Maia

They lay together under a single blanket, perspiring, relaxed and easy.

"Occula! Oh, I wouldn't never have thought-"

"Sh!"

"I don't want to go to sleep now."

"I didn' say go to sleep. I said sh!"

"Well, so I will. You talk, then. Tell me who you are-

where you come from. Are they all black, there, like you? Where is it?"

"Head on my shoulder, then; that's right. Well, where shall I start?"

"Where you were born." i

"Where I was born? Ah! do you want to make me cry like you? I've buried that under a great rock, banzi, like Deparioth in the ballad-oh, years past-since I was a lot younger than you are now. Yes, buried-except in dreams. I remember some man tellin' me once that he knew all shearnas had one thing in common; they came from bad homes. But this one didn'." She paused. "Well, what lies out beyond Belishba, banzi, do you know?"

"Belishba? Where's that, then?"

"Where's Belishba? Oh, banzi, my pretty little net-mender, didn' anyone ever teach you pig's arse is pork? Belishba lies out beyond Sarkid-far away. Herl-Belishba must be more than a hundred miles from here; south- oh, yes, a long way south-from Dari-Platesh. But it's not Herl-Belishba I come from, nor nowhere near."

"Where, then?"

"On the furthest southwestern edge of Belishba, far out, the country gets dry and stony, until in the end you come to the desert-the desert the Belishbans call the Harridan. But when I was a little girl I never knew that name, 'cos I was born on the other side-yes, on the other side of the most terrible desert in the world. We called it by its right name, and I still do. It's the Govig. The Govig, banzi-five hundred miles of stony slopes and dry sand. Five hundred miles of nothing-of ghosts and the wind that talks. Five hundred miles of sky and red clouds, and never a drop of water out of them by day or night."

Maia, pleasantly -intrigued and not really distinguishing in her mind between Occula's talk and one of old Drigga's tales, waited for her to go on.

"And then, beyond the Govig again-ah, that's where my home was, banzi; that's where men are men and women have hearts like the sun-honest and decent and nothin' hidden, nothin' but what you can feel shinin' warm all over you."

"What's the country like?" asked Maia.

"Fertile. Flat. The water was slow and brown-it ran in long ditches up and down the fields."

"For the beasts?"

"For rice. But we didn' use the fields-my family, I mean. My father was a merchant. We lived in Tedzhek. Silver Tedzhek, they call it, 'cos the river runs round it on three sides. The sand-spits are all silver along the water, and the women wash the clothes there, and twice a year there's a fair on the Long Spit and they act plays in honor of Kantza-Merada. I was three when Zai first took me to the Long Spit. I sat on his shoulders, right up above the crowds of people swayin' like long grass in a field. He was a fine, big man, you see, my father was.

"Zai was a jewel-merchant. And I doan' mean one of those fat, greasy old twisters with a house all bolts and bars and guards with clubs. Zai was a merchant-venturer, and Kantza-Merada only knows where he didn' get to. He'd been to the Great Sea-"

"What's that?"

"Never mind. He'd been there, anyway, and to Sellion-Rabat in the clouds, where the air's so thin that you can hardly breathe until you get used to it, he said; and out beyond the Usakos-that's where he nearly died of frostbite and had to fight his way back through bandits who tried to steal his stock. That's the trouble with jewels, you see; they're so terribly easy to steal. Zai used to disguise himself as a crazy pilgrim, sometimes, or even a drover, complete with bullocks. Once he was a lame beggar, with the jewels hidden in his false wooden leg.

"We never knew when he was goin' to get home again. Sometimes he was away for months and months. Once Ekundayo-that was mother's maid-came and said there was a pedlar at the door sellin' shells and carved toys, and did mother want to see what he'd got or should she send him away. But it was Zai come back: he hadn' let on, for a joke, and Ekundayo hadn' recognized him. But I did. I did!

"Oh, banzi, I could tell you all night, but I'd only be cryin' my eyes out. What's the good? I must have been nine-yes, it was nine-when Zai made his first crossin' of the Govig. I remember mother beggin' him not to try it. No one had ever done it, you see, and no one knew how far it was or what was on the other side. All we knew was that people had died tryin' to cross the Govig-or at any rate they'd never been heard of again.

"But Zai came back-he always came back. He'd taken sixty-two days to cross the Govig and he'd discovered the