swiftly, and little Dalys wasn’t the only one who smiled in response.
“I don’t want to go, Bayr. Not yet. I want to stay here, in the temple,” Alba begged.
Bayr patted Alba’s leg, dangling over his shoulder, but he still turned to go. With Alba’s protestations trailing behind them, he whisked her away.
Hod had to put Ghisla’s pictures away. That is how he thought of them; they were Ghisla’s, not his. Ghisla’s eyes, and Ghisla’s memories, all colored with Ghisla’s songs. If he didn’t put them away, tuck them behind a door in his mind, they became his world, and he wanted only to visit them.
They were not his world.
His world was one of sound and silence, one of sense and scents, one of hearing and heeding. And when he looked at Ghisla’s pictures—especially in the beginning—those things fell away. He had begged Arwin to let her stay—who gave a miracle, a gift from the gods, away? But in the part of him that was not heartbroken at the loss, he understood his teacher.
When Ghisla sang, he was useless. Useless to himself. Useless to her.
So he locked her pictures away until he was alone and Arwin thought he was sleeping. Only then did he study the color and the cast. But before long, they began to fade.
The rune on his hand was silent; it only seemed to work one way. He did not have her gift, and the thread between them was not one he could pull. He was afraid for her, the little songbird with the frail bones and bitter words. But beneath his fear for her was despair for himself. For one perfect week, he’d had a friend. A friend, and music and pictures. But she was gone, and she took her songs with her.
For months he waited and listened, hoping. He and Arwin traveled to Leok for supplies, and talk of Liis of Leok had still rippled through the streets. That’s what they called her now. Liis. It was not so different from Ghisla, and he was glad. There was talk of all the Daughters of Freya, the way there had been talk of Princess Alba years ago. In another five years, the Highest Keeper or the king would have to find something—or someone—new to keep the people from losing hope. For now, the daughters were the new gods—Liis of Leok, Juliah of Joran, Elayne of Ebba, Dalys of Dolphys, and Bashti of Berne—and the people raved and prayed as if the girls would save them. Mayhaps they could. Ghisla had saved him for a time.
At least he knew she was alive. That much gave him hope. Arwin did not speak of her, not to Hod, though Hod knew he sought out news in the villages when he thought Hod was out of earshot. If Hod concentrated, he could hear great distances, especially if the speaker had a voice he was accustomed to and the conversation took place out of doors. He could hear a flock of birds a mile away. He’d tested the distance. Crickets and all crawling creatures were quieter, but the more distinct their sound, the farther off he could hear them.
People were the easiest to hear. They did not move with the same stealth or suspicion. They were predators instead of prey, and they stomped and sang and spoke loudly, even when they were alone. He’d grown accustomed to the distortions of the wind and the water, to the way both tossed sound about and muted or amplified it. He could hear a leaf fall—that pleased Arwin immensely—though what good it did him, he wasn’t sure.
But he couldn’t hear Ghisla. And for months he waited, doing his best to forgive his teacher for sending her away, and to forgive himself for not fighting harder for her to stay.
8
TONES
Time passed and the days ran together in leaps and lurches. Life was not terrible. Ghisla had lived through terrible. But it was not sweet. She’d lived through sweet too and recognized the absence. The keepers lived in constant companionship, and they expected the same of the daughters. They moved as one through their days—chores, chanting, study, and sleep. Even in meditation or contemplation they were expected to dwell together, though they were instructed not to speak at all. Ghisla had grown up in the fields and in the forest. Even as a child she’d had far more freedom than the cloistered temple life allowed, and it grated on her patience and poked at her frayed nerves.