Magda reminded her softly, “I was married.”
“But only for a time-”
“I did not know when I married that it was only for a time,” Magda said, with a twinge of the old pain. They had made so many plans for permanence!
“Tell me: if you had had a child, would you have stayed with him? Do you think it can be a bond between you?”
“My mother found it so,” Magda said slowly. “She followed my father to four different worlds; then we came here, and I was born, and she always seemed content.”
“Content only-to make a home for him? Is that your way, in the Empire?”
“She was a musician,” Magda said. “She played on several instruments, and she wrote many songs. She translated many of the mountain songs into the Empire’s standard language; and she wrote music for some poems written in casta. But my father was always the center of her life; after he died, she seemed to lose all joy in living, and seldom touched her music again; and she did not live very long.” –
“Rohana married dom Gabriel when she had seen him only twice,” Jaelle said reflectively. “To me that seemed frightful, to be given to a man I barely knew, to lie with him, to bear his children. It seemed no better than slavery or rape made lawful! But when I said as much to Rohana, she laughed at me, and said that any man and woman, with health and goodwill, can live together in kindness and make a good life for one another. She said she thought herself lucky that he was decent and kindly and eager to please her; not a drunkard or a gambler or a lover of men, as so many of the Ardais are. To me, that seemed like a man, who has received a cudgeling, rejoicing that he had not been horsewhipped as well. …” She was still absently twisting the ribbon around her wrists, looping and uncoiling it. “And now he is truly the center of her life. I cannot understand it, though I find I like him better as I grow older. But there are times, too, when it seems to me that Rohana has as much freedom as any of us, that she does as she wishes and has given up little….”
She drew the loop of ribbon into a tight coil around her wrists, began to coil the loose end around her other arm. She said, “Margali, did you want a child at all? Why did you not have one? You are not barren, are you, breda?”
“I did not want a child at once,” Magda said. “We were traveling together; I did not want anything to separate us.” It had been a bitter quarrel; she looked away from Jaelle, unwilling even now to relive that painful moment.
Jaelle reached out to touch her hand lightly, saying, “I did not mean to pry.”
Magda shook her head. “Afterward, when we agreed to part, T was glad I had no child, to remind me always. …” But would we have separated, then? The touch of Jaelle’s hand suddenly heightened the awareness, the contact, and she found herself thinking, Is she pregnant? Does she think she is, does she want to be? But all she sensed from the touch of Jaelle’s fingertips was … loneliness, fear. I thought Jaelle was so happy.
Magda knew that from this touch she could use her awakened ESP-what Rohana had called laran-to find out if Jaelle were pregnant. The thought suddenly frightened her. She did not want to pry that way, to use this new skill to intrude. She let go of Jaelle’s hand as if the narrow fingers had burned her, and found her hand caught in the ribbon Jaelle had been winding and unwinding about her wrists. Caught off guard, she demanded, “What in the world are you doing with that thing?”
Jaelle stared down at it, in sudden shock. She wrenched it loose, and flung the ribbon across the room, with a look of horror and loathing. As if, Magda thought, she had found a poisonous snake coiling about her wrists!
“Jaelle! What’s wrong, sister?” The affectionate term came readily to her tongue now; but Jaelle’s moment of vulnerability had vanished again behind a barricade of flippancy.