Even men who know many lies occasionally tell the truth.
“We must go there, then,” said Leelson. “To the place.”
“It is forbidden,” I told them. “No outlanders are allowed at the omphalos. Only Dinadhi without stain may attend Tahs-uppi, and the ceremony will be very soon.”
They simply stared at me, knowing what I was feeling. How strange to have people know as these men knew. They knew what I had said was not all I meant.
“But you’re going to take us there,” said Leelson at last, prompting me.
“I will guide you,” I whispered. “If you want to go.”
“But I have a map,” he said, holding it up for me to see. “Do I need a guide?”
“You don’t have a way to travel,” Lutha said. “That’s what she means.”
“You would not last an hour after dark,” I said quietly. “There are ways and ways. You need someone who knows the ways.”
Not that I knew the ways. I’d never been out after dark, but I’d spoken with herders who had. Leelson moved to the desk, Trompe to the bench, Lutha to her child, all thinking, all deciding, as though this wandering motion helped them think. Perhaps it did.
“They’d know we were gone,” said Lutha, pulling Leely into her lap. “They’d come after us.”
“How would they know?” I asked. “I am your servitor. I take care of your needs. If I do not report that you are gone, who is to know?”
“They would see we aren’t here, see we aren’t moving around.”
“They don’t look at you anyhow,” I said. “That’s what I am assigned to do. I look at you so the others don’t have to. We do not look at outlanders, we of Dinadh!”
“They would know you aren’t here,” said Trompe.
Lutha said softly, “They don’t look at her, either.”
Behind my veil, my mouth twisted. It was true. If Chahdzi or songfather did not see me for a number of days, they would think I was staying out of sight. The sisters below would know they had not seen me there, in our place, but they would not search for me. They knew I served these outlanders. They would wait until my duty was done and I came to them.
“So they wouldn’t know we were gone,” said Trompe.
“No,” I said. “They would not know. Not for some time. Songfather may not know until he himself arrives at the omphalos and finds you there.”
“The ceremony is soon?” Lutha demanded.
“Very soon,” I told them. “Within days.”
“Can we get there first?”
“Not by much,” I admitted. “A few days, at most.”
“How do we get there at all?”
“There are wains here in the canyon, wains that make a safe enclosure for people, with woven panels to make a safe pen for the gaufers that pull them. When the songfathers attend Tahs-uppi, that is how they go. We must take a wain and six gaufers to pull it.”
“Gaufers?” asked Lutha.
“Woolbeasts. The young are gaufs. Gaufers are the neutered ones.”
I could see her tucking these words away against later need.
“How do we get these gaufers down from the heights?” asked Leelson.
“We don’t. There are still some here, because all the flocks have not been moved up the trail yet. We must steal them before the flocks are taken up.”
“Food stores?” murmured Trompe.
“There is much food here in the dispenser,” I told them. “Though it is outlander food, I imagine I can figure out how to cook it over a fire.”
They thought about this for some time. Lutha went on cuddling the child. Trompe stared out across the floor of the cave to the canyon. Leelson fiddled with things on the desk, moving them about, here and there. When Leelson turned to me at last, it was not to ask how, but why.
“If this journey is forbidden,” he said, “you may be putting yourself at grave risk.”
Behind my veil I smiled. “What can they do to me that has not already been done? Perhaps they will kill me! They will not do it until after the child is born, and I do not care if they do it then.”
Perhaps it was only what Lutha calls bravado, but I think I was telling the truth.
I am not much practiced at stealing. We Dinadhi do not steal, not much. Oh, children, sometimes, a little dried fruit more than our share. A handful of nuts. A finger dipped surreptitiously into the honey pot. What else? What is there? Only what we make with our own hands.
So, considering how to steal a wain and gaufers was a novel thing for me. It had a certain stomach-churning excitement to it. Leaving the outlanders to mutter and worry behind me, I went out onto the lip of the cave and sat with my legs dangling over the edge. Below me, behind screened openings in the canyon wall, the herds have their winter caves. There before the time of First Grass the females bear their young. When all the gaufs have been born and are steady on their legs, the herds are driven up one of the trails onto the grassy forested lands above. Wains are not taken back and forth. They are too bulky and heavy to drag up and down the trails. So there are wains on the heights for the herders to live in, and there are wains in the canyons for the songfathers to travel to and from the little ceremonies at each other’s hives and the big ceremonies like Tahs-uppi.
At the Coming of Cold, the herds come down again, into the caves, where they eat the dried remnants of our gardens, the vines and stalks and even the weeds we have pulled and set aside for them. When they have eaten it all, they eat fungus, as we do, growing as tired of it as we do and becoming eager for the fresh
