Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

fragile, the size of my thumbnail. The other held something else, knobby finger-sized objects, roots perhaps, earth-colored on the outside, cream-colored on the inside when I broke one. I tasted the one I had broken. It was firm on the outside, soft and creamy within, blandly sweet. The bread, already sliced, was made of the kind of grain the Tarashana grow. It was dense and moist, different from bread made with wheat, the taste earthy and somehow warm.

I had not felt hungry, but I ate a slice of bread and another of the roots and a handful of berries. Then I went to the bed and lay down. It was narrow, but not so narrow it was uncomfortable.

I thought of drawing my knife again and finishing the task I had started, throwing my cut hair out for the wind to blow away. All my injuries hurt, but I could have set the pain aside. Except I was very tired now. I could always cut my hair later. For now, I did not move. I closed my eyes and let the quiet fill my mind until I slept.

 -26-

The starlit country does not measure days and nights as we Ugaro measure days and nights. The Sun never comes to those lands. The Moon comes there, but even when she looks down upon the starlit lands, the stars are so many and so bright that her light makes little difference. Those lands are filled with light all the time, brighter than any night in the winter country, not so bright as any day in the summer lands. This was disconcerting to a man accustomed to days and nights that are each very different from the other, but at first I slept all the time anyway, so that made little difference.

Every day, someone brought me food. Sometimes this was one person and sometimes another, but they were all Tarashana, never any of my own people. All the Tarashana looked the same to me, but the delicate tracery of designs on their faces and hands was different for each of them, so they were easy to distinguish one from the next. Sometimes the person who brought me food was the same man who had showed me this house, and sometimes it was another man, and sometimes a woman and sometimes a different woman. I was grateful they did not speak to me. I did not want to talk to anyone. I did not want anything.

Memory plagued me more and more as I recovered my strength. I could not bear to think of anything that had happened, but I was unable to think of anything else.

When the time came, the Tarashana healer took all the stitches out of my healing wounds. The scars across my stomach were vivid and red, but the wound fever had not returned and the cuts had healed cleanly. The scars only pulled a little when I stretched and bent. Eventually they would become pale, but those were scars I would carry all my life. Probably the deep cut along my ribs would scar as well.

As my strength returned, I began to exercise, jogging and shadow-sparring. When I made myself tired enough, I thought less of other things.

Eventually, my brother Garoyo found me. At that moment, I was lying on my stomach by the stream, tickling the speckled fish, catching them and letting them go. I had no heart to kill a fish, no desire to go to the effort to make a fire to cook one, and no appetite to eat one. The Tarashana did not bring meat, but the food they brought was good enough and I did not care what I ate.

Now Garoyo had come to this place. I heard him, I recognized the sound of his footsteps, I knew he had come. He was not trying to be quiet. He came most of the way and then paused, probably seeing me, and then came close and stood for some time, not far away, looking at me. I pretended I did not know he was there.

“Ryo,” he said at last. “You have been alone long enough. Come back to the village with me now. The Lau have withdrawn to a different village, farther to the east. You do not need to see Aras or speak to him.”

Obviously he knew exactly what Aras had done to me. Probably everyone knew. I did not look up. I did not want to talk about Aras. I asked the only questions I wished to ask. “Does everyone live? Has Etta come back from the sky?”

“Everyone returned to the land of the living. Our sister’s thoughts are still half in the sky,” Garoyo told me. “But she is coming nearer to the world. When someone speaks to her, sometimes she answers. Iro talks to her. He is drawing her back, though slowly.” He paused. “She would probably return more quickly if you spoke to her, Ryo.”

I said nothing.

Garoyo said, “Raga misses you—”

That made me recoil. “I do not want to see him,” I said forcefully. I got to my feet, turning at last to look at Garoyo. He seemed just as always. I saw nothing of the wounds that had killed him. I said, “I am glad you are not dead, Garoyo. I am glad our younger brother is not dead. But I do not want to see him, or you. I do not want to see anyone. I want to be alone.” Turning my back on him, I went into the house. As he was my eldest brother and the warleader of the inGara, this was unpardonably discourteous. I did not care.

“Ryo!” he called after me. But he did not order me to return, nor did he follow me.

I half expected that he might wait outside for me to come out again, but when I next went out, he was not there.