I did not see Kirinar again until late that evening, when Shisken and Berel brought her to the grassy ridge near the center of the Selicar Refuge. This was a special place, set aside for the four of us who had been Selicarites the longest – and now, it seemed, for Kirinar. Whether it was because of her age, or because her Green-Andalite lineage set her apart from the others, or simply because Shisken had found a kindred spirit in her, I did not know; but, whatever the reason, it was plain that the four Elders of Selicar had that afternoon become five.
I don't think any of us begrudged Kirinar this privilege. Certainly Shisken did not; even I, the instant I saw them together, could see that Kirinar had become dear to her in those few hours. Berel, too, seemed to find satisfaction in her company; perhaps the gentleness that was in her (alongside the Green-Andalite queenliness) accorded well with his own quiet and retiring nature. Even Limilt, who was usually a jealous guardian of his own prerogatives, accepted her presence without question – which was natural, when I thought about it. He was a child of the artistic caste, and artists and poets had always romanticized the Green Andalites; Kirinar, to him, was the Selicar's sole representative of the most ancient and mystical of peoples, and as such had every right to share our privileges.
As for myself, I minded perhaps less than anyone. There had, I felt, been four of us for too long; we were all starting to wear on one another. New blood, that was what we needed. Besides, with Kirinar dwelling on the ridge, I would have that much more of an opportunity to get to know her – and, perhaps, to find out why she was so opposed to speaking of the circumstances that brought her to the Refuge.
This latter opportunity, in fact, occurred far sooner than I had expected. At around midnight that night, I found myself suddenly awake and restless (as those of our breed are wont to do), and I left the scoop and wandered out into the small valley that lay at the foot of the ridge. It was a dark night – only the smallest two of the Andalite homeworld's four moons were visible – and, as a result, I didn't see Kirinar standing motionless in the field until my right foreleg had collided with her tail.
We yelped simultaneously, then began frantically apologizing to each other, and finally ended up laughing helplessly. «Oh, dear,» said Kirinar, shaking her head. «Here they told me that they were sending me to this place of solitude and isolation, and I find I can't even trace the Orniya Quest without someone tumbling over me.»
«The Orniya Quest?» I said. «What's that?»
«Oh, just something that my father once showed me,» said Kirinar. «The idea is that you go out on a two-moon night and pick out the first star you see: that represents King Orniya on the horn of the mountain. Then you recite the first stanza of the Questing Song, and with every word you pick a new star next to the one you just had; if you can make it back to your original star on the very last word, you've brought Orniya back to the mountaintop, and you can go on to the next...» She trailed off, and laughed at my expression. «You haven't a notion what I'm talking about, have you?»
«Not really,» I confessed. «It sounds quite complicated, though. Does everyone on the Southernmost Island occupy himself this way?»
«Oh, no,» said Kirinar. «Only a few members of the very oldest families, the ones from which elders are drawn. You see, it reinforces two skills that every good elder needs: the reciting helps you to memorize the historic epics, and the necessity of always coming back to your original star teaches you to distinguish between things that appear alike.»
I wondered how many Blue Andalites would think of those two things when asked what qualities were most important in a High-Council member. «So was that why your father taught it to you?» I said. «So that you could be an elder yourself, someday?»
Kirinar stared at me strangely for a moment without answering; then, to my utter astonishment, she turned violently away from me, covered her face with her hands, and began sobbing piteously.
At first, I was afraid I had insulted her. I hadn't realized, until I had actually asked the question, how much it sounded like a particularly tasteless example of Limilt's humor – for I had noticed that Limilt sometimes used his technique of deliberate absurdity not to gloss over, but to accentuate, a personal deficiency. Mockery, he called it.
I wanted to explain to Kirinar that I hadn't been mocking her at all – that I had genuinely thought, for a moment, that her fellow Green Andalites might have considered elevating her to a position of authority, her deformity notwithstanding – that there was something about her that had made me forget what she and I both were. I wanted to explain all this to her, but I couldn't find the words – so, instead, I reached forward awkwardly and placed my hand over her single vestigial eyestalk.
