wrote.”
“Books?” he said in a bewildered voice.
“The book she made me a long time ago, and the ones she wrote when she was sick. They’re in the chest. In the tower room.”
Out of a silence he said, “What good are they to you?
“I want to have them. She made them for me.”
“Take them if you want.”
“I will,” I said, and Roanie stepped back, because in fighting my anger I had gripped her sore knee too hard. I hated my father. He cared nothing for me, nothing for the work my mother had spent her last energy on, nothing for anything but being Brantor of Caspromant and forcing everybody to his will.
I finished with the mare, washed my hands, and went straight to the tower room while I knew my father would not be there. Coaly led me eagerly up the stairs, as if she expected to find Melle there. The room was cold and had a desolate feel to it. I blundered about finding the chest, and put my hand out to find the footboard of the bed. The shawl lay folded on it, the brown shawl my grandmother had woven and my mother had worn when she was cold, when she was dying. I knew the feel of it, the rough softness of the homespun wool. I stooped and buried my face in it. But I did not breathe in the scent of my mother, the faint fragrance I remembered. The shawl smelled of sweat and salt.
“To the window, Coaly,” I said, and we managed to locate the chest. I raised the lid and felt the sheets of linen canvas stacked inside it. There was much more than I could carry one-handed. I felt down among the stiff pieces until I came to the bound book, the first she had made me, the
All I had in mind was to have the book, to have the thing Mother had given me, made for me, left to me. That was enough. So I thought. I put it on the table in my room, where everything had its place and was never out of its place and no one was allowed to touch anything. I went in to supper, and ate in silence with my silent father.
At the end of the meal, he asked, “Did you find the book?” He said the word hesitantly.
I nodded, with a sudden spiteful pleasure, jeering at him in my mind: You don’t know what it is, you don’t know what to do with it, you can’t read!
And when I was alone in my room, I sat at the table for some while, and then deliberately and carefully slipped off the blindfold and took the pads from my eyes.
And saw darkness.
I almost screamed aloud. My heart beat with terror and my head spun, and it was I don’t know how long before I realised that somewhere in front of me hung a shape full of tiny blurred silver specks. I was seeing it. It was the window frame, and the stars.
There was, after all, no light in my room. I would have to go to the kitchen to fetch a flint and steel and a lamp or candle. And what would they say in the kitchen if I asked for such things?
As I grew a little more used to seeing, I could make out the whitish oblong of the book on the table in the starlight. I ran my hand over it, and saw the shadowy movement. To make the movement and to see it gave me such pleasure that I did it again and again. I looked up, and saw the autumn stars. I gazed at them long enough that I saw their slow movement to the west. It was enough.
I put the pads back over my eyes and tied the blindfold carefully, and undressed, and got into bed.
I had never thought for a moment, as I looked at the book and my hand, that I might destroy them; the thought of my perilous gift had not entered my mind; it had been filled with the gift of seeing. Because I could see, could I destroy the stars?
¦ 15 ¦
For many days it was enough to have the pages Melle had written for me, which I brought down to my room and kept in a carved box. I read them every morning at first light, waking when the cocks began to crow, getting up to sit at the table with the blindfold round my forehead, ready to pull it down over my eyes should someone enter the room. I was scrupulous not to look anywhere but at the written leaves, and—once at the beginning, once at the end—up at the window, to see the sky. I reasoned that I could do no harm reading my mother’s writing and looking up into the light.
I was particularly careful, though it was extremely difficult, not to look at Coaly. I longed to see her. If she was in the room, I knew I could not keep my eyes from her; and that idea sent a chill through me. I tried to sit with my hands cupped around my eyes so I could see only the writing, but it was not safe. I shut my eyes and shut poor Coaly out of the room. “Stay,” I told her outside my door, and I heard her tail give a small, obedient thump. I felt like a traitor when I shut the door.
I was often puzzled to know what I was reading, for the linen pages had been put away in the chest in no order and further confused by my carrying them away; and my mother had written down whatever she could remember as it came into her head, often only bits and passages without beginning or end or anything to explain them. When she first began to write, she had put in notes: “This is from the Worship of Ennu my Grandmother taught me, it is for women to speak,” or “I do not know more of this Tale of the Blessed Momu.” Several of the pages were headed “For My Son Orrec of Caspromant.” One of the earlier ones, a legend about the founding of Derris Water, was titled “Drops from the Bucket of the Well of Melle Aulitta of Derris Water and Caspromant, for My Dear Son.” As her illness grew worse, which I could see in the weakness and hastiness of the writing, there were no explanations and more fragments. And instead of stories there were poems and chants, all written out in cramped lines clear across the sheet, so that I only heard the poetry if I spoke it aloud. Some of the later pages were very hard to decipher. The last—it had been the topmost in the trunk, and I had kept it in place—had only a few pale lines written on it. I remembered how she said she was too tired to write any more for a while.
I suppose it seems strange that, after the intense delight of reading these precious gifts my mother left for me, I was willing to close the darkness down on my eyes again and stumble through the day led by a dog. I was not merely willing, I was ready. The only way I could defend Caspromant was by being blind, so I was blind. I had found a redeeming joy to lighten my duty, but it was no less my duty.
I was aware that I hadn’t found this redemption for myself. It was Gry who had said, “You could read them.” It being autumn, she was busy at Roddmant with the harvest and could seldom come over; but as soon as she did, I took her to my room and showed her the box of writings and told her that I was reading them.
She seemed more distracted or embarrassed than pleased, and was in a hurry to leave the room. She had a keener sense than I did, of course, of the risk she ran. People of the domains were by no means strict with girls, and nobody in the Uplands saw anything unseemly in young people riding and walking and talking together outdoors or where other people might come; but for a girl of fifteen to go to a boy’s bedroom was going too far. Rab and Sosso would have scolded us savagely, and worse, some of the others, the spinning women or the kitchen help, might have gossiped. When this possibility finally dawned upon me, I felt my face turn red. We went outdoors without a word, and weren’t easy with each other till we had talked about horses for half an hour.
Then we were able to discuss what I had been reading. I recited one of the chants of Odressel for Gry. It exalted my heart, but she wasn’t much impressed. She preferred stories. I couldn’t explain to her how the poems I read fascinated me. I tried to work out how they were put together, how this word returned, or this sound or rhyme came back, or the beat wove through the words. All this hung in my mind as I went about the rest of the day in the darkness. I would try to fit words of my own into the patterns I had found, and sometimes it worked. That gave me intense, pure pleasure, a pleasure that endured, returning each time I thought of those words, that pattern, that poem.
Gry was low in spirits that day, and again the next time she came. It was rainy October by then, and we sat in the chimney corner to talk. Rab brought us a plate full of oatcakes and I slowly devoured them while Gry sat mostly silent. At last she said, “Orrec, why do you think we have the gifts?”
“To defend our people with.”
“Not mine.”
“No; but you can hunt for them, help them get food, train animals to work for them.”
