long day's journey of ten miles.
To look back on that summer and the summers after it is like looking across the sea to an island, remote and golden over the water, hardly believing that one lived there once. Yet it's still here within me, sweet and intense: the smell of dry hay, the endless shrill chant of crickets on the hills, the taste of a ripe, sun-warmed, stolen apricot, the weight of a rough stone in my hands, the track of a falling star through the great summer constellations.
All the young people slept outdoors, ate together, played together—Yaven, Astano and Sotur and the cousins from Herramand, and Sallo and I, Tib and Ris and Oco. The cousins were a skinny boy and girl of thirteen and ten, Uter and Umo; they had been unwell and their mother, Sotur's elder sister, brought them to the farm hoping the country air would be good for them. There was a whole scrabble of little kids, too—Family babies, Sotur's nieces and nephews, and slave children being mothered—but the women looked after them and we had little to do with them. We "big ones" had lessons with Everra early in the morning and then were set free for the rest of the long, hot day. There was no work for us. The slave women from the city waited on the Family and looked after the huge old farmhouse along with its regular housekeepers, of whom there were plenty. Tib had been brought as a kitchen boy, but was so unneeded that he was released to study and play with us. Everything else on the farm was in the hands of its people. They lived in a fair-sized village, down the hill from the great house, in an oak grove by a stream, and did whatever it was farm people did. We city children knew nothing of them, and were ordered to keep out of their way.
That was easy. We were busy with our own doings from morning till night, exploring the hills and forests, wading and splashing in the shallow streams, building dams, raiding orchards, making willow whistles and daisy chains and tree houses, doing everything, doing nothing, whistling and singing and chattering like a flock of starlings. Yaven spent some time with the grown-ups but much more with us, leading us on expeditions up into the hills, or organising us to put on a play or dance to entertain the Family. Everra would write us out a little masque or drama;Astano, Ris, and Sallo had been trained in dance, and with Sotur's pure, true voice to lead the singing, and Yaven playing the lyre, we put on some pretty shows, using the big threshing floor as our stage and the haybarn as our backstage. Tib and I were sometimes the comic relief and sometimes the army. I loved the rehearsals, and the costumes, and the tension and thrill of those evenings; all of us did, and as soon as we'd put on a show and been politely applauded by our noble audience, we started discussing the next one and begging Teacher-dí for a subject.
But the best times of all were the nights after the hot days of midsummer, when it finally began to cool off, and a little wind stirred from the west though heat lightning still played in the dark sky to the south, and we lay on our straw-stuffed mattresses out under the stars and talked, and talked, and talked ... and one by one fell silent, fell asleep...
If eternity had a season, it would be midsummer. Autumn, winter, spring are all change and passage, but at the height of summer the year stands poised. It's only a passing moment, but even as it passes the heart knows it cannot change.
Good as my memory is, I'm not always sure what happened in which summer of those three we spent at Vente, because they seem all one long golden day and starlit night.
I do remember from the first summer how pleasant it was not to have Torm and Hoby with us. Sallo and I spoke of it to each other with surprise, having scarcely known how Hoby's hostility oppressed us or how much we feared Torm's outbreaks. Miv's death, though we seldom spoke of it, had made our dread of Torm urgent and immediate. It was wonderful to be completely away from him.
Astano and Yaven seemed to be relieved and released by his absence as much as we were. They were older, they