Shadow's End by Sheri S. Tepper

herself at all.
    â€œSo go to the simul and kill somebody,” Susso had yelled at her when she’d tried to damage Susso and found herself curled up on the floor, thumb in mouth. “Go to the simul and slap people around, kill people, that’s what you want. Do it! But you can’t do it out here!”
    It sounded great, but nobody stayed dead in a simul! How could you get any satisfaction killing somebody who didn’t stay dead? You wake up the next day, the same person is still walking around, looking through you. No matter you’d disposed of him in the simul, you’d still besmelling him. And even when Snark was in the simul, something inside her just knew the people in there weren’t real, even though they looked just like the ones, sounded just like the ones Snark hated!
    Sounded like Kane, talking like he did. Or looked just like that bastard Willit, egging her on that way, making her end up with her thumb in her mouth. Sounded like that bastard Procurator, him with his fancy tea parties. If Snark wanted, she could bring up the Procurator in the simul booth, or that black-haired woman he’d had with him the other day, Lutha Tallstaff. There she’d sat, hair perfect, face perfect, dressed in clothes you could kill for, holding out a cup to be filled, never noticing who it was that filled it! Never noticing who brought the food, who served it! Not a nod. Not a smile. Pretending Snark really was invisible!
    Bitch! What she’d like to do to that bitch! She could tie her up and make her watch while Snark carved the old bastard into slices. Then, when it got to be her turn, let her feel what it was like not to exist! Let high-and-mighty Lutha Tallstaff learn what it felt like to be chopped up into bloody pieces, made into nothing!
    Whimpering in eagerness, ignoring her hunger, Snark ran from the locker room in the direction of the simul booth.
    T he day I went to the House Without a Name, Chahdzi, my father, spent the morning cleaning the upper pool. In the afternoon it was his responsibility to carry food down into the canyon, so all day he kept an eye on the shadow at the bottom of the canyon, judging the progress of the day. If he was to return before dusk, he would need to stop work on the upper pool when the shadow touched the bottom of the eastern wall, or perhaps, for safety’s sake, a little time before.
    When the shadow was where he thought it should be, he went up the short ladders to the cave floor, took a sackof Kachis-kibble from the storehouse, put it over his shoulders, fastened it onto the carrier belts that crossed his chest, swung himself around the ends of the ladder, and began the descent to the canyon floor. Tonight he needed to speak to songfather about the old outlander ghost who was causing so much inconvenience. When he had done that, perhaps he could also discuss certain conflicts in his own life that needed patterning. Had these conflicts been decreed by Weaving Woman? If so, could they be sung and acknowledged? Could his annoyance be exorcised in song? Or must it remain silent, part of the corruption inevitably incurred when the terrible choice had been made?
    I, Saluez, know this, because I know how he thought. My father often spoke to me of his troubles, of his confusions. He did not get on well with Zinisi, his wife (who was not my mother). Always he resolved to speak to
his
father, to songfather about it. Always he delayed. Sometimes he spoke of his ambition to become a songfather himself, a das-dzit, a patterner, a seer-of-both-sides. I asked him once why, if seeing both sides was important, only men could be songfathers? Did not women have a side? He said he would ask songfather, but he never did.
    There were two ladders leading down to the first spring, two ladders more to the first pool, where he’d been scraping algae that morning. Six more ladders led to the second spring and pool, the big one that was still under construction, and then