THE NEXT MORNING I go to my loom. Mati is already working. On my loom is the marriage rug. I hate the sight of it, but I begin to tie my knots. Even now, I cannot waste so much work.
Mati’s yarn tangles. For a few minutes she tries to untangle it. She calls herself bumble-fingered, then calls herself cursed, then looks at me, her face stricken, because I’m the one who’s truly cursed. She runs from the courtyard.
I sit back in my chair, my hands in my lap. I don’t want to weave or even to move. If I could, I would turn myself into the lizard that’s sunning itself on the edge of a fern pot.
Nia comes into the courtyard to water the ferns. The muscles in her thin arms stand out from the weight of the copper watering pitcher.
Once, when I was five, she found me playing with a doll that I had stood on Admat’s altar in my bedroom. She rushed at me and pulled me away, scolding that the altar was not a place for games. My doll fell on its head, which Nia said was my punishment. She prayed over me until Mati called her. I’ve always wondered how long she would have prayed if she hadn’t had to stop.
Now I want to know what she thinks of my sacrifice. She is the most pious among us. Maybe she can explain my sacrifice in a way that will comfort me.
“Nia?”
She puts down the pitcher.
“Why has Admat made this happen to me?”
“Ah.” She smiles. “Little Mistress, Admat wants you to dance for him alone and make rugs for him alone.” She picks up the pitcher again and begins her task.
She’s made Admat seem selfish.
Maybe he will prove himself unselfish and extend my life.
I don’t hear Pado until he pulls Mati’s chair away from her loom and sits in it. He strums the warp of the loom as if it were a lyre.
I want to ask him about Olus: How long has Olus rented our land? Does he take good care of his goats? Does Pado like him? But Pado will ask how I know there is a goatherd.
He sings softly,
“Admat, the king’s king,
The man’s master,
The child’s pado,
Who . . .”
His voice breaks.
“. . . cares for us all.”
He weeps, stands, and wanders away from me toward his counting room.
I don’t know how I will bear to spend my last month with my parents’ unceasing sorrow.