I can't become as she is, nor can she become like me. Individual people have always been more important to her than to me. It's my weakness, that I don't have her awareness of other people's feelings. Perhaps, had I been as observant, as empathic as she, I would not have inadvertently said and done the things that made my older brothers hate me so much, and then our whole path through life might have been different, Elya and I might have been friends all along. Instead, even now when Elemak gives me respect as a hunter and listens to me in council, there is still no closeness between us, and Elemak is wary of me, watching for signs that I seek to displace him. Luet, on the other hand, seems to cause no envy among the other women. As Waterseer, she could just as easily be seen as a rival to Mother's dominance over the women as Elemak is the rival to Father's leadership, and I am the rival to Elemak, but instead there is no sense of competition at all. They are one. Why couldn't Elemak and I have been one, and Elemak and Father?
Perhaps there is something lacking in men, so that we can never join together and make one soul out of many. If so then it is a terrible loss. I look at Luet and see how close she is to the other women, even the ones she doesn't like all that well; I see how close she and the other women are to the children; and then I see how distant I am from the other men, and I feel so lonely.
With those thoughts Nafai finally slept, but only a few hours before dawn, and when he got out of bed he found Luet just as weary from undersleeping, stirring the morning porridge virtually in her sleep. "And there's no school today," Luet said, "so we have all the children and there's no hope of a nap."
"Let them play outside," said Nafai, "except the twins of course, and we can probably leave them with Shuya and then we can sleep."
"Or we could take turns ourselves, instead of imposing on them," said Luet.
"Take turns?" said Nafai. "How dull."
"I want to sleep," said Luet. "Why is it that men are never so tired that they stop thinking about that?"
"Men who stop thinking about that, as you so sweetly call it, are either eunuchs or dead."
"We need to tell your parents about Chveya's dream," said Luet.
"We need to tell everybody."
"I don't think so," said Luet. "It would cause too much jealousy."
"Oh, who but you will care about which child was first to have true dreams?" But he knew as he said it that all the parents would care, and that she was right about needing to avoid jealousy.
She made a face at him. "You are so completely above envy, O noble one, that it makes me envious."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"And besides," she said, "it wouldn't be good for Chveya if a big fuss were made about this. Look what happened to Dza when we made her birthday into a festival—she's really quite a bully with the other children, and it worries Shuya, and that public fuss only made her worse."
"There are times when I see her making the other children run meaningless errands for her that I want to slap her silly," said Nafai.
"But Lady Rasa says –"
"That children must be free to establish their own society, and deal with tyranny in their own way, I know," said Nafai. "But I can't help but wonder if she's right. After all, hers was an educational theory that thrived only in the womb of Basilica. Couldn't we see our own conflicts early on in our journeying as a result of exactly her attitude?"
"No, we couldn't," said Luet. "Particularly because the people who caused the most trouble were the ones who spent the least time being educated by Lady Rasa. Namely Elemak and Mebbekew, who left her school as soon as they came of age to decide for themselves, and Vas and Obring, who were never students of hers."
"Not so, my dear reductionist, since Zdorab is the best of us and he never studied with her, while Kokor and Sevet, her own daughters, are just as bad as the worst of the others."
"You only prove my point, since they went to Dhelembuvex's school and not your mother's at all. Zdorab is an exception to everything anyway."
At that point the twins, Serp and Spel, toddled into the kitchen, and frank adult conversation was over.
By the time they both got free enough to take a nap, the day's activities had wakened them so thoroughly that they didn't want to sleep. So they headed for Volemak's and Rasa's house to confer about the dream.
On the way they passed a group of older boys competing with their slings. They stopped and watched for a while, mostly to see how their own two older boys, Zhatva and Motiga, were doing. The boys saw them watching, of course, and immediately set out to impress their parents—but it wasn't their prowess with the sling and stones that most interested Luet and Nafai, it was how they were with the other boys. Motiga, of course, was an incessant tease—he was keenly aware of being younger than the other boys and his silly pranks and clowning were his strategy for trying to ingratiate his way into the inner circle. Zhatva, however, being older, was there by right, and what worried his parents was how pliant he was—how he seemed to worship Proya, a strutting cock-of-the-walk who didn't deserve so much of Zhatva's respect.
A typical moment—Xodhya got hit in the arm by Motya's careless swinging of his loaded sling. His eyes immediately filled with tears, and Proya taunted him. "You'll never be a man, Xodhya! You'll always just be coming near!" That was a play on his name, of course, and a rather clever one—but also cruel, and it did nothing but add to Xodhya's misery. Then, without any of the boys being particularly aware of it, Xodhya turned in his misery to Zhyat, who offhandedly threw his arm around Xodhya's shoulder as he barked at his little brother Motya, "Be careful with your sling, monkey brains!"
It was a simple, instinctive thing, but Luet and Nafai smiled at each other when they saw it. Not only did Zhatva offer physical comfort to Xodhya, without a hint of condescension, but also he drew attention away from Xodhya's pain and incipient tears and threw the blame where it rightly belonged, on Motya's carelessness. It was done easily and gracefully, without giving the slightest challenge to Proya's authority among the boys.
"When will Zhyat see that he's the one the other boys turn to when they're in trouble?" asked Nafai.
"Maybe he fills that role so well because he doesn't know that he's filling it."
"I envy him," said Nafai. "If only I could have done that."
"Oh? And why couldn't you?"
"You know me, Luet. I would have been yelling at Protchnu that it wasn't fair for him to tease Xodhya because it was Motya's fault and if it had happened to Protchnu he'd be crying too."
"All true, of course."
"All true, but it would have made Protchnu my enemy," said Nafai. He hardly needed to point out the consequence of that. Hadn't Luet lived through it with him often enough?
"All that matters to me is that our Zhatva has the love of the other boys, and he deserves it," said Luet.
"If only Motya could learn from him."
"Motya's still a baby," said Luet, "and we don't know what he'll be except that it'll be something loud and noticeable and underfoot. The one that I wish could learn from Zhatva is Chveya."
"Yes, well, each child is different," said Nafai. He turned and led Luet away from the stone-slinging and on toward Father and Mother's house. But he well understood Luet's wish: Chveya's loneliness and isolation from the other children was such a worry to them both—she was the only complete misfit among all the older children, and they didn't understand why, because she did nothing to antagonize the others, really. She simply didn't have a place in their childish hierarchies. Or perhaps she had one, but refused to take it. How ironic, thought Nafai—we worry because Zhatva fits in too well in a subservient role, and then we worry because Chveya refuses to accept a subservient role. Maybe what we really want is for our children to be the dominant ones! Maybe I'm trying to see my own ambitions fulfilled in them, and that would be wrong, so I should be content with what they are.