or cooler.
I was happy. As difficult as that must be for you to believe,
and in spite of the grief I still carried for my mother and my
sisters, I was happy. No one was angry at me, disappointed in me,
burdened by me. I had nothing to do but sit in the warm sand and
look at the sea.
Oreus, the man who’d provided my day at the shore, dropped
to the sand beside me. “So, man-killer,” he asked.
“Do you have a name?”
I thought before I answered. Wisdom is not a name for a slave.
Stone, Mark, Faithful, Strong are slave names. I had a nurse once
who had named her son Shovel. She was a foreigner, from somewhere
far north, and she told me that she liked the way it sounded.
She’d taught me a few words of her own language, but the only
one I could remember was Zec, and I couldn’t quite retrieve
the meaning, though it sat on the tip of my tongue.
“Zec,” I said, as if my tongue had decided to speak
for itself.
“That’s a Hurrish name.” Oreus looked
surprised. “You are from Hur?”
“No,” I said. “My mother heard it
once.”
“It means ‘rabbit,’” Oreus said.
I smiled. Rabbit was perfect.
“Tell me, Rabbit. Is that your happy face you make? I
can’t tell.”
I felt my upper lip and rubbed my thumb against the scar tissue.
I could feel it distorting my mouth. My nose had a new bump in the
middle of it as well. Maybe I looked more like a man-killer than
I’d realized.
“Zecush, we should call you,” said Oreus.
“Bunny.” He punched me lightly enough in the arm, and I
almost fell over. “Come for a swim.”
The other men seemed to think that a man-killer called after a
rabbit kit was a good joke. From then on they sometimes called me
Zec or Zecush, but more often just Bunny. That night I slept more
lightly than before and dreamed for the first time since my
capture. I dreamed of a library with books and scrolls in ranks on
shelves, all flooded with clear light. When I opened my eyes, the
shed around me was still dark. The call to rise hadn’t yet
come. I lay in the dim quiet of the predawn, listening to the
breath of the sleeping men around me and thinking of my dream.
I was still happy. It was no rest day. I faced a day in the hot
sun, shifting dirt and stones, with scant food and ignorant
company, and I’d never felt so much at peace. I laughed at
myself as I shifted on my pallet for a more comfortable spot and a
few minutes’ more rest. Let me be beaten, I thought, and then
see how well I liked being a slave. Too soon the overseer knocked
on the doorway with his stick, and we all rose, grumbling, for
another day.
I had grown more skilled at shifting dirt. If I couldn’t
compete with some of the men in the field with me, I could keep up
with most of them. I worked hard, I slept well at night, and I
dreamed often. I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a
burden I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of
them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown
slave in the fields of the baron, I knew the worst was over. I had
failed them. At least I could not do so again.
My dreams were lucent and vivid, as if the peacefulness of my
days had put spurs to my imagination, and I dreamed again and again
of the same place, the distant library with its endless collection
of books and scrolls.
In my first dream, I only wandered through the space in awe,
sensing that I was impossibly far from the ordinary world of
Hanaktos’s field hands. I was in an enormous room, filled
with light from windows high up on the walls near the white
coffered ceiling. On the wall that faced north, glass-paneled doors
opened onto a balcony that looked over a green valley far below.
Beyond the valley was a wall of snow-covered mountains with tops so
bright they hurt the eye, and behind them an even brighter blue sky
that never showed a single cloud.
Inside the room, opposite the glass doors, were carved wooden
ones that remained closed in all my visits. I had no idea
I was happy. As difficult as that must be for you to believe,
and in spite of the grief I still carried for my mother and my
sisters, I was happy. No one was angry at me, disappointed in me,
burdened by me. I had nothing to do but sit in the warm sand and
look at the sea.
Oreus, the man who’d provided my day at the shore, dropped
to the sand beside me. “So, man-killer,” he asked.
“Do you have a name?”
I thought before I answered. Wisdom is not a name for a slave.
Stone, Mark, Faithful, Strong are slave names. I had a nurse once
who had named her son Shovel. She was a foreigner, from somewhere
far north, and she told me that she liked the way it sounded.
She’d taught me a few words of her own language, but the only
one I could remember was Zec, and I couldn’t quite retrieve
the meaning, though it sat on the tip of my tongue.
“Zec,” I said, as if my tongue had decided to speak
for itself.
“That’s a Hurrish name.” Oreus looked
surprised. “You are from Hur?”
“No,” I said. “My mother heard it
once.”
“It means ‘rabbit,’” Oreus said.
I smiled. Rabbit was perfect.
“Tell me, Rabbit. Is that your happy face you make? I
can’t tell.”
I felt my upper lip and rubbed my thumb against the scar tissue.
I could feel it distorting my mouth. My nose had a new bump in the
middle of it as well. Maybe I looked more like a man-killer than
I’d realized.
“Zecush, we should call you,” said Oreus.
“Bunny.” He punched me lightly enough in the arm, and I
almost fell over. “Come for a swim.”
The other men seemed to think that a man-killer called after a
rabbit kit was a good joke. From then on they sometimes called me
Zec or Zecush, but more often just Bunny. That night I slept more
lightly than before and dreamed for the first time since my
capture. I dreamed of a library with books and scrolls in ranks on
shelves, all flooded with clear light. When I opened my eyes, the
shed around me was still dark. The call to rise hadn’t yet
come. I lay in the dim quiet of the predawn, listening to the
breath of the sleeping men around me and thinking of my dream.
I was still happy. It was no rest day. I faced a day in the hot
sun, shifting dirt and stones, with scant food and ignorant
company, and I’d never felt so much at peace. I laughed at
myself as I shifted on my pallet for a more comfortable spot and a
few minutes’ more rest. Let me be beaten, I thought, and then
see how well I liked being a slave. Too soon the overseer knocked
on the doorway with his stick, and we all rose, grumbling, for
another day.
I had grown more skilled at shifting dirt. If I couldn’t
compete with some of the men in the field with me, I could keep up
with most of them. I worked hard, I slept well at night, and I
dreamed often. I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a
burden I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of
them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown
slave in the fields of the baron, I knew the worst was over. I had
failed them. At least I could not do so again.
My dreams were lucent and vivid, as if the peacefulness of my
days had put spurs to my imagination, and I dreamed again and again
of the same place, the distant library with its endless collection
of books and scrolls.
In my first dream, I only wandered through the space in awe,
sensing that I was impossibly far from the ordinary world of
Hanaktos’s field hands. I was in an enormous room, filled
with light from windows high up on the walls near the white
coffered ceiling. On the wall that faced north, glass-paneled doors
opened onto a balcony that looked over a green valley far below.
Beyond the valley was a wall of snow-covered mountains with tops so
bright they hurt the eye, and behind them an even brighter blue sky
that never showed a single cloud.
Inside the room, opposite the glass doors, were carved wooden
ones that remained closed in all my visits. I had no idea
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