The Singers of Nevya Read Online Free PDF

the light from Nevya’s two suns. She remembered seeing the Visitor for the first time. She also remembered the look on her mother’s face at day’s end.
    Isbel’s mother, Mreen v’Isenhope, had smiled at her little girl running back and forth over the smooth cobblestones. Isbel squirmed when Mreen caught her up, laughing, tugging at the mass of curls that already fell halfway down Isbel’s back. For a moment Mreen hugged her little daughter, then released her to run again.
    Isbel was Mreen’s only family. She had lost a child, a little boy who never saw a summer, to a fever the Cantor could not control. Her mate had died of the same fever. On this first summer day, Mreen sat with other parents, all of them smiling as they listened to the squeals and laughter that filled the courtyard.
    When a woman began calling, “Karl!” with fear in her voice, the laughter stopped. More urgently she called again, “Karl! I can’t find Karl!” Isbel remembered the bright afternoon seeming to dim all around them.
    The adults in the courtyard were on their feet, looking behind the benches, hurrying off to look in the stables. Some went to the edge of the forest and called between the huge irontrees.
    Isbel, unhappy at the interruption, ran to her mother. “Mama, Mama, play!”
    Mreen picked her up. “Not now, darling. Ana can’t find Karl. I must help her. You stay right here and wait for me.”
    The children were unaccustomed to the freedom of outdoors. It was rare for one to have the courage to walk away from the House. Isbel recalled sensing fear in the air, as sharp as smoke. She had held tight to her mother’s neck.
    “But, Mama,” she said. “I know where Karl is.”
    “You do? Show Mama, then.” Mreen put her daughter down and Isbel immediately trotted to the edge of the courtyard and into the woods.
    “Isbel, where are you going?” Mreen called, hurrying after her.
    “Show Karl, Mama.” The beginnings of softwood shoots greened the earth under the ironwood trees and filled the air with their spicy scent. Isbel led Mreen into the chill shade of a broad tree that obscured the view of the House. Karl was curled up in the crook of an ironwood sucker, sound asleep.
    Mreen swept him up in her arms and hurried back to the House. Karl was just waking as she handed him to his frantic mother. The adults gathered round, laughing in relief and asking Mreen where she had found him. She said, “Isbel found him,” then looked down at her little daughter, realization dawning in her eyes. There was only one way Isbel could have known where the missing boy was.
    Still, Mreen searched for another explanation. “Did you see Karl leave the courtyard?”
    Isbel shook her curls. “No, Mama. I heard him.”
    “What do you mean, you heard him?” Mreen asked, her voice harsh with a new fear.
    “I heard him sleeping,” Isbel said, pulling her hand away from Mreen’s. “I heard his dream. Didn’t you?” She looked up into her mother’s face, and watched the light go out of her face as surely as the suns would set a few hours later.
    Mreen began, inexorably and deliberately, to withdraw from her daughter from that day forward. Isbel could not understand until much later that her mother simply could not bear the loss of another loved one. Mreen knew the pain that was coming. She also knew her duty. Her little Isbel was Gifted, and that meant she belonged, not to Mreen, but to Nevya.
    Isbel was two and a half that summer. There were five years until Conservatory claimed her, and Mreen did what she had to do. But Isbel never saw her mother smile again.
    Eighteen-year-old Isbel, now a third-level Conservatory student, dashed tears from her eyes and smoothed her hair back into its binding. She picked up her filhata again. Maestro Takei would want to hear the inversions tomorrow. That was what mattered now. Her mother had long ago gone with the Spirit beyond the stars.
    The evening meal in the great room cheered Isbel. She took