Singer from the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

against that duty. “Why?” she had cried to her mother. “Why do I have to when I don’t want to!”
    Her mother had replied, softly as always, “Because our great-great-great-grandmothers assented to it, Jenny. When our forefathers bought Haven, they recruited strong, healthy young women to be the royal and noble mothers of all future generations, and the young women were allowed to choose to come to Haven or not, as they pleased, but if they opted to come to Haven, they agreed to obey the covenants.”
    “I didn’t agree! What right did some woman a thousand years ago have to agree for me?”
    “Because that’s how it works, love. We all do whatour ancestors found to be best. Why learn hard lessons over and over?”
    “Nursing babies for a year!” young Genevieve had said scornfully. “Della’s sister’s baby is only six months, and she’s weaning him already!”
    “Year-long nursing is in the covenants,” Mother had said, little lines of worry between her eyes.
    “It wasn’t in the original covenants. I read them my very own self!”
    “Jenny, I’ve asked you to stay out of the library. Your father will …”
    “I read them,” she had insisted, pouting. She had also read the history of the settlement, and could understand very well why young women might have promised almost anything to get away from the planets they had lived upon. Besides, the covenants back then were not at all like they were now!
    Mother sighed, running a pale hand across her brow, as though to sort out the thoughts that lived inside. “The Tribunal has made some amendments from time to time. I’m sure there are good reasons for all the covenants, and we have been taught that women are happiest in gracious submission to the covenants.”
    If that had been the case, Mother should have been very happy, but she had never seemed so to Genevieve. Of course, what Mother said upstairs in her public voice for the Marshal or the servants to hear, and what mother said down in the cellars when she and Genevieve were alone there, were totally different things. Upstairs was covenant, covenant, covenant, all over everything, like moss, with the visiting scrutator scraping away at it to uncover any hidden notions of disobedience or independence. Despite her private reservations, Genevieve earned a passing grade during each spiritual audit, however, and that was the public side of things.
    The secret side of things happened in the lonely hours of the night, when Mother and she went tip-toeing down the stony stairs into the earth-smelling dark, lit only by their candles. It happened when they pushed open the heavy, dusty doors to go beyond the wine cellar, past the coal store, into the deep, moist world of otherness, whenthey left the covenants behind. Once hidden away they became, so Mother said, separate minds who taught and learned things not of that world. Those teachings would be realized in Genevieve’s time, or if not, passed on to Genevieve’s daughters to be realized in some later time. Whichever it might be, they could
never
be practiced or spoken of anywhere else! Never until the time was right. Promise.
    Genevieve promised, though she had no idea why she would ever speak of them? Nine-tenths of them, she did not understand at all.
    “Mama, what are harbingers?”
    “Those who sing the song.”
    “Mama, what is the song?”
    “You’ll know it when you hear it.”
    “Mama, if the scrutator says I have a soul, and the covenants say I have a soul, why … ?”
    Though Mother always answered the questions, Genevieve did not always understand the answer, for Mother often seemed to live in a different world. At breakfast times, her eyes sometimes were focused on something far, far away rather than being cast down in holy resignation as they should have been, even while the Marshal ranted over the latest letters and promotion lists, bloody bedamn this, bloody bedamn that.
    Though perhaps Mother had chosen to take no notice of the