She woke slowly, and lay sweating as the dream gradually dispersed. The flies buzzed in the dusky room and a gleam of red sunlight, slanting through a crack, dazzled a moment in her eyes. After a time she became aware of a curious, droning sound, something like the wind against the edge of a shutter, but varying in tone, rather as though some large flying insect were in the room. Raising herself and looking round her, she saw a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor near the ladder-entrance. Her back was half-turned towards Maia and she was gazing idly downward. The droning-a kind of humming murmur-came from her. It was repetitive, a succession of five or six sustained notes, predictable as the song of a bird. There was no clear beginning or end to the cadence and the singer, indeed, appeared ho more conscious of making it than she might be of breathing or blinking. With one fore-finger she was slowly tracing an invisible pattern on the boards, but this movement, too, seemed recurrent, a kind of counterpart of her drone. On the one wrist which Maia could see was a notched, rather ugly wooden bracelet, stained unevenly in blue and green. Her dirty feet were bare and her hair was gathered in a plait tied with a ragged strip of leather.
This, surely, must be the girl of whom Bayub-Otal had spoken. Watching her, Maia began thinking how best to
go about making use of her for her own comfort and relief in this dismal place. Yes, and for her instruction, too, for there must be plenty she would need to learn. It was a pity she had nothing to give her, for it was important that the girl should not think her stuck-up or feel impatient with her for not knowing Suban ways.
The thought of pestilence came scuttling and creeping back into her mind: her very life might well depend on the girl. There must be ways of protecting oneself-things to do and things to avoid. If only she could contrive to avoid getting ill, then one day, somehow or other, the opportunity might arise to escape: though how-and here her despair returned, so that she shivered in the stuffy room- she could form no least idea. Better to think no more about that, but get on with what was immediately to hand.
She tried to impart a friendly tone to her voice. "Are you Luma?"
She had expected the girl to start or jump up, but on the contrary she gave no immediate sign of having heard her. Then, rather as though reluctantly turning aside from something else which had been absorbing her attention, she lifted her finger from the floor, raised her head, blinked, smiled and nodded. She had dark, heavy-lidded eyes, a broad nose and full lips; and might, thought Maia, have been quite a pretty girl-something after the style of the Deelguy-if it had not been for her sallow, mottled skin and a weeping sore at one corner of her mouth, which she licked nervously before replying.
"Luma." She nodded and smiled again. Maia guessed her to be about seventeen.
"I hope you're going to be able to teach me how you do things here," she said "Only I've never been in Suba in my life, see, and where I've come from it's all different."
The girl spread her hands, smiled again and said something that sounded like "Shagreh."
"Anda-Nokomis said you're going to come with me to Melvda-Rain," said Maia. "Do you know it? Have you been there before?"
The girl nodded. This was better than Maia had hoped for.
"You have? What's it like?"
"Shagreh," said the girl, smiling. Then, as Maia paused, puzzled, she said, in a thick Suban accent, "You'd like some food?"
"What? Oh-no; no, thank you," answered Maia. "I had something not long ago."
The girl, however, appeared to take this for an assent, for she got up and was plainly about to go down the ladder. Maia called her back.
"What I really want," she said, standing up and smiling, "is to wash." The girl looked at her nervously, scratching at one armpit and apparently wondering what she had done wrong. "I want to wash," repeated Maia. Still getting no response, she began to mime the act of stooping and splashing water over her neck and face.
At all events there was nothing wrong with her mimicry. The girl's face tit up with comprehension.
"Oh, washT' she said, laughing with pleasure at having grasped Maia's meaning. She paused, still smiling. At length she added, "You want-nowV
"Yes, please," said Maia. "You wash out of doors here, don't you?" She pointed through the door opening. "Will you show me where it is?"
Luma nodded, raised her palm to her forehead and stood aside for Maia to go first down the ladder. Outside, a light breeze was blowing, stirring loose wisps of thatch under the eaves and rippling the tall, yellow-brown grass beyond the huts. As they set off together, a little group of staring, pot-bellied children, some naked, others in rags, fell in at their heels and followed until Luma, turning and clapping her hands as though they had been chickens, sent them scattering.
It was early evening; an hour, certainly, when any village might be expected to be ceasing from labor, changing the rhythm of the sun for the gentler rhythms of nightfall, supper and firelight. Even so, Maia was struck by the list-lessness which seemed to fill the whole little settlement, as though (she thought) they were all under water, or in one of those dreams in which people can move only like beetles crawling over each other on a branch. Everyone she saw appeared languid and apathetic-nowhere a song or a burst of laughter. The very birds, it seemed, were not given to singing, though now and then, as they approached the further end of the village, the harsh cry of some waterfowl-coot, perhaps, or jabiru-echoed from the surrounding swamp.
Luma appeared to feel no particular obligation to talk and Maia, after a few attempts to do so herself, walked
on beside her in silence. At length she asked "How many people are there in the village? About how many, I mean?"
Luma smiled and nodded.
"How many?" persisted Maia, pointing to the huts.
"How many you think?" replied Luma, with an air of deferring to higher wisdom.
"I don't know. Three hundred?"
"Shagreh, shagreh." Luma nodded corroboratively.
"Or five hundred, perhaps?"
"Shagreh."
They had now left the huts and were walking between clumps of grass and rushes, on a path that wound between shallow pools and mud that was half water. Here the marshy smell was mingled with the scent of some kind of wild herb, peppery and sharp, and now and then with a sweeter fragrance, as though somewhere near there must be a bed of marsh lily or roseweed. In places, split logs had been laid together, flat side up, to pave the path, and over these Luma led the way, her bare feet pressing down the wood so that now and then the warm, stagnant water rose nearly to her ankles. The light was fading and as they went on the croaking of frogs, which at first had been intermittent, became continuous, spreading round them on every side.
Passing through a thicket of plumed reeds and club-rushes taller than themselves, the two girls came to a still, open pool about thirty yards broad-some backwater of the Valderra, Maia supposed, for it did not seem to be flowing. In several places here the short-turfed, level bank had been cut into, to form a succession of regular inlets, each a few yards long and about three feet deep. In four or five of these, girls, either naked or stripped to the waist, were splashing and washing themselves. One, looking up, called a greeting to Luma.
Even on the Tonildan Waste Maia had possessed a towel of sorts and (as will be remembered) Morca used to make soap from tallow and ashes. Such refinements, however, seemed unknown here. Luma, pointing and smiling, became unexpectedly articulate.
"This is a good place. Not many others-" (Here Maia lost her drift.) "You needn't worry; none of the men come here. Have their own place."
Stooping, she pulled off her dull-gray, curiously supple smock (Maia could still form no idea from what it could