The Victor E-Book

Karin Erlandsson

• Herausgeber: Young Dedalus
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Young Dedalus
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 302

Beschreibung

The Victor is the fourth book in the four-part series Song of the Eye Stone. Set in a fantastical world, it is an epic saga of friendship, longing and the things that really matter in life. Exhausted from death-defying adventures and devastating loss, Miranda and Syrsa must gather the strength to go in search of the legendary eye stone one last time. Only they can destroy it and free the Queendom from its tyrannical curse once and for all. But there is no time to lose, for they are not the only ones who seek it. Miranda and Syrsa's final journey takes them to the spectacular Queen's City, where rainbow pearls glitter in the streets. But it soon becomes clear that the Queen knows more about them than she would have them believe. What does the Queen want with them? Can they trust her? And what is her connection with the evil Iberis?

Leseprobe

Young Dedalus

General Editor: Timothy Lane

The Victor

This work has been published with the financial assistance of FILI — Finnish Literature Exchange.

Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited

24-26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE

[email protected]

www.dedalusbooks.com

ISBN printed book 978 1 915568 35 9

ISBN ebook 978 1 915568 54 0

Dedalus is distributed in the USA & Canada by SCB Distributors

15608 South New Century Drive, Gardena, CA 90248

[email protected]    www.scbdistributors.com

Dedalus is distributed in Australia by Peribo Pty Ltd

58, Beaumont Road, Mount Kuring-gai, N.S.W. 2080

[email protected]

Segrare (Legended om ogonstenen) copyright © Karin Erlandsson 2019

Published originally in Swedish by Schilds & Soderstoms

Published by agreement with Helsinki Literary Agency

First published by Dedalus in 2024

Translation copyright © Annie Prime 2024

The right of Karin Erlandsson to be identified as the author & Annie Prime as the translator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Elcograf S.p.A.

Typeset by Marie Lane

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The Author

Karin Erlandsson, born in 1978, is one of the most successful and acclaimed children’s authors in the Swedish language. She is a Swedish-speaking Finnish author and journalist who has won many literary prizes.

Dedalus has published the first three books in the Song of the Eye Stone series, The Pearl Whisperer, and The Bird Master, in 2022 and The Scaler of the Peaks, in 2023. This is the final book in the series.

The Translator

Annie Prime is a prize-winning translator of children’s fiction from Swedish into English. She has translated the four-part series Song of the Eye Stone by Karin Erlandsson, for Dedalus.

Contents

In the Sea

A Cold Boat Voyage

Over the Ditch, in the Ditch

The Four Regions

New Trousers

Around the Table

Syrsa’s Story

Where do all the Parents go?

Breakfast

Arrest

The Red Trousers

To the Queen’s City

The Tower

The Trial Begins

Before the Queen

The Water

The Witnesses

Exposed

Sated

Syrsa Dives

Morning in the Queen’s City

The Woodcarver

The Red Pearl

The Fountain

Life in the Queen’s City

Who is Interrogating Whom?

Revelation

Explanation

The Aquarium

Chased along the Avenue

Off and Away

To the Sea

The Lighthouses

Abandoned Children

The Sister’s Story

Reunion

Together

The Diving Hood

Moonlight Trail

There

Dislodging the Pearl

The Storm

The Speech

Longing

Farewell

Burial

The House in the Forest

The Pearl Fishers

Acknowledgements

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In the Sea

I had forgotten how clear the sea is.

The sun’s rays cast reflections on the surface and penetrate all the way down to the algae and pearls. As I glide through the water I see hundreds, nay thousands, of pearls.

The western region is dedicated to agriculture. This is where the farmers live and where the wheat violet grows. But there is also a stretch of sea, and where there is sea, there are pearls.

The sand is rolling, undulating, and covered in compass-lily and sea-fringe. A few turquoise pearls lie under a pinch tick and next to a patch of sealmoss is the largest white pearl I have ever seen. All the colours of the sea — orange, yellow, green and red — are reflected in the white mother-of-pearl. The surface of the white pearl shimmers and shines, and I see another pearl beside it, grey like a stormy day.

My diving hood is close to my face and I take deep breaths. When I wear the diving hood, I feel light, as if the very air I breathe is infused with all the many colours of pearls.

I splay out like a starfish slightly above the seabed, just like my father taught me, just like I always have.

Everywhere I turn, I see pearls. Yellow as the sun’s rays, blue as the sky, black as the night, and red — the Queen’s favourites.

