More had been maimed lately, so the sisters said. In our great-grandmothers’ time, almost no one was maimed, but now it is more than half! Why? What was happening? The sisterhood argued over this again and again, finding no answer. What does one say? I was guilty of doubting. I did not doubt more than others, or differently from others, but I was selected for punishment. My punishment was particularly horrid because … because of who did it to me….
Lutha was right. There is no rape on Dinadh, but I can imagine it would be as shaming, as cruel as this. In a way, it was like what the two Fastigats were doing to me, questioning me, searching at me, examining me, bending their Fastigat sense upon me. That, too, was rape. They increased my shame and sorrow for no good reason, for they could not learn something I did not know.
It is better to do as the sisters recommend, to say nothing at all, to admit nothing. Let them seek elsewhere, among others for answers. And if they find answers, let them tell me.
A voice from the door.
“Saluez? Are you awake?”
Lutha.
I sat up, pulling my veil into place. “I was up earlier,” I confessed.
“Leelson and Trompe and I’ve been talking,” she said. “We have an offer we wish to make you, in return for your help.”
I had heard nothing of an offer. What offer?
She said, “It’s possible … your face can be fixed. Restored …”
“No,” I cried, thrusting away with both hands. “No. Do not say that!”
She looked shocked, horrified. “But surely …”
“I would have to leave Dinadh,” I cried hysterically. “I would have to go away from my people. They would not let me live here if you healed me.”
“But … but I thought …”
“It was my fault,” I cried. I who had decided to say nothing! I, who knew it was not my fault! “My face is evidence of my sin. Do you think you can erase my sin by healing me? Do you think my people will let me live among them if I am healed!”
She backed away from me in confusion. Leelson came from the study and put his hand on her shoulder. “What?” he demanded.
She turned and led him into the room, shutting the door firmly behind them. And I sat on the edge of my bed and cried. Oh, if I were healed, Shalumn might be mine again. Oh, if I were healed, I would have to go away. Oh, if I were healed, it would change nothing, it would change everything!
After a time I dried my face, straightened my veil, and went to knock upon the closed door.
“I will help you,” I said when they opened it. “But you must not talk of …what you said earlier. Not at all. Not ever!” I could not bear it. It set all my hard-won peace at nothing.
They stared at me, all three of them. The boy was curled on a bench beneath the window, playing with his fingers. They cared, but he did not.
“Why?” asked Leelson. “Why will you help us?”
“You say there is great danger for everyone, perhaps for Dinadh too. Perhaps the outlander ghost found something to avert this danger, so I will help you search for the outlander ghost or for what it was he knew.”
Leelson ran his hands through his hair. He was a handsome man, Leelson. Tall, bright-haired, with one of those rugged, rocky outlander faces that always seem strange to us Dinadhi, who are round-faced and smoother looking. The boy looked something like him. More like him than Lutha. But he had a big-eyed strangeness to him, something I thought I should recognize.
“Where could Bernesohn Famber have gone, Saluez?”
It was a foolish question. He knew as well as I. “You heard his own voice,” I replied. “He spoke of the southern canyon, of the omphalos. You yourself said he must have walked. That is where he walked.”
Leelson frowned as he seated himself. “All right, let’s take it point by point. Last night you told us certain gods were abandoned on your former world.”
I nodded. Unwisely, I had said it.
“And these gods were abandoned for”—he gestured toward the window—“the beautiful people.”
“We chose the Kachis instead,” I said. “Our songfathers chose them.”
“Why?” asked Lutha.
“It is not something we speak of,” I told them. “I have already said more than is proper. We chose them, that is all. We abandoned certain of our gods, and chose these instead, and came here to this world.”
“Through the omphalos?”
“Through the omphalos.”
They looked at one another in that way they have, like grown-ups amused by the fanciful tales of children.
“She believes it,” said Trompe, staring at me.
Why would I not believe it? It was true.
“If you’ll allow a non-Fastigat a comment,” said Lutha in a dry voice. “As a linguist, I’ve become aware that there are many kinds of truth—factual truths, scientific truths, spiritual truths, psychological truths. It is no doubt spiritually true that the people of Dinadh emerged from the omphalos. That being so, it doesn’t matter whether it’s factually true or not.” She smiled at me, saying I might believe as I liked, she would not question it.
“Why do you say that?” Trompe demanded.
She turned to him, gesturing. “I say it because we can only deal with so many variables at a time! Bernesohn didn’t mention emergence stories, he spoke of a place! A geographical location. We need not concern ourselves with what’s true or false about the place, at least not until we get there.”
I bowed my head. Exactly. What was true or false did not concern them. Only their duty concerned them, as only my duty now concerned me. My
