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hand on Bela’s shoulder. “How’s that?” he said. “You won’t be the poorer for it, Captain!”
    “This is not the time to talk about it,” Bela said, awkward and dignified.
    Ralo smiled and said, “But soon, I hope.”
    Bela stood, and Ralo had to take his leave. “Please send to tell me when Pretty Eyebrows is feeling better,” he said to Modh, with his smirk and his piercing glance. “I’ll come at once.”
    When he was gone Modh could not be silent. “Lord Husband, don’t give Mal to him. Please don’t give Mal to him.”
    “I don’t want to,” he said.
    “Then don’t! Please don’t!”
    “It’s all his talk. He boasts.”
    “Maybe. But if he makes an offer?”
    “Wait till he makes an offer,” Bela said, a little heavily, but smiling. He drew her to him and stroked her hair. “How you fret over Mal. She’s not really ill, is she?”
    “I don’t know. She isn’t well.”
    “Girls,” he said, shrugging. “You danced well tonight.”
    “I danced badly. I would not dance well for that scorpion.”
    That made him laugh. “You did leave out the best part of the amei.”
    “Of course I did. I want to dance that only for you.”
    “Lui has gone to bed, or I’d ask you to.”
    “Oh, I don’t need a drummer. Here, here’s my drum.” She took his hands and put them on her full breasts. “Feel the beat?” she said. She stood, struck the pose, raised her arms, and began the dance, there right in front of him, till he seized her, burying his face between her thighs, and she sank down on him laughing.
    Hehum came out into the dancing room; she drew back, seeing them, but Modh untangled herself from her husband and went to the old woman.
    “Mal is ill,” Hehum began, with a worried face.
    “Oh I knew it, I knew it!” Modh cried, instantly certain that it was her fault, that her lie had made itself truth. She ran to Mal’s room, which she shared with her so long.
    Hehum followed her. “She hides her ears,” she said, “I think she has the earache. She cries and hides her ears.”
    Mal sat up when Modh came into the room. She looked wild and haggard. “You hear it, you hear it, don’t you?” she cried, taking Modh’s hands.
    “No,” Modh murmured, “no, I don’t hear it. I hear nothing. There is nothing, Mal.”
    Mal stared up at her. “When he comes,” she whispered.
    “No,” Mal said.
    “Groda comes with him.”
    “No. It was years ago, years ago. You have got to be strong, Mal, you have got to put all that away.”
    Mal let out a piteous, loud moan and put Modh’s hands up over her own ears. “I don’t want to hear it!” she cried, and began to sob violently.
    “Tell my husband I will spend this night with Mal,” Modh said to Hehum. She held her sister in her arms till she slept at last, and then she slept too, though not easily, waking often, listening always.
    In the morning she went to Bidh and asked him if he knew what people—their people, the villagers—did about ghosts.
    He thought about it. “I think if there was a ghost somewhere they didn’t go there. Or they moved away. What kind of ghost?”
    “An unburied person.”
    Bidh made a face. “They would move away,” he said with certainty.
    “What if it followed them?”
    Bidh held out his hands. “I don’t know! The priest, the yegug, would do something, I guess. Some spell. The yegug knew all about things like that. These priests here, these temple people, they don’t know anything but their dances and singing and talk-talk-talk. So, what is this? Is it Mal?”
    “Yes.”
    He made a face again. “Poor little one,” he said. Then, brightening, “Maybe it would be good if she left this house.”
    Several days passed. Mal was feverish and sleepless, hearing the ghost cry or fearing to hear it every night. Modh spent the nights with her, and Bela made no objection. But one evening when he came home he talked some while with Alo, and then the brothers came to the hanan. Hehum and Nata were