and Tisso's saying, "Some of us do that kind of seeing when we're children," had intrigued me. But the limits drawn around men's knowledge and women's knowledge were nearly as clear as the line separating the half villages. Tisso was uneasy about having said so much to me, and I could not press her further. None of the other girls would let me ask about "sacred stuff" at all: they hooted like owls or yattered like kingfishers to drown me out—half alarmed at my transgression and half laughing at me for being, as they said, such a tadpole.
I was reluctant to ask the boys my age what they knew about these powers of seeing. I was different enough already, and talking about such things would only estrange me further. My uncle left all mysteries alone, seeking comfort only where it was easy to find. I didn't know any of the older men well. Rava was the kindest, but he was an elder, an initiator of his clan, and spent much of his time in South Shore. There was only one man I thought might welcome my questions. Peroc was old, his thick hair quite white, his face seamed and drawn; he was crippled with rheumatism, and lived, I think, in pain. His arthritic hands were not good for much, but he laboriously knotted and mended fishing nets, and though he was slow at the work it was always done perfectly. He lived by himself in a tiny house with a couple of cats. He spoke little, but had a gentle manner. He was often too lame to go to the fish-mat. Tisso's mother sent food for him, and I offered to take it to him. It became a regular thing that she'd give it to me and I'd take it and set it down on the old man's deck and say, "From Lali Betu, Uncle Peroc." We young men called all the old men uncle.
He'd be sitting in the sun if there was any sun, working at a net, or just gazing over the grasslands, humming. He'd thank me, and as soon as I turned away, the soft humming would begin again. Soon half-comprehensible words would enter into the tune, strange song words about the marsh lion, the lords of the fish, the heron king. ... They were the only serious songs I had heard in Ferusi, the only ones that hinted at a story behind them. One day I put down his reed box of food and said, "From Lali Betu, Uncle Peroc," and he thanked me, but I did not turn away; I stood by his deck and said, "Can I ask about the songs you sing, Uncle?"
He glanced up at me and back at his work, then laid the net down and looked at me steadily. "After the second initiation," he said.
That was what I'd been afraid of. There was no arguing with the rules of the sacred. I said, "Anh." But he saw I had a second question, and waited for it.
"Are all the stories sacred?"
He gazed at me a minute, thinking, and finally nodded."Ao."
"So I may not listen to you sing?"
"Eng," he said, the soft negative. "Later. When you've been to the king's palace." He looked at me with sympathy. "You'll learn the songs there, as I did."
"The heron king?"
He nodded, but murmured, "Eng, eng," with a gesture to prevent my asking more. "Later," he said. "Soon."
"There are no stories that are not sacred?"
"Those the women and children tell. They are not fit for men."
"But there are tales of heroes—like Hamneda, the great hero who wandered all the length of the Western Shore—"
Peroc gazed at me a while and shook his head. "He did not come here to the Marshes," he said. And he bent to his work again.
So all my tales and poems remained closed up in my head, silent, as my copy of Caspro's poem lay closed and wrapped in reedcloth in my uncle's house, the only book in all Ferusi, unread.
***
I WAS FISHING by myself one day in spring; my uncle had gone netting with another man. Old Minki jumped into the boat as a matter of course and sat in the prow like a curly-eared figurehead. I put up the little sail and let the wind carry us slowly up the lake. I didn't net but fished with the rod and line for ritta, a small bottom fish, sweet and succulent. The ritta were lazy and so was I. I gave