“Gharm have no family names,” said Mam, whispering. “Call names only, Maire. No family names. If you want a Gharm, you use the call name. That’s all you need.”
So Fess was only Fess and Bel was only Bel, but Maire was Maire Manone with a family name.
“I have two names, and you don’t,” she crowed at them. “I have two names.”
Fess turned to Bel, eyes wide. Bel frowned. Both of them looked shocked and puzzled and then, all at once, cool, as though some little fire inside them went out. Lilla was standing by the back door of the house, listening to what was said. She always listened to them, very carefully. “Fess, Bel,” she said, “Come in now. There’s work to do.”
They turned away, without a word, and went to Lilla before vanishing in the mists.
“They won’t play with me!” Maire said to Mam.
“They have work to do,” said Mam in a quiet voice. “Let them alone, child.”
“But, I want them to play with me,” Maire cried.
Dad heard her, and Dad said, “You call those whelps by their call name, Maire Manone, and you tell them what you want them to do, and they’ll do it.”
So she called “Fess,” and Fess came. “Play with me,” she said, and Fess stayed and did everything Maire told her to do. Everything. Sit here. Say this. Say that. Get up and go there. Fetch. Only Fess didn’t do anything herself, not anything. Everything Maire said, she did, but nothing of her own.
“You’re not playing!” Maire cried.
“I’m doing everything you tell me,” said Fess in her quiet voice without any giggles in it. “As I must.”
“But you used to play with me!”
“That was before you told us you had two names. When you say that, then you’re master and we’re slaves, and that’s that.”
Maire went in the house to cry. Dad came in. He was tired and mad from something that had happened. He asked her what the trouble was, and she told him Fess wouldn’t play with her. So Dad took his whip and went out, and Maire heard Fess scream.
Mam was looking at her, tears running down her face. “I thought you loved Fess.”
“I do,” Maire said, frightened at the screaming, which went on and on, the animal sounds, as though the throat uttering those sounds had forgotten whose it was and went on uttering without a mind behind it.
“She’ll play with you now,” said Dad, coming back into the room, coiling the whip up. It was wet, and it dripped on the floor, little spots of darkness that nobody saw but Maire.
Maire saw Fess’s back, next day, when Mam went to the Gharm quarters with medicine and food. “Look at it,” Mam hissed at her. “Remember it. That’s what you did when you let Dad hear you complain of the Gharm, Maire. There’s some might send for the pastors to do their whipping, but not your dad. Remember that!”
Fess’s back was bloody, striped, raw, like meat in the kitchen, the startling white of bones showing through. Fess lay with her face to the wall and didn’t speak. Her breath came into her throat like a little scratching thing, trying to get out. Fess died, lying that way, with her face buried in the corner between the bed and the wall. She burned with fever and she died, and after that none of the Gharm ever played with Maire again, and she never asked them to.
That’s when the music inside herself began to fade. There had been a dream in which white curtains blew softly from tall, arched windows, while voices sang upon a green hill. Sometimes she dreamed of it still and wakened, weeping at what had been lost.
“Why are you crying, child?” Mam would demand, impatient of her tears.
“I miss the voices in my head,” she’d wept. “All the voices in my head.” It was Fess she missed, and Bel, and Bitty. It was innocence she missed. The little dark spots were still there on the floor. No one washed them away. The broom in Lilla’s hands slid over them, leaving them there. How could she say she missed Fess? She talked of the music in her head, instead.
Mam shushed her and told her not to talk foolish or somebody might tell the prophets, and they’d come take her away. “Bad enough that you sing out loud, where people can see you, where men can see you,” she said. “If you weren’t so young, it wouldn’t be tolerated. If you start talking crazy, they won’t tolerate it, no matter how little you are.”
So she learned not to complain of the Gharm. Unless one wanted them killed, or crippled, or maimed, one did not complain of them. If one complained, a man took up his whip—even some women did that—or they sent for the pastors, and the Gharm ceased. It was easier not to see them. The mists made that possible. If one didn’t go out back, one never saw the Gharm houses. If one didn’t pay attention, one never saw the house-Gharm or the field-Gharm. One learned to look by them, over their shoulders, as though they were invisible. One learned not to speak of them, for someone might act on that speech.
Maire went to the girls’ Ire-school, to be taught by the celibate teachers there, and in school she sang. She went to County concerts, and once to an all-Voorstod one, held in Cloud, on a platform built over the whipping posts in the public square. She was twelve lifeyears old, and it was the last time she went anywhere without a veil. She became a woman then, and could not sing to anyone except women, or her family, or on sound recordings, which did not show her image. She put on the robes the prophets commanded all women wear in public until they were old women, past