Under the surface of the water, all colours become clearer. Green bone-lily flowers float up to the surface while silver flakes of sealmoss fall like raindrops. The firefingers will take on a flaming red hue in autumn, but now it is spring and they are still pinkish.

Bluefang sways and coils upwards and whipweed covers the sand in a soft carpet. There are almost always pearls hiding in the sea grass, especially this early in the season. Pearl fishers rarely dive in these areas.

We are on the brink of summer and the water is still cold. But the ice has gone so the sea is ours again. The sea belongs to the pearl fishers.

I won’t be diving for long. When I turn to look up at the surface, I see the hull of our hired boat. Syrsa is waiting.

Many years as a pearl fisher have taught me to land on the seabed without disturbing the sand so as not to obscure the pearls. The ocean floor is soft beneath my feet.

It is not only colours that change underwater; sounds are different too. In the sea, all sounds become muted, almost drowsy. I know the pearls are singing, but Syrsa is the only one who can hear them. I sincerely wish I could hear what pearls sound like. They must be beautiful.

I am diving for pearls to sell. We have a long journey ahead of us and need money for provisions and a large boat. Not everybody is as hospitable as Maria, the farmer with whom we are staying.

I’ve been desperate to dive ever since we saw the ocean from high up in the mountain. Under the sea is the only place where everything is still as it should be. The pearls are exactly where they are supposed to be, the little black ones clinging to Saint Maximilian’s half-rose as always, ragrays inhabit the deep-sea caves and the rose-sharks want the pearls for themselves as much as the pearl fishers do.

I promised Syrsa that I would surface soon with a bag full of pearls, but when I look around I just can’t tear myself away. I want to stay below the surface.

I swim slowly towards a sea-fringe reef. The algae is dark green and looks like tiny trees on the sea floor. Just as I expected, there is a cluster of white pearls in the middle of the reef. The reflection of the algae makes it look like tiny trees are swaying on the surface of the pearls.

The water caresses my arm and legs, as if it has missed me just as much as I have missed it. Can water miss someone? I don’t know, but I do know that it receives me and moulds itself around my body as if there has always been a gap in the water just for me to swim through.

I float above the algae and gaze at the white pearls. I’m not going to pick them. Let them stay where they are, and whatever the future may hold, I will think of the white pearls in this reef.

There is beauty in this world. There are pearls that even Iberis cannot touch.

The most valuable pearl in the entire Queendom is the eye stone. Generations of pearl fishers have set out in search for it. Whoever finds the eye stone gets everything they have ever wanted, but whoever starts looking for it will never want anything else again.

Iberis got her hands on the eye stone, and she forced all the people in the land to the northern port town. After the town was burnt to the ground, Iberis hid the eye stone in the mountains, and Syrsa, Lydia and I followed. The eye stone caused a great avalanche, where rocks and boulders the size of sailing ships thundered down the mountainside.

It took everything with it.

I shiver in the cold water. I should hurry up; Syrsa is waiting in the rowing boat and she doesn’t like being left alone for long. I swim away from the white pearls and look around. Green pearls are often found scattered around the seabed, but here they seem to be in short supply. I see a couple of yellow pearls behind some rocks and place them in my satchel.

Picking pearls is quick work, not like picking raspberries. A raspberry bush is prickly and you have to be careful not to scrape your arm. Picking pearls from the seabed is more like plucking grain from a wheat-violet stalk. You just take it and move on, collecting as much as you need.

I pick the grey pearl and the black ones tangled up in the Saint Maximilian half-rose. Then I find some large purple pearls in a shade I have never seen before. If the colour pleases the Queen, they could fetch a good price at the market.

I pick a few small blue pearls that I almost missed. They will be good for rings and necklaces. I manage to pluck out the turquoise beads without the pinch tick shutting.

Just as I am about to swim up, an oar splashes on the surface. Syrsa wants me to come back.

A Cold Boat Voyage

Syrsa is leaning over the rail and doesn’t see me surface. She flinches when I dump my satchel on the deck.

“Only me,” I say.

I grab the railing and climb aboard.

“We should have brought a blanket,” I say. “The sun isn’t strong enough to dry us off this early in the year.”

“Lydia would never have forgotten a blanket,” says Syrsa.

“No,” I say. “She wouldn’t.”

The waves lap against the hull as if the sea is enjoying the opportunity to move again now that the ice has melted.

I sit in the bow and Syrsa sits in the stern, with the middle board and oars between us. That middle board looks so empty.

