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grimace. “We decorate the streets and the square with paper flowers and real flowers, and banners and ribbons, and the whole town looks like it’s on holiday, with the dresses and blankets hanging out everywhere. We do have real flowers here—besides the eternal pimchie—although nothing like what you’re used to at Home, I daresay. Everything grows tremendously for two weeks, so for the third week, Fair week, everything is green and blossoming—even the desert, if you can believe it.”
    “Then of course the sun kills everything again. That’s the fourth week. And you know what it’s like here the rest of the time.”
    “Yes, but the Fair—everyone comes to the Fair. The Hillfolk too, a few of them, although never anyone very special. Certainly never the king. And it’s not all the bead purses that our sort has been making in despair. There are always some really lovely things, mostly that the Darians themselves have made. Even the servants aren’t expected to do as much, you know, during the rains. After the first few weeks you’re far too cross yourself to give many orders to anyone else.”
    “But mostly the best things come up from the south. It’s only way up here that the weather’s so ridiculous, but the south knows about our Fair, and the merchants know that when we break out of winter prison we’re so mad with our freedom that we’re fit to buy
anything
, so they come up in force.”
    “There are Fairs, or celebrations of spring of one kind or another, all around here, but ours is the biggest.”
    “Well,” said Beth, “we’ve the biggest in things to buy and so forth; and we’re the only Homelander station up here. But there’re quite a number of Darian villages around here, and they take spring very seriously. Lots of singing and dancing, and that kind of thing. And they tell the most beautiful stories, if you can find someone to translate into Homelander. Which isn’t often.”
    “We have singing and dancing too,” said Cassie.
    “Yes, I know,” said Beth slowly; “but it’s not the same. Our dancing is just working it off, after being inside for so long. Theirs means something.”
    Harry looked at her curiously. “You mean asking the gods for a good year—that kind of thing?”
    “I suppose so,” said Beth. “I’m not quite sure.”
    “No one will talk about anything really Darian to Homelanders,” said Cassie. “You must have noticed it.”
    “Yes—but I’m new here.”
    “You’re always new here if you’re a Homelander,” said Cassie. “It’s different in the south. But we’re on the Border here, and everyone is very aware that Freemen live in those Hills you see out your windows every day. The Darians that do work for you, or with you, are very anxious to prove how Homelander they really are, and loyal to all things Homelander, so they won’t talk; and the others won’t for the opposite reasons.”
    “You’re beginning to sound like Daddy,” said Beth.
    “We’ve heard him say it all often enough,” Cassie responded.
    “But the Hillfolk,” said Harry.
    “Yes. The one thing I suppose we all have in common is a joy in those three short weeks of spring. So a few Hillfolk come to our Fair.”
    “They don’t act very happy, though,” said Beth. “They come in those long robes they always wear—over their faces too, so you can’t see if they’re smiling or frowning; and some of them with those funny patched sashes around their waists. But they do come, and they stay several days—they have the grandest horses you’ve ever seen. They pitch camp outside the station, and they always set guards, quite openly, as if we weren’t to be trusted—”
    “Maybe we aren’t,” murmured Cassie.
    “—but they never sell their horses. They bring the most gorgeous tapestries, though, and embroidered sashes—much nicer than the cut-up ones they wear themselves. These they sell. They stalk around the edge of the big central square, the old marketplace,