Which reminded me…“He says I’m domesticated.”
“Yes.”
I turned my head with a snap. “You’re saying it, too? And do you plan to say anything in words of more than one syllable?”
Del smiled. “Maybe.”
I scowled.
“Two syllables,” she said, lifting one shoulder in a slight shrug.
I sighed deeply and set the back of my skull against the mudbrick. “Maybe he’s right.”
“The Sandtiger is not domesticated, regardless of what his son says. The Sandtiger is teaching what he knows, which is substantial. That’s an honorable thing, Tiger. When Neesha’s older, he’ll recognize that.” She patted me on one thigh. “You’re older, now, yes. You need not go traipsing all across the Punja looking for jobs.”
I suppose she meant that in a positive way. I was older. So was Del, but we’d met when she was twenty, so she wasn’t exactly old. But I didn’t require being reminded, necessarily, of what I was told each morning when I arose. Creaking bones were noisy. “He says you should go, too.”
She didn’t respond, merely watched our daughter now attempting to sneak up on Alric’s dog. On hands and knees, and filthier than ever.
“He says you could leave Sula with Lena and Alric,” I observed idly. “And he’s right: She’s over there half the time.” ‘Over there’ constituted a mudbrick house very like our own, though larger, approximately two hundred long paces away from ours. Alric and Lena had a litter of kids to go along with the litter of kittens.
“He says I could add luster to the legend. Not that it needs luster, I don’t think.” I paused, waiting for a reply. When it didn’t come, I asked, somewhat aggrieved, “Do you think it needs luster?”
“I think,” she said finally, “that a shodo could—and perhaps should—venture forth to refine his skills so he can best teach his students what new techniques there may be.”
“‘Refine his skills’,” I echoed with no intonation that might be interpreted as my being upset.
Del said, “You’re upset.”
“Do you want to go?”
“If you want to.”
“Is that a roundabout way of saying you’d like to go?”
“It’s a way of saying I’d go if you want to.”
“Gah,” I declared, thudding my head against the wall.
“The same thing applies to me, Tiger.”
“What applies to you?”
“I teach, also. I could—and perhaps should—venture forth to refine my skills.”
I eyed her sidelong. Her white-blonde hair was loose and curtained part of her profile. I couldn’t see her expression. “Are you sure Neesha didn’t address this with you?”
“Neesha has been muttering about wanting to go for awhile. It started when everyone else left.”
“I told him he could go!”
“He didn’t suggest anything to me about you going. Or me.”
“Oh, he suggested to me that we both go with him.”
“And so we are back at the beginning,” Del said. “And you had best put up the sword, because Sula is on her way.”
So she was, still on hands and knees in the dirt but crawling in our direction. Apparently, for the moment, she found it easier than toddling. I picked up the sword and held it high over my head. This technique resulted in my daughter standing up against my knee, clutching flesh, reaching as high as she could in pursuit of the sword.
“There’s no question,” I observed, “what she will be when she’s grown.”
“A wooden sword,” Del suggested, “and the blade perhaps padded so when she whacks you on the shin, you won’t come whining to me.”
I gently but with determination directed Sula aside with a hand cupped over her skull, and stood, once again resting the flat of the sword against my shoulder. I headed for the door. “I think she’s due for a bath.”
Del said, “Your turn.”
I paused in the doorway and glanced back. Our daughter, deprived of my sword, was once again sitting in the dirt, stirring up dust. “All right,” I growled. “We’ll go with Neesha.”
Del smiled serenely. “I thought we might.”
Sword safely in harness on pegs against the interior wall, I gathered up the bag of lumpy soap, washing cloth, and the folded length of sacking we used for drying our daughter. Went back outside. Scooped up Sula and headed down past the multiple circles pegged out in the earth—as well as multiple footing surfaces for sword-dancing: sand, dirt, grass, gravel, a mix—and took her to the natural pool in the wide stream that ran through the canyon. Alric and I had, over the last two years, built up the edges with mudbrick and rocks, mortaring all into something akin to a fire ring surround, except much larger, and its contents were water, not flame. Everyone at this end of the canyon used it for bathing but also for fishing. On hot days, the dog used it for swimming. It was a very accommodating pool.
Despite the warmth of the day, the brightness of the sun directly overhead, the water was cool. I stepped over the surround and into the shallow-edged pool carefully, still barefoot and therefore attempting to miss rocks beneath the surface. I planted my butt just on the edge of the bank, lowered Sula, and tolerated the usual squeaks and shrieks as her lower legs made contact with cool water. One big hand clamped onto a small arm, I dumped the bag of soap and fabric out onto the bank, then stripped off Sula’s tunic. This occasioned more squeaks and shrieks, and vehement protestations involving a squirming, naked body.
She was lovely, my little girl, if loud. Prior to her arrival, I had never spent time examining small children. Or infants, or even older children. Children were—other beings. Eventually they became men and women, but for years they were simply—other beings.
Sula, of course, was not and never had been an other being. She was mine. Del’s. Ours. Oh, Neesha was mine as well, but he had arrived in my life a young but fully grown man. No soiled loin wrappings. He could even bathe himself.
I sluiced handfuls of water over my protesting daughter, top to bottom. She did have a vocabulary—two languages, no less; Southron and Northern—but it was relatively limited as yet and often consisted of “No,” if in two languages.
“Yes,” I said. In one.
She was a blend of us both. Not as dark as I, nor as Neesha; eyes were blue, hair was blonde but not as pale as Del’s. Del said it would likely darken as she grew. Del also said it had my wave, and tended to stick out in bizarre sculptural shapes after naps.
Suds. Wash. Sluice.
Domesticated.
Yes.
I swore. Then told Sula she shouldn’t swear and inwardly swore again that I had done so outwardly. Dammit.
The Sandtiger, the celebrated seventh-level Sandtiger, infamous throughout the South, sat on his butt on the damp bank of a stream soaping up, scrubbing down, and rinsing off a two-year-old girl.
I swore again. But very quietly.
And Sula was shrieking anyway, much too loud to hear me.
“Of course,” Southron-born Lena said, as she squashed dough on a flat wooden square Alric had adzed and rubbed smooth for her. The kitchen consisted of a small mudbrick fireplace, rounded like a beehive but boasting a gaping mouth that allowed access to the turnspit; cleverly, a narrow chimney forced smoke out of the daub-and-wattle roof. There was also a barrel of water and a narrow plank workspace snugged up against one wall. Alric was somewhat handier than I, and he had built something identical for Del and me in our smaller house.