“We should probably get going,” I say, but I don’t move. Instead I follow Syrsa’s gaze. She is looking east, towards the mountain.

“Do you think Lydia can see us?”

“I don’t know, Syrsa. I don’t know what people can or can’t see after they…”

I search for the right thing to say. Maybe I’m hoping Syrsa will continue for me. But she says nothing, which is unusual for her.

Lydia’s medicine bag is under the stern thwart. It is Syrsa’s medicine bag now.

“Isn’t there anything in her medical book about it?” I ask.

“No.”

Syrsa and I spent the autumn and winter living with Lydia, the medicine woman of the northern port town. I worked in the forest as a woodcutter. I spent my days in the trees, high up instead of deep down.

Trees in the forest can fall, and waves in the sea can destroy a boat, but neither the forest nor sea mean us any harm. We may occupy their space on the same terms as the birds and fish. The mountain is different.

The cold fabric of my shirt clings to my arm, and my legs are numb with cold.

I move to the middle seat and grab the oars.

“Help me,” I say.

As a child I lost my right arm in a rose-shark accident, as did Syrsa. I can row with one arm, but it’s harder work than with two. That’s why I prefer sailing boats where it doesn’t matter how many arms you have.

“Take the other oar,” I say.

We slowly turn the boat around and row towards the shore. I row as hard as I can to warm up.

“Not so fast,” Syrsa gasps. “I can’t keep up.”

“Just go for it,” I say. “Pull harder!”

“Lydia wouldn’t…”

“Lydia isn’t here. Just row.”

Syrsa gives me a shove and lets go of the oar. It lands in the water with a splash that soaks us both before it bobs away.

“What do you think you’re doing? Why did you drop it?”

I get up and try to catch the oar before it drifts away.

“It’s going to take a lot longer to get to shore now,” I say while trying to row with the bailer. “Why did you drop the oar?”

Syrsa doesn’t say a word, she just looks towards the mountains and doesn’t move.

“Well, come on! Help me!”

Finally I get hold of the oar. We’re close to shore and I jump in. The water only reaches up to my waist and I am able to wade inland and pull the boat along. It will be faster this way, even though I’m so cold I can barely hold the mooring line.

“You mustn’t say that,” says Syrsa.

“What?”

Water laps around the boat. There is nothing colder than getting wet again before drying off.

“Lydia most certainly is here! Don’t say that she isn’t!”

Syrsa jumps over the side of the boat and swims past me with fierce strokes until she reaches the shore and disappears behind the reeds.

“Wait!”

I curse under my breath. Now I have to pull the boat up and carry my heavy satchel alone, and try to find her in the little village we came to after we left the mountains.

I moor the boat and hesitate for a moment. I know I shouldn’t bring Lydia’s medicine bag with me. Syrsa needs to learn to keep track of her own things. But I can’t leave it behind. If it went missing, I don’t know what Syrsa would do.

The medicine bag is heavy. It contains all of Lydia’s medicinal plants and herbs, everything she thought she might need during the hunt for the eye stone. In the mountains she collected minerals and scraped silver dust from the rock, which she put into small jars. The contents of the bag rattles around inside as I try to figure out how to carry both this and my satchel.

She should be here carrying her own bag, I think, but I’m not altogether sure whether I mean Syrsa or Lydia.

Over the Ditch, in the Ditch

Reeds scratch my skin and stick to my wet shirt. The medicine bag is so heavy that I have to pause for a rest several times.

The village is on the border between the western region, with its rolling fields and farmland, and the northern region with its deep forests. After the avalanche, we made our descent down the mountain. We must have made fires, we must have slept, maybe we scraped bark from copper pine trees and made porridge when we finally reached the forest… but I remember very little of our journey. All I knew was that I had to get Syrsa away from that place, even though every step was taking us further and further from Lydia.

Somewhere along the way, we met Kalinda. She recognised us from the time we met in the northern port town and she brought us here, to Maria’s village in the western region. We didn’t know Maria, but such is the way of people in the western region. They welcome strangers.

The people in Maria’s village till the soil and gather algae from the sea. They live off the water and land. Maybe the presence of the sea is why we finally felt able to rest and became unable to take a single step more once we had reached their red houses.

“The algae makes excellent mulch, it’s full of nutrients from the sea.”

That’s what Maria said when she welcomed us in and gave us food and shelter.

We are going to travel along the coast all the way to the southern region, because that’s where the best boats are, and from there we can get to the eye stone. We saw where it landed after the avalanche so I think I know roughly where it is.

