Morning came with a twitter of birds, a bellow of lizards. By the shore stilt-lizards walked, their narrow heads darting into the shallows to bring up bugs and fishes, stopping now and then to utter their customary cry, “Ha-ha, ha-ha,” without inflection. Stilt-lizard meat was edible, Medoor Babji told herself, coming out of sleep all at once, fully conscious of being somewhere new, different, unknown. This place could not be too foreign, she thought, if there were stilt-lizards. Edible. Yes. Hunger pinched her stomach and brought a flood of saliva into her mouth. She sat up in the boat, unwrapping herself. The lizards fled at the sudden motion, then returned to stalk the shore once more, meantime keeping a wary eye on her.
The boat was halfway up a narrow beach, less sandy than stony, cut by a streamlet that bubbled down a shallow channel into a little bay. Contorted protrusions of black rock jutted from the beach and from the smooth surface of the bay, culminating in two writhing shapes, like a mighty arm and hand at each side of the entrance, reaching toward one another, braceleted with colonies of birds. Outside that embrace the River swept by, empty and endless.
Now the immediate danger was past. Now there was food and good water. Now that persona who had wished to cry for some time could cry.
It was some time before she realized what she was crying about, where the grief came from, boiling up from some deep well within her. It was not being lost, not being fearful for her life. It was being separated from Thrasne, lost from him, fearful for his life. And with that realization, she dried her tears, laughing at herself. The Gift was a strong, heavy boat, one that had plied the World River for generations. She thought of Thrasne fussing over it, repairing it at every opportunity, and of his crew of experienced men. Why had she assumed at once that he had met with some disaster? She was far more likely to have perished in the tiny Cheevle, and yet she lived. And if she lived, she could find the Gift again, somewhere, if not on Southshore or mid-River, then on Northshore when it returned.
“If the strangeys allow it,” she told herself with some asperity, trying to give herself something else to think about. It was a cheerless thought, yet it had the same strengthening force as one of Queen Fibji’s lectures. “Settle,” the Queen had said to her often. “Settle, daughter. Consider calmly what you will do. Cry when it is done with, when you have the luxury of time.”
“How did you get to know absolutely everything?” Medoor had asked, somewhat bitterly.
There had been a long silence, then a humorless laugh. Medoor had looked up at her mother, startled, almost frightened. She had not heard that laugh before.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” the Queen had said with a faraway, angry look on her face. “I don’t know. Much of the time I don’t know anything. However, my not knowing will not help my people, so I must know. And I do. It is easier to correct a mistake than to be caught doing nothing. It is easier to beg forgiveness for a mistake than to beg permission to act. People will forgive you, child, but they will not risk allowing action. Go to a council and say, ‘Let me do this thing.’ They will think often thousand good reasons you should not. It could be wrong. Or it could be not quite right. Or it could be right, but of a strange lightness they are unfamiliar with. Oh, daughter, but they will talk and talk, but they will not say, ‘Do it.’ That is why I am Queen and they are my followers. Because they cannot risk anything nor take part in others doing so. They are herdbeasts, daughter. And yet I love them. When I speak to you of trial and error, Babji, whose experience do you think I am speaking of? . .
“So,” Medoor Babji told herself. “If the Queen can prevail in such a way, so her daughter can also prevail.”
The resolution did not help her much in deciding what to do next. Securing food seemed most logical, and this decision was helped by a cramp of hunger that bent her in two. Fish was well and good, but it left one empty between meals.