The men gathered in the Great Hall in the morning, mending gear and yarning. Mavi organized her women for an exhaustive cleaning of some of the inner Hold rooms. Menolly and Sella were sent down to the glow storage so often that Sella vowed she didn’t need light to show her the way anymore.
Menolly worked willingly enough, checking glows in every single room in the Hold. It was better to work than to think. That evening she couldn’t escape the Great Hall. Since everyone had been in all day, everyone needed entertainment and was going. The Harper would surely play. Menolly shuddered. Well, there was no help for it. She had to hear music sometime. She couldn’t avoid it forever. And at least she could sing along with the others. But she soon found she couldn’t even have that pleasure. Mavi gestured to her when the Harper began to tune his gitar. And when the Harper beckoned for everyone to join in the choruses, Mavi pinched Menolly so hard that she gasped.
“Don’t roar. You may sing softly as befits a girl your age,” Mavi said. “Or don’t sing at all.”
Across the Hall, Sella was singing, not at all accurately and loud enough to be heard in Benden Hold; but when Menolly opened her mouth to protest; she got another pinch.
So she didn’t sing at all but sat there by her mother’s side, numb and hurt; not even able to enjoy the music and very conscious that her mother was being monstrously unfair.
Wasn’t it bad enough she couldn’t play anymore yetbut not to be allowed to sing? Why, everyone had encouraged her to sing when old Fetiron had been
62
alive. And been glad to hear her. Asked her to sing, time and again.
Then Menolly saw her father watching her, his face stern, one hand tapping not so much to the time of the music but to some inner agitation. It was her father who didn’t want her to singl It wasn’t fair! It just wasn’t fairl Obviously they knew and were glad she hadn’t come before. They didn’t want her here.
She wrenched herself free from her mother’s grip and, ignoring Mavi’s hiss to come back and behave herself, she crept from the Hall. Those who saw her leave thought sadly that it was such a pity she’d hurt her hand and didn’t even want to sing anymore.
Wanted or not, creeping out like that would send Mavi looking for her when there was a pause in the evening’s singing. So Menolly took her sleeping furs and a glow and went to one of the unused inner rooms where no one would find her. She brought her clothes, too. If the storm cleared, she’d be away in the morning to the fire lizards. They liked her singing. They liked her!
Before anyone else was up, she had risen. She gulped down a cold klali and ate some bread, stuffed more in her pouch and was almost away. Her heart beat fast while she struggled with the big metal doors of the Hold entrance. She’d never opened them before and hadn’t appreciated how very solid they were. She couldn’t, of course, bar them again, but there was scarcely any need.
Sea mist was curling up from the quiet harbor waters, the entrances to the dock Cavern visible as darker masses in the gray. But the sun was beginning to bum through the fog, and Menolly’s weather-sense told her that it would soon be clear.
As she strode down the broad holdway, mist swirled up and away from her steps. It pleased Menolly to see something give way before her, even something as nebulous as fog. Visibility was limited, but she knew her path by the shape of the stones along the road and
63
was soon climbing through the caressing mists to the bluff.
She struck somewhat inland, towards the first of the marshes. One cup of klah and a hunk of bread was not enough food, and she remembered some unstripped marshberry bushes. She was over the first humpy hill and suddenly the mist had left the land, the brightness of the spring sun almost an ache to the eyes.