Maia

9: OCCULA'S COMFORT

At Hirdo the track ran into the paved road between Thettit and Bekla. In this town the slave-dealers had no private quarters, as at Puhra, but paid the keeper of one of the i

The journey from Puhra, in the heat of the day, took more than four hours, and by the time they arrived both the girls-whom Megdon had been content merely to chain together by one ankle-were weary, less with actual fatigue than with that general sense of bodily discomfort peculiar to prolonged traveling. Maia, unable, during the afternoon, to keep from brooding on her betrayal and misery, would more than once have wept, but the black girl would not suffer it, scolding her fiercely in whispers and more than once threatening to abandon her altogether if she gave way in front of Megdon. (Megdon himself, leading the bullocks #nd obviously preferring to keep as far away from Occula as possible, was out of hearing.) Maia, knowing now what Occula was capable of and more than anxious not to antagonize her only friend, choked back her tears as best she could.

On reaching the i

To Maia this young Zuno, with his quiet, authoritative drawl, seemed the finest gentleman she had ever set eyes on. Not only his dandified clothes but his aloof air intensified her already dismal sense of being altogether out of her depth among contemptuous strangers to whom she was

nothing but a little hoyden-a body for sale. She could not imagine herself conversing with him on any level at all, so cold and superior was his ma

Apart from all this magnificence, she intuitively sensed about Zuno a novel and (to her) puzzlingly strange kind of detachment-a detachment, as it were, of inward inclination as well as of outward ma

There was, however, something inexplicable about Zuno; something which confused her in a way that Genshed had not. He was like another order of being-a feathered reptile or a three-legged bird. His ma

Worst of all, the man seemed to subdue even Occula. Upon their arrival the black girl had at once adopted an

entirely different bearing from that with which Maia had watched her dominate the household at Puhra. As Zuno- looking up from stroking the cat and picking his teeth with a carved splinter of bone which he took out of a leather case-gave them his instructions, the black girl stood with downcast eyes, murmuring only "Yes, sir" or "Very well, sir," and at length, as he turned back to his meal, raising her palm to her forehead and leaving the room without a word.

The i

"I can't make him out," replied Maia dolefully. "I don't fancy him at all!"

The black girl chuckled. "Be terrible if you did, wouldn't it? But banzi, if you start lettin' fairies like that get you down, you're not the girl I took you for. Anyway, let's get to sleep. I'm worn out, aren't you?"

Maia fell asleep to the sounds of the tavern below- murmurs of conversation, the clink of pots and vessels, footsteps, closing doors, an occasional raised voice calling to a servant. Despite these, she slept heavily and did not stir for several hours.

When she woke the room was in darkness. Was it still early in the night, she wondered, or near dawn? She got up and went across to the barred window. The stars shone bright. There was not a trace of dawn in the sky, and no sound either from the i

What will become of me? she thought. What does it mean, to be a slave? How will the days be spent-what sort of people will be around me? And then, like the half-child she still was, "Is there anything nice at all to look forward to?" No, there was nothing-nothing. The future was a black pit: and Maia, leaning her forehead on the window-sill, covered it with hopeless tears.

"Banzi!"

Maia jumped, for once again the black girl had made no sound. Turning Maia away from the window, she clasped her in her arms and rocked her gently, stroking her hair as she continued to weep with great, shuddering sobs. At length Occula whispered, "Come back to bed, banzi. No sense standin' here. Least you got a bed. And you got me-'less you doan' fancy."

Leading Maia to her own bed, she got in beside her. For some little time they lay unspeaking. Slowly, Maia's weeping ceased, her tears though not her misery exhausted. At length Occula said "Why didn' you wake me?"

"I-I didn't think-you said-tough and cu

"Oh, but not to each other, banzi! Only to men! Cran and the stars, how I despise men! I'm hard as stone-I hope. I wouldn' have given a baste if we'd choked one of those swine to death this morning. But a girl's got to be soft to someone. I can't be a brute to the whole world. For my own self-respect I've got to love somebody, else I'd soon be as big a bastard as Genshed or Perdan-and wretched into the bargain. Listen, Maia, I meant what I told you. I'll be your true friend, I'll stand by you and look after you. I'll never let you down! If you like I'll swear it by Kantza-Merada. You may be up to the neck in shit, but for what it's worth, you got me."