Read The Silences of Home for Free Online

head lowered.
    “I am not like Cannin,” she said in a rush. “He was old and did not want to understand you. I do. Want to understand you.” She watched the wind shift his hair and felt suddenly desperate, her chest tight and hot. “Speak to me.
Please
.”
    He looked up, so slowly that she nearly did not realize he was doing so. His eyes were very dark, and this time they were quite steady.
Shonyn eyes
, she thought.
I can’t tell what he’s thinking, or even what he’s seeing
. She could not smile now, and she forgot words. When he turned and began to walk away, she did not call after him.
    Lanara returned to the teaching tent and waited, straightening the stack of writing trays in front of her. The shonyn children filed in slowly. Slowly they arranged themselves in their four straight rows on the carpet. They looked at Lanara, but not
at
her. They had sat in these rows and repeated her words for days—blurry days she could only count by the number of letters she had written to the Queen. Six letters; six days of awkward speaking that she knew was not the same as teaching.
    “Children,” she said now, “I want you to talk to me.” She had not known that the words were coming until they did. She set down her writing tray with a firmness that might make them sound confident. “Yes—
you
talk to
me
. I want to hear about your lives. What you like to do every day. Or night.” She closed her eyes for a moment.
Slow down, Lanara
, she could hear her father saying.
You have always been too hasty
. Or Ladhra:
Don’t worry, Nara: you are actually
helping
them learn the Queenstongue when you speak so incoherently.
    “Messannell,” Lanara said, and a boy in the front row lifted his eyes. His gaze, like the man’s earlier, was unwavering. “Tell me what you do after you wake up every evening.”
    The silence was very long. She tried not to shift impatiently.
    “I go to the river,” the boy said at last in a high, clear voice. “I listen to stories. I watch flatboats get lynanyn.”
    “What are the stories about?”
    “Shonyn life,” he said after another pause.
    She smiled encouragingly at him. “Yes?” she said when he did not continue. “Tell me about this.”
    “Shonyn life,” he said again. “The river. Flatboats and lynanyn.”
    “The river,” Lanara said, “yes—let’s talk more about this. It is low now, not a lot of water. Soon it will rain. Then the river will get high again. Do you like rain?”
    This time no one spoke. The shonyn children looked at the carpet and hardly seemed to breathe. “What is wrong?” she said. “What did I say? Serran?”
    The girl whispered one word, a shonyn word, rolling and strange.
    “What does this mean?” Lanara asked, though she knew there would be no answer. “One of you, please tell me. . . .”
    “Fear,” said a new voice, and Lanara turned to the open door flap. The young man was standing there, half inside, half out. “The word means fear in your language,” he said, and she felt herself nodding. He spoke to the children then, his words like wind-blown sand. They looked up at him, blue-black heads angled away from her.
    She cleared her throat. “It is late. You may go. Except,” she added as they rose and began to leave, “for you.”
    The young man watched them until they had all walked down the hill. She leaned against the table and watched him.
    “As I have already told you,” she said when he looked back at her, “I am Lanara. What is your name?”
    “Nellyn,” he said. Her brows arched when he continued, “That is my Queensfolk name. My teacher Soral thinks it sounds like my shonyn name.”
    “And does it?” she asked.
Good
, she thought,
keep talking, Nellyn
.
    “Not very much,” he said, and stepped out of the tent.
    “Nellyn!” she cried as she strode after him. “Nellyn—wait!” He was walking away from her, his feet falling silently on the sand of the ridge. “You will not walk away from me again!” she