"Thank the Echoes, you were lucky!" exclaimed an astonished Yerwan. "You're
still here! You're telling me you did that tremor?" Rue was similarly
astonished. She nodded vigorously and gestured with her hands. Yerwan
understood her signs now. It had taken quite a bit of work but now they had
their own language of hand gestures. Much better than pallet-whispers.
Yerwan followed her hands and nodded. "He was nice to you.and then he bandaged your foot. with. with his cloak?" Rue nodded. "You can't be serious! Not the really long one he uses for going abroad? I don't believe you." She produced the scraps of embroidery from her bandage and lay them delicately on their table in the Dining Area. The pair examined them for long moments. "I don't believe it," breathed Yerwan. "This tells the story of the Second Singer himself! I can't believe he gave you this. And he ripped it up." Rue glanced at him and motioned with her hands to tell him she didn't understand. She had never paid much attention to her history lessons. "Well, according to this bit -" He selected a strip from the collection and placed it to the right of the table, the beginning according to Singer- script. "- the Second Singer, he was just Renn then, a novice, and he was taken by the Second Singer in that time, Kherron, abroad in search of.centaurs." Rue looked at him questioningly and gestured that centaurs didn't exist. "That's what I thought to but apparently they do. A Crazy was delivered to the Isle for Therapy - her name was.I think this is how you pronounce it.Shaiala - and claimed she had seen centaurs and they went to investigate.look, Rue. This is a long story. If you had just listened to Old Singer Ollaron in our lessons, you would know." Rue stuck her tongue our impudently at her friend, gave him a quick tap on the ankle with her right foot and gestured that Old Singer Ollaron was partially deaf and he couldn't hear his own cracked voice and the rubbish that he spouted.
"Ouch, you.alright. I'll go on. Anyway, Shaiala only spoke Herd, centaur-speech, and Renn was the only one who could understand her. So he went along too. And then.that's.!" Frantically, Rue persuaded her friend on. "Well, she escaped, Shaiala, that is, and got caught by a woman called.I can't read it. It's all scratched, the fabric.ouch! Alright, you don't need to kick me! And she was kidnapping children off the street. She also got a prince, Erihan, the prince of a Plains tribe.that's all. There's nothing else left of the story."
Dismayed, Rue tried to read the lines, written in elegant Singer script with only a few illustrations, unsuccessfully. Yerwan was also hooked on the story.
"I want to go on too, Rue. But how do we get more of the cloak? It's the Second Singer's favourite." Rue tried to think. It was difficult, because the rest of the novices were giving her strange looks, but she remembered something about her mending Singer Renn's cloak. She hopped across the room and looked out of the window at the flagpole. Barely a sunstep left before her therapy. She hopped back, quickly motioned to Yerwan and hopped off down the nearest corridor. Before her therapy, she needed to find Dremon.
*
Dremon was one of the old ways. She could be found in her private pallet for most of the day, except at meals when she collected her food from the kitchen, always the same arrangement, and shuffled off back to her pallet, muttering to herself. She never had visitors, and her purpose was only to teach the girls who would not become Singers embroidery.
Rue was one that had her frequently as a tutor, for many orderlies believed that she was not capable of anything because of her 'problem'. Although Dremon was known to be a bit mad, she was especially kind to Rue. She was one who believed that she was useful for more than just embroidery, although she showed talent in it. When Dremon was small, it was thought she would never become anything either. She knew how it felt to be abandoned by friends because of 'problems'.
That was why she was so enthusiastic when she saw the tall, slender, green-eyed girl with straight blue hair shielding her eyes and the rest tucked into an untidy bun. Rue was also glad to see her for she was one of the orderlies who made life bearable for her in the Echorium.
"Welcome, Miss Rue. Are we well?" Rue nodded. "Good! Now, do you have a problem? You know you can always come to me. I don't mind!" Rue signed her dilemma: about the way she was bullied (Dremon knew about that already), how she lost her temper and stamped the floor, causing a miniature earthquake, how Singer Renn explained how it happened and bandaged her foot with strips of his cloak and how Yerwan had translated the Singer-script on it. She was glad that Dremon did understand her signing. It was Dremon who suggested that she invent her own signing language.
