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was nothing to be done about him…. Silence fell. There was something about Kore that nobody wanted to bring up—not even the boss, who was never superstitious. Somewhere far away, on the coast of Africa, there had been a major earthquake. A fearful portent, an ominous sign of Supernatural meddling in human affairs … Shehad come to us like smoke blown from a distant fire. What could she tell us, if she dared?
    The last lamp was guttering. We decided to spare the oil and go to bed.
    Whatever she was hiding, our new waitress had told the truth about her skills. She didn’t know a thing about cooking, serving food or attending to guests. But she was a thorough housemaid, and a speedy learner. The only half-truth was when she’d said she could weave “a little.” Her weaving was superb. She’d brought a frame loom dismantled in her pack, along with a finely carved shuttle, hanks of dyed yarn and some outlandish loom weights of carved stone (not solid gold!). Word quickly got about. Over the next few days a procession of the finest weavers in Seatown came to visit the little room on the flat roof. Our matriarchs were impressed by the quality of her work, her knowledge of dyes and yarns, her daring use of color. They also liked her respectful manners; and they liked her silence. “The more a young woman thinks, the less she speaks,” said the great Balba (our chief weaver) to Papa Dicty. “She seems to me a sensible girl. Let her stay.”
    She tried not to show her interest in the refugees. But we noticed that when someone raised the subject in the taverna (and of course people were talking about them), our new waitress would drift over, trying to make it casual, and listen to the conversation. We made up errands forher so she could go out and explore, and check up on her people on the quiet. This trick—it was Anthe’s idea—didn’t work. Kore didn’t say no, but she always found some reason why she couldn’t go out just then.
    We introduced her to our household gods, Mémé the cat and Brébré the ferret (that’s
gods
with a small
g;
in our language it means “pets”); and she was approved. We introduced her to the poultry. Our yard geese grudgingly agreed not to yell blue murder at her, after a few days…. I showed her the forge and the little furnace yard, where Dicty worked on gadgets like his wheat-ribbon press. “In my country,” she said, giving me a thoughtful look, “metal-working is a craft reserved for princes.” … I didn’t comment on that.
    When we realized that our fugitive
would not
leave the house alone, Papa Dicty arranged things so that the four of us young people had time off together—and Pali and Anthe and I pretended this happened all the time, which it certainly did not!
    We showed her the glories of Seatown, which was a short tour. The only place worth seeing was the Enclosure, and we knew she didn’t want to go there. We took her up into the hills west of the town so that she could see, across the ripening terraces of hard wheat, the forest-clothed “mountains” (rather small mountains) of our island’s heart. In hard winters we have snow and ice up there. We go and cut the ice and bury it in a deep cave, then bring it down in summer—so that we can have iceddesserts and fresh meat at Dicty’s through the hottest weather. Just the way people did before the Disaster, when our taverna was a seaside mansion. Pali and I said we’d show her the cave one day. She said thank you, in her quiet way; but her eyes shone. (Anthe hated the idea of being underground!) We took her sea bathing in our favorite cove, north of the harbor. She could swim, but she’d never been in the sea before. We took her to visit Aten and his wife.
    Moni the Naxian was a skilled herbalist. She showed Kore the leaves and flowers of the opotato, and they were soon deep in conversation about the curious qualities of that rare plant. They went off for a study-walk around Moni’s garden while we stayed