Her thoughts kept returning to the sin of having strummed a few bars of her own song. That, and being a girl and the only one who could teach or play in the absence of a real Harper.
Yes, she finally decided, that was the reason for her universal disfavor. No one wanted the Harper to know that the youngsters had been schooled by a girl. But; if she hadn’t taught them right, then Fetiron had taught her all wrong. That didn’t hold water. And, if the old man had really written the Masterharper about her, wouldn’t the new Harper have been curious, or sought her out? Maybe her songs hadn’t been as good as old Petiron had thought Probably Petiron had never sent them to the Masterharper. And that message hadn’t said anything about her. At any rate, the packet
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was now gone from the mantel in the Records room. And, the way things were going, Menolly would never get close enough to Elgion to introduce herself.
Sure as the sun came up, Menolly could guess what she’d have to do the next daygather new grasses and rushes to repack all the beds in the Hold. It was just the sort of thing her mother would think of for someone so out of favor.
She was wrong. The ships came back to port just after dawn, their holds packed with yellow-stripe and packtaik The entire Hold was turned out to gut, salt and start the smoke-cave.
Of all the fish in the sea, Menolly detested packtafls the most. An ugly fish, with sharp spines all over, it oozed an oily slime that ate into the flesh of your hands and made the skin peel off. Packtails were more head and mouth than anything else but hack the front end oS and the rounded, blunt tail could be sliced off the backbone. Grilled fresh it was succulent eating: smoked it could be softened later for baking or boiling and be as tasty as the day it was caught. But packtafls were the messiest, hardest, toughest, smelliest fish to gut
Halfway through the morning, Menoll/s knife slipped across the fish she was slicing., gashing her left palm wide open. The pain and shock were so great that Menolly just stood, stupidly staring at her hand bones, until Sella realized that she wasn’t keeping pace with the others.
“Menolly, just dreaming … Oh, for the love of … Mavil MaviP Sella could be irritating, but she could keep her wits. As she did now, grabbing Menoll/s wrist and stopping the spurt of blood from the severed artery.
As Mavi came and led her past the furiously working holders, Menolly was seized with a sense of guilt Everyone glared at her as if she’d deliberately wounded herself to get out of working. The humiliation and silent accusations brought tears to her eyes, not the pain nor the sick feeling in her hand.
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“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Menolly blurted out to her mother as they reached the Hold’s infirmary.
Her mother stared at her. “Who said that you did?”
“No onel They just looked itP
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