Dremon sat in her large puffy chair, purchased from the docks below the Echorium, and contemplated it. "Well, you were probably right to come to me, young one. I do all the mending around here. It's a bit sneaky, reading the Second Singer's cloak when he isn't looking but I taught him when he was but a lad. I'm old enough to be his grandma, by the Echoes!" Rue giggled. "We'll see, my young Rue. We shall see. I'm not one for Singer- script myself but you're welcome to bring your little friend along too. Is he the small one?" Rue nodded. "Aaaah. Yes, indeed." The old lady winked at her apprentice and wandered over to her miniature version of the flagpole, cunningly crafted so it would portray the time even when the Sun was in.
"Goodness! From what you tell me, you should be at the Pentagon by now! The Second Singer won't be happy if you're late!" Rue gasped and sprinted out into the corridor as fast as she could go on one leg, signing her thanks to Dremon as she left. The old lady chuckled and lay back in her puffy chair, smiling thoughtfully.
*
Rue was indeed late for her therapy. The Second Singer glanced at her and hummed a single pure note of Aushan but then it was forgotten. She was glad the appointment before had overlapped hers and she listened to the Song with interest from outside the door..
It was something similar to Aushan but related to Yehn. She didn't know if it was normal to combine Songs for different effects but it was not one she had heard before. When the Song eventually ceased, dropping to a soft melody and then a hum before stopping altogether, there was some shuffling and the patient was taken away on a stretcher after passing her.
Rue was surprised it was so small, a child of ten or eleven at the most. His eyes were open, revealing them as completely black, like a midnight sky. It was very spooky to see the child just laying there like a dead body. The only clue telling her he was still alive was the steady breathing she could hear, rasping and short. He had short black hair to match his eyes and skin the colour of dusty copper. He was from the Plains.
For some reason, it hurt her to see him like that, stretched out, vulnerable, but she did not doubt the Singers' judgement. This boy deserved that peculiar Song. And it didn't look like Kashe.
When the boy was gone, she was invited inside. The Pentangle was a five-pointed star with a chair at its centre. Five respectable Singers would stand on the points and Sing, the shape amplifying the sounds, like her earthquake. Everything was constructed of bluestone. Although it was intimidating, she thought it was beautiful too. And very powerful.
"Ah, Rue. My silent child. Come in and seat yourself." First Singer Lamaria smiled warmly at her and she was instantly happy and calm. She obeyed, nodding her thanks to the five Singers in the room. The First Singer, the Second Singer, Singer Costor, Singer Imina and another foreign Singer she hadn't seen were all present. Each smiled at her except the foreign one. She was known around the Echorium and liked too.
"So, it is your foot, yes?" Rue bobbed her head. The foreign Singer was inspecting her strangely. He disturbed her. He looked similar to the young boy who had just gone, except his eyes were dull brown, his hair was bright blue, which clashed horribly with his skin, and he was not wearing Echorium clothing as the boy had.that was odd. The boy was wearing Echorium colours.
"Rue, are you listening?" asked the First Singer. Rue nodded in reply. "Good. Then, we shall begin the treatment." In pallet-whispers, the four Singers conferred, excluding the strange man, and allocated themselves positions on the Pentangle. Rue snapped to attention. She knew what to do in therapy. Apparently, it was painful and she would sleep fitfully for days afterwards if it were successful. Focusing her mind on her broken foot, she breathed steadily and persuaded the nervous excitement inside her to calm. All five Singers began to Sing Challa simultaneously, starting at a hum and getting louder.
Rue listened to each of their voices. The Second Singer's was possibly the best of them all: controlled, experienced and firm. The First Singer had a soft, melodic voice that made you settle and drift. It was like the voice of your mother singing you a tune when you are little, although Rue wouldn't know. She just imagined the nannies in the Birthing House singing to her. Singer Imina had a loud voice: confident, like your own when you have conquered a fear. She herself was very young, not much older than Yerwan, and everyone knew she was sister to First Singer Lamaria. Singer Costor had a strange but very vibrant voice, loud and brilliant. If the situation were different, it would have made Rue laugh. Then, finally, the stranger. He had a soft voice but it was hard and cruel to listen to like listening to a child being beaten. Rue didn't like that voice. Even though she knew little about Singing, she felt almost evil rising in this voice. She wondered if the others sensed it too.
