She found her patch of marshbeny and picked one handful for her face, then one for the pouch.
Now that she could see where she was going, she jogged down the coast and finally dropped into a cove. The tide was just right to catch spiderclaws. TTiese should be a pleasant offering to the fire lizard queen she thought as she filled her bag. Or could fire lizards hunt in fog?
When Menolly had carried her loaded sack through several long valleys and over humpy hills, she was beginning to wish she’d waited a while to do her netting. She was hot and tired. Now that the excitement of her unorthodox behavior had waned, she was also depressed. Of course, it was quite likely that no one had noticed she’d left No one would realize it was she who had left the Hold doors unbarred, a terrible offense against the Hold safety rules. Menolly wasn’t sure whybecause who’d want to enter the Sea Hold unless he had business there? Come all that dangerous way across the marshes? For what? There were quite a few precautions scrupulously observed in the Sea Hold that didn’t make much sense to Menolly: like the Hold doors being barred every night, and unshielded glows never being left in an unused room, although it was all right in corridors. Glows wouldn’t bum anything, and think of aH the barked shins that would be saved by leaving a few room glows unshielded.
No, no one was likely to notice that she was gone until there was some unpleasant or tedious job for a one-handed girl to do. So they wouldn’t assume that shefd opened the Hold door. And since Menolly was
64
apt to disappear during the day, no one would think anything about her until evening. Then someone might just wonder where Menolly was.
That was when she realized that she didn’t plan to return to the Hold. And the sheer audacity of that thought was enough to make her halt in her tracks. Not return to the Hold? Not go back to the endless round of tedious tasks? Of gutting, smoking, salting, pickling fish? Mending nets, safls, clothes? Cleaning dishes, clothes, rooms? Gathering greens, berries, grasses, spiderclaws? Not return to tend old uncles and aunts, fires, pots, looms, glowbaskets? To be able to sing or shout or roar or play if she so chose? To sleep … ah, now where would she sleep? And where would she go when there was Thread in the skies?
Menolly trudged on more slowly up the sand dunes; her mind churning with these revolutionary ideas. Why, everyone had to return to the Hold at nightl The Hold, any hold or cot or weyr. Seven Turns had Thread been dropping from the skies, and no one travelled far from shelter. She remembered vaguely from her childhood that there used to be caravans of traders coming through the marshlands in the spring and the summer and early fall. There’d been gay times, with lots of singing and feasting. The Hold doors had not been barred then. She sighed, those had been happier times … the good old days that Old Uncle and the aunties were always droning on about But once Thread started falling, everything had changed … for the worse … at least that was the overall impression she had from the adults in the Hold.
Some stillness in the air, some vague unease caused Menolly to glance about her apprehensively. There was certainly no one else about at this early hour. She scanned tie skies. The mist banking the coast was rapidly dispersing. She could see it retreating across the water to the north and west. Towards the east the sky was brilliant with sunrise, except for what were probably some traces of early morning fog in the northeast
65
Yet something disturbed Menolly. She felt she should know what it was.
She was nearly to the Dragonsong Stones now, in the last marsh before the contour of the land swept gently up towards the seaside bluff. It was as she traversed the marsh that she identified the odd quality: it was the stillness. Not of wind, for that was steady seaward, blowing away the fog, but a stillness of marsh life. All the little insects and flies and small wrigglers, the occasional flights of wild wherries who nested in the heavier bushes were silent. Their myriad activities and small noises began as soon as the sun was up and didn’t cease until just before dawn, because the nocturnal insects were as noisy as the daytime ones.