Mort

'Oh. Nothing. Nothing much, really. Sorry.'

Ysabell sighed and stood up.

'I expect you'll be wanting to get off,' she said. 'I'm glad we got this marriage business sorted out. It was quite nice talking to you.'

'We could have a sort of hate-hate relationship,' said Mort.

'I don't normally get to talk with the people father works with.' She appeared to be unable to draw herself away, as though she was waiting for Mort to say something else.

'Well, you wouldn't,' was all he could think of.

'I expect you've got to go off to work now.'

'More or less.' Mort hesitated, aware that in some indefinable way the conversation had drifted out of the shallows and was now floating over some deep bits he didn't quite understand.

There was a noise like —

It made Mort recall the old yard at home, with a pang of homesickness. During the harsh Ramtop winters the family kept hardy mountain tharga beasts in the yard, chucking in straw as necessary. After the spring thaw the yard was several feet deep and had quite a solid crust on it. You could walk across it if you were careful. If you weren't, and sank knee deep in the concentrated gyppo, then the sound your boot made as it came out, green and steaming, was as much the sound of the turning year as birdsong and beebuzz.

It was that noise. Mort instinctively examined his shoes.

Ysabell was crying, not in little ladylike sobs, but in great yawning gulps, like bubbles from an underwater volcano, fighting one another to be the first to the surface. They were sobs escaping under pressure, matured in humdrum misery.

Mort said, 'Er?'

Her body was shaking like a waterbed in an earthquake zone. She fumbled urgently in her sleeves for the handkerchief, but it was no more use in the circumstances than a paper hat in a thunderstorm. She tried to say something, which became a stream of consonants punctuated by sobs.

Mort said, 'Um?'

'I said, how old do you think I am?'

'Fifteen?' he hazarded.

'I'm sixteen,' she wailed. 'And do you know how long I've been sixteen for?'

'I'm sorry, I don't under —'

'No, you wouldn't. No one would.' She blew her nose again, and despite her shaking hands nevertheless carefully tucked the rather damp hanky back up her sleeve.

'You're allowed out,' she said. 'You haven't been here long enough to notice. Time stands still here, haven't you noticed? Oh, something passes, but it's not real time. He can't create real time.'

'Oh.'

When she spoke again it was in the thin, careful and above all brave voice of someone who has pulled themselves together despite overwhelming odds but might let go again at any moment.

'I've been sixteen for thirty-five years.'

'Oh?'

'It was bad enough the first year.'

Mort looked back at his last few weeks, and nodded in sympathy.