Her senses became too dull to think or to listen. She began to drift as the Song reached its peak. Challa was her favourite Song. In her pallet, Jaya was by far the best Singer, destined for a place on the Pentangle. At night, she would sing it gently in her dreams and if Rue couldn't get to sleep herself, Challa helped. It was like an old friend.
After that, nothing was clear. According to Singer Imina, she had fallen off the chair and had to be carried by the Second Singer to her pallet. Her friends were under firm instructions not to wake her at any cost. It did indeed seem like days of sleep had passed before she woke, her head aching unmercifully and all her senses clogged with sleep. The Second Singer was summoned as soon as she was up and he inspected her foot again, to confirm the Challa had been a success. She had just enough strength to answer his questions and then ask some of her own.
Yerwan was there too, as her best friend he had insisted he go to see her with the Second Singer. He kept flicking his eyes towards the cloak but Rue ignored him. She wanted to ask,
"Singer, who was that man at the Pentagon? The foreign man? Was he a Singer?"
Yerwan translated the signs for the Singer and he frowned as he bandaged Rue's foot again with clean linen strips soaked in ointment. "I can't answer that, Rue." And that was all he would say. Rue then went on to another question.
"Why didn't it hurt? The therapy, I mean?" Yerwan translated and Singer Renn smiled.
"It didn't hurt? Well, I'm not surprised. The First Singer does not often Sing for any of her pupils because she is so busy. She makes it her job to stop the pain. You were lucky." The third question was:
"Why aren't you the First Singer, instead of the Second Singer? Meaning no disrespect." At first, Yerwan was reluctant to translate this but Rue persuaded him, telling him that he couldn't be punished and the Second Singer would answer. Slowly, Yerwan translated the third question. The Second Singer looked as if he would not answer, for he had finished bandaging the foot from further harm and was now packing equipment into a small bag. Rue was desperate to keep him there until he had answered.
"I like travelling," he replied, "I have people to meet, places to go and." He hesitated. "Friends outside the Echorium." And with that he left.
*
Yerwan followed her hands and nodded. "He was nice to you.and then he bandaged your foot. with. with his cloak?" Rue nodded. "You can't be serious! Not the really long one he uses for going abroad? I don't believe you." She produced the scraps of embroidery from her bandage and lay them delicately on their table in the Dining Area. The pair examined them for long moments. "I don't believe it," breathed Yerwan. "This tells the story of the Second Singer himself! I can't believe he gave you this. And he ripped it up." Rue glanced at him and motioned with her hands to tell him she didn't understand. She had never paid much attention to her history lessons. "Well, according to this bit -" He selected a strip from the collection and placed it to the right of the table, the beginning according to Singer- script. "- the Second Singer, he was just Renn then, a novice, and he was taken by the Second Singer in that time, Kherron, abroad in search of.centaurs." Rue looked at him questioningly and gestured that centaurs didn't exist. "That's what I thought to but apparently they do. A Crazy was delivered to the Isle for Therapy - her name was.I think this is how you pronounce it.Shaiala - and claimed she had seen centaurs and they went to investigate.look, Rue. This is a long story. If you had just listened to Old Singer Ollaron in our lessons, you would know." Rue stuck her tongue our impudently at her friend, gave him a quick tap on the ankle with her right foot and gestured that Old Singer Ollaron was partially deaf and he couldn't hear his own cracked voice and the rubbish that he spouted.
"Ouch, you.alright. I'll go on. Anyway, Shaiala only spoke Herd, centaur-speech, and Renn was the only one who could understand her. So he went along too. And then.that's.!" Frantically, Rue persuaded her friend on. "Well, she escaped, Shaiala, that is, and got caught by a woman called.I can't read it. It's all scratched, the fabric.ouch! Alright, you don't need to kick me! And she was kidnapping children off the street. She also got a prince, Erihan, the prince of a Plains tribe.that's all. There's nothing else left of the story."
