Sunleaf laughed. “Oh, trust me, it’s in my own best interest,” he answered, and from across the clearing, Darian saw him wink. “I know what she’d do to me if she found out we had a party without her!”
“Do to you? Have pity, I have to sleep with her - what do you think she’d do to me? I’d be afraid to close my eyes!” Since the attendees at this little celebration were all males, and mostly bachelors, the entire gathering laughed at both of them, and Darian was momentarily ashamed to speak so of Keisha. On the other hand, Snowfire has said the same thing about Nightwind, to her face, and she just pretends to threaten him. “We should keep it very casual, but give Keisha and the other girls a chance to dress up.” There; that should make up for his lapse.
One of the hertasi that had adopted Darian and Keisha - a young striped male called Meeren - was picking up discarded and empty cups. At this sally, he hissed a laugh of his own. “Very well, then, do not worry about the preparations,” the leather-capped hertasi put in. “It is of manageable difficulty. In fact, with this much notice, we can have a few delicacies set aside for you. I will arrange for the official party to take place when Keisha returns.”
Darian relaxed; Meeren was one of Ayshen’s most valued assistants, a specialist in logistics. Whatever Meeren organized was certain to be a success.
Now the young hertasi turned to sweep the clearing with his gaze, his tail counterbalancing his movement as he turned. “And what Dar’ian has said makes me think. Do you young Tayledras think to be inviting some females, so that Keisha will not be the only one of her gender here? It will not only be Keisha who is disappointed to learn that there was a gathering to which no one thought to bring a friend.”
“That’s an even better idea - how did this end up as an all-male party, anyway?” asked Wintersky, looking around himself in astonishment. One of the shaych scouts replied with a laugh, “We were just lucky?”
“Don’t ask me - I was the last one to be invited,” Darian countered, tossing a cushion at the scout. “It wasn’t any idea of mine!”
Keisha was unusually glad to see the entrance of the Vale ahead of her. The twin pillars with the shimmer of the Veil between them beckoned her with all the warmth and welcome of an old friend. She was equally glad to ride through the cool shadows under moss-covered trunks and dismount at her very own door again. She removed the panniers resting across the back of her dyheli, but before she could touch the tack, a hertasi had come and taken it, and the dyheli trotted off to rejoin his herd.
How do they do that? Appear out of nowhere and just take over things? She stared at the retreating hertasi tail. I am never going to get used to it. It’s like they are always around, and always watching, no matter what we do - and then they know what we need next. She picked up the empty panniers, one in each hand, and with her foot nudged open the green- painted door.
It wasn’t that she was tired - that was far from the case; she had enjoyed the ride back enormously. Spring was her favorite season, and this spring was turning out to be particularly lovely. So far it had rained just enough, and only at night, so that blue skies graced the daylight hours. Everything was growing or in bloom. There were already spring vegetables coming in to the market, weeks before the usual time. It hadn’t been too cold or too hot. In fact, if the entire region had been seated beneath a Veil, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect.
No, the problem was not that Keisha was tired - unless it was that she was tired of Errold’s Grove. When she returned to her childhood home, she increasingly felt as if she was trying to squeeze into clothing that she had long since outgrown. Every time she made her weekly visit it was the same thing, whereas the Vale was constantly changing. The only change in the village was the occasional new pile of rocks, a fresh border around a flower bed, or a new shirt worn out-of-season so that everybody noticed. Other than that, it was the same little complaints, the same village gossip -
The same lectures from Mother about still being single.
She dropped her panniers into their corner, and frowned, feeling a sullen anger well up in her again. Back in Errold’s Grove she had fought it down, but now she allowed herself to admit it. I wanted so badly to tell her exactly what I thought. What was so bad about not being married? It wasn’t as if she was the only one in the family expected to produce grandchildren - there were already two squalling infants bearing the Alder name and features, one each from her two oldest brothers. What on earth could she do as a married woman - besides produce legitimate grandchildren - that she couldn’t do as a single one? Could she be any more valued? Would she have any higher rank?
If she doesn’t stop giving me the “you’ll grow old, lonely, and abandoned” lecture every time I’m ready to leave, I swear, I’m going to stop visiting her, Keisha thought sullenly. What’s more, I’ll let everyone in the village knoiv why I stopped visiting her!
She wouldn’t and she knew it, but the idea was very, very tempting. As she walked into the outer room with its comfortable furnishings of woven branches and overstuffed beige cushions, its walls of soft cream, and tiled floor, she took her first completely free breath since she’d left. This was home, from the mask and decorated gryphon-feather hanging on the wall, gifts from Firesong and Silverfox, to the flowering vines around the skylight of the bathing room.
I’m stale, that’s what it is. All I ever see these days are farm animals, idiot men as dumb as farm animals, women as stubborn as farm animals, pregnant mothers-to-be, cuts and scrapes, and the occasional sniffle. It wasn’t that she wanted Errold’s Grove to suffer a disaster. Nothing of the sort could be farther from her mind! But she didn’t even get to see the interesting diseases the Northern tribes brought down with them anymore. The Sanctuary Healers got all of those. All she was left with were the all-too-ordinary
