“It was on the ship they said we were survivors. Then, later, they put me in the home. But the people at the home didn’t know … who I was. They said I was a liar.”
“Right,” barked Willit. “They knew you, kid.”
“I wasn’t lying,” she said.
“There’s no world called Breadh,” said Kane. “Not in this sector. You were probably sent here from one of the other worlds, when the Ularians came. If you were the only ones left, what happened to the others?”
Snark thought about it. Part of it was clear and close. Scourges. They’d had to stay away from the scourges. And from something else, too. She shrugged. She couldn’t really remember.
“Survivors from Ularians. I be damned,” said Kane.
“And what are these damned Ularians when they’re not hiding under a rock?” asked Willit.
“Nobody really knows.” Kane looked at the jar he’d found. “Nobody knows who they are. There were no survivors. Not unless Snark was one.”
“You mean she really could have been? A survivor?”
It was all very casual, not very meaningful, and everyone went back to work without agonizing over it. In Snark, however, the discovery of the jar began a chain of recollection. She remembered faces, voices. She remembered things people had said. She remembered words. The returned ones. The faithful.
That child Snark: How long had she been here, before they found her? Had it been only a few days? A few seasons? Had it been years? Whether born here or not, certainly she had grown here. Someone had provided clothing. There had been the animal skins, the fleeces in the cave, the clay jars. Where had the skins come from, with their woolly fleece? There were no animals like that on this world.
No. They’d been wearing the animal skins when they came! But they had brought no tools, no food. Who had told her that? Someone had. How had they grown food? Had they grown food?
How much was reality? How much was dream? That night, curled in her blankets in the cave at the edge of the sea, she asked herself that question again and again, finding no answer. In the niche in the wall, the patterned jar kept its enigmatic silence. There were bones in it, she was sure of that. Whose bones they were, she did not really want to remember.
On Dinadh, Leelson and Trompe asked me questions until I could answer no more questions. “Saluez? Saluez?” they begged, until at last I wept. All the pain I had refused to feel, all the tears I had stored away, everything came flooding out, drowning me.
“Leave her alone,” Lutha said angrily to the two men. “Later on we’ll find out what we need to know. We’re too tired now. We will talk when it is light.”
Everything was easier when it was light. Perhaps she knew that better than they. I let her lead me back into the entryway, through the door I had left ajar, to my bed in the storeroom of the hive.
“Do you sleep here?” she asked, her tone saying what her words did not, that it was a poor place for a woman to sleep.
“It is … private,” I whispered. “And it is closer to my duties than the other place, below, for women like …” For women like me.
“Why, Saluez?” she begged, her voice a whisper. “Why did they do this to you?”
I choked, thrusting her away, trying to put her off, noting the way she had said it. Not “What happened to you?” but “Why did they do it?” How could I say why? How could I tell her when I did not know myself? She caught herself up, becoming very quiet before she laid her fingers upon my mutilated mouth. Tender fingers. Gentle hands.
“Never mind,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow would offer no more explanations than tonight, but I let it be.
She left me. I lay down upon the shelf, pulling the woolen blanket over me, turning my head upon the cotton pillow to find a certain position in which my face was mostly hidden but was not thrust hard against the fabric. I didn’t want anyone to see my face if they happened upon me sleeping, but actually covering it brought pain. There is a venom in their teeth, and any touch can set it afire. The pain sometimes lasts for years, so my sisters say. If I find exactly the right position, the pain diminishes almost to nothing; I can fall asleep and, sleeping, forget, and sometimes even wake without remembering, believing for a few blessed moments I am as I used to be ….
The man who was father to my child is Slozhri T’ri. Turry. In Lutha’s language, his name means Worrier. He worried at me from the time we were children together. His mother is … was a second mother to me. My only mother after my own was gone. Poor Chahdzi father. He has had little fortune with his womenfolk. Saluez, his first daughter, now come into this shame. And my mother, his first wife, long since gone into the night and returned as our departed kindred do. She left human form while giving birth to my little brother. I was only a baby then. So, after a time father took another wife, Zinisi, a s’mahs, which is to say a screech bird, one who has made his life a misery. His second daughter … Well, if any man can bear being close enough to Hazini to get her pregnant, the beautiful people will likely let her be. Likely her flesh is bitter as her tongue.
Even so, perhaps she is the better daughter. Perhaps she will be the better wife to someone. Someone will be a better wife to Turry, too, and he can worry at her for a time.
He has not asked to see me. Sometimes men do ask, so