Dismayed, Rue tried to read the lines, written in elegant Singer script with only a few illustrations, unsuccessfully. Yerwan was also hooked on the story.
"I want to go on too, Rue. But how do we get more of the cloak? It's the Second Singer's favourite." Rue tried to think. It was difficult, because the rest of the novices were giving her strange looks, but she remembered something about her mending Singer Renn's cloak. She hopped across the room and looked out of the window at the flagpole. Barely a sunstep left before her therapy. She hopped back, quickly motioned to Yerwan and hopped off down the nearest corridor. Before her therapy, she needed to find Dremon.
*
Dremon was one of the old ways. She could be found in her private pallet for most of the day, except at meals when she collected her food from the kitchen, always the same arrangement, and shuffled off back to her pallet, muttering to herself. She never had visitors, and her purpose was only to teach the girls who would not become Singers embroidery.
Rue was one that had her frequently as a tutor, for many orderlies believed that she was not capable of anything because of her 'problem'. Although Dremon was known to be a bit mad, she was especially kind to Rue. She was one who believed that she was useful for more than just embroidery, although she showed talent in it. When Dremon was small, it was thought she would never become anything either. She knew how it felt to be abandoned by friends because of 'problems'.
That was why she was so enthusiastic when she saw the tall, slender, green-eyed girl with straight blue hair shielding her eyes and the rest tucked into an untidy bun. Rue was also glad to see her for she was one of the orderlies who made life bearable for her in the Echorium.
"Welcome, Miss Rue. Are we well?" Rue nodded. "Good! Now, do you have a problem? You know you can always come to me. I don't mind!" Rue signed her dilemma: about the way she was bullied (Dremon knew about that already), how she lost her temper and stamped the floor, causing a miniature earthquake, how Singer Renn explained how it happened and bandaged her foot with strips of his cloak and how Yerwan had translated the Singer-script on it. She was glad that Dremon did understand her signing. It was Dremon who suggested that she invent her own signing language.
Dremon sat in her large puffy chair, purchased from the docks below the Echorium, and contemplated it. "Well, you were probably right to come to me, young one. I do all the mending around here. It's a bit sneaky, reading the Second Singer's cloak when he isn't looking but I taught him when he was but a lad. I'm old enough to be his grandma, by the Echoes!" Rue giggled. "We'll see, my young Rue. We shall see. I'm not one for Singer- script myself but you're welcome to bring your little friend along too. Is he the small one?" Rue nodded. "Aaaah. Yes, indeed." The old lady winked at her apprentice and wandered over to her miniature version of the flagpole, cunningly crafted so it would portray the time even when the Sun was in.
"Goodness! From what you tell me, you should be at the Pentagon by now! The Second Singer won't be happy if you're late!" Rue gasped and sprinted out into the corridor as fast as she could go on one leg, signing her thanks to Dremon as she left. The old lady chuckled and lay back in her puffy chair, smiling thoughtfully.
*
Rue was indeed late for her therapy. The Second Singer glanced at her and hummed a single pure note of Aushan but then it was forgotten. She was glad the appointment before had overlapped hers and she listened to the Song with interest from outside the door..
It was something similar to Aushan but related to Yehn. She didn't know if it was normal to combine Songs for different effects but it was not one she had heard before. When the Song eventually ceased, dropping to a soft melody and then a hum before stopping altogether, there was some shuffling and the patient was taken away on a stretcher after passing her.
Rue was surprised it was so small, a child of ten or eleven at the most. His eyes were open, revealing them as completely black, like a midnight sky. It was very spooky to see the child just laying there like a dead body. The only clue telling her he was still alive was the steady breathing she could hear, rasping and short. He had short black hair to match his eyes and skin the colour of dusty copper. He was from the Plains.
For some reason, it hurt her to see him like that, stretched out, vulnerable, but she did not doubt the Singers' judgement. This boy deserved that peculiar Song. And it didn't look like Kashe.
When the boy was gone, she was invited inside. The Pentangle was a five-pointed star with a chair at its centre. Five respectable Singers would stand on the points and Sing, the shape amplifying the sounds, like her earthquake. Everything was constructed of bluestone. Although it was intimidating, she thought it was beautiful too. And very powerful.
