Maia Page 3

  young body, her rosy cheeks and golden hair. Her former husband had been thrifty and hard-working. If he had lived, they would probably have been well-off in a few more years. Maia-so it seemed to Morca-had become, with her selfish, wayward intractability, nothing but a dead weight and a useless mouth.

  Not far from the cabin a great ash-tree stood beside the lake, and here, during the summer afternoons, Morca would often catch sight of Maia sprawled along a branch, chewing grass and gazing down at her reflection in the green water, indolent and luxurious as a cat on a bench. Then she would scream at her to come down and sweep the floor or peel the vegetables; and the girl would comply with a lazy, shoulder-shrugging grace which only increased Morca's resentment. After a time, however, Maia, tired of predictable interruption, forsook the ash-tree and took to straying further afield, to the marshes or the waterfall: or she would swim out more than half a mile, to an island near the center of the lake, there to bask away the afternoon before returning for a supper to the preparation of which she had contributed nothing.

  There was never quite enough to go round-never enough, that is, for satisfaction. They were not starving, or even in serious want; yet throughout the past year, as the girls had grown, there seemed to Morca to be less and less than in days gone by-less variety and quality and less prospect of making provision for the future. Often it was all she could do to feed Tharrin as a man ought to be fed and to fend off, with bread, apples and porridge, the continual hunger of the rest. Once, Maia had sat down by the road and eaten half the butter she was supposed to be taking to market at Meerzat.

  "But she won't do it again," Morca had said in relating the matter to Tharrin, who roared with laughter and invited Maia to show him her weals. There were only two, for after the second blow Maia had torn the stick out of her mother's hand and snapped it across her knee.

  Perhaps it was the recollection of this which now caused Morca to cut short her tirade. Taking down a wooden tub from where it hung on two nails by the door, she carried it over to the hearth and began to fill it with warm water for Tharrin to wash. Her back being turned, he winked at Maia, holding a finger to his lips. The girl smiled back and, having gone so far as to turn away before stripping to her

  shift, wrapped herself in an old blanket, sat down on a stool and began mending her torn bodice with needle and thread.

  Tharrin, wiping his mouth and spitting raisin stones on the floor, followed Morca across to the hearth, sat down on a stool and bent to unwind his muddy leggings.

  "Come on, old girl," he said, as she set the steaming tub at his feet. "What's the use of a house full of caterwauling, eh? Life's too short. Look here"-pulling her reluctantly down on his knee-"this'll put a smile on your face. You didn't know I was a silver diviner, did you?"

  "What you talking about?" replied Morca sulkily, yet making no move to get up.

  "I can find silver anywhere. Look!" And, suddenly thrusting his hand down the front of her smock, before she could grab his wrist he drew it out with a coin held up between his fingers. "Fifty meld! And all for you, my pretty Morca! You just take that to market tomorrow along with the cheese and butter, and buy yourself something nice. And don't you dare go telling me anything about taverns and Deelguy girls again. It's you I love; and you ought to know that by this time."

  Morca stared; then took the coin between her finger and thumb and bit it.

  "Where'd you find this?"

  "In between your deldas!"

  On the other side of the hearth Maia, holding her stitching up to the light from the fire, suppressed a gurgle of laughter.

  "Go on, take it!" persisted Tharrin. "It's not stolen, I'll tell you that much. It's yours, fair and square. Come on, now, give us a kiss!"

  "Well-" Morca paused, only half-appeased. "What's all this leading up to? You're off to Thettit, I suppose, and see you back when we do?"

  "Never in the world! Why, I'm taking the boat out tomorrow, soon as young Maia's mended that hole in the net. When you come back from market the place'll be stacked with carp, perch, trout-anything you like. Make another eighty meld, easy. Come on, Nala," he called to the nine-year-old, "just you get that banzi laid down to sleep, now! and you, Kelsi, see to covering down the fire: you can pull out that big log and dip it in the tub here; I'm done with the water. I don't know about the rest of

  you, but I'm tired out. Give over stitching, now, Maia; you'll only spoil those big blue eyes! You can finish it tomorrow! Come on, my lass," he said, putting his arm round Morca's waist and fondling her, "just you be getting that big belly into bed, and I'll be along to remind you how you came by it."

