“It is because we are water poor,” I said. “We value it.”
“Well, it flatters me that you like my laughter,” she said. “Sometimes I think I have forgotten how to laugh.”
Her eyes were on the boy, and I knew why she had almost forgotten, but I said nothing. She did not want to discuss Leely, and I did not want to offend her. Still, I wondered why. Among the Dinadhi, once we know a child is … incompetent to live, we do not insist upon keeping it alive. Sometimes a mother will fight the inevitable, and she is allowed to do so. Mothers are mothers, after all. But eventually, even a mother understands that humans are not immune from nature’s error. Some babies are not meant to live. I thought Leely was one such. So did Leelson, and this was the source of the conflict between them. I almost said hatred, but it was not hatred. Not that alone, at any rate, for she loved him too. I am no Fastigat, but I could feel her yearning, and his. It was like wind, or sunshine, or flowing water, an undeniable presence.
It was all very tragic and complicated, and I interested myself with it for all the miles we walked that afternoon, down the long canyon, out into the bare space where the five canyons meet, and across that rocky expanse to the place beside the water where we hid ourselves in a grove of trees and set up our camp.
I had no more idea how to set up the gaufer cage than they did. After a time we figured it out. The pen had the wain for one side, with a narrow panel fastened across the wheels to keep anything from coming under. Two oblong panels hooked onto the front and back of the wain, then onto other panels to make a six-sided enclosure. Then six triangular panels made the peaked roof, all joined together with paran-wood fasteners on the inside.
“Leather lacings would be easier,” said Trompe as he struggled with a panel that would not line up correctly.
“The Kachis can chew through leather,” I said quietly. “They cannot chew paran, which is sometimes called wood-adamant. It must be steamed a long time before it can be worked, and when it is dry, even metal tools have difficulty cutting it.”
“I can see why,” he muttered, continuing his struggle.
Eventually, he and Leelson figured it out. Only after they’d done it by trial and error did they find the faded marks on the edges of the panels to show which one went where. Meantime, the gaufers had been watered and allowed to graze in the woody glade. When the sun was almost gone, they surprised us by coming purposefully out of the woods and entering the enclosure by themselves. They milled about uncertainly until we shut them in, then they settled, each to a small pile of the edible growths we had gathered during the afternoon. We were shut in as well, with a tiny fire in the firebox to warm our food and make a pleasant smoke. The Kachis do not like smoke, though they are attracted to fire. Carrying a torch at night is a sure way to bring them by the dozens.
We heard the dusk song, echoes of it from far up the canyons. Only from the southern canyon came no sound, for it is too narrow for men to live in. The days are short inside it, and there are no hives there. Luckily, the canyon itself is not long. We could traverse it, I told Lutha, in a couple of days.
“Will we find enough fodder for the gaufers?” she asked.
“Lady, I do not know,” I told her. “I feel such a fool. I should know more about my own world.”
“Your world is sexually di-cultural,” she said seriously. “Men know one set of things, and women know another. And, I suppose the women are di-cultural as well. Those who are … veiled and those who are not.”
“No,” I said. “We who are veiled know everything the others do. And more, besides.”
She opened her mouth as though to ask a question, then caught herself and was still. Trompe and Leelson were murmuring together, but they, too, fell quiet in that instant and we all heard the questing cry from the southern canyon.