‘The other thing about my father was that he could read. Not many of the farmers in Lakland could read. It wasn’t something they did, with every summer full from sunup to sundown and the winters fully occupied with mending of tools and tending of animals. Father had learned it somewhere, maybe by teaching himself. Whenever we asked him, he was full of winks and riddles, which makes me believe he learned it all alone. Nothing would do but that he teach all three of us, too, though it wasn’t considered womanly for farmwives in Lakland to read. As it was, I was the only one who paid that much attention, but I made up for the others, sitting in his lap for hours in the winter firelight while he read me stories out of old, raggedy books he traded for in Lak Island. I still have one of those books, a very little one, kept in memory of him. It seems more like him, somehow, than the things he made with his own hands. Those went to Iacinth and Cissus, anyhow, some as dowry, some with the farm. Well, the book is enough for me. It isn’t as though I would forget him, anyhow.’ She fell silent once more, her voice raw in her throat. There was quiet in the stone cleft, the dog king dozing over her leash. She let herself fall into a doze too, waking to speak again when her captor moved.
‘I wouldn’t want anyone to think he mistreated me or wasn’t fair. He was the fairest and kindest of men. It’s just that there were three of us, and girls do not get a husband in Lakland without a dowry. Why should they? If a man wants a woman, he can hire a female servant and keep her so long as he wants her. A wife, though, there’s no ridding of. At least, that’s the way things were thought of there. I’ve learned since that there are other ways of looking at things, but there weren’t any other ways when I was a child. As it was, Father scraped up a dowry for Iacinth and got her safely married off to the big, red-faced elder son of the water farmer in Dolcanal. That took care of Iacinth. He was starting to get the dowry together for Cissus when he fell ill. He didn’t know what it was, poor man, nor did we. It was something slow and wasting, and I remember his eyes in the firelight, lost and hopeless when he first began to realize there would not be enough time to do all he needed to do. Cissus and I did what we could. Yes, even I, only eleven and still not much bigger than a pet cat. It wasn’t enough. When the end came, I told him that I had had a vision of the future, that everything was shining and good in it, that I was well provided for. I don’t know if he believed me or not, but he smiled. That’s what I really wanted, to remember him smiling.’ She wept, wept into silence, looked up into the eyes of the dog king as he watched her.
‘So short a life,’ he said. ‘To care so much about things, little things. To fill life so full of caring – I cannot. I live too long. You will see … you will see….’ and he was off again.
Jasmine interrupted firmly. ‘When he was gone, there had to be some man about the place. It was only fair that Cissus have the farm as her dowry – there was little enough there – and find a man to help work it. We made it up between us I would go into Lak Island and find some work. Girls my age did it all the time. I had the farm to come to on holidays or when things became too hard. It took only a short while of asking and I had a job as wash girl in a tavern near the canals. Wash girl isn’t a bad job at all. It pays little, but it’s clean work and not heavy. I did well, too, knowing how to read and do numbers. It wasn’t but a short time until Cissus found a husband, too, another of the stout, red-faced men Lakland is full of, one named Hahd who loved her dearly. Cissus is a kind, good person who deserves to be loved dearly.
‘I worked in the tavern for nigh on three years. What happened then couldn’t be prevented, I began to fill out. I filled out in the places most girls fill out in, though rather more and less in my case than in some. Also, I had learned to wash my hair and rub my hands with fat into which herbs were steeped. Living on a herb farm teaches you that, cleanly smells and good ones. It was rather my shape than my smell that got me into trouble, though, for the tavern-keeper (a kindly enough fellow, I’d always thought) began to make certain suggestions. I was interested not at all, but his wife didn’t care about that. She suggested that I find other work, and she wasn’t overly nice about it. Still, when I had cried a little, she patted me and said it wasn’t
