The Memory of Earth Page 0,21

Where did you run to get away from the Oversoul?

You didn't. You couldn't hide, either-how could you disguise your own thoughts so even you didn't know what you were thinking?

The only choice he had was to try to find out what the Oversoul was, to try to understand what it wanted, what it was trying to do to his family, to him. He had to understand the Oversoul and, if possible, get it to leave him alone.

Chapter 4

FOUR - MASKS

There would be no point in going back to Mother's house so late in the school day. Explaining himself would probably take up what little time was left. Making excuses could wait until tomorrow.

Or maybe Nafai would never go back. There was a thought. After all, Mebbekew didn't go to school. In fact he didn't do anything, didn't even come home if he decided not to.

When had that started? Was Meb already doing that sort of thing at fourteen? Well, whether he was or not, Nafai could start now and who was going to stop him? He was as tall as any man, and he was old enough for a man's trade. Not Father's trade, though-never the plant business. If you followed that trade long enough, you started seeing visions in the dark beside desert roads.

But there were other trades. Maybe Nafai could apprentice himself to some artist. A poet, or a singer- Nafai's voice was young, but he could follow a tune, and with training maybe he could actually become good. Or maybe he was really a dancer, or an actor, in spite of Mother's joke this morning. Those arts had nothing to do with going to school-if he was supposed to pursue one, then staying on with Mother was a waste of time.

That notion possessed him through the afternoon, carrying him south at first, toward the inner market, where there would be songs and poems to hear, perhaps some fine new myachik to buy and listen to at home. Of course, if he stopped attending school, Mother would no doubt cut off his myachik allowance. But as an apprentice there'd probably be some spending money, and if not, so what? He'd be doing a real art himself, in the flesh. Soon he would no longer even want recordings of art on little glass balls.

By the time he reached the inner market, he had talked himself into having no interest in recordings, now that he was going to be making a career out of creating the real thing. He headed east, through the neighborhoods called Pens and Gardens and Olive Grove, a few narrow streets of houses between the city wall and the rim of the valley where men could not go. At last he came to the place that was narrowest of all, a single street with a high white wall behind the houses, so that a man standing on the red wall of the city couldn't see over the houses and down into the valley. He had only come this way a few times in his life, and never alone.

Never alone, because Dolltown was a place for company and fellowship, a place for sitting in a crowded audience and watching dances and plays, or listening to recitations and concerts. Now, though, Nafai was coming to Dolltown as an artist, not to be part of the audience. It wasn't fellowship he was looking for, but vocation.

The sun was still up, so the streets of Dolltown weren't crowded. Dusk would bring out the frolicking apprentices and schoolboys, and full dark would call forth the lovers and the connoisseurs and the revelers. But even now, in the afternoon, some of the theatres were open, and the galleries were doing good business in the daylight.

Nafai stopped into several galleries, more because they were open than because he seriously thought he might apprentice himself to a painter or a sculptor. Nafai's skill at drawing was never good, and when he tried sculpture as a child his projects always had to have titles so people could tell what they were supposed to be. Browsing through the galleries, Nafai tried to look thoughtful and studious, but the artsellers were never fooled-Nafai might be tall as a man, but he was still far too young to be a serious customer. So they never came up and talked to him, the way they did when adults came into the shops. He had to glean his information from what he overheard. The prices astonished him. Of course