Raising The Stones Read Online Free PDF Page B

intended to have. So far Africa had added Tuesday through Friday, three boys plus another girl, and had decided a total of five might be enough.
    From the time she was tiny, Saturday sang. Even when she was a toddler, she twittered like a bird. There were few birdlike things on Hobbs Land, and none of them sang very well, so Saturday had no competition in becoming the settlement songstress. She was much petted over this, and it was due to Africa’s good sense she didn’t become spoiled. It was a gift, Africa told her child in a stern voice. A gift which Saturday hadn’t earned or even earned the use of. She must work hard at other things as well and use the gift for the happiness of all.
    Saturday worked hard at everything, and she sang, and when she was about ten, she got to know Maire Girat, who, though she didn’t sing now, had once been a singer of great reputation. At least, so said many of the settlers, even those from Phansure or Thyker. Many of them knew of the songs of Maire Manone, which is what she had been called back in Voorstod. It was Maire who taught Saturday how to breathe, and how to bring the air up in a glowing column from her lungs, without break or pause, stroking the notes into life. It was Maire Girat who taught her to embellish her songs with trills and scales and leaps, so the voice trilled and purled like water running.
    They became friends, the tall, haggard, broad-shouldered, often-silent woman and the slight, talkative, flyaway girl. They spent much time together, Saturday questioning and Maire answering in her slow, deliberate voice with the furry roughness at its edges.
    “Why do you sing no more, Maire?” Saturday asked her one day. It was a question she had wanted to ask for a very long time, but something had kept her from it, some sensitivity or scrupulosity which told her the answer would be painful.
    “I cannot,” the woman said sadly. She did not want to talk to this happy child about Fess and Bitty, or about the dreams she once had of great anthems sounding among the stars. Once music had dwelt in her mind, every watch of every day. She had left Voorstod when the music died, but she did not want to talk about that.
    Instead, she said, “None of the things I sang of exist here, child. I sang of lashing seas and looming mountains. Here, the land is like a child’s sandbox, all patted smooth. What can I sing of?”
    To Saturday, there seemed a good deal to sing of. Though Hobbs Land was dull, so everyone said, Saturday had always found it beautiful. Very simple and plain, but beautiful for that.
    “In Voorstod,” Maire said, “the mists gather around to make a little room wherever you stand. If a girl had a lover they could walk all alone, closed in, as though there were no other people in the world. Women could take their veils off, in the mist, and kiss their sweethearts, daring greatly for love, for the winds might come down off the heights to blow all the mists away, and suddenly everything would be there, the monstrous stones, black and towering, with the sea reflecting the sun in a great mirror, everything green and blue and gold, meadow and mountain and sea, and the lovers would have to flee lest they be discovered. That is what I sang of, there.”
    “That’s all you sang about? Sweethearts in the mist?” Saturday’s voice held a great deal of doubt.
    Maire considered this. The sweethearts were entirely a fiction. Women did not dare do such things, and men would not have risked their lives so, but it had been pleasant for a moment to pretend it was true. The lie turned to bitterness in her throat, and she spat it out as truth. “I’m lying to myself and to you, child. I did not sing of lovers. I sang of death. When my boy Maechy died, I wrote a song. It was called ‘The Last Winged Thing,’ and it spoke of the angel of Hope coming to Scaery to ask if I’d called it there as I’d called the other angels. Hope was the last one, the last winged