“Round the world and round again.” He had sun spots like Seruchel, looked a little like her when he grinned. “Me; I’ve only been halfway so far.” His hand was closed in a loose fist and he was shaking it gently, two shells or stones or something similar clicking together inside the fist, making a small music. “Name’s Tudil.”
“Mine’s Luna, Tudil. Smarada diam.”
“Diam,” the boy said, then looked startled when he saw her catch and echo the beat, snapping her fingers and swaying her body; after a moment’s thought, his face lit up. “You’re the star woman.”
“Yes.” The Bond, she thought and groaned silently. “I miss mousika.”
“Huh?”
“That.”
“Oh. Chelideyr.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“Well, you wouldn’t. The land Pandai don’t have it. It’s only us Berotongs who can know what it is and that’s because it’s part of the sea dance.”
“1 tried making a drum. It’s not very good.”
“Would you like to see ours?”
“Oh, yes. I’d love that. Would your folks mind?”
“Why should they? It’s not like you’re going to steal the beronta.” He grinned again, slipped his clickers into a pouch on his belt, then swung over the side of the jetty into one of the boats tied there. “So come on down.”
“Mengar, toss the ladder. I’ve brought a visitor.”
One of the oldest Pandai that Lylunda had seen peered over the rail at them, his mouth stretched in a broad grin showing mostly toothless gums. “Star mama, hah? Treat her gentle, boy.”
Lylunda blinked, startled.
Tudil chuckled. “Omel oma, Luna, don’t be worried by him. Ol’ Mengar sniffs all the news in the world from the air that runs past that nose of his.” He caught the rope ladder as it unrolled down the side of the outer hull. “Can you climb if I hold this steady?”
“I can climb better if I do the following,” she said.
He giggled, shook his head. “Omel oma, watch close, then.” He went up the ladder as if he had fingers instead of toes, shook his narrow behind at her, then was over the rail with an easy kick of his feet.
She followed more cautiously, but found it no more difficult than working an umbilical in an unlicensed fueling station. She got over the rail with a bit more decorum than the boy, then let the two Pandai show her about the ship, smiling at their pride, but understanding it thoroughly, a small ache around her heart because her own ship was so far out of her reach.
Tudil led her to the Great Drum, but he didn’t touch it, so she didn’t either. He slid out some pegs and opened the top of a chest, took out two much smaller drums, closed the top again, and pegged it tight. “We practice on these,” he said.
“May I?”
“You are my guest.”
She turned the drum in her hands, tested the weight of it, drew her fingers across the single head. Parchment. Someone on Bol Mutiar knew about skins and how to treat them. The wood was dark and tight grained, hard enough to carve thin. She sat on the chest, held the drum on her knees, and tapped the head. The sound was sharp and pure. It was joy. She closed her eyes and touched it some more, testing the different areas of the head, using all the hand gestures she could remember. Then she made a song for herself and Tudil with her hands and this giving drum.
After a minute, though, she sighed and stilled the sound. “Better than food,” she said. “But I don’t know how to play it, not really.”
Tudil was crouched by her feet, looking up at her. “But it’s there. It’s in you. YOU should come with us, not stay with them on land. You don’t belong there.”
“I don’t belong here at all,” she said and sighed as she bent to give him back the drum. “My father forgot I’m not a child any more. But that’s the way he is. He thinks he knows better than most people how to run their lives and he has the power, so he does it.”
Tudil nodded gravely. “I’ve seen that,” he said. “The Bond rejects folk like that. After a while, anyway. And then they die.”
“Either you’re in the Bond or you die? Is that the way it is? What about the traders?”
“They respect the Bond, they don’t hurt any Pandai and they leave in a few days.” His teeth closed on his lip and his eyes glazed. After a minute he said, “You’re fighting the Bond. Trying to be with it but not of it. You want to be like them. The traders. Come and go.
“Yes. Traders. Do you know if there are different kinds of traders or only those who call themselves Jilitera?”
Tudil looked down. He scratched uneasily at a sliver that was separating from the wood of the deck. “Maybe you should talk to Menget about that, he’s the Drummer. I could ask, if you want.” He sighed. “You think you can’t play, but I watched you, you know things about the drum I hadn’t even thought of. I wish you’d want to be of us.”
“I can’t, Tudil. I think the land Pandai’s life is good, and yours is even better, but not for me. It’s just the way things are. I’d like it if you talked to the Drummer about what I asked.” She got to her feet. “Thank you for showing me your home. I think we’d best be going back now.”
11
The Drummer came to Lylunda’s house that evening; he was a big burly man; he wore his coarse brown hair in a thick braid that reached past his waist. A large enameled copper amulet covered most of his bare chest and his dark red mezu was narrower than most, wrapped about his hips, the set-fold held in place by a long steel pin with an enameled copper head and a copper point guard. When she greeted him, he touched his forehead, then the amulet. “Smarada diam, Luna.”
“The kitchen is the kindest place to sit. There’s fruit if you wish and an infusion of iya leaves.”
He sat at the kitchen table and smiled as she brought out a plate heaped with dark purple-red berries and slices of golden imekur fruit. She filled two mugs with the iya, then settled herself across from him. “What I have is yours,” she said. “May it be acceptable.”
“It is so.” He helped himself to the fruit and took the first bite as was custom, then spooned down the rest with a gusto that matched his size.
When he was finished, he patted his lips with the napkin she’d laid beside the plate and smiled at her. “You have had a difficult time, Luna.”
“Yes.”
“And coming here was neither your choice nor your intent.”
“Yes.”
“What do you know of the Berotong Pandai?”
“What the Chioutis have told me, what Tudil said, what I saw when I visited your beronta. What I heard when the beronta came around the end of the island. That you will take young people from where they are excess to where they are needed. No more.”
“Then you know everything and nothing.” He pushed his mug across the table, waited till she refilled it. “We are of the Bond, but we live within it in another way than the Land Pandai do. We eat the tung akar when we are on the land, but when we are on the sea, we do not touch it. You might find that more to your heart’s liking, Luna. Tudil tells me you have a gift for the chelideyr but no teaching.”
“Tudil is young. I have a deep need for chelideyr, but no gift. It’s just that I’ve listened more widely than he has and known more drummers. I was remembering, not creating. I do know the difference.”
“Ah. I see.” He lifted the mug and drank, his eyes fixed on the window open above the sink. She could see he was thinking something out and she understood what it was when he spoke again. “The Jilitera have been forbidden to take you away or let you call for help,” he said, “so you want to know if there are other traders who come here.”
“You have it.”
“You’ve been here almost half a year. Do you understand that even with the cherar you drink and the purging you’ve forced on yourself, it is not likely you can live away from the tung akar?”
“I don’t know that, though I’m afraid that’s how it’d go.” She sighed. “I have resources if I can reach my friends. With enough coin you can buy almost anything.” She held up her hand to stop his objection. “Out where I come from, I mean.”