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I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Sundance caroled inside her own head, dancing in circles in the snow, not even minding as she usually did when the people on the other side of the safety shield pointed her out to each other, jabbering away about how cute she was and how they could almost think she was a person if they squinted just right. I knew it, I knew it, she’s perfect! Just perfect! Mama and Daddy would think so too, if they got a chance to hear her like I have…
Of the three traditional walks of Aelur life, that of the rovers, which Free Sky had once followed, left its people with the most time for pursuits like music. The hunters needed to embrace silence, become one with it, as they stalked their prey, and the farmers worked so hard while the sun was in the sky that they often had no strength left for practice once it went down.
Though often doesn’t mean always. Nightsinger was born into a farming clan, but when he plays his dulcimer, it’s so beautiful that it makes you want to cry. And the hunters aren’t silent all the time, just when they’re hunting…
Still, walking behind trison from sunrise to sunset left the hands, the mind, and the voice all free, and the beasts often responded well to being coaxed along their path with song. So it was that the roving clans were known among the Aelur for two things: the excellence of their trison herds’ bloodlines, to the point where the best bulls commanded stud fees almost as princely as the payment for a child-contract between clan queens, and the precision and polish of their singers and musicians.
Which is the fancy way of saying we’re the best. And with Mama a queen and Daddy a bard, I’m the best of the best. Sundance cartwheeled three times, flopping down onto her back at the end of it. Or I will be, once I’m all the way grown up. But even if I’m not grown up yet, I’ve been around music my whole life, and I know the difference between a bad voice and a good one, between someone who likes music a little bit and someone who lives for it…
And Carol, despite the unpracticed qualities in her singing, definitely fell into the latter category both times.
Only what am I supposed to do about it? Sundance stared up at the “clouds” with a scowl, shifting the furs she wore as the snow, melted by the warmth of her body, threatened to soak through her pelt. Shadowcrest can say “playing isn’t talking” all he likes, and for him it would work, he’s still a little boy. But Mama’s not going to believe that from me. I’m old enough to know what she really meant when she told me not to talk to Carol, and now I disobeyed, and that could mean I get in a lot of trouble.
Or it could mean we do, the whole clan of us.
The thought of how big and bad that trouble could get, especially for her father if anyone found out what he was doing, threatened to put a permanent damper on Sundance’s mood. She countered it by thinking of the expression of awestruck joy she’d seen on Carol’s face when she had begun to play the little harp, and how much brighter that joy would surely be if and when Carol got the chance to learn to play it herself.
It needs to be when, Sundance declared firmly to herself. And it’s going to be when. Anything else wouldn’t be fair.
But no daughter of the Aelur, and especially not a princess of Free Sky, could see eleven Christmases and hear all the fireside stories that accompanied them without realizing that sometimes life simply wasn’t fair.
Tomorrow. Sundance jumped to her feet in a shower of snow. I’ll talk to Mama about it tomorrow, and she’ll see if there’s anything Daddy can do to help Carol without getting caught. Or maybe I’ll ask Killdeer—
She grimaced. Or I would, if she was here. She and Nightsinger pick the worst times to go away!
Though to be truthful, Sundance knew, her father’s sister and her mother’s cousin hadn’t exactly chosen to be separated from the clan at this precise moment, any more than the rest of the clan had desired the situation in which they now found themselves. It had been chosen for them, or rather dumped on top of them, by the demon still known to the vast majority of the galaxy as Murphy.
But that’s just more about the whole “life not being fair” thing, and I don’t want to think about that now. I want to think about…about…
About the way Carol had laughed when some of her agemates within the clan had ventured out onto one of the frozen streams, she decided. Her friend had pressed herself against the far wall of the secluded alcove off the main path of the walkway Sundance had found for her, gasping for air in between fits of giggles, arms clenched across her belly and tears flowing freely from her eyes, as though she had never in her life seen anything so funny as the passel of skidding, slithering boys.
Maybe she hasn’t. Maybe there isn’t much to laugh about on Moria. Sundance nodded to herself. A world that doesn’t like music probably wouldn’t like laughter very much either.
Her thoughts making her solemn, she padded over to the decorated tree near the rear of the viewable area and stood looking up at it, pursing her lips so as to blow visible plumes of steam into the cold air.
I gave Carol music for Christmas, and I reminded her how to laugh. That’s not nothing.
It isn’t what I want to do for her—I want to grab her hand and pull her through that shield to the side of it where she belongs, here with us, with the people who know what’s real and what’s important—but it might be all I can do.
Sundance sighed deeply. It may not be nothing, but it still doesn’t feel like enough…
She supposed this was what her mother had meant by having an iron nerve and a strong mind. A queen had to be able to understand that as powerful as she was, she couldn’t solve every problem in the galaxy, and she also had to figure out which ones she could solve, so that she and her people didn’t waste their time beating their heads against stone walls.
Or safety shields.
Very softly, so as not to reach the people on the walkway behind her, she hummed, and made the words running through her mind a prayer, for Carol, for herself, for the entire Free Sky clan.
Peace on the earth, good will to men,
From heaven’s all-gracious King…
Star of Wonder Page 5
