forward to marry her. No one would. No one wanted Koombrun in their family, and his mother would never have another child. So she punished him for all the things he couldn’t control or comprehend. For being different. Leodora sympathized with his plight. It wasn’t that much different from her own.
She stood on the beach and watched until Tastion was gone from sight. He would likely be out all day, for he and his father fished farther out than many of the others. Where they went and how they found their way back on the vast and featureless sea was a mystery to her, and even though Tastion had tried to explain it to her, she didn’t understand. All she knew for certain about fishing was that she was forbidden to do it.
Later that afternoon, after dressing in clothes uncontaminated by blood, she emerged from the boathouse to find Soter awaiting her outside.
He observed her sternly, his expression grave, although she couldn’t think of anything she had done to warrant it. Maybe, she thought, he was unhappy that he was sober. Then he turned sharply, commanding her: “Follow.”
She smiled to herself as she obeyed. The imperious stride was all too familiar. Today Soter was acting the sage, the teacher, the wise old man whose pupil was a source of constant disappointment. She knew his roles: They had little to do with her, everything to do with him.
Where most people she knew were recognizably constant, Soter comprised a collection of posturings, guises, a composite of masks, so many that she had no idea if any one of them had ever been the true Soter, or if there had never been anything but masks.
He marched her across the island to his hut. They passed Gousier’s asymmetrical house and outbuildings, where the smell of Dymphana’s white root pie filled the air. Where the path split, they went right, away from the cavern, away from the trail to Ningle.
Soter made a show of sidestepping a large tree root that snaked out of the ground in the middle of the path. His dodging it reminded her of the night he’d fallen over it: less than a year ago, after he’d performed for the villagers without her and gotten roaring drunk as well. She had heard him yelling and careering through the woods with the two undaya cases and stole out to see what he was doing. He had tripped across that root and crashed to the ground, the cases landing atop him. She arrived in time to see two village elders, fairly pickled themselves, drag him to his feet. He was weeping, blubbering incoherently, and not at the two men but as if he were alone. The villagers took him by the arms and carried him and the cases the rest of the way to his hut. His behavior was so peculiar that she had followed along behind them. As the elders returned, she had ducked into the shadows. Passing close by, one of them told the other, “He’s ashamed to be alive.”
She glanced now at the scaly back of his head and wondered if that was true. Why had he fallen to weeping that night? Ashamed to be found so drunk? But he was drunk so often. It wasn’t something she could ask him about.
His hut stood hidden among an overgrown mass of vines and weeds so thick that only the glinting hexagons of the windows hinted at its presence. The roof had been rethatched not so long ago, and thick new windows added, bought from a Ningle glazier; but an ancient smell of charred, smoked fish remained. Even the fermenting vats behind the hut couldn’t obliterate it entirely.
He’d set up the booth against the back wall. Because of the smallness of the hut, it was only half as deep as a real booth. There was no room for an accompanist.
Within the curtains, on top of the undaya cases, Soter had laid out six puppets for her. He pushed into the confines behind her, moving to the side to watch as she considered the figures. Leodora knew every story Soter knew. His tests now probed whether or not she could formulate what specific tale or tales he expected her to perform based solely on which figures he’d selected. He was adamant that she be able to carry every single story and all of its nuances in her head; that she be able to take any elements and weave a performance from them.