Never mind there were no chains on Sam and he could have gone to Voorstod any time he liked. Settlers weren’t serfs, they were free to come and go. To Sam, “going home,” meant something more than that. To him, the meaning of the tale was clear, evident, absolutely without question. The illogicality of it only made it more sure, more intriguing. Of course it was illogical. Of course it was strange. Legends were strange, and destiny might be illogical. Sam had never heard credo quia absurdum est, which a few Notable Scholars still quoted on occasion, but he would have understood the phrase in a minute.
Even though that particular story was the best one, Sam soon came to believe that all the stories were really one story. Every legend was one legend. At the root of every tale was someone with a need or a question, setting out to find an answer to that need, meeting danger and joy upon the way. All the heroes were looking for the one marvelous thing: for their fathers or for immortality or goodness or knowledge or some combination of those things, and it was their destiny to find what they sought. It was almost always the men who went, not the women, and that told Sam something too, confirming him in a former opinion about Maire and China, that it did no good to ask women some kinds of questions because they weren’t interested in the answers. Women just didn’t understand these things!
Thereafter, he often took long walks north, in rocky country, shifting boulders along the way, believing that any one of them might be the one beneath which his father had hidden the sword or the shoes or some other thing, whatever it might be. He did this even after he realized that both “stone” and “sword” might be symbolic rather than real. He did it even knowing that Phaed Girat had never set foot upon Hobbs Land. In a marvelous world, Phaed could have sent someone, some miraculous messenger who flew around between worlds. And who was to say it wasn’t so. The power of the father, the hero, the king, resided in that ability: to make the impossible real.
• Jeopardy Wilm had a cousin, Saturday, the daughter of his mother’s sister, Africa Wilm, who had chosen her daughter’s name out of old Manhome sources from the Archives. It was a language no one spoke anymore. Sometimes settlers chose old Manhome names for their meaning, sometimes for their sound. Africa Wilm had chosen Saturday for its sound, and because it was part of a series of words that could be used for the five or six other children she intended to have. So far Africa had added Tuesday through Friday, three boys plus another girl, and had decided a total of five might be enough.
From the time she was tiny, Saturday sang. Even when she was a toddler, she twittered like a bird. There were few birdlike things on Hobbs Land, and none of them sang very well, so Saturday had no competition in becoming the settlement songstress. She was much petted over this, and it was due to Africa’s good sense she didn’t become spoiled. It was a gift, Africa told her child in a stern voice. A gift which Saturday hadn’t earned or even earned the use of. She must work hard at other things as well and use the gift for the happiness of all.
Saturday worked hard at everything, and she sang, and when she was about ten, she got to know Maire Girat, who, though she didn’t sing now, had once been a singer of great reputation. At least, so said many of the settlers, even those from Phansure or Thyker. Many of them knew of the songs of Maire Manone, which is what she had been called back in Voorstod. It was Maire who taught Saturday how to breathe, and how to bring the air up in a glowing column from her lungs, without break or pause, stroking the notes into life. It was Maire Girat who taught her to embellish her songs with trills and scales and leaps, so the voice trilled and purled like water running.
They became friends, the tall, haggard, broad-shouldered, often-silent woman and the slight, talkative, flyaway girl. They spent much time together, Saturday questioning and Maire answering in her slow, deliberate voice with the furry roughness at its edges.
“Why do you sing no more, Maire?” Saturday asked her one day. It was a question she had wanted to ask for a very long time, but something had kept her from it, some sensitivity or scrupulosity which told her the answer would be painful.
“I cannot,” the woman said sadly. She did not want to talk to this happy child about Fess and Bitty, or about the dreams she once had of great anthems sounding among the stars. Once music had dwelt in her mind, every watch of every day. She had left Voorstod when the music died, but she did not want to talk about that.
Instead, she said, “None of the things I sang of exist here, child. I sang of lashing seas and looming mountains. Here, the land is like a child’s sandbox, all patted smooth. What can I sing of?”
To Saturday, there seemed a good deal to sing of. Though Hobbs Land was dull, so everyone said, Saturday had always found it beautiful. Very simple
