Jo Clayton SS3 Crystal Heat

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Lylunda carried the knife and the log to the end of the outcropping, set them
down out of the reach of the wind, and jumped to the sand. Stay up there and
watch, Seru. And listen.
She moved a few steps until she was standing on sand that was damp enough not
to drag at her feet.
For a moment she stood with eyes closed, clapping her hands to catch the
rhythm she wanted, then she began one of the stamping swaying dances she d
learned from the Tiker worlds, a child s version of the voor tikeri. She
wasn t a good whistler, but she did manage to improvise a few trills to the
clicking of her thumbs and fingers.
When her mouth went dry, she stopped and walked back to the lava outcrop.
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That s chorous and a bad at-tempt at mousika, Ser....
She broke off. The girl s eyes were glazed and she was staring out across the
water; it was obvious and disturbing that she hadn t seen or heard
any of Lylunda s performance. Never mind, she said. Best, I suppose, that
we just forget it. Come on, teach me how to find more tiauch, I ve got a want
in my mouth for tiauch stew.
When Lylunda had the inside and outside of the wooden ring rubbed smooth, she
passed her hands over it, smiling with pleasure in her work. Then she set it
aside and went looking for waxberries and chedik vines. The Pandai used the
berries to make candles for their scraped shell lamps and, mixed with
chemidik, they made good polish for furniture and the inside walls of their
houses since that mix kept insects away from the wood. Chemidik came from sap
milked from chedik vines and cooked over a slow fire for several days.
Lylunda was getting more than a little tired of things like that. Every time
you wanted something, it took days, maybe even months and lots of planning. If
you wanted a new mezu, you had to go cut enough pieces of torech vine
to fill up the retting pond and wait till the fibers rotted clear of the rest,
then you had to beat, the fibers, get them spun into thread, then the length
of cloth woven on a loom, then you had to dye the cloth, either a solid color
or spend yet more time with the tedious process of batiking to get a pattern
dyed into the cloth; to set the colors so they wouldn t wash out or fade, you
had to steep the cloth in mix of cold water and oma which you made by
macerating a fungus that grew from the roots of lalou trees. Every-thing was
like that. The Pandai shared the jobs, but they were always working with an
eye on the months ahead, getting things ready so they would be there when they
were needed to get other things ready. It wasn t hard work or even unpleasant,
it was just so damn constant.
When she first walked up that white sand path that ran along the beach, she
thought with despair:
How am I ever going to get through the days? What will I do?
She shook her head. Idiot that s what I was. The more she had to do for
herself, the more she wanted additional hours in the day to give her time to
get it done.
Lylunda stroked her fingertips down the smooth wood; after the waxing, it had
a lovely golden brown glow. I need something for a drum head. Which could be
a problem. They don t do leather, and the cloth they weave is too coarse, too
soft, no snap to it. Maybe I should wait until the Barotongs come drifting
by. She shivered. And maybe not. If I cut up the gearsac it s got some
bounce anyway ...
borrow a needle from Outocha and hem it so the cord doesn t pull through ...
I m not going anywhere ...
I wish I knew what I was doing....
The drum looked good when she was finished, with its matte black heads, its
greenish cord, and the golden wood. She reached toward it, drew her hand back.
Not yet. It has to be special.
Moonlight. Yes.
I ll take it to the beach. I ll play my drum in the moonlight.
The sky was clear of clouds, filled with the brilliant glitter of the closely
packed stars of Pseudo
Cluster, enough light to turn the beach into an abstract painting in black and
white. The two moons were already high, the outer one a hairline crescent, the
nearer, several hours behind it, in its gibbous phase.
She stood, her feet cold on the damp sand, but not so cold as she was inside
as she realized just how long she d spent working on the drum. Days had
sneaked away on her ... weeks ... no, more. At least a month and a half. What
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else had she lost?
She climbed onto the lava outcrop and walked slowly to the pillow humps at its
tip, working her tongue in her mouth, seeking to taste how much tung akar
she d eaten without being aware of what she was doing. She couldn t, of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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