“Omel oma,” Seruchel tapped a short stubby finger against her knee as if she were counting the ways of weird. “They live on those berontas all the time, they’re biiiig, like they’re two sometimes three boats with a floor built across them and house on that floor. They brag they go all the way round the world each trip. I’ve never seen the same ones twice, so maybe that’s true. We trade stuff with them. Like for axes and knives and needles and stuff like that. They get them from the starmen, they say, and maybe that’s true also because Pandai-don’t work metal.”
“And they have drums?”
“They beat on them to let us know they’re coming so we can bring out our trade.”
“Do they chorous?”
“What’s chorous?”
Lylunda stilled her hands and stared at the girl, startled. The language didn’t have a word for dance. She’d used the interlingue without thinking about it. She must have been doing that all along when she thought about the drum and dancing. ’Moving to mousika ah! You don’t have a word for that either. I’ll show you.”
Lylunda carried the knife and the log to the end of the outcropping, set them down out of the reach of the wind, and jumped to the sand. “Stay up there and watch, Seru. And listen.”
She moved a few steps until she was standing on sand that was damp enough not to drag at her feet. For a moment she stood with eyes closed, clapping her hands to catch the rhythm she wanted, then she began one of the stamping swaying dances she’d learned from the Tiker worlds, a child’s version of the voor tikeri. She wasn’t a good whistler, but she did manage to improvise a few trills to the clicking of her thumbs and fingers.
When her mouth went dry, she stopped and walked back to the lava outcrop. “That’s chorous and a bad attempt at mousika, Ser…” She broke off. The girl’s eyes were glazed and she was staring out across the water; it was obvious-and disturbing-that she hadn’t seen or heard any of Lylunda’s performance. “Never mind,” she said. “Best, I suppose, that we just forget it. Come on, teach me how to find more tiauch, I’ve got a want in my mouth for tiauch stew.”
When Lylunda had the inside and outside of the wooden ring rubbed smooth, she passed her hands over it, smiling with pleasure in her work. Then she set it aside and went looking for waxberries and chedik vines. The Pandai used the berries to make candles for their scraped shell lamps and, mixed with chemidik, they made good polish for furniture and the inside walls of their houses since that mix kept insects away from the wood. Chemidik came from sap milked from chedik vines and cooked over a slow fire for several days.
Lylunda was getting more than a little tired of things like that. Every time you wanted something, it took days, maybe even months and lots of planning. If you wanted a new mezu, you had to go cut enough pieces of torech vine to fill up the retting pond and wait till the fibers rotted clear of the rest, then you had to beat, the fibers, get them spun into thread, then the length of cloth woven on a loom, then you had to dye the cloth, either a solid color or spend yet more time with the tedious process of batiking to get a pattern dyed into the cloth; to set the colors so they wouldn’t wash out or fade, you had to steep the cloth in mix of cold water and oma which you made by macerating a fungus that grew from the roots of lalou trees. Everything was like that. The Pandai shared the jobs, but they were always working with an eye on the months ahead, getting things ready so they would be there when they were needed to get other things ready. It wasn’t hard work or even unpleasant, it was just so damn constant.
When she first walked up that white sand path that ran along the beach, she thought with despair: How am I ever going to get through the days? What will I do?
She shook her head. “Idiot that’s what I was.” The more she had to do for herself, the more she wanted additional hours in the day to give her time to get it done.
Lylunda stroked her fingertips down the smooth wood; after the waxing, it had a lovely golden brown glow. “I need something for a drum head. Which could be a problem. They don’t do leather, and the cloth they weave is too coarse, too soft, no snap to it. Maybe I should wait until the Barotongs come drifting by.” She shivered. “And maybe not. If I cut up the gearsac it’s got some bounce anyway… borrow a needle from Outocha and hem it so the cord doesn’t pull through… I’m not going anywhere… I wish I knew what I was doing…”
The drum looked good when she was finished, with its matte black heads, its greenish cord, and the golden wood. She reached toward it, drew her hand back. Not yet. It has to be special. Moonlight. Yes. I’ll take it to the beach. I’ll play my drum in the moonlight.
The sky was clear of clouds, filled with the brilliant glitter of the closely packed stars of Pseudo Cluster, enough light to turn the beach into an abstract painting in black and white. The two moons were already high, the outer one a hairline crescent, the nearer, several hours behind it, in its gibbous phase.
She stood, her feet cold on the damp sand, but not so cold as she was inside as she realized just how long she’d spent working on the drum. Days had sneaked away on her… weeks… no, more. At least a month and a half. What else had she lost?
She climbed onto the lava outcrop and walked slowly to the pillow humps at its tip, working her tongue in her mouth, seeking to taste how much tung akar she’d eaten without being aware of what she was doing. She couldn’t, of course, and it was a silly thing to try, but she had to do something to push back the billows of panic that kept trying to drown her.
She settled herself on the cold stone with the drum between her knees, closed her eyes, and tried to call up music she knew, let it flow through her body. It was hard. As if she were being pushed away…
When she could finally feel a simple beat, she set her fingers on the drum head and began to tap it out.
The sound was thin, dull. There was no resonance. It wasn’t music. It wasn’t even noise. She could barely hear the sound above the siss siss of the waves.
Maybe it’s me,. she thought. I don’t know how to make it talk to me. She closed her eyes and struggled to remember what she’d seen drummers do, but the memories were faint as faded watercolors and they kept slipping away for her.
“Aahhhhh!” she screamed and flung the drum away from her, then sat with her head resting on her crossed arms, her body heaving as she sobbed out her frustration, fear and grief.
9
Lylunda lifted her head as the shell string by the front door clattered and clanked; she sighed and snuggled into her covers, closed her eyes and tried to drift back into the dream she’d been having. It wasn’t a pleasant dream, but it was better than being awake.
A hand closed on her shoulder, someone shook her.
She pried her eyes open. Seruchel bending over her, the smiles fled from her mouth. “Luna, Luna, get up. Please.”
“Di’m, Seru,” she mumbled. “Go ’way.”
Seruchel shook her some more, but Lylunda closed her eyes tightly and ignored the child until Seru gave up and left. Then her mind started going round and round about her father, his promise to come get her, how much she didn’t believe that, the addiction to the tung akar, her horrified suspicion that if she completed the Tung Bond and he did come, she couldn’t leave without the tung killing her. She tried not to think of that, but the notion sat like a dark fungus in her mind.
“Jojing doors without locks. Everybody and his dog can walk in.” Muttering obscenities under her breath, she crawled out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen, vomited into the sink, an acrid yellow fluid that she washed away before it made her sick again. She splashed water onto her face, stood leaning against the counter, her body shaking, her knees threatening to fold under her. “What’s happening to me? I’m acting like I was three years old and sulking because Ma took my candy away. I’m not like this.”