others something to talk about. She was no trouble at all.
The tall caravan master, his gray-shot beard and easy confidence reminders of
his experience, did not believe that she was syphilitic, or pocked, or sun
cursed, or pregnant either. Nor did he view her as sinister merely because she
refused to show her face. Thus Caravan Master Eliab was not pleasant to the
little delegation of three women and the prideless husband of one of them, when
they came to demand that the veiled person reveal and identify herself on the
grounds that she was mysterious and therefore sinister and Frightening The
Children.
Master Eliab looked down upon them, literally and figuratively. “Point out to me
those children who are affrighted of the Lady Saphtherabah,” he said, making up
an impressive name for in truth she had signed on with him simply as “Cleya,” a
name common in Suma, “and I shall make them forget her by giving them something
else to be fearful of.”
“Hmp. And what might that be. Caravan Master?”
“ME!” he bellowed, and he transformed his bushily bearded face into a fearful
scowl. At the same time he swept out the curved sword from his worn paisley
patterned sash. Curling his other hand into a claw, he pounced at them.
He took only the one big lunging step, but the members of the delegation took
many. Squealing and worse, four disunited individuals fled his company.
When Eliab arose next morning-with the sun, of course-it was to find that the
veiled lady had prepared breakfast for him from her own stores and was calmly