Page 46 of Circle of Days
“This is not a good time to make enemies.”
He was right, but Ello would never change. Joia said: “The drought will break. We just don’t know when.”
“It had better be soon.”
Han was right. Joia had already seen that older people were dying, not of starvation exactly, but of the illnesses that came with an inadequate diet. And more babies were dying before they reached their second midsummer. They suffered the usual baby illnesses, which most would normally have survived. Soon it would be the middle-aged and the children, and eventually everyone.
“It’s worse for the farmers,” Han said. “They’re expectinga second bad harvest. And their women have almost stopped conceiving.”
Joia said: “And the woodlanders are in trouble too. The younger hazelnut bushes have all died. Only the old-established plants survive, and they’re giving less fruit.”
There was a silence, then Han said: “Is it possible that the entire plain community could disappear?”
“Yes,” Joia said. “I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, because I don’t want people to panic, but the truth is that if our beasts die, we die.”
“And then the Great Plain will be left to the birds.”
Joia thought over their conversation, then said: “You know a lot about the farmers.”
“Do I?” He offered no explanation.
“At the Midwinter Rite I saw you talking to a farmer girl.”
“Pia. She’s an old friend. We used to play together when we were children.”
Joia recalled a self-assured little girl. At the Midwinter Rite she had seen a young woman, poised and graceful, with an authoritative look, surprising in someone of Han’s age. “I remember,” she said. “She had a horrid little cousin.”
“Stam, yes.”
“So that’s how you know all about the farmers.”
“I suppose so.”
Joia pictured Han and Pia as she had seen them at the Rite. He had been chatting amiably, and the girl had been looking up at him with an expression of deep interest. Joia said: “Will you see her tomorrow?” The Spring Rite would take place then.
“I hope so.”
This looked like a romance—which was bad news. Joia said: “Don’t fall in love with her.”
Straightaway she wished she had not blurted it out. Why couldn’t she have said it tactfully? Too late now.
Han was offended. “I don’t see why not, and I don’t know why you think you have the right to give such instructions.”
That response told her that her advice was too late. If Han had not been in love with Pia, he would have laughed and told Joia she had nothing to worry about. The evasiveWhy not?meant he had already fallen.
Now that she had started this conversation she had to finish it. “The farmer folk are different from us,” she said. “There, every woman is the property of a man: first her father, then the father of her children. You would never feel at ease in farmer society.”
“Pia could join the herder folk.”
“The farmers hate it when that happens. They feel that something has been stolen from them. They cause trouble, trying to make the woman return to them.”
“Yet it happens.”
Joia shrugged. He was fearless to the point of recklessness, like his father. “I’m just warning you. Trouble lies ahead.”
“Thank you,” Han said surprisingly. “You’re rude, but you speak from love.”
She put her arm around his waist and gave him a brief hug.
