A Song for Lya Read Online Free PDF

be more appealing than a really alien one."
    “No, Robb,” Lya said. “I don't think so. Just the reverse. If they're like us, it doesn't make sense that they'd go off so willingly to die. See?"
    She was right, of course. There was nothing suicidal in the emotions I'd read, nothing unstable, nothing really abnormal. Yet every one of the Shkeen went off to Final Union in the end.
    “We should focus on somebody,” I said. “This blend of thought isn't getting us anywhere.” I looked around to find a subject, but just then I heard the bells begin.
    They were off to the left somewhere, nearly lost in the city's gentle roar. I tugged Lya by the hand, and we ran down the street to find them, turning left at the first gap in the orderly row of domes.
    The bells were still ahead, and we kept running, cutting through what must have been somebody's yard, and climbing over a low bush fence that bristled with sweethorns. Beyond that was another yard, a dung pit, more domes, and finally a street. It was there we found the bell-ringers.
    There were four of them, all Joined, wearing long gowns of bright red fabric that trailed in the dust, with great bronze bells in either hand. They rang the bells constantly, their long arms swinging back and forth, the sharp, clanging notes filling the street. All four were elderly, as Shkeen go—hairless and pinched up with a million tiny wrinkles. But they smiled very widely, and the younger Shkeen that passed smiled at them.
    On their heads rode the Greeshka.
    I'd expected to find the sight hideous. I didn't. It was faintly disquieting, but only because I knew what it meant. The parasites were bright blobs of crimson goo, ranging in size from a pulsing wart on the back of one Shkeen skull to a great sheet of dripping, moving red that covered the head and shoulders of the smallest like a living cowl. The Greeshka lived by sharing the nutrients in the Shkeen bloodstream, I knew.
    And also by slowly—oh so slowly—consuming its host.
    Lya and I stopped a few yards from them, and watched them ring. Her face was solemn, and I think mine was. All of the others were smiling, and the songs that the bells sang were songs of joy. I squeezed Lyanna's hand tightly. “Read,” I whispered.
    We read.
    Me: I read bells. Not the sound of bells, no, no, but the feel of bells, the emotion of bells, the bright clanging joy, the hooting-shouting-ringing loudness, the song of the Joined, the togetherness and the sharing of it all. I read what the Joined felt as they pealed their bells, their happiness and anticipation, their ecstasy in telling others of their clamorous contentment. And I read love, coming from them in great hot waves, passionate possessive love of a man and woman together, not the weak watery affection of the human who “loves” his brothers. This was real and fervent and it burned almost as it washed over me and surrounded me. They loved themselves, and they loved all Shkeen, and they loved the Greeshka, and they loved each other, and they loved us. They loved us. They loved me , as hotly and wildly as Lya loved me. And with love I read belonging, and sharing. They four were all apart, all distinct, but they thought as one almost, and they belonged to the Greeshka, and they were all together and linked although each was still himself and none could read the others as I read them.
    And Lyanna? I reeled back from them, and shut myself off, and looked at Lya. She was white-faced, but smiling. “They're beautiful,” she said, her voice very small and soft and wondering. Drenched in love, I still remembered how much I loved her , and how I was part of her and her of me.
    “What—what did you read?” I asked, my voice fighting the continued clangor of the bells.
    She shook her head, as if to clear it. “They love us,” she said. “You must know that, but oh, I felt it, they do love us. And it's so deep . Below that love there's more love, and below that more, and on and on forever. Their