Pryn turned.
Trees fell back from the wagon’s far side.
Grinning over his shoulder and shaking his head, the driver pulled up before a thatched shack.
In the yard, beside some pots and baskets, an old woman had set up her loom. She pulled back on the tamper, thrust her shuttle through the strings, tamped again, then leaned forward in her threadbare shift and twisted the intricately ridged and ribbed stick that reversed the height of the alternates. The shuttle shot through shaking strings.
‘All right, Auntie!’ Juni called. ‘Will you come with us? I told you I’d stop by for you again. Here we are!’
‘Go on,’ the old woman said. ‘The Festival’s for young people. Not for me — nobody wants me there. Besides, I have too much to do.’ She bent down to turn over a handful of coarse yarn in one of the pots.
‘But it’s a holiday, Auntie,’ Juni said. ‘You’re not supposed to work today.’
’I’ll work if I want to. It’s the Labor Festival. I want to labor. You young people don’t know what work is. Go on, now. You don’t want me around. I don’t know how to have a good time — I hear you say it. And you’re right.’
‘Well, you might learn if you’d come!’
‘I don’t like jouncing in wagons. My bones are too brittle.’ She tamped, sent the shuttle back, leaned forward, and gave a sharp twist to the separator. ‘You won’t stay past three o’clock yourself — I know you. You’ll be back early; you always are. Who wants to watch a bunch of drunken men, impertinent slaves, and crude forest folk all pretend they like each other till they can’t keep it up any longer and fall to fighting — when they’re not getting sick all over themselves! There’s bound to be an accident. You know, there was a drowning down there three years ago. People get careless at these things, go drown themselves, if not each other.’
A man leaning on one knee said: ‘I was there three years ago. Nobody got drowned!’
‘It was seven years ago,’ a woman near him whispered. ‘No, eight — nine years now, I think! But she always says three. She doesn’t really remember. She says it every year.’
‘There was a drowning three years ago. I haven’t gone since, and I’m not going now. Thank you for your trouble. Now get on your way!’
‘Are you sure, Auntie?’
‘I said I wasn’t going.’ She leaned, she twisted. ‘How sure does a woman have to be…?’
Juni sighed loudly and sat back from the rail.
The driver had watched it all. Laughing, he turned to the horses and started the wagon.
The shuttle shot.
Juni turned from the rail on her knees. ‘Well, I tried.’ She crawled back between grinning workers across the straw to Pryn’s side. ‘Everybody saw me. She just won’t come.’
From the yard the old woman called: ‘You can tell me about it when you come back this afternoon!’
Juni closed her eyes. ‘Yes, Auntie! Goodbye, Auntie!’ She opened them and sat back. ‘Well, I did try. But there’s no changing her.’
With some assurance that she was not being pursued by omnipotent powers, Pryn let herself smile.
‘She’s not really my aunt, you know,’ Juni said. ‘She’s my older cousin — she’s really a good sort. You wouldn’t believe it, but she used to have a reputation as the girl who always danced till moon-down. But that was a long time ago, and such things change. I hope I don’t — though I suppose I will. It’s bound to be a family thing, don’t you think? But then, she’s only a cousin — .’
Pryn thought: I’ll stay a few hours at the beach, then head back for the north road. Maybe I’ll only stop a day or two at Kolhari, before I make my way further north…? No, Kolhari deserved at least a week. A few weeks, even; or months…She didn’t want to return to Ellamon. Somehow, though, it was easier now both to be here — and to leave.
Trees dropped back from Pryn’s side of the wagon. Beyond dense brambles, she saw the thatched roofs of several distant buildings.
Juni leaned toward her. ‘The dyeing houses…’ She nodded at the far structures. ‘I worked there for a summer, before I came to the brewery. It’s harder work — I suppose you make more money. But Nallet, who owns them, is much more of a stickler than Rorkar. I guess that’s because he’s younger and feels he has to show he won’t take any nonsense. Nallet’s workers will be at the Festival too, of course. But I didn’t really like it there. I’m glad I’ve got the job I have now. Still — ’ She held up the hem of her dress for Pryn to see. Sun through the trees played over the night-dark blue. ‘They do nice stuffs, don’t you think?’
Pryn nodded.
Trees closed around; trees opened. The sun had burned off the overcast. They came in sight of the crowded wagon ahead. Soon they almost overtook it. Someone there started another song. Some people in Pryn’s wagon joined. Juni got into a conversation with some other women.
Pryn looked over the rail at passing pines.
Again trees fell back. On a rocky field where she thought there might easily be the same kind of caves as on Rorkar’s property, Pryn saw a number of long buildings. Beside one stood a dozen plows. Some were small and single-handled; others were large enough to need an animal or a person to haul through the ground.
‘Now that,’ Juni said, ‘used to be the site of our weapons manufactory. Armor, swords, helmets — everything for the soldier and the fighting lord. This whole area used to be known for it. But that was years back, when Auntie was a girl.’
‘Has it become a farm?’ Pryn asked.
Juni laughed. ‘No, silly! They make stone hammers and farm equipment now!’
The wagon rolled.
Someone told her this beach was called Neveryóna. Yes, there were a few old ruins off in the woods, and some ancient foundations out on the islands she could see from here, but nothing to speak of. Was there ever a city? she asked. No, No — true, some folks said as much. But it couldn’t have been more than a village. No, not a city. But the Festivals had always been held here. Pryn was told this out on the sand by a hefty, tow-headed sunburned man of about twenty-one, who had a barbarian accent so thick she could barely understand him. He worked in the dyeing houses and showed her his hands to prove it, if she didn’t believe him! Yes, this was where they’d had the Festivals in his parents’ time; and in his parents’ parents’.
Was it sacred to some god, perhaps, Pryn wanted to know.
No.
Well, had it ever been sacred to some god — perhaps a great dragon god, guardian of the ruins, who lived among the stars?
No. He knew of no such gods around here.
After that she stayed pretty much to herself, sitting at the edge of the grass with her feet on the sand, looking out across the inlet to the gray hills or off at the glittering sea. It wasn’t too hard to be alone. There were a lot more people than just the brewery folk — enough, indeed, to populate a small city!
She said that to herself several times.
The friendliness local people can extend to strangers is always, beyond a point, problematic, as Pryn’s stay at Enoch had reminded her. From time to time there had been strangers in Ellamon. From time to time Pryn had made friends with them. But you just couldn’t draw a friend of a week into the alliances, aversions, shared concerns, mutual suspicions, committed bonds and vague acquaintances of a lifetime — not at an affair like this, where any one of those relationships might change in an instant.