It was a feeble gesture, but it was the best that I could think of. I knew that, when I was feeling miserable and wanted to shut out the world, it always annoyed me that the eye in my deformed stalk wouldn't close, but kept sending its fuzzy, black-and-white images to my brain. Perhaps Kirinar was feeling the same way right now; if so, she might appreciate my action.
And I believe that she did: when she had emptied herself of tears and turned back to face me, there was an expression in her glistening golden eyes that suggested gratitude. All that she said, however, was, «Forgive me, Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer. I had not realized, until you spoke, just how much my exile from the People had distressed me.»
I cocked my head. «Exile?» I repeated. «How are you in exile? You have committed no crime...»
«It would seem that I have,» said Kirinar, her voice bitter in my mind. «It would seem that my mere existence is a crime so far as the Mainland is concerned.»
I must have looked utterly baffled, for she sighed and stroked her ishimir with her right forefinger. «But perhaps I should not be speaking this way to you,» she said. «You are happy in the Selicar; Shisken told me so this afternoon, and I have seen as much for myself since then. It is not my business to infect you with my own dissatisfactions...»
«To the contrary, Kirinar,» I said hastily. «Whatever you wish to say, I wish to hear. It would give me great unhappiness to think that some aspect of the Selicar was distressing one of its residents for reasons of which I knew nothing.»
Kirinar laughed as though I had said something amusing. «"Some aspect of the Selicar",» she repeated. «Your innocence is the stuff of legend, Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer.»
Since I had no idea what she meant by this, I did not reply, but maintained an expectant silence. After a moment or two, she sighed and lashed her tail wearily. «Oh, very well,» she said. «Hear the story, for all the good it may do you.»
She took a few steps backward, folded her hands, and began to speak in a different, older-sounding voice, as though she were reciting an ancient poem. «There are many lands in this world, and many folk dwell therein,» she said. «Among one such people, who live upon a vast island near to the southern pole of the world, there was born a female child, the daughter of a great elder.»
This sudden snatch of saga bewildered me, and I am afraid that I allowed my bewilderment to turn to peevishness. «What are you doing?» I said. «Do you suppose I wish to hear of one of your Green-Andalite culture heroines? Why do you not tell me your own story?»
Kirinar seemed not to hear me. «This child was not as other children,» she said, «for there was a malign influence in her body that had misshapen her head and limbs. But the people of that island was a wise and understanding people, which knew that the shape of the body is of little importance next to the shape of the soul – and the sages of the island had assured the child's parents that her soul was even as their own. Thus it came about that, as the child grew, her mother cared for her as for a child properly grown, and her father trained her without hesitation in all the things that befitted an elder's daughter.»
I realized what she was doing, and my hooves tingled with shame. Why had I been such a boor? Surely, it would have done me no harm to let her tell her story in her own way – though it puzzled me that she should wish to tell it as though it were one of the epics of her people. (I had not yet learned that some stories are too painful to tell in the first person.)
«For nine years,» said Kirinar, «the child grew and throve, and knew all the joys and sorrows that childhood knows. But a greater sorrow awaited her – for there are indeed many lands in this world, and not all are as wise as the land of this child's birth.»
She was silent for a moment, then continued with a visible effort. «In the child's ninth year,» she said, «a ship came to the island from the lands across the sea, bearing with it a great prince of those lands. This prince was a servant of his nation's council of rulers, who had appointed him to bring the island people into conformity with their laws.»
«This would be the resident governor?» I said. «The one who gave you your secondary and tertiary names?»
Once again, Kirinar ignored me, but she gave me no reason to doubt my interpretation. «Most of these laws were just and ordinate,» she said, «as is the case with most laws that are not laid down by wicked men. Even those that suppressed ancient traditions were, for the most part, concerned with minor and secondary matters, and the people of the island endured them with patient tolerance. There was one law, however, about which they could not be so sanguine – for there were in those foreign lands children whose bodies had been malformed by the same malign influence that had affected the nine-year-old elder's daughter, and the rulers had commanded that such children should be sent to a lonely place in the far north, lest others be dismayed at the sight of them.