  Fifty meld was more money than the house had seen for weeks. But impulse and unpredictability were Tharrin's hallmarks, and Morca had learned better than to provoke further absurd replies by pressing him to tell how the windfall had been come by. All the same, she would have given half of it to know where he had been that day.

  3: THE NET

  The setting moon, shining through a crack in the shutters, fell upon the dirty, ragged bedclothes and on the one bare leg which Maia, asleep in her shift, had thrust out to lie along a bench beside the bed. The bed had become too narrow for both herself and Nala, and Maia, who, however bitterly she might quarrel with Morca, was for the most part generous and kindly towards her sisters, had taken to sleeping with one leg out on the bench so that Nala could be more at ease. On summer nights such as this the arrangement was not really troublesome, except that turning over was tricky. However, Maia usually fell asleep quickly and slept sound.

  In the foetid air behind the closed wooden shutters, flies buzzed and droned about the room, and from time to time the gnawing of a mouse sounded from somewhere along the wall by the hearth. Tharrin, awake beside the sleeping Morca, drew the curtain a crack and lay watching the shaft of moonlight as it slowly travelled across Maia's bare shoulders and tumbled curls.

  Moonlight is commonly believed to induce dreams, and certainly Maia was dreaming. Tharrin could hear her murmuring in her sleep. Yet into the world within her solitary head he could not follow.

  At first her dream was formless, possessed of no images from the waking world; there was only an awareness of shining, misty distance; an empty place of opalescent light. Then, looking down, she saw that she was clothed all in

  flowers; not merely hung about with them, as on the waterfall the evening before, but clad in a long robe made entirely of scented, brilliant blooms such as she had never seen in her life.

  "I am the Queen of Bekla!" she pronounced; yet without speaking; for miraculously, her every thought was a royal utterance automatically heard by multitudes waiting silently round her. Slowly, magnificently, she paced between them towards her carriage; for, as she knew, she was to ride through the city to some sacred destination, there to fulfil her role of queen.

  The carriage, curved and faintly lustrous like a shell, stood waiting. To either side of its red-painted pole was harnessed a white, long-horned goat. Each, scarlet-plumed and gold-tasselled, was hung about, as though for market, with all manner of fruit and vegetables-beans in their long pods, bunches of carrots; marrows and pendent green cucumbers. Some shadowy, half-seen person was waiting to lead them, but she waved him aside.

  "I will drive them: they are mine." And, grasping the shaft of a cloven-headed goad which stood in a holster beside her seat, she pricked and urged them forward.

  Now, as though swimming in choppy water, she was rocking on through unseen crowds like waves, swaying, moving up and down as her goats bore her through an applauding city all tumult. Between her legs she was holding a hollowed gourd full of ripe figs, and these she tossed in handfuls to either side.

  "They're for everyone! Everyone is to have them!" she cried. There was scrambling, tussling and a smell of crushed figs, but of all this she was aware without discerning anyone out of a concourse formless as lake-mist. Yet she knew that even in the midst of their admiration she was in deadly danger. A great, fat man was guzzling and stuf
fing himself with her figs. He had the power to kill her, yet she drove past him unharmed, for a black girl was holding him back.

  Amid the cheering crowds she reached her destination. It was the ash-tree by the lake. Reining in her goats she scrambled out, climbed to the bough over the water and lay along it, looking down. Yet it was not her own face she saw below her, but that of an old, gray man, gazing kindly yet gravely up at her from the green depths. He was himself a denizen of water-ways and water; that much she knew. She wondered whether he was actually lying

  stretched beneath the surface, or whether what she saw was only a reflection and he behind her. Yet as she turned her head to look, the boughs began to sway and rustle, a bright light dazzled her and she woke to find the moonlight in her eyes.

