Yen Olass thought of her own people, slaughtered or enslaved by the Yarglat, their homeland laid waste. At least she was still alive. And where there was life, there was hope: or so it was said.
Monogail made no protest when told they were going away. She was too young to understand what it meant.
Yen Olass had said her goodbyes to the lake, to the ruins of House Two and to her tears. Now she said her parting words to Hor-hor-hurulg-murg:
'Till we meet again,' said the Melski gravely. 'Though that will not be in this lifetime.’
Hearing his voice, she realized he was afraid. This time, the Collosnon were coming north in force. Perhaps even the depths of Penvash would not prove a sufficient refuge in the face of such strength – and the Melski had nowhere else to run to.
Yen Olass bowed.
'Be strong,' she said.
'And you, Bear-Fond-Of-Climbing,' said Hor-hor-hurulg-murg.
And he in his turn bowed, and they turned away from each other, and went their own ways.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
'Bears!' said Yen Olass.
Monogail threw herself flat in the sand dunes. She hugged the ground for a little while, then lifted her head to look around.
'Down!' said Yen Olass. 'The bears are very close. I can see them. Big ones. The kind that eat Monogaiis.’
'But you're not down, mam,' said Monogail.
'Today I'm a bear too,' said Yen Olass, 'so I'm safe.’
A little while later, Monogail lifted her head again.
'Maybe the bears are gone now,' said Monogail hopefully.
'No!' said Yen Olass. 'They still want to eat you.’
'Maybe they've eaten a seagull instead.’
'All right,' said Yen Olass, relenting. 'They've eaten a seagull.’
'Ya!' screamed Monogail. 'Seagulls!’
And she went bounding over the sand dunes and down to the beach, giving war whoops and bird screeches. Yen Olass followed sedately, with Quelaquix padding along behind her.
The tide was in, so Yen Olass could not work. Nevertheless, as she walked along the beach she kept her eyes open. She did not feel like lugging great loads of driftwood and seaweed down the beach, but, where she found these valuables – the wood bleached by long days in the ocean currents, the seaweed hulking in great blackening masses – she piled them up above the high tide mark so she could retrieve them later.
Monogail, at the age of five, was spared from work. Not because she was too young to work – elsewhere, children of her age laboured daily to help their families – but because Yen Olass did not choose to impose such obligations upon her daughter. As Yen Olass walked along the beach, with her lyre-cat Quelaquix at her heels, Monogail ran ahead of them, chasing seagulls.
The walk was almost at an end. They were drawing near Skyhaven, their home, a small stone cottage crouching in amongst sand dunes which were stabilized by marram grass and wind-gnarled saltwater pines.
'Come along, Monogail,' said Yen Olass.
But Monogail went larking down the beach after the sunwhite windscrawn gulls, which went wheeling into the air, tilling the sky with their lonely scree-scraw of disaffection.
'Monogail!’
Yen Olass watched as her daughter kicked round in a big circle then started to return, skidding now and then and wheeling into mock falls from which she always recovered, grinning broadly.
'Clean yourself up,' said Yen Olass, 'and go inside.’
Monogail did another circle.
'Come on!' said Yen Olass, clapping her hands. 'Let's horse horse!’
'Let's bear bear,' said Monogail, sprinting for the door. 'Brush the sand off before you go inside!' shouted Yen Olass.
'Let's cat cat!' screamed Monogail, still running. 'Let's gull gull.’
Quelaquix followed, but Yen Olass paused for a moment, and stood looking out to sea. Low, grey cloud concealed the further distances of the ocean. Somewhere out there, almost lost in the cloud, she thought she saw a sail. Was it friendly or hostile? It hardly mattered, either way. There was no need to fear pirates here: for three leagues out from the coast, the sea was a maze of shoals and sandbanks, lethal to any ship foolish enough to venture inshore.
Yen Olass fetched the wooden bucket from the woodshed, where driftwood was heaped up high, then she went to the well. This was protected by three weatherbeaten boards. Yen Olass removed one of them and laid it aside. A little sand fell into the water and lay floating on the surface. She reached down – the well was Qnly elbow-deep – and stirred the water so the sand sank to the bottom.
When Yen Olass stirred the water, she did so very gently, not wanting to disturb the inhabitants. One was Monogail's pet fish Straff, a fingerlength freshwater kel-ling. The other, sitting on top of a rock which poked out of the water, was a yellow harbucker dune frog. Her name – or his, with a frog that small it was hard to tell – was Alamanda. Early in life she had lost a leg to a seagull or a cripple beetle. Finding her under a lenis bush at the edge of the sward pond, Monogail had insisted on keeping her, and Yen Olass had been unable to resist.
Despite these indulgences, Yen Olass had at various times refused house room to a big hairy mottle spider, a rabbit snake, a baby rat and a stink lizard. Fortunately, baby sharks, flatfish, stingrays and jellyfish could not live away from the sea, otherwise Yen Olass would have had other battles on her hands. The last time they had visited Uncle Hearst, he had come into Brennan Harbour on a boat with a dead lynch shark on board; when it was cut open, there had been a dozen live and viable baby sharks inside, almost ready to be born.
Observed intensely by Alamanda, Yen Olass dipped a cup into the well and filled the bucket bit by bit. Straff settled on the bottom, waiting till this procedure was over.
Yen Olass filled the cup one last time, and drank from it. The cold water hurt her mouth, reminding her of the trip she had made to Vinyard the day before, where old Martha had pulled two of her teeth. The pain reminded Yen Olass that in a few more years she would be forty.
She was no longer tempted to pretend she was young. She was definitely middle-aged, and very definitely settled; it seemed that she was destined to grow old here on Carawell, the largest island of the Lesser Teeth, that minor archipelago lying west of Lorp, south of the Ravlish Lands and a little more than a hundred leagues north of the Greater Teeth.
Well, as a place to grow old in, Carawell, otherwise known as Mainland, did have its advantages. Grey, windy and wet, it was nevertheless spared the hardships of snow and ice, thanks to the moderating influence of the surrounding sea. The island communities were small, stable and friendly, and the islands were at peace; the Orfus pirates, who had once seemed to have positively imperial ambitions, had reverted to their old habits of casual raiding, for their present leader, Bluewater Draven (not to be confused with Draven the leper or Battleaxe Draven or the late and unlamented Draven the Womanrider) was a pirate of the old school.
Lying within easy reach of Lorp, the Lesser Teeth traded fish and shark liver oil for wool, mutton and boatbuilding timber; with easy access to the Ravlish Lands, they traded amber and ambergris for knives, fishhooks, nails and soapstone, for Tamarian honey, Dulloway beer and the occasional cask of Renaven wine. Amongst themselves, they traded boats and land, the titles to land being based on traditional family holdings. When Yen Olass had come to Carawell, she had purchased title to Skyhaven from old Gezeldux, paying with her gold, her amber beads and her stone globe filled with stars.
Yen Olass lived free of rates and taxes, for there was no government in the Lesser Teeth. The people were
