A Saucer of Loneliness Read Online Free Page A

it and ran on, and the glass-blower’s lips burst away from his pipe, for a man can smile or blow glass, but not both at the same time.
    When at last she reached Wrenn’s house, she was breathing deeply, but with no difficulty, in the way possible only to those who run beautifully. She stopped by the open door and waited politely, not looking in until Oyva came out and touched her shoulder.
    Jubilith faced her, keeping her eyes closed for a long moment, for Oyva was not only very old, she was Wrenn’s wife.
    “Is it Jubilith?” asked Oyva, smiling.
    “It is,” said the girl. She opened her eyes.
    Oyva, seeing their taut corners, said shrewdly, “A troubled Jubilith as well. I’ll not keep you. He’s just inside.”
    Juby found a swift flash of smile to give her and went into the house, leaving the old woman to wonder where, where in her long life she had seen such a brief flash of such great loveliness. A firebird’s wing? A green meteor? She put it away in her mind next to the memory of a burst of laughter—Wrenn’s, just after he had kissed her first—and sat down on a three-legged stool by the side of the house.
    A heavy fiber screen had been set up inside the doorway, to form a sort of meander, and at the third turn it was very dark. Juby paused to let the sunlight drain away from her vision. Somewhere in the dark before her there was music, the hay-clean smell of flower petals dried and freshly rubbed, and a voice humming. The voice and the music were open and free, but choked a listener’s throat like the sudden appearance of a field of daffodils.
    The voice and the music stopped short, and someone breathed quietly in the darkness.
    “Is … is it Wrenn?” she faltered.
    “It is,” said the voice.
    “Jubilith here.”
    “Move the screen,” said the voice. “I’d like the light, talking to you, Jubilith.”
    She felt behind her, touched the screen. It had many hinges and swung easily away to the doorside. Wrenn sat cross-legged in the corner behind a frame which held a glittering complex of stones.
    He brushed petal-dust from his hands. “Sit there, child, and tell me what it is you do not understand.”
    She sat down before him and lowered her eyes, and his widened, as if someone had taken away a great light.
    When she had nothing to say, he prompted her gently: “See if you can put it all into a single word, Jubilith.”
    She said immediately, “Osser.”
    “Ah,” said Wrenn.
    “I followed him this morning, out to the foothills beyond the Sky-tree Grove. He—”
    Wrenn waited.
    Jubilith put up her small hands, clenched, and talked in a rush. “Sussten, with the black brows, he was with Osser. They stopped and Osser shouted at him, and, when I came to where I could look down and see them, Osser took his fists and hammered Sussten, knocked him down. He laughed and picked him up. Sussten was sick; he was shaken and there was blood on his face. Osser told him to dig, and Sussten dug, Osser laughed again, he laughed … I think he saw me. I came here.”
    Slowly she put her fists down. Wrenn said nothing.
    Jubilith said, in a voice like a puzzled sigh, “I understand this: When a man hammers something, iron or clay or wood, it is to change what he hammers from what it is to what he wishes it to be.” She raised one hand, made a fist, and put it down again. She shook her head slightly and her heavy soft hair moved on her back. “To hammer a man is to change nothing. Sussten remains Sussten.”
    “It was good to tell me of this,” said Wrenn when he was sure she had finished.
    “Not good,” Jubilith disclaimed. “I want to understand.”
    Wrenn shook his head. Juby cocked her head on one side like a wondering bright bird. When she realized that his gesture was a refusal, a small paired crease came and went between her brows.
    “May I not understand this?”
    “You
must
not understand it,” Wrenn corrected. “Not yet, anyway. Perhaps after a time. Perhaps never.”
    “Ah,” she