  For some time she lay still, recalling the dream and repeating in her mind a proverb once told to her by her father.

  If you want your dream made real, Then to none that dream reveal. If you want your dream to die, Tell it ere the sun is high.

  She remembered the dream vividly; not merely what she had seen, but chiefly what she had felt-the all-informing atmosphere of a splendor composed of brilliant yet come-by trappings, their bizarre nature unquestioned while the dream held sway. The splendor-and the danger. And the strange old man in the water. She could not tell whether or not she wanted that dream to come true. Anyway, how could it?

  Ah, but suppose she took no steps to stop it coming true? Then it might come true in its own way-in some unexpected, unbeautiful way-like the disregarded prophecies in the hero-tales that Tharrin sometimes told, or the ballads sung by Drigga, the kindly old woman who lived up the lane. And if it were to come true, would she know at the time, or only afterwards?

  She felt hungry. Listening intently and holding her breath, she could just catch the sound of Morca's regular breathing from behind the curtain. The girls were forbidden to help themselves to food. Morca would have liked to be able to lock the cupboard-like recess that served for a larder, but a Gelt lock was a luxury far beyond the household's means. Maia had never even seen one.

  She slipped out of bed, pulled on her half-mended smock and tiptoed across to the larder. The door was fastened with a length of cord, and this she untied with scarcely a sound. Groping, her hand found a lump of bread and some cold fish left over from Tharrin's supper. Taking them, she tied the cord again, stole to the door, raised the bar and stepped out into the clear, grey twilight of the early summer morning.

  Bird song was growing all around her, and from the lake

  came a harsh, vibrating cry and a watery scuttering. She crouched, clasping her knees, and made water in the grass; then, picking fragments of fish off the bone as she went, she wandered slowly down to the ash-tree and climbed to her accustomed branch.

  Resting her arms before her as she lay prone along the branch, she laid her forehead on them and breathed the air thus imprisoned in the cave between bosom and forearms. The bread was hard, and she held it for a little while in her armpit before biting and gulping it down. Just as she finished it, a brilliant shaft of light shot all across the lake and the rim of the sun appeared above the further shore three miles away.

  The glittering water, dazzling her, reminded her once more of her dream. "If you want your dream made real-" Suddenly an idea occurred to her. Dreams, as everyone knew, came from Lespa of the Stars, the beautiful consort of the god Shakkarn. Lespa had sent this dream, and therefore Lespa must know all about it. She, Maia, would give it back to her, confess her own incomprehension and beg the goddess to do as she thought best. In this way she would both have told and not have told her dream.

  Pulling off her clothes, she laid them across the branch and then, swinging a moment on her arms, lightly dropped the ten feet to the water. A quick shock of cold, to which she was well-accustomed, a blowing of her nose and sluicing of her eyes, and she was swimming easily, on her back, out into the lake lying smoother than snakeskin in the sun.

  Now she was resting still on the surface, more alone than in the grass, more easy than in bed, gazing up into the early-morning, pale-blue dome of the sky.

  "Hear me, sweet Lespa, thou who from thy silver stars dost sprinkle the world with dreams. Behold, I give thee back thy dream, not ungratefully, but in bewilderment. Do for me as may be best, I humbly pray thee."

  "Maia! Ma-ia!"

  Maia dropped her legs, treading water, pushed back her hair and looked quickly round towards the shore. It was Morca's voice, strident and sharp, and now she could see Morca herself standing by the door of the cowshed, shading her eyes and staring out across the lake.

  She could see Morca. Why could Morca not see her? Then she realized why. Morca was looking straight into

  the risen sun, and her own head-all of her that was above water-must appear as a mere dot in the path of light streaming across the lake. Turning, she began swimming away, directly into the sun, taking care to leave scarcely a ripple on the surface.

  It was nearly two hours before she returned, wading ashore near the ash-tree and pausing a few moments to brush the water from her body and limbs before climbing up to her clothes. As she strolled up towards the cabin, Nala came running down to meet her.

