The Floating Islands by Rachel Neumeier Read Free Book Online

word to hurry him.
    Coming back to the bed at last, Trei carefully laid one of these papers down on the bedspread so that Araenè could see it. The paper wavered a little as he put it down, but Trei’s expression was calm. The calm broke a little when he said, “This was Marrè.”
    The drawing, a deceptively simple ink sketch, showed the upper body and face of a girl, not quite a woman, in quarter profile. The girl was elegant, serene, dignified; her hair was up on the side of her head in a young woman’s figure-eight braid. Her hand rested gracefully on a delicate little table before her; a sheet of paper and a quill lay on the table next to her hand, and you could just see that the paper held the very sketch at which you were actually looking.
    But that was not the only echo contained within the sketch: it also showed a mirror that stood beside the girl. In this mirror, you could see her reflected, this time in three-quarters profile. In the mirror, you could see that strands of hair had come loose from the braid to curl around her ear and down the back of her neck. Somehow, there was a different look in her eye in the mirror. Though her expression in the mirror seemed at first glance the same, this angle of view did not give an impression of serenity. In the mirror, there was a hint of mischief in the girl’s eye, a wryness to her mouth, which suggested that her hair would never really be perfect—even that a casual imperfection was something she enjoyed and wanted you to enjoy. That she might be ready to step into womanhood, but not into any staid, demure womanhood. You could imagine this girl dressing up in boys’ clothing and climbing out of windows: it was almost hard to imagine that she never had.
    Araenè looked up, shaking her head. “Your sister drew this? This was her? This is amazing—”
    Trei’s mouth trembled, then tightened. He said after a moment, “Marrè would never have stayed here. In the Floating Islands, I mean. Or at least not in Canpra. Girls … girls stay at home here, don’t they? Girls don’t study or go out or … or anything. Do they?”
    “Girls visit other girls. And then they sit around and gossip about young men and do needlework, and go home and write letters to one another about young men and do more needlework.” Araenè couldn’t help her disdainful tone. “Is it really different in Tolounn?”
    Trei offered a diffident shrug. “Marrè studied drawing and things with the best tutors, and she didn’t have to dress up like a boy to do it. Her tutors—” Trei stopped, and then went on in a low voice, “Her tutors said she should do a showing. Mother was going to arrange it for next spring. Father said she should wait until after she got married, so her fame wouldn’t drive her dowry up too high. But really he was so proud. He said once—he said she would be as famous someday as Kekuonn Terataan—” He stopped again.
    Araenè said nothing. She had a terrible image in her mind of the girl in this drawing, sitting at the table pictured in this sketch, quill in hand and that mischievous look in her eyes, when the poisonous gas and hot ash poured out of the fire-mountain and came down upon Rounn. She didn’t know what to say.
    She was saved from needing to say anything, because at that moment her mother called.
    Trei flinched and gathered up the sketch, taking it and the others back to the desk and putting them again into the large book.
    Araenè got up and prepared to go down the stairs to Mother. But, lingering, she said to Trei, “May I see the other drawings sometime? Would you … You wouldn’t mind showing them to me?”
    Her cousin gave a small nod.
    “And maybe you could tell me about her? Sometime? If you, I mean … if you wouldn’t mind?”
    “I’d like to,” Trei said in a low voice.
    Araenè nodded, and ran out as her mother called once more. The strange detour she’d taken to get home already seemed like a dream, and she refused to think