When we have found the eye stone, we must destroy it. I don’t know how, because nothing can break a pearl. The eye stone even survived its fall from high in the mountain. But I have promised Lydia, so I will find a way.

Many of Iberis’ golden guards died in the avalanche. We saw them tumble down the mountain and be crushed under the rocks. We don’t know whether Iberis survived.

If Iberis is alive, she is bound to be searching for the eye stone, and we really should hurry. We shouldn’t stay here with Maria, but we don’t have the strength to carry on just yet.

I never knew that grief makes you so tired.

I have longed for the eye stone, and I have longed for Syrsa, but longing is nothing like grief. In longing there is hope. In grief there is only darkness — a darkness so great that it becomes impossible to keep going.

“Syrsa! Come on, I bet there’ll be violet porridge for dinner.”

No answer. I hope she has gone back to Maria’s house.

A village has been established in a field of these fertile lands. All settlements in the western region are similar in this regard. People build their homes in the middle of the land and work the surrounding fields. They step straight out of their front door and onto their own soil. They have everything they need right in front of them.

I have made it through the reeds and am standing at the edge of the largest field.

I understand the appeal of living on your own land, but it isn’t all that practical. In spring, when the frost subsides, the soil becomes wet and muddy. The farmers are in a hurry to plant spring grain and fertilise while they sow. There is a thick stench of dung.

“Whoa!”

Maria walks behind a harrow pulled by a large horse whose hooves are sunken in the mud.

“Have you seen Syrsa?”

“I thought I saw her running past, but I was on the other side of the field so it might have just been a hare.”

“I doubt it,” I say quietly, then add a little louder: “Thank you.”

They are particular about giving thanks in the western region, I know that.

Maria urges her horse on and it plods forward with loud suction sounds around its hooves. I never really got used to the horses in the western region. I was only here for half a season. It was after a winter in the mountain. I quit halfway through the season and came to the western region just in time for spring work.

I was in another small village that time. The whole western region is full of villages like this one. I walked behind the horses and scattered the wheat-violet seeds, or I was on my knees weeding the cabbage fields, and the smell of manure was so strong that I even dreamed about it at night. I only stayed until the beginning of the pearl fishing season.

“See you tonight,” Maria calls after me. The horse neighs.

Wading through ankle-deep mud, I shuffle carefully down the edge of a ditch. The brown water rushes and ripples, dragging earth and reeds along with it, drawn to the sea as though pulled by a rope.

I balance on the edge of the ditch and am just about to toss Lydia’s bag across when I slip.

The bag! I think, moments before I fall straight into the brown water.

The ditch is not very deep. I fall on my backside and sit there with water up to my waist. When I try to support myself on my hand and stand up, I slip and fall once more.

I look around for the bag, please don’t let it… no, it’s on the other side, it made it.

The mud is slippery and the water is brown. Why can’t all water always be like the sea? I can always stand on the sandy seabed, but the ground at the bottom of the ditch is too slippery.

“Whoops! Give me your hand.”

A red-haired woman appears above me in the field. She smiles at me and stands in a wide stance at the edge of the ditch. It’s Kalinda, Maria’s neighbour. I haven’t seen her since she first brought us to the western region.

My satchel is hanging from my belt, empty. All the pearls have fallen out. I really should stop and pick them up, but it’s so muddy and I’m too cold. I never want to see a ditch again for the rest of my life.

“Hold onto me,” says Kalinda. “I’ll help you up.”

The Four Regions

There are three houses in the village, all the same size and painted red with yellow eaves. We are staying in the middle one.

“I didn’t think you would stay this long,” Kalinda says as we walk across the field.

Every time I pull my feet up there is a sucking sound like a barley barnacle releasing its grip on a pearl. Kalinda carries the medical bag above her head to keep it from getting muddy. She makes walking across the field look easy.

“We haven’t been able to leave yet,” I say and try to walk like her. The way she moves reminds me of a fox slinking through the forest, as if trying not to disturb the earth.

Kalinda lives nearby, but I haven’t seen her since she asked Maria to take care of us.

“Are you waiting for the medicine woman?”

I look down at the mud and clods of earth falling in my tracks. I am walking more like a field yak than a fox. I don’t know how to respond.

“Lydia didn’t make it,” I say simply when we arrive at Maria’s house.

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“But you have Syrsa. That girl is full of life.”

“I think she’s waiting in our room,” I say.

The door to Maria’s house is wide open.

