she
turned her back on it and stood facing outward, searching the sky and the horizons for her
pursuers. She couldn't see them, which didn't mean they weren't there. What she could
see was the everlasting monotone of the desert gray sand, gray earth, creeping dikes of
gray stone among hard gray dunes dotted with the ash white of bonebush, the bleeding
scarlet of lichen, the angular thickets of thorn made impenetrable by hundreds of needle-
sharp daggers that seeped glistening beads of toxin. The thorn meant more than mere
pain. A puncture could fester for weeks before healing. Delganor had told them that, or
one of the trade representatives. Everything anyone could find out about Mahahm had
been dissected and discussed, and she had listened to all of it, to everything any of them
knew about Mahahm. It had not been enough.
The skeletal lines of bonebushes were less forbidding than the thorn, but more eerie,
each branch an arm or thigh bone, each twig a finger bone, always growing four or five
together in a patch of blood lichen. The thorn grew only where there were many
bonebushes, and the bone-bushes grew only where lichen had established a hold. Now, in
the slanting sun, the lichen glowed crimson, as though it were freshly bled onto the soil.
She did not want to think of blood. Had Delganor bled? Was the Marshal dead or dying?
Cut down by a hundred seabone daggers. Left lying in all that red for someone to find, or
not. If she went back to the house, would any of their party be there, lying in their blood?
She turned back to the gate and rang again. Clang, then again clang, and clang. Three,
as before. Temperate, she told herself in a mood of weary fatalism. Not hasty. Not
importunate. Merely a measured reminder that someone waited, whenever they got
around to seeing who it was, or wasn't.
"Who are you?" a voice asked, near her ear.
She swung around, eyes darting, finally locating the tiny sliding hatch in the door. It
had opened without a whisper and the person within was invisible in the shadow. The
voice was as anonymous as wind, man, woman, child, devil or angel, it could be any.
She cleared her throat, but the words rasped nonetheless: "My name is Genevieve."
She bowed her head and took a deep breath. "In Mahahm-qum, an old woman named
Awhero told me to seek Tenopia's haven beneath the green banner."
"Who are you running from?"
"Those who were coming to kill me and my baby, men who have already probably
killed my husband and father . . ."
"Et al," she whispered hysterically to herself. "Et al . . ." She raised her head to find
the hatch closed once more. She waited. After a time she thrust the staff through the loop
and clanged again, another measured three.
This time she saw the hatch slide open. "Don't be impatient. You may enter. The
small opening to your left."
It was a considerable distance to her left, a narrow slot around and behind a great
wallowing buttress, like the buttocks of some huge animal that had stood forever, pushing
up the wall. The passage did not extend through the wall but only into the buttress itself,
a slot that only a slender person might traverse, a child, a woman, a young man without
arms or armor. She took two steps and a metal grille moved behind her, closing the
entrance and leaving her standing in a iron caged space so tight she could not spread her
arms. Stone circled her except for the grille at her back and another at her left where a
lantern was held by an invisible hand. A woman's voice, perhaps the same voice, said,
"Take off your clothing. All of it."
"This is not hospitable," she said, suddenly furious. "This is what they no doubt
wanted of me, that I be naked and helpless."
A laugh, without humor. "Woman, you do not know them if you believe that, and as
for us, we have no designs on your body. We do need to assure that you carry nothing to
our hurt, but you may choose. If you like, we will open the grille and you may go out the
way you came."
Fighting tears, she leaned her staff against the stone and took off the hooded robe
with its porous, insulated helmet that kept the sun from frying the brain, then the under-
robe Awhero had given her. Finally, with some struggle, she removed the silken bodysuit
that covered her from throat to below her elbows and knees, laminated to her belly and
thighs by the dried breast milk.
"How old is your child?" someone asked. A softer voice. Not so crisp.
"Almost a month," she said, gulping tears. "His name is Dovidi."
"Sandals, too," said the first voice. "And stockings. Put everything through that hole
by your foot."
The lantern wagged, showing her the gap in the grille, large enough to put shoes or
wadded clothing through.
"Turn around, slowly."
She turned, holding her hands out, away from her body. She heard whispers.
". . . one of the intended . . ."
". . . all nonsense, look at that unmistakable nose . . ."
". . . rather as we had been told?"
