He had run barefoot in these halls, laughed, played pranks with a dozen sibs and cousins, rolled on the floor-sand, till exasperated elders flung them out into a yard well shaded with old trees.
The trees were gone. The new wing stood where the oldest tree had been. So much for homecomings.
He made a fire. There was that one thing left untouched, the old stones of the hearth he had sat by as a child, and there were scraps of demolished outbuildings and fences, in a towering pile near the rocks. He made a fire of them, burning others’ memories of home.
He took the infant outside with him, well wrapped against the cold; he took it about the house with him, in the kitchen, at last before the fire itself; he sat on the clean deep sand before the hearthstones and held the infant in his lap.
He had grown accustomed to it. The flat, round face no longer disturbed him. The smell was his smell, compounded of its sweat and his. Demon eyes looked up at him. The face made grimaces meaningless to both of them in the wavering firelight, the leaping flames.
He took its skull between his hands, the whole and the maimed one, and he was careful as if the skull had been eggshell instead of bone. He smiled, drawing back his lips from his teeth, and gazed into eyes which perhaps saw him, perhaps not.
“Wei-na-ya,” he sang to it, “wei-na-mei,”-in a hoarse male voice unapt for lullabies; little bird, little fish-the house had heard that song before. “Hei sa si-lan-nei…” Do not go. The wind is cold, the water dark, but here is warm. “Wei-na-ya, wei-na-mei.”
And “Sha-khe’a,” he sang, but softly, like the lullaby, which was a hatani song.
It was the deathsong. He sang it like the lullaby. He smiled, grinned into its face.
“Thou art Haras,” he said to the awful, demon face, to the slitted eyes with their centers like stormcloud. It was the sadoth he spoke, the language of his hill-dwelling ancestors. “Thou art Haras. Thorn is your name.” It gazed solemnly up at him. Unafraid.
It waved its hands. He, Duun reminded himself. He. Haras. Thorn. The wind howled about the house, skirled in the chimney and set the flames to flickering in the hearth.
He grinned and rocked the child and did a thing which would have chilled the blood of any of the countryfolk who doubtless huddled together in their dispossession; or the meds; or Ellud in his fine city apartment.
He held it as if it were a shonun child and washed its eyes with his tongue (they tasted salt and musty). There was nothing he spared himself, no last repugnance he did not overcome. Such was his patience.
* * *
* * *
II
They came from the capital. Copters landed, and meds made the long trek uphill carrying their instruments; and downhill going away. They were not pleased. Perhaps the countryfolk frightened them, gathering in their sullen watchfulness at the foot of the road, where the aircraft landed.
They came and went away again. Duun held the infant, talked to it as he watched them go, mindless talk, as one did with children. It. Haras. Thorn.
“Duun,” Thorn said, infant babble. “Duun, Duun, Duun.”
Thorn made busy chaos on the sand before the hearth. His cries were loud, ear-splitting; shonunin were more reserved. He still soiled himself. When this would cease Duun did not know. How to teach him otherwise he did not know. Thorn’s appetite had changed; his sleep was longer, to Duun’s relief.
“Duun, Duun, Duun,” the infant sang, on his back before the fire. And grinned and laughed when Duun poked him in the belly, squealed, when Duun used a clawtip. Laughed again. Enjoyed his belly rubbed, fat round belly which began to hollow now, the limbs to lengthen. “Duun.” Duun leaned forward, nipped at Thorn’s neck. Thorn grabbed his ears, and Duun sat back, escaping the infant grip, disheveled. He had let his crest grow; it sheeted raggedly down his back and strayed now in front of his ears.
He went for the throat again on hands and knees and Thorn squealed and kicked. Clawed with small fat hands, with nails which were all the defense he had.