Earthborn Page 0,47

faithful service, just because I was doing it freely instead of because I knew I could be killed or at least sold out of the house if I made the slightest mistake?"

Edhadeya thought about this. "But you'd live in a hole in the ground, if you were free," she said.

Uss-Uss cackled and hooted. "Of course I would! So what if I did?"

"But that's... ."

"That's inhuman" said Uss-Uss, still laughing.

Edhadeya finally got the joke, and laughed with her.

Later, when it was dark, when Edhadeya was supposed to be asleep, she was wakened by a slight sound at the window. She saw there in the moonlight the silhouette of Uss-Uss, her head bobbing up and down. Thinking something might be wrong, Edhadeya got up and padded to the window.

Hearing her, Uss-Uss turned around and waited for her.

"Do you do this every night?" asked Edhadeya.

"No," said Uss-Uss. "Only tonight. But you were worried about these humans who are held captive by diggers in some far-off place."

"So you pray to the Keeper for them?"

"Why should I do that?" asked Uss-Uss. "The Keeper knows they're there-it was the Keeper sent you the dream you had, wasn't it? I don't figure it's my business to tell the Mother what she already knows! No, I was praying to the One-Who-Was-Never-Buried. She lives in that star, that high one. The one that's always overhead."

"No one can live in a star," said Edhadeya.

"An immortal can," said Uss-Uss. "I pray to her."

"Does she have a name?"

"A very sacred one," said Uss-Uss.

"Can you tell it to me?"

Uss-Uss lifted up the hem of Edhadeya's long nightgown and draped it onto her head, so that the cloth was over Edhadeya's ear. "My name is Voozhum," said Uss-Uss. "Now that you know my true name, I can tell you the name of the One-Who-Was-Never-Buried." Then Uss-Uss waited.

"Please," said Edhadeya, trembling. "Please, Voozhum." What was she supposed to do or say now? All she could think of was to offer the most formal and official version of her own name in answer. "My true name is Ya-Edhad."

"The One-Who-Was-Never-Buried is the one to whom Nafai gave the cloak of the starmaster. Did they think this was a secret from the earth people? The blessed ancestors saw her skin tremble with light. She is Shedemei, and she is the one who took the tower up into the sky and made a star of it."

"And she's still alive?"

"She has been seen twice in the years since then. Both times tending a garden, once in a high mountain valley, and once on the side of a cliff in the lowest reaches of the gornaya. She is the gardener, and she watches over the whole Earth. She will know what to do about Che-beya and her husband, about Luet and her brother."

For the first time Edhadeya realized that there might be things that the diggers knew that they didn't learn from the humans, and it filled her with a sudden and unfamiliar blush of humility. "Teach me how to speak to the One-Who-Was-Never-Buried."

"You fix your eye on the permanent star, the one they call Basilica."

Edhadeya looked up and found it easily-as every child could do.

"Then you bob your head, like this," said Uss-Uss.

"Can she see us?"

"I don't know," said Uss-Uss. "I only know that this is what we do when we pray to her. I think it started because that was how she moved her head that time when she was seen in a high valley."

So Edhadeya joined her slave in the unfamiliar ritual. Together they asked the One-Who-Was-Never-Buried to watch out for Chebeya and Luet and their people, and set them free. Uss-Uss would say a phrase, and Edhadeya would repeat it. At the end, Edhadeya added a few words of her own. "And help set all women free from captivity," she said. "Women of the sky, women of the earth, and women of the middle."

Uss-Uss cackled for a moment, then repeated the phrase. "And just think," she said. "Someday they'll marry you off to some second-rate potentate somewhere and I'll be dead and you'll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!" Then she bustled Edhadeya back to bed, where she slept fitfully, dreaming meaningless dreams about dead women with sparkling skin whom no one had remembered to bury.

"If I didn't think this whole thing might be a mistake, I'd think it was funny," said the Oversoul.

"You don't have a sense of humor," said Shedemei, "and if you thought it