"What is that?" Elenya asked. Meyr had just come out of the tent, carrying a small bundle.
The girl paused, eyes wide, mute. Meyr always did her best to avoid any sort of contact with her strange "parent." Finally, still without comment, she held out the object.
Elenya let it unfold, and recognized it. At the same time, Peyri stepped out, noticed the pair, and hurried forward. It was she who answered the question.
"It is a tent for thepulstrall. A boy will use it during part of the time he is at the oasis."
"What boy?"
"Any boy. It doesn't matter. She is required to make one."
"Why?"
Peyri hesitated. Suddenly she turned to Meyr and said, "Take it to Clan Mother. She is waiting."
Meyr nodded submissively, gingerly lifted the tent out of Elenya's hands, and scurried away.
Peyri sighed. "This is not a matter that men need be interested in."
"Is it forbidden?" Elenya said testily.
"No," Peyri admitted.
"Then tell me. I'm just curious. It's not as if I'm plotting something."
Peyri hesitated. Always, the internal debate. The women never were sure how to act with Elenya. A true Zyraii, no doubt, would not have asked his wife such a question. Finally, Peyri said, "Last year, Meyr began her bleeding."
Elenya raised her eyebrows. "So?"
"You don't understand? It is time for her to be a woman."
"Of course it is," Elenya said. "Is there something unusual about that?"
"I don't think being a woman in your land is the same as being a woman here."
"That's true."
Peyri continued, "To become a woman of the Zyraii, she is taught all she will need to be a wife. In the year after she starts to bleed, she must show that she can do all of these things alone. She must be able to cook both the common foods and the ritual ones. She must make a garment for every member of her family. She must cure hides. She must understand how to please her husband when she goes to his bed, and how to prevent the children from happening at the wrong time. The last thing is to make the tents for the boys to use in thepulstrall. Now she can be married. When the new men come back from Shom, she will be ready."
"Meyr is going to be married?" Elenya said, surprised.
"No. Shecan be married. A man must want her. Sesheer has been of age for two years now, but no one has asked to wed her."
Now, out in the desert, Elenya debated with herself as to which was the easier rituaclass="underline" the abrupt but respected one demanded of the males or the drawn-out, unpublicized female one.
With her luck, she was glad not to have to endure both.
Task done, she squirmed feet first into the cloth cocoon she had created. She wondered who had ended up with Meyr's tent.
Alemar awoke to the sensation of something creeping down his neck. He sat up so fast he lifted the hide off one of its poles and collapsed the tent.
Sand trickled down his spine.
The moons told him it was a few hours before dawn. Nothing stirred, except the air flowing over the dune, bearing with it the fine spray of granules picked up from the earth. Small drifts had piled up against Alemar's sleeping body, until it had entered his collar. Irritated, he stood up and shook out his clothing.
He realized immediately what he had done. In this particular region, the prevailing winds always changed direction shortly after midnight. He had left the open end of his tent exposed to them. Wearily, disgusted with himself, he proceeded to uproot his shelter and reconstruct it facing the other way.
Dawn smelled imminent, but the sky offered only diamonds on black velvet. Elenya couldn't make herself sleep any longer. She began to tremble, though she was perfectly warm inside her blankets. She shifted until her head lay outside the tent, where she could stare upward and feel the faint kiss of dew landing on her face.
A billion stars, a billion grains of sand. And her. One woman, man, man/woman. Who was she? A bastard child on a quest, sent by a father she had scarcely ever seen. One half of a set of twins.
She couldn't understand why she wasn't happy to be away from the Zyraii. She didn't belong with them. They all treated her like an aberration. The strange man with tits. An embarrassment. Did Lonal really think that the other tribes would play along with the farce? How could the T'lil themselves have accepted it so blithely? She wished she were God; it was handy to have people obey you to the point of denying their own sight and touch.
The jumping rat could derive enough moisture from the dew and the seeds it consumed to never need a true drink. That was the sort of creature that belonged here. Not a woman.
She reached into her collar and pulled out her necklace. The jewel was agonizingly faint, a small green flicker now and then. Alemar was miles away. But at least he was there.
Alemar felt the tiny pulse of heat on his chest and knew at once it was the amulet. It said nothing articulate, only that there was someone else thinking of him. He hung on to the knowledge, the faint chitters and rustles of dawn desert life failing to bring him out of his soliloquy.
A new day. Soon it would be a new month, a new year. Would he still be here in the desert? Or would there be a path suddenly open in front of him, making his course of decision clear? He knew what had been expected of him when he departed for this country. He could guess at Lonal's plans for him. He hadn't resisted either influence on his life. That struck him as strange. He should have some idea whathe wanted to do with himself. He was over twenty years of age now; yet still he let others lead him.
What were the choices? To plow ahead with his and Elenya's original quest, and ignore the lessons in prudence they had gained from the Zyraii? To return home empty-handed? He hadn't felt such lack of direction since his mother had died.
It startled him to think of her. She wasn't so long dead that he forgot her often. No, what surprised him was that he had not recently felt the disconnectedness her passing had created. No one could replace her as an individual, but the sense of a home, a place he belonged, had not been fretting him. Foreign though it was, he now had a family and, transient though it was, a home. He didn't know whether to be grateful or to grieve. He realized he had been touched irrevocably by Zyraii.
He got up. The next year would come soon enough. Best to take this day all by itself first.
XVIII
IN THE FIRST WEEKSafter Ethmurl had gone, Lerina liked to spend middays meandering along the high bluffs. The fog would usually be well off the coast, providing her with a broad view of the ocean while she herself was camouflaged by the forest. She would watch as the ships of the Dragon's blockade maintained their patrols, catch glimpses of the fishing boats of her own people, and imagine that she saw other craft, always at the horizon or on the edges of incoming fog banks. Those who knew her might have thought her behavior odd, but ever since puberty she had habitually spent long periods alone away from the hold, and none were the wiser that she was now haunting the woods more than the beaches.
This day she broke her ritual, cutting short the time spent watching the Dragon Sea, and drifted deeper into the trees. Inland, Garthmorron was a treasury of virgin lumber, little exploited since the Elandri war had disrupted trade between Cilendrodel and the civilized world. The roads were infrequent and seldom travelled. The forest devoured her, the subdued light beneath the canopy guiding her toward her objective. Before long she found it, growing at the base of one of the mammoth trunks.
The shrub was in flower – tiny white blossoms to accent the earth tones surrounding them – but the abundant, delicate leaves were what she wanted. She stripped off a few handfuls, sniffed them, and wrinkled her nose. She folded the leaves into a piece of cloth and stood up.