The thought of pestilence came scuttling and creeping back into her mind: her very life might well depend on the girl. There must be ways of protecting oneself-things to do and things to avoid. If only she could contrive to avoid getting ill, then one day, somehow or other, the opportunity might arise to escape: though how-and here her despair returned, so that she shivered in the stuffy room- she could form no least idea. Better to think no more about that, but get on with what was immediately to hand.
She tried to impart a friendly tone to her voice. "Are you Luma?"
She had expected the girl to start or jump up, but on the contrary she gave no immediate sign of having heard her. Then, rather as though reluctantly turning aside from something else which had been absorbing her attention, she lifted her finger from the floor, raised her head, blinked, smiled and nodded. She had dark, heavy-lidded eyes, a broad nose and full lips; and might, thought Maia, have been quite a pretty girl-something after the style of the Deelguy-if it had not been for her sallow, mottled skin and a weeping sore at one corner of her mouth, which she licked nervously before replying.
"Luma." She nodded and smiled again. Maia guessed her to be about seventeen.
"I hope you're going to be able to teach me how you do things here," she said "Only I've never been in Suba in my life, see, and where I've come from it's all different."
The girl spread her hands, smiled again and said something that sounded like "Shagreh."
"Anda-Nokomis said you're going to come with me to Melvda-Rain," said Maia. "Do you know it? Have you been there before?"
The girl nodded. This was better than Maia had hoped for.
"You have? What's it like?"
"Shagreh," said the girl, smiling. Then, as Maia paused, puzzled, she said, in a thick Suban accent, "You'd like some food?"
"What? Oh-no; no, thank you," answered Maia. "I had something not long ago."
The girl, however, appeared to take this for an assent, for she got up and was plainly about to go down the ladder. Maia called her back.
"What I really want," she said, standing up and smiling, "is to
At all events there was nothing wrong with her mimicry. The girl's face tit up with comprehension.
"Oh,
"Yes, please," said Maia. "You wash out of doors here, don't you?" She pointed through the door opening. "Will you show me where it is?"
Luma nodded, raised her palm to her forehead and stood aside for Maia to go first down the ladder. Outside, a light breeze was blowing, stirring loose wisps of thatch under the eaves and rippling the tall, yellow-brown grass beyond the huts. As they set off together, a little group of staring, pot-bellied children, some naked, others in rags, fell in at their heels and followed until Luma, turning and clapping her hands as though they had been chickens, sent them scattering.
It was early evening; an hour, certainly, when any village might be expected to be ceasing from labor, changing the rhythm of the sun for the gentler rhythms of nightfall, supper and firelight. Even so, Maia was struck by the list-lessness which seemed to fill the whole little settlement, as though (she thought) they were all under water, or in one of those dreams in which people can move only like beetles crawling over each other on a branch. Everyone she saw appeared languid and apathetic-nowhere a song or a burst of laughter. The very birds, it seemed, were not given to singing, though now and then, as they approached the further end of the village, the harsh cry of some waterfowl-coot, perhaps, or
Luma appeared to feel no particular obligation to talk and Maia, after a few attempts to do so herself, walked
on beside her in silence. At length she asked "How many people are there in the village? About how many, I mean?"
Luma smiled and nodded.
"How many?" persisted Maia, pointing to the huts.
"How many
"I don't know. Three hundred?"
"Shagreh, shagreh." Luma nodded corroboratively.
"Or five hundred, perhaps?"
"Shagreh."