  "Where've you been, Mai?"

  "Where d'you think? In the lake."

  "Mother's been looking for you everywhere. She was that angry!"

  "That's a change. Where is she now?"

  "Gone to market in Meerzat. She's taken Kelsi with her. She was going to fell you all the things you had to do while she's gone, but she's told them to me instead and I'm to tell you."

  "Well, for a start I'm going to mend the net for Tharrin. He said so last night. Where's Tie got to, anyway?"

  "I don't know. He went up the lane. Let me tell you what mother said, otherwise I'll never remember."

  "All right, but I shan't do no more 'n what I want."

  She was lying near the shore in the warm sun. All around her were spread the folds of the big net, and through her smock she could feel its knotted mesh against her back. She had piled up part of the mass behind her like a couch, and was now reclining at ease, the rent she was mending opened across her lap. Tar, cord, wax, twine and knife lay about her, conveniently to hand. Her fingers were covered with streaks of tar and felt sore from all the knotting and pulling tight.

  The flies buzzed, the water glittered and from somewhere behind her a bluefinch repeated its song over and over. Dropping a handful of the net, she fell into a daydream. "Queen of Bekla"-she knew what the Sacred Queen in Bekla had to do, for Tharrin had once told her, with much sniggering detail, about the great craftsman Fleitil's brazen image of Cran, that marvel of dedicated artistry; which, in answer to her abashed but fascinated questioning, he was forced to admit he had never seen for

  himself. "And if she didn't do it, lass, the crops wouldn't grow-nothing would grow."

  "You mean, not any longer at all?" she had asked.

  He chuckled. "Nothing would grow any longer. Not mine or anyone else's. Wouldn't that be terrible?"

  "I don't understand."

  "Ah, well, there's plenty of time. Every apple falls in time, you know." And, pinching her arm and laughing, he was off to the tavern.

  She settled herself more comfortably in the net, stretched and yawned. The job was nearly finished. There would be about another half-hour's work. Once she had taken on a task for Tharrin she liked to take pains to please him: but this had been a long, dull, careful job and now she felt weary of it. She was overcome by a sudden, depressing sense of the monotony of her life; dull food, rough, dirty clothes, too much work and tedious, unvarying companionship. Save for her solitary escapes to the lake it was seldom enough, she reflected, that she got away. Last year Tharrin had taken them all to the wine festival at Meerzat-a piffling enough sort of affair, he'd called it, compared with those he had known in Ikat and Thettit. And yet, she thought resentfully, it was the best she was ever likely to see. "Queen of Bekla"-She felt herself to be beautiful, she fel
t confidence in her beauty-oh, ah, she thought, beautiful in dirt and rags, in a hovel on the Tonildan Waste. Mend the nets, gather the firewood, mind the banzi, don't eat so much, there isn't enough to go round. If only there could be something sweet to eat, she thought-and swallowed the saliva that filled her mouth at the longing.

  She felt drowsy. Her deft fingers recommenced their work, then faltered and paused, lying still as she leant back in the soft, resilient thickness of the piled net and closed her eyes. The breeze, the wavelets lapping on the shore, the leaves of the ash-tree, the flies darting in the bright air-all these were in motion above and around her, so that she herself seemed like a still centre, a sleeping princess, motionless save for the gentle rise and fall of her bosom under the self-mended dress.

  She woke with a start, conscious that someone was standing beside her. She half-sprang up, then lay back, laughing with relief as she realized that it was only Tharrin.

  "Oh-Tharrin-oh, you give me such a turn! I'd dropped

  off for a moment. Don't matter, I've done most of it, look. It's done proper, too-won't go again in 'urry."

  He lay down beside her, leaning on his elbow and gazing up at her intently. As he still said nothing she felt a touch of nervousness.

  "What's up, then, Tharrin? Nothin' wrong, is there?"

  At this he smiled. "No, nothing," he answered, laying a hand on her bare forearm. "Nothing at all."