“So it seems,” says Kalinda, pointing at the muddy footprints on the front steps. “See you this evening. I’m helping Maria with the fertiliser and she has invited me for dinner afterwards. I’m looking forward to chatting more.”

I was born as a woodcutter in the northern region. There, everybody talks to each other, helps each other and shares everything. The trees in the forest never run out so nobody has to claim their own property; everyone shares.

I am happiest in the southern region. In the southern region people are quiet. That is where the pearl fishers are, where the sea is. You can’t talk in the sea, you have to be quiet, and maybe that’s why the people in the southern region barely talk at all. You can easily live without talking much.

In the eastern region, where the mountains are, everyone looks after themselves. Nobody gives anything away for free, but will trade for goods and services. Everything is divided into mine and yours, but belongings can change owners through the right deal.

There is a scarcity of everything in a mountain. Everything people need to survive has to be imported. That is why they all cling so jealously to what they have.

But farmers in the western region have everything in abundance. Here there is no reason to barter or be greedy.

The wheat violet takes roots as soon as it is sown, the cabbage sprouts without human labour and the raspberry bushes bloom year after year. Everything people need grows and thrives here.

For generations, the people of the western region have tended to the land, trusting that the fields will provide, with no need to defend them or go wanting. They know that the sun shines as needed and that the rain provides moisture.

And when this isn’t the case, when there is drought instead of rain or rain instead of sun to make hay, they just shrug their shoulders.

“It will all work out this year, same as it did last year,” they say.

“Do you remember the last time we had a drought? We had to nibble the horses’ hay all winter.”

“And it was fine,” they say.

The people of the western region are easy company. They look at you as if you were a seed, wishing you well and hoping you grow, but without exerting pressure or interference. They know that seeds do best on their own, as long as they are given water and fertile soil.

I used to feel very uneasy when they looked at me that way. But now I find that I am enjoying talking to Kalinda.

“Very good,” I call after her. “See you this evening then!”

I linger on the steps and watch the way Kalinda strides over the soil furrows. If we stayed here, I would have to learn to walk like that, I think. But I know that I will be tramping clumsily across the fields until the time comes for us to move on.

Syrsa and I must continue on our journey. We are the only ones who can save the Queendom from the curse of the eye stone. Desire can be a good thing, but not when it becomes so great that you lose sight of everything else.

When Kalinda reaches Maria, she takes out a piece of bread and lets the horse nibble it from her hand. They don’t need to look for the eye stone, they don’t care about the pearls that fell out of my satchel and got lost in the ditch.

They make everything look so easy.

I stomp the mud off my boots, leaving large clumps on the steps. The outermost layer of mud on my shirt has dried and is falling off me as I move.

I can’t go into Maria’s house like this. Quickly, I take off my trousers and wring them out, dripping brown water onto the field. I hope Syrsa knows not to get Maria’s house dirty. We are guests. Of course the people of the western region are unquestioningly hospitable to all visitors, but even they must have limits to how much mud they want inside their homes.

I step over the threshold and call: “Syrsa! Are you here?”

New Trousers

Our room is at the top of a wide staircase with a banister of young birch that still has its bark. Not very durable, but beautiful, even a simple woodcutter like me can see that.

“Are you here?”

The door is ajar and I carefully push it open. The first thing I see is the large hand-woven rug of yarn dyed with wheat violet. Syrsa is lying in bed under a heap of blankets.

“Strange that the rug is red, isn’t it?” I say. “You would think that wheat violet turns things white, like the ears of the grain, but it actually makes red dye. I always thought that was strange.”

She doesn’t answer. I sit down on the foot of the bed.

“We’ve been invited to dinner tonight,” I say. “Just like yesterday.”

She still doesn’t answer. Suddenly I feel so tired that I don’t even have the energy to sit upright. My legs are freezing and my shirt is still wet.

I take off my shirt, lift the covers and crawl into bed.

She looks at me with wide eyes and wriggles away to give me room. The beds in the western region are so soft, with mattresses filled with down and dandelion fluff that you sink into as soon as you lie down.

“You’re cold,” says Syrsa and flinches when my legs touch hers. “Why aren’t you wearing trousers?”

“They got muddy,” I say.

She snuggles her warm body closer to me. The mattress sinks us both into the middle so we end up leaning against each other.

“Was it my fault?”

She whispers so quietly that I wouldn’t hear her if I weren’t so close.

“What?” I say.

“That Lydia is no longer with us?”

Her voice is so small that I feel her words more as warmth against my throat more than I hear them.

