Moongather by Jo Clayton Read Free Book Online Page A

child, if there’s anything you need, call for it and my servants will bring it.”
    When he’d disappeared below, invisible hands fetched a basin of warm soapy water and bathed her face. They brought her more water to drink and a savory broth to fill some of the emptiness inside her. They tended her neatly and impersonally, went away as soon as they were done. Serroi crouched against the humming mast, the only thing that seemed real and comforting, too sick to care.
    Twice more she succumbed to the urgency of her stomach. The hands cleaned her up and left her alone. Finally she managed to sleep and found to her surprise that when she woke, her body had adapted to the dip and fall of the ship. She sat up, pushed aside her blankets, blinking at the sun which shone directly in her eyes as it dipped to its lowest point near the horizon. “Hands,” she called. “I’m starved. Bring me something to eat.”
    A moment later she had a platter of steaming rolls with butter and jam, a pot of cha and a dainty small cup with no handle and long thin slices of cream-colored posser flesh. She sniffed, grinned, began eating hungrily. The wind was crisp and fresh even filtered through her invisible walls, the sea jewel blue, singing past the sides, rising and falling like a breathing beast. Fish leaepd in schools from the water making tiny whistling sounds like damp, iridescent birds.
    When she finished her meal, she submitted to the invisible hands while they bathed her and brought her fresh clothing, more things her mother had packed away for her. With their usual wordless efficiency they polished her and the deck until both were painfully clean, then they left. Serroi shook out her tether, wrinkled her nose at it, then moved toward the railing, testing how much range of movement she was going to have. The rope proved long enough to let her lean on the rail and stare down at the water hissing past.
    A whale broached nearby. Breaking water first, its back was a shining curve of dark grey with black mottles like sooty hand prints. It spouted a rush of steam, then sounded with a comic flirting of its tail flukes. Laughing her delight, Serroi raced back along the rail, the rope whipping behind her until it pulled her to a stop, She leaned out over the rail, still laughing, her eye-spot tingling. She called the whale back, clapped her hands in joy as it played with the ship, loosing it finally when it began to chafe at the restraints she put on it.
    Birds flew by overhead, riding the wind that drove the ship. Sometimes they settled around Serroi to preen russet, gold, green, or blue fur with long narrow tongues, to search each other for fur-mites, crunching them between tiny dagger teeth lining the lips of their leathery beaks. Serroi scratched at small heads, coaxed some of the birds into her lap where they twittered with pleasure under the probing of her fingers.
    The ship moved south without pause, the days growing shorter and the stars shifted into new patterns. Serroi contented herself with the birds and the creatures of the sea, left utterly alone by Ser Noris. Yet she wasn’t lonely; her happiest times had always been when she ran and played with the animals drawn to her by the siren-song of the eye-spot. These days were an endless playtime without the painful and often incomprehensible demands of adults. The rope confined her and at the same time freed her from the need of watching her feet so she ran heedlessly about, tagging the birds, racing the fish that sometimes leaped the rail and slid across the deck into the sea on the far side.
    The ship danced southward until days and nights matched and the winds were warm as her own breath—always no land, only the blue water, the blue sky and the mage wind blowing them into summer. Her life in her father’s wagon following the vinat faded into vague dreams. She had a child’s perception of time, the hours stretching out and out until one day was