I'm gentry--any commoner can be raised up to be a chief. But the third child of a ruling lord is only fit for marrying off to other gentry.'
I could tell by the way my lady stared at the fire that
she was done talking, so I sat by her, quiet, and thought about what she'd said. Her sister's name, Altan, means golden in the naming language. Gold is the color of the gentry, and it seems a right name for the lady of a realm.
Erdene means jewel, another noble name. Saren means moonlight. I wonder what her mother thought when she named her moonlight, the dim light that keeps the night sky company until the blue sky can return.
It's strange for me to think about gentry in that way, as people who had mothers who gave them names. People who wanted things they couldn't have, who were ordered to marry men they feared. Though I clean her plate and wash her unders, I guess until today, I never truly thought of my lady as a real person.
[Image: Drawing of Smiling Woman]
Later
I showed my lady the drawing I did of her smiling, and she said that I'm her best friend. I thought I should write that down.
Day 298
Daily I sing to my lady. Sometimes it's to help ease a headache or bellyache, and sometimes it's my continued attempt to cure whatever troubles her inside. Yesterday I tried a new song, one I'd nearly forgotten.
The song for unknown ailments is a wail. High the notes stretch, my throat stretching with them, the tune reaching up and up like a wounded bird's call, 'Rain rips as it falls, it tears as it falls!' Just the sound of it echoing in our tower made my chest feel tight. My lady sighed and curled up against me, not crying but breathing as if she would.
After she had a good rest, she seemed lighter. She even chatted with me over supper and joined me in a game of pea toss.
So I went to bed content last night, thinking I'd made some progress with her healing. But this morning she's the same again. If only she'd tell me why she's so sad and crooked-brained and lonely and often acts as if she's only half her age. Does she even know why? Maybe it's just how she is, maybe there's nothing in her to fix.
I'll keep trying.
Day 312
It's summer, and thank Evela, goddess of sunlight, that it's a gentle one this year or we'd roast in our brick oven. There were children running around our tower this morning. I think they've been here before, but I could hear them more clearly today. They were closer to the tower, perhaps daring one another to draw near, and their voices ghosted up the uncovered hole. As they ran around and around, I could hear broken bits of the song they sang. I believe it went like this:
Two dead Ladies in a tower
Counting peas for every hour
In seven years
With all their tears
They drown in pea soup sour
I didn't care for their song much, but I sat near the hole all the same and listened, listened, listened. New sounds are like lost sugar.
Day 339
Most of the time, my lady sits alone and stares at things--her fingers, the floor, a single hair. I wonder how a person can sit so much without work in her hands. Are muckers born to work and gentry born to sit? This darkness makes me ask questions that never occurred to me under the Eternal Blue Sky.
But it doesn't seem fair, does it? Why can't my lady dip her hands into the wash water and give the clothes a good scrubbing or mend a rip or make a pot of something worth eating? I'd be pleased as anything if I never had to haul a bucket of water up the cellar ladder again, but some work isn't so bad, not when you have naught else to do but stare at a candle flame or into the shivering dark.
Later
Ancestors forgive me, but I offered to teach my lady how to cook dung cakes.
She said, 'I don't know how, Dashti.'
'That's why I'll teach you.'
'I'll do it wrong.'
'Of course you will, everyone does wrong when learning something new.'
Then she started to cry. 'But I'll do it wrong.'
I wish I understood my lady and her crying and her shaking. She looks at the whole world as though it crouches over, ready to pounce.
Day 457
Weeks and weeks go by, months and months. I wash, I cook. My lady is more shadow than girl. Once I tried to teach her to read. Her eyes wandered.
Some days I hate candlelight. Sometimes I think we'd be better in all darkness, then we'd just hold still until everything went away. But I keep cooking.