“Absolutely not,” I say. “How could it have been your fault?”

“I blew the bugle.”

“You blew it because you had to, otherwise we would never have got the eye stone out of the mountain. The mountain fell because the mountain wanted to fall, you never know what the mountain will do.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s not your fault that Lydia died. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just a tragedy.”

Syrsa is quiet for a long time and I think she must have fallen asleep.

“I’m glad we don’t have the bugle anymore,” she says. “I never want to blow it again.”

Syrsa is a pearl whisperer. She can summon pearls with her silver bugle, but the bugle was destroyed in the avalanche that killed Lydia. She can still hear the pearls, but she can no longer call to the eye stone or any other pearl.

Lydia was a pearl whisperer too, but her powers faded when she grew up. She said she never missed them.

“We’ll find the eye stone anyway,” I say. “We can do it without the bugle.”

“Why did Lydia have to die?”

Once again, her words are so faint that they are barely audible, but I feel her breath on my neck.

“I don’t know.”

Syrsa’s tears are warm and make my shirt even wetter, but it’s a very different kind of wet than falling in a muddy ditch.

“Why can’t everyone just live forever?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “That’s just the way it is.”

“Like the sea and pearls, they exist forever.”

“Yes,” I say. “As they should.”

“I don’t want people to disappear.”

I know that she doesn’t just mean Lydia. Not long before the avalanche, Syrsa found her parents. They set out to look for the eye stone when Syrsa was little and when Iberis took possession of the eye stone, they joined forces with her. Everybody who had ever hunted for the eye stone became one of Iberis’ golden guards.

Syrsa’s parents were loyal to Iberis. Their desire for the eye stone was greater than their love for their daughter.

“We’re going to destroy the eye stone,” says Syrsa.

“Yes,” I say. “We are.”

I don’t know how to do it, but I must keep the promise I made to Lydia.

“Are you going to die as well?”

“No,” I mumble. “No, I’m not going to die.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I know,” I say. “But I’m not going to die. Neither are you.”

I hold her hand tight.

“Syrsa, it’s not your fault. Do you hear me? How could it possibly have been your fault?”

She lays her head on my shoulder.

“Nothing is ever your fault.”

Syrsa doesn’t say any more, she just shuts her eyes and her breathing gets heavy. I can lie beside her. Maybe that is enough.

I don’t know how long we sleep for, but I am woken up by Syrsa wriggling and her legs getting tangled with mine. The light in the room has changed. Evening has fallen.

“Does Maria know that Lydia is dead?”

Syrsa’s voice is different, it has been clearer since we buried Lydia.

“Maria didn’t know Lydia so she doesn’t miss her.”

“That’s strange,” says Syrsa. “Everyone should miss Lydia.”

I should have known that she felt that Lydia’s death was her fault. I should have told her much earlier that it wasn’t. Lydia would have known what to do. She would never have let Syrsa go around believing that she caused the avalanche. I sigh loudly and try to think about something else.

“Kalinda has come to visit,” I say, sitting up in bed. “We’re going to have dinner together this evening. Kalinda knew Lydia.”

“So she misses her too.”

“They might not have known each other that well,” I say.

Syrsa stands in the middle of the rug, her four tufty little pony tails swaying like ears of grain on her head.

“Maria left some new trousers for us,” she says, pointing at the headboard where two pairs of trousers are hanging up. They are red.

“So I see,” I say and gently touch the fabric.

Syrsa’s grey trousers are hanging from a cord around her waist. She has grown out of them and they end well above the ankle now. There is a large tear up one knee, and the seat is so worn that you can almost see through the fabric.

“I’ll change trousers if you do,” I say.

“I have never seen red trousers before,” says Syrsa. “They are much softer than my old ones.”

I pull the new trousers on. She’s right. The fabric on these trousers doesn’t prickle like the old ones did and the button works better than the rope I had tied around my waist before. This yarn, spun from wheat violet by the spinners of the western region, feels like bird feathers against my skin.

“We must remember to thank Maria at dinner. We can give her some pearls.”

But then I remember that all our pearls are lying in the ditch.

“We’ll have to dive for some tomorrow,” I say.

“Then I’ll dive too,” says Syrsa. “Maybe.”

Around the Table

Maria applauds when she sees how we are dressed.

“How smart you look!”

There is a fire burning in the large fireplace and Kalinda, Maria, her husband and two sons are all sitting around the table.

Syrsa looks at them one by one.

“Were you all in the northern port town as well?” she asks.