“I’ve got a name.” Even in the depths of his present depression he bridled at the thought that he could not keep his own name.
“Not a Friary name, you don’t. Friary names have to be made up out of certain qualities.” Brother Mainoa whacked the cooker with the flat of his hand, scowling at it. “Twelve consonant sounds and five vowels, each with its own holy attribute.”
“That’s nonsense,” mumbled Rillibee, licking tears from the corner of his mouth. “You know that’s nonsense. That’s the kind of thing— That’s what I was asking in refectory. Why so much nonsense?”
“Got too much for you?”
Rillibee nodded.
“Me, too,” said Brother Mainoa. “Except I didn’t ask questions. I tried to run away. You were probably a pledged acolyte too, weren’t you? How long were you pledged for?”
“I wasn’t really pledged. They took me, is all, when … well, when I didn’t have anyplace else to go. They said twelve years and I could do what I wanted.”
“Me, I was pledged for five years, but I couldn’t get through them. Just couldn’t. My folks pledged me from my fifteenth birthday. By age seventeen I was here on Grass, digging up Arbai bones, and I’ve been here since. Penitent as all get-out. Ah, well. Maybe if I’d been a little older.” He took the steaming cup from the cooker. “Here, drink this. It really will help. Elder Brother Laeroa gave me some years ago when he fetched me from the port, though he was only young Brother Laeroa then, and I’ve given some to a dozen since then. It always seems to help. You’ll be hungry all the time for a long time, then eventually it’ll taper off. Don’t know why. Just part of bein’ on Grass. You can tell me about yourself, too. More I know about you, easier it’ll be to help you out,”
Rillibee sipped, not knowing what to say. “You want the story of my life?”
Mainoa thought about this for a time, his face adopting varying expressions of acceptance and rejection before it finally cleared. “Yes, I guess I do. Some people, I wouldn’t, you know. But you, I think so.”
“Why me?”
“Oh, one thing and another. The way you look. Your name. Now that’s an unusual name for one of the Sanctified.”
“I never was one of them. They just took me, I told you.”
“Tell me more, boy. Tell me everything there is to know.”
Rillibee sighed, wondering what there was to know, remembering, unable not to remember.
The house in Red Canyon had thick adobe walls, mud walls that stayed warm at night and cool in the day. The walls crumbled a little in the winter snow and when it rained, so that every summer Miriam and Joshua and Song and Rillibee had to spend most of a week putting more adobe on and smoothing it out and letting it dry. Inside the house the floors were tiled. One floor was red and the one in the next room was green, one was blue, the next one had patterns in the tiles. Song taught him to play hopscotch on the tiles in his bedroom, and there were dark and light ones in front of the fireplace, little ones, about two inches across, where Joshua and Miriam played checkers. The checkers were made out of clay, too, with leaves pressed into the tops so the pattern stayed after the leaves burned away. Miriam fired them in the same oven she fired the floor tile in, the funny old brick kiln out back, the one that pulled the fire in from the front
There were three bedrooms, a little one each for Rillibee and Songbird and a big one for Joshua and Miriam. Sometimes Rillibee called them Mom and Dad and sometimes he called them by their names. Miriam said it was all right, because sometimes he meant to talk to his Mom or his Dad and other times he just meant to talk to somebody named Miriam or Joshua.
The kitchen was a big room and the common room was bigger yet, with a painting of Miriam over the fireplace and two big, squashy couches. There were old, old Indian rugs on the floors and a table where they all ate supper. Mostly they ate breakfast in the kitchen.