Fish Tails by Sheri S. Tepper Read Free Book Online Page B

and easy ways she would not have been able to travel with Trudis, arriving very soon thereafter near the House of the Oracles. It was a short walk from there to her home. Though the Oracles saw her in transit, they took no particular notice, which would have surprised Lillis had she known. The persons/creatures/individuals, he, she, it, or they who had thus far actually directed her life, however, noted with deep concern that instead of looking at least fifteen years younger than her years—­which she usually did—­on this occasion she showed every year plus a few. She was desperately weary and slept for several days without moving.
    Back in Tuckwhip, both Trudis and Gralf Garn discovered parts of the Rule that neither of them had considered. Morning came and Gralf Garn woke in a strange bed with Trudis sprawled beside him. There was no Lillis in the house. He searched the area around the house, the byre, the garden, even the privy. It being the Midsummer morning, no one was around to ask if anyone had seen Lillis going somewhere to do some healing. To say Gralf Garn was astonished was to say too much; the man was not capable of astonishment, for he had only two, perhaps three, emotions. There was the pleasant feeling of being drunk. There was the edgy feeling of being hungry or lustful. And there was often the heat of anger.
    The worst of it was that when he followed Trudis home, he had not considered that Lillis wouldn’t be there. So far as Gralf had planned—­and he had actually planned to meet Trudis that morning—­Lillis had been the most important part of the deal. Lillis was needed for several reasons. One of them was that she could cook. There were other important reasons also, one of which he had anticipated forcibly explaining to her, so he actually put down his bottle and decided to hunt her down! Everyone else was sleeping off a drunk, with another two nights of being drunk to look forward to. He had no luck at all in getting anyone to go with him to look for her.
    Of his three emotions, anger seemed the most applicable. Trudis was surprised to find herself receiving both the blame for no tea water and the violent chastisement that accompanied it. She went to complain to her mother and was again surprised. Within a few days she had grown accustomed to the reality of constant surprise and constantly being hit for it. That was the way she would live in Hench Valley with Ma Healer gone. Trudis being Trudis, she soon decided being hit was easier than doing anything to prevent it.
    Bein’ hit required no effort at all. She soon didn’t even bother to yell, and Gralf soon gave up hittin’ as useless.
    L ILLIS HAD GROWN UP ON a small farmlike place with an oddly assorted pack of relations and quasi-­relations. There was an uncle who spoke several languages, an aunt who had been a surgeon, two ­people Lillis had thought of as moms, one of whom had actually given birth to her, though Lillis was never certain which of them it was. Both of them knew about animals and farming. There was a man she called Poppa who might have been her father and who had certainly read every book ever written about the history of Earth. There were also several uncles and cousins who knew frighteningly exhaustive information about “onomies” or “ologies” from astro to zoo. All these ­people came and went; all of them had spent time with Lillis, who had learned to read at age three and had been kept well supplied with books ever since. It had not occurred to Lillis that she was being “managed” in any way, nor did it occur to those who helped in the matter that they were “managing” her. It was simply what ­people did with young ones.
    The Oracles had arrived in the vicinity around the time Lillis was born. No one saw them arrive; they were simply there, occupying a series of well-­explored and rather boring caves that had been, seemingly overnight,