The Silences of Home by Caitlin Sweet Read Free Book Online Page B

until the children arrive. Please.”
    His forefinger drew lazy circles around each of her knuckles. “I’ll be happy to. As long as I’m not keeping you from your important work.”
    She could not see the houses or the river or the lengthening shadows. She could not see if there was anyone waiting for her by the plants. “Talk to me,” she said again, and smiled at him.
    “Serran.” The child looks up at Nellyn as he puts his hand on her shoulder. “Tell me—your teacher is here? Not . . . gone away?”
    Serran shakes her head. “She is here.”
    He nods and looks again at the tents on the ridge. Already they are difficult to see: the sky is blotted with clouds. Not rain clouds; those are behind, advancing with the thunder.
    “May I play?” the girl asks, and he turns back to her and smiles.
    “Yes, small one. Thank you.” He watches her walk to where the other small shonyn are, gathered by the dry bank below the wise ones’ stones. The river is very low; the flatboat poles are hardly wet, when he and the others raise them up. Lynanyn they do not pick from the water lie on the opposite bank, their skins split and oozing into the dust.
    Nellyn has not seen Lanara from the bank or the village, and he has not gone up to the tents. He wonders whether a Queensship has come during the day and taken her away again—but he knows that this cannot have happened so quickly and silently.
Because she does not come to me, I think she must be gone
, he thinks, and sighs at his own foolishness.
    “A man is here,” Maarenn says later as the flatboat rocks beneath them. Nellyn kneels facing her and does not speak. “A Queensman,” she continues, “with Lanara Queenswoman. I hear his voice at sundown, and there is a small tent with an animal inside.” He feels her eyes on him in the cloud-thickened darkness. “She does not speak to you now?”
    “No,” Nellyn says, and tries to smile. “You are curious about these things, even though ‘their doings are of no interest to you.’” His voice deepens and slows. She laughs at his imitation of a wise one.
    “Even though,” she agrees. “And you too are curious, gathering companion, though you do not speak of it and only stare at her tent with large eyes.” She rolls a lynanyn toward him. It bumps his knee gently. “Take care,” she says quietly. “Remember who you are.”
    He does not sleep at all that day. The sunlight on his walls is muted, almost grey. When he ducks outside, he sees that the bank of cloud in the west is crackling with white light. The sand beneath his feet is warm, not hot as it was on the day he went up to Soral’s tent. But as on that day, Nellyn hears voices. Hers and a man’s, low and laughing—and with them another sound, like someone striking a flatboat pole repeatedly into the sand.
    They are standing beyond the third tent; Nellyn stays behind it and watches them. Lanara is holding her bow, pulling back a string and an arrow very slowly. When she opens her right hand, the arrow sings, then sinks into a tall cactus. The cactus tips slightly. It is supported by several rocks, not by roots, and Nellyn thinks,
That man tears it from the earth and brings it here.
The man is beside Lanara. He too wears blue and green, though the colours are more faded than hers. He grins down at her, his teeth glinting suddenly from the hair around his mouth. “Not bad,” Nellyn hears him say, “for a Luhran female.” She pretends to shove him and he pretends to stumble. Nellyn sees her smile and turns away.
    He still does not sleep. He lies with his eyes closed, he lies with them open. “Our sleep is our strength,” the wise ones say—and he realizes the truth of this as he bends to gather lynanyn with fumbling hands. His limbs feel heavy and clumsy. His eyes ache until he rubs them, and then they burn. When he speaks, his tongue drags over his teeth.
    He listens to the breathing of his sleeping companions and thinks of the Queensman. He imagines