"Ah, Rue. My silent child. Come in and seat yourself." First Singer Lamaria smiled warmly at her and she was instantly happy and calm. She obeyed, nodding her thanks to the five Singers in the room. The First Singer, the Second Singer, Singer Costor, Singer Imina and another foreign Singer she hadn't seen were all present. Each smiled at her except the foreign one. She was known around the Echorium and liked too.
"So, it is your foot, yes?" Rue bobbed her head. The foreign Singer was inspecting her strangely. He disturbed her. He looked similar to the young boy who had just gone, except his eyes were dull brown, his hair was bright blue, which clashed horribly with his skin, and he was not wearing Echorium clothing as the boy had.that was odd. The boy was wearing Echorium colours.
"Rue, are you listening?" asked the First Singer. Rue nodded in reply. "Good. Then, we shall begin the treatment." In pallet-whispers, the four Singers conferred, excluding the strange man, and allocated themselves positions on the Pentangle. Rue snapped to attention. She knew what to do in therapy. Apparently, it was painful and she would sleep fitfully for days afterwards if it were successful. Focusing her mind on her broken foot, she breathed steadily and persuaded the nervous excitement inside her to calm. All five Singers began to Sing Challa simultaneously, starting at a hum and getting louder.
Rue listened to each of their voices. The Second Singer's was possibly the best of them all: controlled, experienced and firm. The First Singer had a soft, melodic voice that made you settle and drift. It was like the voice of your mother singing you a tune when you are little, although Rue wouldn't know. She just imagined the nannies in the Birthing House singing to her. Singer Imina had a loud voice: confident, like your own when you have conquered a fear. She herself was very young, not much older than Yerwan, and everyone knew she was sister to First Singer Lamaria. Singer Costor had a strange but very vibrant voice, loud and brilliant. If the situation were different, it would have made Rue laugh. Then, finally, the stranger. He had a soft voice but it was hard and cruel to listen to like listening to a child being beaten. Rue didn't like that voice. Even though she knew little about Singing, she felt almost evil rising in this voice. She wondered if the others sensed it too.
Her senses became too dull to think or to listen. She began to drift as the Song reached its peak. Challa was her favourite Song. In her pallet, Jaya was by far the best Singer, destined for a place on the Pentangle. At night, she would sing it gently in her dreams and if Rue couldn't get to sleep herself, Challa helped. It was like an old friend.
After that, nothing was clear. According to Singer Imina, she had fallen off the chair and had to be carried by the Second Singer to her pallet. Her friends were under firm instructions not to wake her at any cost. It did indeed seem like days of sleep had passed before she woke, her head aching unmercifully and all her senses clogged with sleep. The Second Singer was summoned as soon as she was up and he inspected her foot again, to confirm the Challa had been a success. She had just enough strength to answer his questions and then ask some of her own.
Yerwan was there too, as her best friend he had insisted he go to see her with the Second Singer. He kept flicking his eyes towards the cloak but Rue ignored him. She wanted to ask,
"Singer, who was that man at the Pentagon? The foreign man? Was he a Singer?"
Yerwan translated the signs for the Singer and he frowned as he bandaged Rue's foot again with clean linen strips soaked in ointment. "I can't answer that, Rue." And that was all he would say. Rue then went on to another question.
"Why didn't it hurt? The therapy, I mean?" Yerwan translated and Singer Renn smiled.
"It didn't hurt? Well, I'm not surprised. The First Singer does not often Sing for any of her pupils because she is so busy. She makes it her job to stop the pain. You were lucky." The third question was:
"Why aren't you the First Singer, instead of the Second Singer? Meaning no disrespect." At first, Yerwan was reluctant to translate this but Rue persuaded him, telling him that he couldn't be punished and the Second Singer would answer. Slowly, Yerwan translated the third question. The Second Singer looked as if he would not answer, for he had finished bandaging the foot from further harm and was now packing equipment into a small bag. Rue was desperate to keep him there until he had answered.
"I like travelling," he replied, "I have people to meet, places to go and." He hesitated. "Friends outside the Echorium." And with that he left.
*