she would leave, and she might not ever have gone at all. She really had no idea then what she was inviting—how much effort would be involved, how much of her life she would devote to practice. She would train and train while Soter forever reminded her that she wasn’t quite ready, that her skills still needed sharpening; that there was a world of detail she didn’t know, of subtlety she didn’t yet possess. As time passed, she began to think that she might spend her whole life preparing for just one performance.
FOUR
Life on Bouyan ran along with a tedious sameness.
Each morning she awoke in her small garret atop the boathouse. It was a room she had taken as a sanctuary after discovering it on one of her flights from her uncle. It had a small bed and sparse furnishings in it, suggesting that someone had lived there before her. Her aunt and uncle didn’t resist when she asked if she could move into the garret. In truth, she had asked Dymphana, who as always had acted as go-between for her; but she had watched the interchange, had seen her uncle’s hooded gaze shift to her with an incomprehensible look of relief, as though he wanted her gone. For once his desires and hers agreed. She was thirteen. Her body was changing and with it her emotional compass: She wanted privacy, she wanted her own places on the island. Her uncle’s one stipulation was that she cease all complaining about her assigned tasks.
Once she had arisen, she dressed and went down the beach to Tenikemac to watch the sea dragons surface. The village dotted the whole curve of the bay just over the north ridge. The ridge took half an hour to reach, and as she walked she watched the people already up and working, especially the half a dozen women gathering seaweed in baskets along the beach ahead of her. Soon she had reached them, but for the most part they ignored her, letting her by as if she didn’t exist. On the ridge, she stopped and watched.
The men in teams of two carried their rolled-up nets down beside the water, where they unfurled them. Tastion and his father made up one team. He pretended not to see her, so no one was suspicious of the true relationship between them.
Soon four younger boys waded into the water up to their waists, each carrying a large conch with pierced ends. In unison they raised the shells to their lips and blew a trumpet call.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to study the surface.
Farther out, the water rippled. Slithers of yellow appeared, darted beneath the grayish waves. Then the heads rose up, one after another, strange, long-snouted, magisterial heads with large, black, and protruding eyes. These were the sea dragons.
There were sixteen of them in all, and she knew every one. She had never ridden them, never touched them. As a female, she wasn’t allowed. But she’d given them names. Her favorite was Muvros, the youngest, his head yellow and black, freckled with the red spots of youth, and his snout as thin as a reed. The tiny mouth at the end of it seemed forever puckered, as if sharing a kiss.
The conch boys fed the dragons long strips of the gathered seaweed and would feed them again when they returned. Meanwhile the fishermen, dragging their nets, moved into the water two by two. The dragons seemed as fascinated by the men as Leodora was with the dragons. They bowed their heads and let their riders clamber over their necks and sit. They seemed not in the least encumbered by the riders.
With a storyteller’s inquisitiveness, she wondered when this ritual had begun, and who had tamed the first dragon. Even the village itself didn’t seem to know, or else she would have known the story, too. Soter had taught her every one of their tales with the intention of having her perform them for villagers—once he was satisfied that she was skilled enough.
The dragons snaked off into deeper waters, their riders rocking from side to side. Some of the men would return early with full nets. Others stayed out all day, hunting a more difficult catch but one that might earn them more money on Ningle. Tastion and his father were among those who hunted farther away.
She watched until he was gone from sight, then turned and set off into the trees to perform the most hateful task in