Diut
I decided to push Alanna into a liaison with one of my judges. She had stayed with the artisans for a full season—long enough. It was time for her to be treated as the adult she was. I thought a judge would be best for her because the proportions of her body were much like those of a judge. She was tall and slender. Her bones were large, but because of her height, they did not seem so. She presented a false image of fragility. I would choose a judge for her. So.
But I chose no one. Other matters held my attention and I left Alanna with the artisans until she got into trouble. A hunter—a low hunter, but not as low as he should have been—chose to make her the victim of his frustration. Her season with the artisans probably helped him to believe that she was of no importance. Else why had she been left in subjection to others for so long? And her coloring gave her no protection. The hunter could not see her as blue enough to be dangerous to him or yellow enough to be a nonfighter whom he must not harm.
Thus, there was the foolish confrontation.
Alanna had been ordered to help the farmers down in our hidden valley. They were digging up the year’s first harvest, and at the same time, sowing the seeds of the second. Alanna was carrying a large basket of ohkahs when her trouble began. She was taking them to the storerooms. The hunter, also drafted temporarily into helping with the harvest, was in a foul mood and eager to humiliate another person since he felt himself humiliated by such “low” work. As Alanna walked past him, he thrust his digging prongs between her feet.
She tripped and fell onto the rocks, scattering spilled ohkahs over a wide area. I was standing not far away talking to a pair of judges. I saw Alanna look up at the hunter and see the white in his coloring. Her hand closed on what I first thought was a small ohkah, and she hurled it hard into his face.
The hunter shouted, fell, and did not get up. As I walked toward them, I saw blood on his face. I realized that the woman had thrown a stone not an ohkah. The hunter moaned, tried to get up, and fell back.
Another hunter was advancing on Alanna as I reached her. I spoke to him quietly.
“What do you want with her?”
Anger had driven yellow into his coloring. “Didn’t you see, Tehkohn Hao? She struck Haileh with a stone, a weapon, as though he was an animal.”
“I saw. And what weapon did Haileh use to provoke her?”
The hunter sputtered. “She is a foreigner! She has no right…”
“To defend herself? The lowest animal has that right. You will not interfere with her in any way.”
There was a silence that I did not like and I let my coloring flare.
“I will obey, Tehkohn Hao,” the man said quickly.
I turned to face Alanna and saw that though she had shown no fear of either hunter, she was afraid now. Of me. That was not surprising. I am much larger than any hunter—much larger than Alanna herself. And I am blue. Jeh had said that the blue was not important to her—that she had had to be taught to respect it. But I had other differences—Hao differences. I could not remember a time since my adolescence when there had not been people who stood before me in fear. I spoke to her in the same tone I had used on the hunter.
“Find Gehnahteh or Choh and tell them that your time with them is ended. Then go back to Jeh and Cheah.”
She looked at me for a moment—seemed to force herself to look at me. Then she murmured, “Yes, Tehkohn Hao,” and went away quickly.
I did not like the way she had looked at me. There had been more than fear in her eyes. There was something of the horror that I had seen in the eyes of a friend when he saw for the first time a loathsome poisonous desert animal. My differences repelled her. Her differences interested me. She was ugly almost beyond description, and yet her appearance was as natural to her as mine was to me. She wore it with assurance that was unmistakable, clearly secure in her private belief that we were the ones malformed and ugly. I in particular did not meet her standards.
I felt my coloring flow to white as these thoughts came to me, and I knew—perhaps I had known all along— that I would not choose a judge for her. Not until I had tried her assurance and her strangeness myself.
The morning after Diut escaped, Alanna came to breakfast not to eat but to talk to Jules’s guest, the Mission doctor. She wanted to tell him of a possible solution to the problem of how to bring the Missionaries safely through withdrawal. She had gotten her idea from the Tehkohn, but Dr. Bartholomew wouldn’t care about that. If it made sense to him, he would try it. If it didn’t make sense, he would be able to tell her exactly why. She had always liked that about him, and liked him. He was practical and bluntly honest. He had made no secret of the fact that he disapproved of her at first, but she had won him over. He was one of the few Missionaries whose respect she had worked to win. But he did not arrive.
In his place came his assistant, Nathan James, a man Alanna hardly knew. Nathan was young and thin and balding. Dr. Bartholomew had thought one of the younger people should begin learning to replace him. Just before Alanna had been captured, Nathan had volunteered. But still…
“Nathan,” she said, “isn’t Dr. Bartholomew coming?”
Nathan stared at her, then looked at Jules, who was eating a piece of meklah bread. Alanna looked at Jules and saw that he too was startled.
“Two years,” he muttered. “Of course, how could you know. And it’s such old news to us that I didn’t even think to tell you. The Tehkohn killed Bart, Alanna. They killed him when they took you.”
“But…” Alanna frowned, disbelieving. “Last night, you told Diut… you said the doctor…”
“I meant Nathan. He’s served as our doctor for the past two years. He had some teaching from Bart and he’s been studying Bart’s books.”
“I’ve done the best I could,” said Nathan. “I’ve had time enough. The Tehkohn killed my wife in that same raid.”
Alanna sat down at the table and stared at Jules bleakly. Couldn’t Jules hear the utter loathing in Nathan’s voice when Nathan mentioned the Tehkohn? Nathan had reason to hate, of course. An irreplaceable teacher lost, a
