Everything went very well for the first two days. The morning of the third, Merelan was entertaining all the children with game songs and teaching them the gestures that went with them, when a very tattered girl, eyes wide with delight, moved closer and closer with surreptitious stealth. When she was near enough, Merelan smiled at her.
“Do you want to join us?” she asked in a carefully soft voice.
The girl shook her head, her eyes wide now with a mixture of longing and fear.
“Oh, please, everyone else is here,” Merelan said, doing her best to reassure the timid child. “Rob, open the circle and let her in, will you, dear?”
The child took another step and then suddenly squealed when she saw a man charging from the traders’ wagon, right at Merelan’s circle.
“You there … you stop that, you harlot! You evil creature, luring children away from their parents …”
Merelan didn’t realize at first that he meant her. The child raced into the shelter of the heavy plantation just beyond the clearing, but that didn’t seem to cool the man’s fury, for he charged right up to Merelan with his arm raised to strike her.
Robinton ran to clutch his mother’s skirts, frightened by the wild threats and crazed behaviour. Meren, the StationMaster, two of the male runners and three other traders charged to her rescue: Meren just in time to push the attacker off balance and away from Merelan. The children were by then all weeping and running away.
“Easy, Rochers, she’s a mother, singing baby songs,” Meren said, holding the man away.
“She’s singing, ent she? Singing comes first, don’t it? Singing to lure kids away! She’s evil. Just like all harperfolk. Teachin’ things no one needs to know to live proper.”
“Rochers, leave be,” the Station Master said, exercising considerable force to pull the man away, shooting embarrassed and apologetic glances at merelan.
“Come, Rochers, we need to finish dealing,” said one of the traders. “Come on, we’d nearly shook hands …”
“Harper harlot!” Rochers shouted, trying to free a fist to wave at
Merelan, who was clinging to Robinton as much as he was clinging to her.
“She’s not a harper, Rochers. She’s a mother, amusing the kids,” the Station Master said, loudly enough to try to drown out what the man was saying.
“She had “em dancing!” Spittle was beginning to form in the
corners of his mouth as the men pulled him back to the wagons.
“Get into Dalma’s wagon, Merelan,” Meren said quickly. “We’ll clear him out.”
Merelan complied, picking Robie up in her arms and trying to calm his frightened sobs. She slipped behind a tree and through the wooded verge until she could duck into Dalma’s wagon, one of the last in the Station clearing. She was shaking when she got inside it, and she nearly shrieked with fear when someone pushed open the little door. But it was only Dalma, her face white with anxiety. She embraced Merelan and tried to soothe Robinton all at the same time.
“Crazy, woods crazy,” she murmured reassuringly. “Who’d’ve thought he’d even notice you over there, playing so nicely.”
“What did he mean?” Merelan asked, trying to control her sobs.
She’d never been so frightened in all her life. Especially since she had joined the Harper Hall, which was held with respect everywhere she’d gone as a MasterSinger. “What could he mean? He called me a harper harlot. And how can singing be bad? Evil?”
“Now, now.” Dalma held Merelan tightly against her, stroking her hair and patting her shoulder, or patting Robie, though he had recovered within the safety of the wagon and in Dalma’s comforting presence. “We run into some real odd folk now and then. Some of “em have never met a harper, and some don’t hold with singing or dancing or drinking. Sev says it’s because they can’t make wine or beer, so it has to be evil. They don’t want their children to know more than they did or you’d better believe it’ – and Dalma gave a sour little laugh – “they couldn’t keep them from leaving those awful jungles.
“But it was the way he said “harper” …” Merelan swallowed at the tone of hatred in which the word had been uttered.