After that she sang Water-Dragon into being, and after Water-Dragon, she sang Desert-Dragon, and after Desert-Dragon, Forest-Dragon, and then all other dragons of every kind, and sent them to the various worlds where they were to live …
• “You don’t want me to say the entire catalog, surely,” said Stenta. “You have known the list of the Tchenka since you were eight!”
“So we have,” Liva agreed. “Dragons first, then fish that eats grass in all its kinds, fish that eats on the bottom in all its kinds, fish that eats other fish the same; then bird that eats grass, bird that eats in the field, bird that eats other birds; so on and so on, creatures of every kind. All the Tchenka, lost forever.”
“Well, it may be they are not lost, though such is the story,” sighed Stenta. “And finally, She-Goes-On-Creating meets together with all the Tchenka at the foot of the eternal mountain to decide what should be done to keep everything in balance. But the Tchenka of humans would not agree to keep humans in balance, so the other Tchenka killed them, and man has had no Tchenka since.”
“Which is why he kills everything,” said Liva, “for he is not cousin to the creatures of the worlds as the Gharm are.”
“It is why those of Voorstod are so evil,” said Sarlia, “for they have no indwelling spirit whatsoever.”
“Tss,” whispered her mother. “Do not offend the Tchenka by mentioning Voorstoders. I will play you quiet, as She-Goes-On-Creating sang the quiet into which He-Is-Accomplished went.”
She went to the harp, which stood beside the window, a great concert harp, the largest any Gharm could play, very narrow, to hold all the strings, with the strings set very close, as they could be for the slender Gharm fingers. “I will play the song She-Goes-On-Creating sang to create the saber bird,” said Stenta, laying her hands upon the strings.
She played and the-women-her-daughters were silent. Outside in the street, people stopped what they were doing and simply stood, heads turned toward the sound. Wherever the music was, the birds came into being, head and wing and leg, brilliant body and brilliant tail. They moved. One could see them moving in the music. One could tell what they looked like. They danced with their beaks pointing upward. They danced on their toes. They leapt and turned, wings spread wide. It didn’t matter, not too much, that they were not on Ahabar, or in Voorstod, that they had died on Gharm with all the trees and forests and swamps and streams which had been Gharm, for they survived still in the music. When the music was over, for a long time, it was as though the birds were in the room, as though their souls were there, listening, brought back from whatever place they had been.
“Go home now,” said Stenta to her daughters, her face calm and radiant as dawn, as though she had been speaking to angels. “Go help your daughters feed the children. I will rest, for soon I will play for the Queen.”
• • •
• On the escarpment of Hobbs Land, Shan Damzel dreamed of Ninfadel.
“Don’t forget to wear your faceplate,” said the officer at the outpost. “Don’t forget to wash off the mucous before it dries.”
Shan went away from the outpost. It receded behind him as things in dreams recede, becoming unreachable, unattainable. He was remote now, all alone, standing on the hill overlooking the river. Raucous sounds came to him, and he looked down to see Porsa by the river, and then they were coming at him faster than he could have imagined possible.
He tried to run, but his feet wouldn’t move …
He only had time to get his faceplate down before …
Something inexorable swallowed him up.
• Jep learned to dig ditches, at first painfully, and then much less so. At first digging by hand seemed a daft, silly thing to do, when there were machines that could do it easier and better, but here in Voorstod there were many daft, silly things going on. So he worked hard, hoping to finish the task, only to find there were more ditches to be dug, and still more. After the third or fourth agonizing day of it, he realized the labor was set specifically to tire him out, possibly so he would sleep, certainly so he would not have the energy to be rebellious, so he would have no time or strength to think about escape. The farmer didn’t need these ditches, or, if he did, he didn’t need them done quickly or finished soon. With this realization came sense and a kind of fatalistic serenity. From that moment on he worked easily, gently, as though, he told himself, he were uncovering a God, neatly setting the turves aside in parallel lines and piling the dark soil inside them, making of the task a work of art.
Work was not easy, as it would have been at home. He could not see into calming distance. The whole world was confined by mist, into the compass of his own emotions. There were feelings all around him, anger and hatred and menace. Each time one of the men came near him, he could feel roiling dissatisfaction, barely withheld belligerence. The animosity was not toward him, especially. It was not even toward the Gharm, especially. It simply was, a condition of their being, born in them as gills on a fish, suiting them to breathe only angry and hostile air.
The bellicose atmosphere frightened Jep. He could feel a reflection of it in himself, as well, rising up from a hot well in his belly, something responsively molten there, something heretofor
