(which were still sore from carrying her yesterday). But this didn’t at all look like the river I remembered. By picking a zigzag way on the high point of the shoals I was never more than waist deep, and could hold Melle up well enough, except in one place where the current ran fast and deep alongside an islet of gravel. There I told her to hold tight to the rope around my waist and keep her head up the best she could, and I waded in, swam the few yards to the gravel bar, and wallowed ashore, Melle went under only at the last moment, when she thought she could touch bottom and couldn’t. She came up choking and sputtering.
After that we had only shallow waters to wade, and soon came to the far shore.
As we sat getting our breath, drying out, and putting on our shoes, I said, “We’ve crossed the first of the two great rivers we have to cross. This is the land of Bendile.”
“The hero Hamneda had to swim across a river when he was wounded, didn’t he?”
I can’t say how much that touched me. It wasn’t that she’d learned the story of Hamneda from me. It was that she thought of him, that he was familiar to her mind and heart as he was to mine. We had a common language, this child and I, a language I hadn’t spoken with anyone else since I left my own childhood in Etra. I put my arm around her little thin shoulders, and she wriggled against me comfortably.
“Let’s go find a village and buy some food,” I said. “Hold on, though. Let me get some money out so I don’t wave all of it in people’s faces.” I dug into my pack and brought out the heavy little silk pouch. A faint, smoky Cuga-reek still clung to it, or maybe it had just been close to the smoked fish from Ferusi. I untied the cord, opened the pouch, and stared. I remembered what it had held: bronzes, and four silver pieces. But along with the bronzes there were now nine silver pieces, four of the gold pieces from Pagadi called dictators, and a broad gold coin from Ansul.
My Cuga had been a thief as well as a runaway.
“I can’t carry this!” I said, I looked at the money with horror. All I saw was the danger it posed us if anyone should get the slightest notion that we carried such a fortune. It was in my mind to simply dump the gold pieces out in the grass and gravel and leave them.
“Did somebody give it to you?”
I nodded, speechless.
“You can sew up money in clothes to hide it,” Melle said, handling the dictators with admiring curiosity, “These are pretty, but the big one is the prettiest. Have you got a needle and thread?”
“Only fish hooks and fishing line.”
“Well, maybe I can get some sewing things in a village. Maybe there’ll be a pedlar on the road. I can sew.”
“So can I,” I said stupidly. “Well, all I can do now is put it back. I wish I hadn’t found it.”
“Is it a lot of money?”
I nodded.
She was still studying the coins. “C—I—City of P—A—C—something—”
“Pagadi,” I said,
“Oh, the words go all the way round. State and City of Pagadi Year 8 something.” Her head was bent over the coin just as it had used to bend over her reading in Barna’s house, in the lamplight in Diero’s room. She looked up and smiled at me as she handed it back. Her eyes were luminous.
I kept out a few quarter- and half-bronzes and hid the pouch away again. We walked on up along the river, for there was a clear path. After we had gone for an hour or more, Melle said, “Maybe when we get to the city where we’re going we can find out where my sister is and buy her from the soldiers with the gold.”
“Maybe we can,” I said, my heart twisting again.
Presently I added in my anxiety, “But we can’t talk about it. At all.”
“I won’t,” she said. She never did.
Following the river as it took a sharp turn north we came that afternoon to a fair-sized town. I summoned up my courage to enter it. Melle seemed quite fearless, trusting in my strength and wisdom. We walked boldly into the marketplace and bought ourselves food. I bought a blanket for Melle which she could also wear as a poncho, and haggled for a little case containing a stout needle and a hank of linen thread. People wanted to talk with us, asking us where we were from and where we were bound. I told my story, and “student of the University” was mysterious enough to most people that they didn’t know what further questions to ask. The plump, snaggletoothed woman who was demanding a quarter-bronze for the thread and needle looked at Melle with compassion and said, “I can see it must be a terrible hard life for a little fellow, studenting!”
“He was sick all last winter,” I said.
“Was he then? What’s your name, sonny boy?”
“Miv,” Melle said calmly.
“I’m sure your brother takes good care of you and doesn’t let you walk too far,” the woman said. And perhaps because she’d seen that I wasn’t going to pay such a price as she asked, or for a better reason, she went on, “And this is for you, to keep you safe on your journey—a gift, a gift, I wouldn’t ask money of a child for the blessing of Ennu!” She held out a little figure of a cat, carved of dark wood, with a copper wire round its neck to hang it from as a pendant; there were several such little Ennu-Mes on her tray. Melle looked up at me with big eyes. I remembered she and Irad had worn such figures on a necklace, though these were finer than what they’d had. I handed the woman her extortionate price and nodded to Melle to take the carving.
She clutched it in her hand and held her hand tight to the base of her throat.
I felt unexpectedly easy and safe in the marketplace. We were strangers among strangers, lost in a crowd, not isolated, solitary travelers in a wilderness. A booth was selling some kind of sweet fried cake that smelled delicious. “Let’s have some of that,” I said to Melle, and when we each had a hot cake in hand we sat down on the broad edge of a fountain in the shade to eat them. They were greasy and heavy, and Melle got through only about half of hers. I looked at her sidelong, seeing what the snaggletoothed woman had seen: that this was a very thin little child who looked on the point of exhaustion.
“Are you tired, Miv?” I said.
After a slight struggle with herself she hunched her shoulders and nodded.
“Let’s stay at an inn. We won’t often get a chance to, I expect. This is a nice town,” I said, recklessly. “You got cold crossing the river. You walked a long way today You deserve a real bed tonight.”
She hunched up some more and looked down at her greasy cake. She showed it to me. “Can you eat it, Beaky?” she whispered.
“I can eat anything, Squeaky,” I said, proving it. “Now come on. There was an inn back there just off the market square.”
The innkeepers wife took an interest in Melle—evidently my companion was a passport to people’s sympathy. We were given a nice little room at the back of the house, with a wide, short bed. Melle climbed up on the bed at once and curled up. She still held her Ennu-Me tight in her hand. She was wearing her new poncho and didn’t want to take it off. “It keeps me warm,” she said, but I saw she was shivering. I covered her over, and she fell asleep soon. I sat in the chair by the window. It was a long time since I’d sat in a chair, since I’d been in a great, solid house like this, very different from the huts in the Marshes with their walls of reed. I took my book out and read for a while. I knew the
I brought her back a bowl of chicken broth, and she roused up to drink it, but drank very little; she was feverish, I thought. I consulted with the innkeeper’s wife, Ameno, who had the hearty, jolly manner of her trade, but underneath it seemed a quiet, serious woman. She came and looked at Melle and said she might have caught something or might just be very tired. She said, “Go on and have your supper, I’ll keep the fire up, and look in at the child.” She had persuaded Melle to let her have the little cat figure so she could put it on a necklace, Melle was watching her braid thread for the necklace, and dozing off again. I went to the common room and had an excellent supper of roast mutton, which made me think with affection and pain of Chamry Bern.
We stayed at the inn in Rami four nights. It didn’t take Ameno long to let me know she knew Melle wasn’t a boy, but she asked no questions—it was clear enough why a girl might want to travel as a boy—and dropped no