After a long pause, her outer robe came back, and she wrapped it around herself.
"Where did you get these sandals?" someone asked. Where had she got them? "I was
told they were a gift," she said. "From the wives of the Shah. So that I could walk with
them in their garden. My own shoes were . . . what do they say?" For a moment she
couldn't remember the caste word and substituted another. "Befouled?"
"Arghaste. That is the Mahahmbi word. It means 'soiled by being foreign,' that is,
from originating elsewhere than Mahahm. You yourself are arghaste, while the
untouchables are malghaste, soiled by birth. In addition, you are evighaste, soiled by
being a woman. Even wearing Mahahmbi shoes, you would not have been allowed to
walk in their garden. It was a ruse, a ploy. Something, perhaps, to gain time."
"But I had walked in their garden," she cried. "I'd been there before!"
Silence. Ominous. Gathering.
Then another voice. "Describe the occasion. Where? Who did you meet?"
"1 don't know where. A walled place, not too far from the house we rented. There
were three of them, the Shah's wives they said. They were all new mothers, and one of
them said . . . they'd earned the right to go ... to paradise. To Galul."
A long silence, then very softly: "What did they look like?"
"They wore veils, heavy ones. I saw one face, only for a moment. They said . . . no!
She said, the only one who made sense, she said they had earned this . . . candidacy,
whatever it was."
A long pause, then a weary sigh. "Perhaps, under those circumstances you would
have been allowed to walk with them."
"Except that we didn't walk," said Genevieve. "We sat. I said something, and they
would say nonsense. At least one of them could talk as well as I, but all but one spoke
only nonsense aloud. They gave me some tea. I didn't drink it. I didn't like the smell."
Another silence, less ominous. "Perceptive of you. What did you do with it if you did
not drink it?"
"Dripped it into my robe, under my veil. You can see, the stain is still there. I had no
time to wash it before I left."
"Did the wives sound young? Or old?"
"The one who spoke said she was thirty-three years old. She said she was old for the
trip, but her husband hadn't wanted her to go until now. I assumed the others were
younger."
A pause. Then, "Why did you pick these clothes for this journey?"
Despite herself, the tears came. "I didn't pick anything. Awhero gave me the robe and
told me to wear it when I went out. I had the under-robe and the sandals on because I was
summoned to visit the women again. And Father had gone to find out the details from the
Shah's people. Then Awhero came running in to tell me assassins had taken him and were
coming for me and Dovidi. I didn't doubt her. Others of our party were away, my father
was missing, there was fighting where my husband had gone! My husband's spare
sunhelmet and cloak were still hanging by the side door. Awhero said take them, so I
threw them on and ran."
"Where is your son?"
"Awhero said if I took him, he was as good as dead. She said she could hide him,
pretend he was one of them. I trust her, but I honestly don't know if he's ... if he's still
alive."
"She's malghaste?"
"Yes."
"You took no food or water?"
"My husband had left a little sack of way-food in the pocket. I took a water bottle and
this staff from the door nearest the guard post. I filled the bottle at the untouchables well,
then I started north." She rubbed her head, trying to make the pain go away. 'The guards
weren't at their post, and it made me uneasy, so I went out the malghaste door."
"Guards wouldn't have been there," said the softer voice. "Not if men were coming to
abduct you. The guards would have been invited to be elsewhere, so they could later say
they had seen nothing, that perhaps you had been stolen. Women are stolen. It's always
believable. Where is the bottle you carried?"
"Wherever I stopped to sleep this morning. I heard the birds screaming, so I rolled
away from under a bonebush, and then I ran. When I found it was gone, I didn't dare go
back and look for it. It can't be far from here, for I only walked an hour or so before
seeing the banner."
"What is this device in the pocket?"
"A locator. It's just ... it focuses on the navigational beacon in orbit above Haven and
it can tell you where you are. It's more useful in Haven than here . . ."
"An off-world device!" The pitch went up, the sharpness slashed. "You're from
Havenor? From the Lord Paramount?"
"I'm not, no, though the leader of our party is. I suppose he is. We did come in an
airship. I'm sorry. I thought you knew. Though, why would you know? We've been here
for some time. I guess I thought everyone knew ..."
