dismissing the youngsters to help unload the heavy
; catch. Then he silently, which made the anticipation of
the punishment worse, removed his wide belt, signaled
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to Menolly to raise her tunic over her head and to hend over the high harper’s stool
When he had finished, she had fallen to her knees on the hard stone flags, biting her lips to keep back the sobs. He’d never beaten her so hard before. Hie blood was roaring in her ears so fiercely that she didn’t hear Yanus leave the little HalL It was a long while before she could ease the tunic over the painful weals on her back. Only when she’d got slowly to her feet did she realize that he’d taken the gitar, too. She knew then that his judgement was irrevocable and harsh.
And unjust! She’d only played the first few bars … hummed along … and that only because the last chords of the Teaching Ballad had modified into the new tune in her head. Surely that little snitch wouldn’t have done any lasting harm] And the children knew all the Teaching Ballads they were supposed to know. She hadn’t meant to disobey Yanus.
“Menolly?” Her mother came to the classhaH door, the carrying thong of an empty skin in her hand. “You dismissed them early? Is that wise …” Her mother stopped abruptly and stared at her daughter. An expression of anger and disgust crossed her face. “So you’ve been the fool after all? With so much at stake, and you had to tune…”
“I didn’t do it on purpose, Mavi. The song … just came into my mind. I’d played no more than a measure …**
There wasn’t any point in trying to justify the incident to her mother. Not now. The desolation Menolly had felt when she realized her father had taken the gitar intensified in the face of her mother’s cold displeasure.
“Take the sack. We need fresh greens,” Mavi said in an expressionless voice. “And any of the yellow-veined grass that might be up. There should be some.”
Resignedly, Menolly took the sack and, without thinking, looped the thong over her shoulder. She
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caught her breath as the unwieldy sack banged against her scored back.
Before Menolly could avoid it, her mother had nipped up the loose tunic. She gave an inarticulate exclamation. ‘^You’ll need numbweed on some of those.”
Menolly pulled away. “What good’s a beating then, if it’s numbed away first chance?” And she dashed out of the Halt
Much Mavi cared if she hurt, anyhow, except that a sound body works harder and longer and faster.
Her thoughts and her misery spurred her out of the Hold, every swinging stride she took jarring her sore back. She didn’t slow down because she’d the whole long track in front of the Hold to go. The faster she went, the better, before some auntie wanted to know why the children were out of lessons so soon, or why Menolly was going green-picking instead of Teaching.
Fortunately she encountered no one. Everyone was either down at the Dock Cave, unloading, or making themselves scarce to the Sea Holder’s eyes so they wouldn’t have to. Menolly charged past the smaller holds, down aways on the marshroad, then up the nghthand track, south of the Half-Circle. She’d put as much distance between herself and Sea Hold as she :could: aH perfectly legitimate, in search of greenery.
As she jogged along the sandy footpath, she kept her open for fresh growth, trying to ignore the occa-going when she’d jar her whole body. Her began to smart She gritted her teeth and paced
|| Her brother, Alemi, had once said that she could run |g as well as any boy of the Hold and outdistance the half a&gjfthem on a long race. If only she had been a boy … |llien it wouldn’t have mattered if Petiron had died |and left them Harperless. Nor would Yanus have beaten -“boy for being brave enough to sing his own songs. The first of the tow marsh valleys was pink and yel-21
low with blooming seabeachplum and marshbeny, slightly blackened here and there: more from the low-flying queens catching the odd Thread that escaped the main wings. Yes, and there was the patch that the flamethrower had charred: the one Thread infestation that had gotten through. One day, MenoHy told herself, she’d just throw open a window’s steel shutters and see the dragons chairing Thread in the sky. What a sight that must be for certainl