The Silences of Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

walked toward him and her flickering eyes found his, and he too wondered.
    An unripe lynanyn brushes his hand. His fingertips press hard unpuckered skin and open again.
Do not look for her
, he thinks
. Turn away from her when she comes down to the village.
He avoided Soral’s eyes and Soral went away. The wise ones’ stories soothed: Nellyn’s own language, smooth and gentle, with its words of endless river and cycles of lynanyn and night.
Do not
.
    “Nellyn,” Maarenn says. He looks up and finds her eyes on him. “Nellyn, where are your thoughts?” He shakes his head and tries to smile. Across the river, a Queensfolk banner snaps in wind that still smells of daylight.
    Lanara stood in the teaching tent, watching small shonyn file out into the dusk.
    “You see?” Queensman Cannin demanded. “You see how impossible this is?” He stacked writing trays on the table with a clatter that made her blink. “They imitate—they do not understand. Apparently it has been this way since we found them. I cannot imagine why the Queen keeps sending us here. It’s all far too much effort for some blue fruit.”
    Lanara said, “It’s not just the fruit. She wants to understand them—she has always desired knowledge of other people and places.”
    Cannin snorted and wiped his fingers across his brow. “When queens say they want to understand people, it means they want something from them: support, allegiance, trade goods. But she’ll get no such things from these shonyn. The sooner she recognizes this, the sooner she can stop wasting our time.” He saw the expression on Lanara’s face and cleared his throat roughly. “I suppose you’ll write the Queen about my insubordination now. I’ve been here too long, girl, far too long—but my time is done in a few days. That boat will take me home to Fane, thank the First.” He stood at the door flap, holding it open with one hand. “I leave it to you, this supposed task of understanding.”
    And so he did. He also left the trays with their wet sand and sharpened stones for writing. He left scrolls of his own observations (“All too few, I’m sorry to say”) and lists of desert plants and animals. Lanara watched him give his brief, sharp lessons. On the fourth day, at noon, she watched him board the boat. “Thank the First,” she muttered as anchor and timbers shrieked. She lifted her arm as the ship crawled downstream. No one waved back at her.
    Several days later she went down to the river at dusk. The old shonyn on their stones and the young ones at their feet were not looking at her. She smiled at them anyway. “Good evening,” she said slowly, in their language. She had found a brief list of words among Cannin’s scrolls:
Shonyn words
,
approximate
, he had written across the top.
    One of the old shonyn nodded ponderously at her. “Good evening,” he replied, and she heard that it was a bit different from what she had said, though she did not know how. The others stirred and nodded and said good evening, and she felt her smile widen.
    She had forgotten the other words. Good sleep? River? Fine lynanyn? She said, “Good evening” one more time, trying to catch their eyes and failing, then walked among them to the houses. She did not look back. She knew that none of them would be looking at her.
    The young shonyn man was standing where he had been on the day she arrived. He was staring at his feet, she saw, and she turned her own feet from the path and went toward him. “Good evening,” she said when she was in front of him. The words sounded ridiculous now. She said carefully, in her own language, “You must have studied with us—you must understand the Queenstongue.” He did not move. “I am Lanara.”
    There was a long silence. She noticed that his black hair had a sheen of blue, which matched his skin. He looked as if he had been soaked in lynanyn juice. He was a bit shorter than she was—especially, she thought with a brief stab of annoyance, with his