"Was this device brought with you?" The words were sharp, demanding. "Did anyone
in Mahahm-qum see it?"
Why did they care? Then, wearily, she understood. "No, the people in Mahahm-qum
don't know I have this device. They probably have no idea I can keep to a direction in the
desert, which would explain why they kept finding my trail and losing it. They don't
know that I had talked to Awhero or that I knew anything about Tenopia or this place.
Awhero called it wabi orantja, or marae morehu. That is what the name means, isn't it?
Place of refuge?"
A long silence. Evidently they had closed a door across the grille, for she heard
nothing. The lantern had gone with the voices. She pulled the cloak around her and
slumped against the grille, head on bent knees, simply waiting. At least nothing from
outside could get at her here. When the voice came again, it actually wakened her from a
doze.
"We'll open the door. There's a small room here, where you can be comfortable for a
while. You'll stay here while we check what you've told us."
"What about my other clothes?"
"We'd like to know what they gave you in that tea, so we'll keep that robe for a time.
Here's your bodysuit, and we'll find you some other clothing. We're keeping the sandals.
Someone will carry them away from here, a good distance away from here. The soles
have tracking devices in them."
"Tracking devices?"
"Scent emitters. Sometimes women escape, but their shoes are made to lead hunters
directly to them. You're lucky. The devices were blocked with mud . . ."
"The well," she cried. "When I filled my bottle at the well. It was muddy."
"Was your ship here, on Mahahm?"
"Outside the city. As I went out, I yelled at the communications man to tell them what
was happening." Or had she? She remembered doing it. But then, she might have
imagined doing it.
"The people of Mahahm-qum would expect you to go toward your ship. They would
not expect you to have listened to a malghaste woman's tales. So, because they are
creatures of their preconceptions, it is unlikely they have any idea where you are. If we
are lucky, they will assume you are dead. One of us may backtrack to the place you left
the bottle, however, as we would prefer that it and the sandals be found somewhere else,
a long way from here. On the way to some oasis."
A breath of air came from her left as the grille slipped into a wall pocket and a door
opened upon a white plastered room where the day's last light pooled around the high,
barred window and seeped a melancholy dimness onto the narrow bed and stone floor
below. Beside the bed a small table held a glass carafe of water topped with an inverted
cup. She almost fell over herself in her scramble toward it.
"Slowly," said the voice from somewhere across the room. "Take it slowly. A few
sips, then a few more. Otherwise you may vomit it up, and that would be a waste. Don't
eat anything until you've bathed and settled down and are no longer thirsty. Bring your
staff, and also the lantern. It will soon be dark."
The lantern stood in its own circle of light on the floor by the grille. She fetched it
and set it upon the table where a bowl covered a plate of fruit, sliced meat and a loaf of
brown, crusty bread. Though she ached with hunger, she obeyed the voice. She sat on the
bed with the cup in her hand, drinking little by little, refilling the cup twice. The dryness
of her throat and nose slowly eased. For the first time she noticed the little jars near the
plate, one of them half-filled with something waxy, herbal, perhaps an unguent.
"Can I use this on my lips?" she asked the walls, turning the jar in her hands, seeing
the label too late to forestall the question. "For desert-burned skin."
"Never mind," she said, swallowing hysterical laughter that caught in her throat when
she read the label on the other jar. "To dry your milk. Take one with each meal."
To dry her milk. She choked on tears, swallowed them. Well then. Whatever help
they might offer, it wouldn't run to getting Dovidi back, not soon. She had best plan on
staying here for some time and be thankful for what it offered: drink, food, and a place to
wash herself. Someone had definitely mentioned bathing.
She picked up the lantern and walked the perimeter of the room, three meters by five,
the entry door now closed off by a sliding panel. Through a pointed arch opposite the
entry she found a boxlike hall with three more of the sliding panel doors: left, right, and
straight ahead. Two of the panels were immovable, but the one to her right slid easily,
opening on a stone-floored alcove furnished with a large, shallow copper pan, an ewer of
tepid water, cloths, a low stool, and in the corner, a privy hole like those in the house they
had used in Mahahm-qum.