«The elder and his wife were astonished. They had spent many years in the lands across the sea, and they knew the people of those lands to be a good and noble race; surely they could not be so cruel as to separate a child from her family and her home, simply because her body was less comely than those of her peers? But when they spoke to the prince who represented the rulers, they were informed that that was precisely what the law required – and, furthermore, that dire consequences would follow if they did not obey.
«Late that night, under the light of three moons, the child's father and his fellow elders convened to discuss the matter. They were agreed that they could not sacrifice a daughter of the island race to the whims of barbarians; they also agreed that they were not strong enough to resist them by force of tail. They concluded that the only recourse was for the child and her mother to flee to the great caves on the southern side of the island: no-one but a native islander could follow after them, and there was a subterranean pool at the center of the caves where enough rock-grass grew to keep them alive for perhaps five months. In the meantime, the elders would foment unrest among the people of the island, in an effort to discredit the prince; if fortune favored, the foreign rulers would take him away and replace him with another representative, who might look more leniently on a parent's love for a deformed child.
«All the arrangements were made, and, when the sun went down on the following day, the child and her mother fled into the forests. For five hours they ran through brush and briar, allowing neither their weariness nor their fear to sap their strength, and, as the fifth planet rose to the top of the celestial globe, they arrived at the mouth of the principal cave.
«But a cruel surprise awaited them there, for a certain elder, a rival of the child's father, had seen in the affair of the child a means of deposing his hated adversary, and had betrayed them to the prince in exchange for official favor and protection. When the child and her mother arrived at the cave mouth, therefore, they were met by a phalanx of foreign warriors, who subdued them and took them to the prince; the prince informed the child's mother that she would stand trial with her husband for rebellion against the foreign government, and ordered that the child be sent to the northern land of isolation as soon as the sun rose.
«And so now the child dwells alone in the Selicar Refuge, ten thousand miles from the land of her birth, and longs for parents who may no longer be alive, for hills and valleys she will never see again, and for a way of life that she fears may be perishing from the earth.»
When Kirinar had finished her story, I could not immediately respond. In somewhat less than fifteen minutes, this young Green-Andalite female had taken everything I had thought I knew and turned it upside down – had made me see the Refuge in which all my happiest years had been spent as a wall-less prison, and the political achievement of which my grandfather had always been proudest as an act of unconscionable tyranny.
«Is... is this story true?» I said at last.
A faint smile twinkled in Kirinar's eyes. «All stories are true, Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer,» she said. «This one even happened.»
«We must do something,» I said. «So great an injustice cannot go unrepaired; we must...»
Kirinar shook her head. «No, Garatron-Sitek-Shaveer,» she said, «there is no reparation for me. Your High Council has decreed that this is my fate, and the wishes of a few dozen vecols – as I believe the word is – will not make them change their decree.»
«But the wishes of Nimavar-Povis-Alkati will,» I said earnestly. «He often comes to the Selicar to learn how we are faring, and he is bound by the ties of blood to attend to my concerns. If I tell him your story, and ask him to address your plight at the next meeting of the Council...»
Kirinar sighed. «Garatron, you do not understand,» she said. «I know of your grandfather; the Selicar Refuge is his pride and joy, and he has no love for my people and our ways. You will not be able to persuade him to exalt the latter at the expense of the former.»
«You cannot know that, Kirinar,» I said. «You may know of my grandfather, but you do not know him. However proud and insular he may be, he is not deaf to the voice of justice – nor to that of young females in distress.»
I was unsure why I had added that last statement. To be sure, my grandfather was generally gallant towards young females (as most male Andalites are who have had a daughter and no sons), but I felt sure that he would have been no less aggrieved at the abduction of a young male. The fact that Kirinar was female, therefore, had no real relevance to the discussion – yet, somehow, I had felt compelled to mention it.
Kirinar lowered her main eyes and stroked her ishimir again. «I see that this is quite important to you,» she said in a strange tone. «Very well, then. The next time you see your grandfather, make your petition on my behalf – but be assured that I will think no less of you if you fail.»
And she turned back toward the ridge and galloped away into the darkness of the two-moon night, leaving me to wonder what she had meant by her parting words.