Oh, one must. One must have a troupe. Favel blessed the hour he had been adopted into Bondri’s troupe. As a male, he should have lived out his life in the troupe to which he was depouched, but the continuity of his life had been broken when the second commandment of the Prime Song was broken.
The second commandment was almost a corollary of the first. ‘Many views yield truth,’ said the first part of the Prime Song. Therefore, be not alone,’ said the second.
Favel had been alone. He had been alone for a very long time, which meant there were gaping, untruthful holes in his memory of his life. When he sang these parts of his life, there were no other views to correct and balance his own – no joyous counterpoints to relieve his pain, no voices of hope or curiosity to relieve his own terrified horror. Favel had been a broken one – broken and abandoned.
It had happened long ago – how long ago? Fifteen years? Twenty? A lifetime. Favel had been a young male then, almost a mateable age, had long since given up trailing his giligee in favor of being with the adventurers, as the young ones thought of themselves. It had been in Bondri’s pouch troupe, the troupe of Nonfri Fermil, Nonfri the Gap-toothed with the beautiful voice, and it was Nonfri’s trade daughter Trissa that Favel had set his song upon.
She had not been in the troupe long, only long enough to get over her first pain of separation, only long enough to learn a few of the troupe’s memories so that she did not sit utterly silent during evening song. To Favel, she was Trissa of the frilled ears, for the edges of her wide ears were ruffled like new leaf fronds, the soft amber color of dawn, only slightly lighter than her song-sack. Her eyes were wide and lustrous, but so were those of all the people. Her voice, though – ah, that Favel could remember, but he had to sing it to himself all alone, for none in Bondri’s troupe had ever known her. ‘Softly resonant,’ he sang quietly to himself, ‘plangent in the quiet hours, rising like that of the song mouse to trill upon the sky.’ Ah, Trissa. She had sung tineea and turned his soul.
A small group of youngsters had gone one evening to gather brush. Some of the elders of the troupe had a taste for bark sip, and the young ones were searching for a juicy growth. Favel was older than the gatherers and too shy of his awakened senses to invite his own group to go with him, so he broke the second commandment of the Prime Song and went alone. Alone to lie in the brush and watch Trissa, hear Trissa. Alone to imagine himself and Trissa mated.
Her group started back, laden with juicy brush. Favel, hidden at the foot of a ’ling, waited for them to pass. One of them, a silly young male, threw a bit of crystal at the ’ling, the very ’ling that Favel lay beneath, hidden in the grasses. The ’ling had been excitable. It had broken.
When he woke, there was blood on his head and his legs were broken beneath the shattered ’ling. When he pulled himself to the place the troupe had been, the troupe had departed. Days passed, and nights, and he found himself beside a Loudsinger trail. Days passed again, and nights, and a Loudsinger caravan came by.
After that was pain as the Loudsinger tried to set his legs, then less pain, and finally only the songbreaking agony of loneliness as he waited to die.
‘Why did you not die, Favel?’ Bondri had asked him later.
‘I was too sick to die,’ he had replied. ‘My brain-bird could not settle on it.’ And it was true. Despite the ban, despite the taboos, Favel had not died. Perhaps curiosity had kept him alive.
Favel learned Loudsinger talk. It gave him something to do, and it was not particularly difficult. One word served many purposes. No word was particularly precise. The Loudsingers made no attempt to find truth, each merely asserting his or her own vision of history. ‘I remember it this way,’ one would say in a disagreeable tone. ‘You’re wrong, this is the way it went,’ making Favel writhe at the rude arrogance of such statements.
The man was named Mark Anderton, and he kept Favel in a cage made of stuff Favel could not bite through. Favel considered the question of taboo and finally allowed himself to chitter words and phrases at him in order to get food.
‘Listen to my little frog-monkey,’ Anderton would say. ‘Like a ruckin’ p’rot, in’t it.’
‘What’s a p’rot?’ someone always asked.
‘Urthian bird. Talks just like people,’ he would say, with a guffaw. ‘I got me a Jubal p’rot.’
‘See the pretty viggy,’ they would chant, stuffing bits of meat through the bars at Favel. ‘See the pretty viggy.’
‘Pretty viggy,’ Favel would say, without expression, grabbing for the meat, while the Loudsingers broke themselves in half laughing. He was breaking the taboo by not dying, but he was not breaking the taboo when he used words. They did not know he understood what he said.
‘Ugliest thing on six worlds,’ one said. ‘Pretty viggy my pet ass.’
Favel had never considered whether he was pretty or not. It wasn’t something generally considered important. Trees were beautiful, of course. Presences, most of them, were beautiful. Voices were beautiful, some more and some less. But viggies?
It was a new thought, one that perplexed him. Had he thought Trissa