Shutting the panel behind her, she set the lantern on the floor, threw off the dusty robe
and ladled water into the pan. Sitting on the stool she washed her feet and legs before
standing in the pan to wash the rest of her. The water had a sharp, resinous smell, some
cleansing agent that rinsed away without residue and took the grime with it. Even the
sweaty stiffness of her hair dissolved when she poured water through it. When she had
finished washing herself she fetched her bodysuit and sloshed it about in the pan until the
dried milk was gone. She wrung it out and spread it across the stool. The dirty water went
down the privy hole and the folded cloths went over the edge of the pan. One dry cloth
was long enough to wrap around her body, covering her aching, swollen breasts. She
wasn't expecting company, and it covered her almost decently. Certainly it would do to
eat in.
When she returned to the table she found a comb lying atop a folded shift, a perfectly
simple white garment woven of the same fiber as the robe Awhero had given her. Plant
fiber of some kind. Less harsh than wool. Well then. Someone was watching her,
someone who could come in and out without her hearing. Not precisely a comforting
thought, though the items spoke of concern for her welfare. Give them, her, whoever,
credit for trying. The shift covered her from neck to elbows and ankles. The comb pulled
the snarls from her hair. She left the wet strands loose down her back while she rubbed
unguent onto her hands and feet and face. Later, when she had rested, she would braid
her hair out of the way.
Then the food. The bread was chewy and full of crunchy inclusions, nuts and seeds
and shreds of the same rich, peppery pod Awhero had once given her in the rooms below
the kitchen. The meat and slices of melon were delicious, the one partially dried and
salty, the other juicy and sweet. After a brief spasm of rejection which was almost anger,
she took one of the pills from the jar and swallowed it. Emotionally, she hated the idea,
but she would need all her strength. If Dovidi couldn't use her milk, it would be stupid to
stress her body to produce it.
When she had eaten less than half the food, she caught herself drowsing, head on
chest, breathing deeply, lips half opened around a partly chewed mouthful, a bit of bread
still in hand. She roused enough to cover the food remnants and drink a last half cup of
water before setting the cup over the neck of the carafe. If she was being observed, let
them give her a good rating for neatness and parsimony. Who knew how long this ration
was intended to last?
Her last thought before sleep was of Awhero. She wished the old woman knew she
had come this far safely . . . well, seemingly safely. At least there were no hunters, no
voices from the sky. At least she was away from the thorn and the sun. She did not think
of the Marshal or Delganor or Dovidi. She did not think of anything but this moment,
well fed, comfortably warm, and without thirst. As Tenopia had said, she could afford
neither grief nor anger. She could not afford anything but the day, each day from waking
to sleep, each such day to be set down after all other such days, a long journey which one
must not think of as even having a direction. If one went on, steadily, perhaps at the end
there would be explanations, even justification.
The end was the only possible destination. One could not, ever, go back to the
beginning.
1: Blessingham House
Genevieve's tower was slender and tall, an architectural conceit added at the last moment to the
otherwise undistinguished structure of Blessingham School. Gaining access to this afterthought could not
be accomplished on the way to or from anywhere in particular. Climbing the hundred steps to the single
room at the top was both inconvenient and arduous. Despite the nuisance, Genevieve had chosen the tower
room. For the quiet, she said. For the view. For the brightness of the stars at night. Though these were at
best only half reasons, they satisfied Mrs. Blessingham better than the real reason would have done—a
reason which had to do with the billowing foliage of the surrounding forest, the isolation of the star-
splashed night, the silence of the sky. On stormy nights the boughs surged and heaved darkly as a midnight
sea, and on such nights Genevieve would throw the casements wide and lean into the wind, the white
curtains blowing like flung spray as she imagined herself carried jubilantly through enormous silken waves
toward an unknown shore.
The imagined sea, the waves, the inexorable movement of the waters were implicit in
the instructions her mother had given her. The jubilance, an emotion she had touched
rarely, and only at the edges, was an interpolation of her own which, she feared, might be
摘要：

SINGERFROMTHESEAbySheriS.Tepper[24jul2001–scanned,proofedandreleasedfor#bookz]0:Prologue-DreamtimeInGenevieve'sdream,theoldwomanlungedupthestairs,handsclutchinglikeclawsfrombeneathherragtagrobe."Lady.They'recomingtokillyou,now!"Shedreamedherselfresponding,tooslowlyatfirst,forshewasstartledandconfuse...

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