“You ought to consider the alternatives,” Yma said, every time they met. “Really, Lutha. You ought to … ”
The Fastigat uncles and cousins also urged her to consider alternatives. Santeresa’s World, they’d suggested, where the whole planet made its living caring for the sick, the injured, the disabled. It was expensive, but Fastiga would pay for it. Lutha had refused. Her child was not an alternative. End of statement. End of consideration, no matter how her life narrowed around her day by day and even her necessary professional duties gave way to Leely’s needs. She could not decide to let him go any more than she had decided to have him. Though she had. She must have!
For years now she had kept a fragile calm, slathering sentimental oil on every emotional linkage, making her life move like some old cog-and-belt-driven machine, creaking and wobbling from one day to the next. And now, here, all at once, this skinny old fart, this Fastigat servant of the Alliance, this bureaucrat, had thrust an additional duty among her gears, grinding her to a screaming halt!
She abandoned simile and summoned anger, making herself rage at being forced to do the Alliance’s will. Was this a penalty, for having known Leelson? Another one?
The anger wouldn’t hold. It was too hard to hide from herself the anticipation she felt at the promise of somewhere to go, the relief at the idea of someone to help her. The promise of succor and change.
So Lutha planned a journey, even as I, Saluez, planned a journey, though hers was far longer than mine. In a sense, at least, hers was longer, though mine wrought greater changes. For me a night soon came when Shalumn and I wept on each other’s shoulders, I out of fright, she out of fear of losing me. The following morning I bent beneath the brow-strap of my carrying basket and went up the rocky trail with Masanees. High on a shelf above Cochim-Mahn, I panted, waiting for her to catch up with me. Masanees is not as agile as she once was. She has not yet received Weaving Woman’s reward, that comfortable time of life when she need no longer fear conceiving, but she is no longer young. I am young. I am twelve in Dinadh years, twenty standard years. Too young for this, perhaps. But no. Women younger than I, much younger than I have made this trip. If a woman is old enough to conceive, she is old enough for this. So the songfathers say. “Soil which accepts seed is ready for the plow!”
“Whsssh,” Masanees breathed as she came up to the stone where I waited. “Time for a breather. That path gets steeper every year.”
“Have you come up before this year?” I asked, knowing the answer already.
Masanees nodded. “With Dziloch. And last year with Kh’nas.”
“Imsli a t’sisri,” I murmured. Weave no sorrow.
“None,” Masanees replied cheerfully. “They’re both fine. We did it right.”
I tried to smile and could not. I was not reassured. Each year some did not return from the House Without a Name. Each year some went behind the veil, down into shadow. Each time the women no doubt thought they had done it right. Who would go there otherwise?
There was no point in saying it. Saying it only increased terror. I had been told one should, instead, sing quietly to oneself. A weaving song, dark and light, pattern on pattern. Turning away up the hill, I chanted quietly to myself in time with my plodding feet.
The House Without a Name stands on a promontory above Cochim-Mahn. One can see a corner of it from the shelf where the songfather stands, only a corner. One would not want to see it all. One would not want to look at it as part of one’s view of the world. It is easier to ignore it, to pretend it isn’t really there. One can then speak of the choice in measured tones, knowing one need not fear the consequences. As songfathers do.
“That which we relinquished, death and darkness in the pattern.
“That which we took in its place, the House Without a Name … ”