"That may be very true, Mere, but what you fail to realize is that the Harper Hall needs more young folk to train up than come to us.
Pierie needs a full-time journeyman, not a vacationing one." Petiron was pacing and robbing his hands together, a sure sign to his spouse of his rising agitation. "Everyone has the right to learning -that is the traditional duty of the Harper Hall. We are desperately short of harpers."
"But people do learn the Teaching Ballads and Songs, as they have here," merelan said. "As I did."
"Only the usual ones, but not all the important ones," Petiron said sternly with a scowl. When he frowned like that, his heavy eyebrows nearly met over the bridge of his aquiline nose. Though she'd never tell him, Merelan adored his eyebrows. "They don't know the Dragon Duty Ballads, for instance."
Merelan suppressed a sigh. Was it only people brought up in strict Harper Hall tradition who believed that Thread would, not just might, return in the next fifty or so turns? Or was their belief merely an extension of the traditions of the Hall?
"You are teaching those, as I am. And I don't think anyone here, now that they've met you and seen me again, would take it amiss if you did suggest that one of the more talented youngsters looked towards the Harper Hall as a life's work."
Petiron gave her a strange look. "You don't?"
She pursed her lips. That tone was his driest and most repressive: the one he reserved for apprentices who had not studied hard enough to suit his exacting standard.
"There was plague, you know, as well as that storm which took many lives from this hold," she said as casually as she could. "This may be a small hold, but to do all that is required properly also takes a fair-sized population. Sometimes there are none to be spared."
"Yet they spared two lads to the Weyr," Petiron said begrudgingly.
Merelan tried to hide her laugh behind her hand but failed, the look of him was so jealous.
"And I suppose you wouldn't have accepted being Searched for the Weyr?"
"I wasn't."
"I know, but if you had been Searched by Benden Weyr, would you not have gone?"
"Well," he said, hedging, "I certainly don't dispute the honour of being Searched... but not everyone Searched Impresses a dragon."
"They Impressed greens," Merelan replied.
"Then they were lucky indeed."
"Neither of them would have been good as harpers," she added, with a twinkle in her eye.
"Now that's not fair, Mere," Petiron replied stiffly.
"Think on it a bit, my darling," she said, and continued neatly folding the clothes which she had laundered that afternoon.
It was Petiron who was almost apoplectic with fear when he heard that Merelan was teaching Robinton to swim.
"But he's only just started walking," he protested. "How can he swim?"
"All our children learn to swim in their first year," Segoina told him. "Preferably before they learn to walk, because they remember swimming from their womb days."
"They what?"
Merelan put a warning hand on Petiron's arm, for his body was rigid with shock at the dangers his son had just been exposed to.
"It's true," Segoina went on. "Ask at the Healer Hall when you return." Petiron recoiled slightly, but Segoina continued affably, "It is the best time to remind a child of what it knew in the womb. And then we don't have to worry so constantly, with us so near the sea as we are." She pointed down the steps to where a gentle surf made white scallops on the equally white sand. "There is a rite of passage which requires a lad to dive from that height," and she pointed to the headland that jutted out a fair distance into the sea, "to prove he is a man."
Petiron visibly swallowed and blinked furiously.
"Do you swim?" Segoina asked blandly.
"Yes, actually I do. We had the Telgar River to learn in."
"It's much easier to swim in the sea than a river. More buoyancy." Segoina turned away before she could catch the apprehensive expression on Petiron's face.
Merelan controlled her amusement. If he hadn't been able to answer positively, it was obvious he feared that she would have immediately appointed herself his instructor. He swam well enough, and the mid-summer races were months away. By then they would be safely back at Harper Hall. She sighed, for she would have liked to stay for the Full Summer Gather when the entire peninsula gathered for races, both in the water and on the water as everyone tested his or her skills at swimming and sailing.
It was as well, Merelan thought as they continued on to their quarters, that he was over the age when he would have been required to make the high dive. That was also a feature of the High Summer Gather. Maybe she could talk him into it ...
He'd learned so much about himself, as well as about how the ordinary people lived. As a lad at Telgar, he had been more inclined to scholarship, which was why he had been sponsored to go to the Harper Hall in the first place. So he had had little chance, as an adult, to expand his horizons – until now. And he'd never looked fitter, or more handsome. Hair down to his shoulders, skin tanned, he was more secure on the back of a runner, could walk a good day's journey, and had done more harpering than his duties at the Hall had ever required of him. If only he could be more in harmony with his own child ...
When Robinton began to talk, she told herself, when he needed to learn things a father should teach his son, then the affection and pride would develop. At least Petiron had shown himself nervous about his child's safety with the swimming business.
That much was obvious when Petiron accompanied spouse and son to the cove beach the next First Day. By then Robinton was paddling happily, not the least bit concerned if he fell under the water, though a white-faced Petiron snatched the sun-browned little body up into his arms, startling Robinton. Wide-eyed with surprise, the boy struggled to be released back into the water which was such fun, the waves lapping bubblingly around his ankles and pushing treasures of flotsam for him to examine. He even gave the next smooth pebble, a very pretty red one with white intrusions making a pattern, to his father to be admired. And Petiron did so, without any prompting from merelan.
When it was handed back to him, Robinton toddled off to place it with the growing pile of unusual objects he had retrieved. Then he was off in another direction, running as fast as his legs would take him to see what his cousins had discovered among the seaweed they had just hauled up on to the beach.
"Sit, love," Merelan said softly, patting the woven reed mat beside her where the sunshade cast a shadow. "He isn't far from help, should it be needed."
"Isn't he younger than the lad of Naylor's?" he asked, with the first sign of paternal comparison he had ever exhibited.
"By two months," Merelan said nonchalantly.
"He's a full hand taller," said Petiron, his tone almost smug.
"He'll be a tall man when he gets his growth," she said. "You're not short, nor were my parents. How were you in height against those brothers of yours?"
"I suspect Forist will be taller but the other three won't make his height," said Petiron, who had never liked his brothers at all.
"Nor yours." Idly she brushed sand out of his heavy dark brown hair, flicking it off his shoulder and giving herself the excuse to touch his warm, smooth skin. She liked his back. He had muscled up a great deal. Not that he would ever carry much flesh: he was too intense to put on weight. But he looked better than he ever had, and she loved him more than ever.
He glanced up at her, saw her look and responded to it. Catching up her hand to his lips, he nibbled at her fingers, never breaking eye contact.
"When Robie takes his afternoon nap, can we find shade somewhere?" he asked, his breath coming a trace faster.