Earthborn (Homecoming) by Orson Scott Card Page B

dream business can get you anywhere, little girl,” she said. Then she smiled. “What you say to him in here, I can always unsay to him on his pillow.”
    Edhadeya smiled her prettiest smile back at her stepmother. Then she opened her mouth and jammed her finger down her throat as if to make herself throw up. A moment later she was smiling prettily again.
    Dudagu shrugged. “Four more years till I can have you married off,” she said. “Believe me, I already have my women looking for someone suitable. Someone far away from here.”
    She glided silently away from the door and down the hall. Edhadeya threw herself back on her bed and murmured, “I would dearly love to have a true dream of Dudagu Dermo in a boating accident. If you arrange those things, dear Keeper of Earth, keep in mind that she doesn’t swim, but she’s very tall, so the water must be deep.”
    The next day all the talk was of the expedition to find the Zenifi. And the morning after that, the lofty people and the officials of the city turned out to see the soldiers march away, the spies flying their daredevil maneuvers in the sky above them. Edhadeya thought, as she watched them go, So this is what a dream can do. And then she thought, I should have more such dreams.
    At once she was ashamed of herself. If I ever lie about my dreams and claim a true one when it isn’t so, then may the Keeper take all my dreams away from me.
    Sixteen human soldiers, with a dozen spies shadowing them from the air, set out from Darakemba. It was not an army, was not even large enough to be a serious raiding party, and so their departure caused only a momentary stir in the city. Mon watched, though, with Aronha and Edhadeya standing beside him on the roof.
    “They should have let me go with them,” said Aronha angrily.
    “Are you that generous, that you want the kingdom to come to me?” asked Mon.
    “Nobody’s going to be killed,” said Aronha.
    Mon didn’t bother to answer. He was perfectly aware that Aronha knew Father was right—there was a touch of madness to this expedition. It was a search party trying to find the location of a dream. Fathertook only volunteers, and it was only with great reluctance that he let the great soldier Monush lead them. There was no chance that he would send his heir. “They’d spend all their time worrying about your safety instead of the mission I’m sending them on,” Father had said. “Don’t worry, Aronha. You’ll have your first sight of bloody battle far too soon, I’m sure. If I sent you out this time, though, your mother would rise up from the grave to scold me.” Mon had felt a thrill of fear when he heard this, until he saw that everyone else was taking it as a joke.
    Everyone but Aronha, of course, who really was furious at not being included. “My sister can have the dream, my brother can tell you the dream—and what is for me? Tell me that, Father!”
    “Why, Aronha, I have given you exactly as much involvement as I have given myself—to stand and watch them go.”
    Well, now they were doing just that, standing and watching them go. Normally Aronha would have seen the soldiers off from the steps of the king’s house, but he claimed it would be too humiliating to stand beside the king when he had been declared too useless to go. Father didn’t argue with him, just let him go to the roof, and now here he stood, furious even though he had already admitted to Mon that if he were in Father’s place he’d make the same decision. “Just because Father’s right doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”
    Edhadeya laughed. “By the Cottonmouth, Aronha, that’s when Father makes us the maddest!”
    “Don’t swear by the Legless One,” said Aronha sharply.
    “Father says it’s just a dangerous snake and not a real god so why not?” said Edhadeya defiantly.
    “You’re not superstitious now, are you, Aronha?” asked Mon.
    “Father says to have respect for the beliefs of others,and you know half