A Saucer of Loneliness Read Online Free Page B

said. “I—I didn’t know.”
    “How could you know?” he asked kindly. “Don’t follow Osser again, Jubilith.”
    She parted her lips, then again gave the small headshake. She rose and went out.
    Oyva came to her. “Better now, Jubilith?”
    Juby tumed her head away; then, realizing that this was ill-mannered, met Oyva’s gaze. The girl’s eyes were full of tears. She closed them respectfully. Oyva touched her shoulder and let her go.
    Watching the slim, bright figure trudge away, bowed with thought, drag-footed, unseeing, Oyva grunted and stumped into the house.
    “Did she have to be hurt?” she demanded.
    “She did,” said Wrenn gently. “Osser,” he added.
    “Ah,” she said, in just the tone he had used when Jubilith first mentioned the name. “What has he done now?”
    Wrenn told her. Oyva sucked her lips in thoughtfully. “Why was the girl following him?”
    “I didn’t ask her. But don’t you know?”
    “I suppose I do,” said Oyva, and sighed. “That mustn’t happen, Wrenn.”
    “It won’t. I told her not to follow him again.”
    She looked at him fondly. “I suppose even you can act like a fool once in a while.”
    He was startled. “Fool?”
    “She loves him. You won’t keep her from him by a word of advice.”
    “You judge her by yourself,” he said, just as fondly. “She’s only a child; in a day, a week, she’ll wrap someone else up in her dreams.
    “Suppose she doesn’t?”
    “Don’t even think about it.” A shudder touched his voice.
    “I shall, though,” said Oyva with determination. “And you’d do well to think about it, too.” When his eyes grew troubled, she touched his cheek gently, “Now play some more for me.”
    He sat down before the instrument, his hands poised. Then into the tiny bins his fingers went, rubbing this dried-petal powder and that, and the stones glowed, changing the flower-scents into music and shifting colors.
    He began to sing softly to the music.
    They dug deep, day by day, and they built. Osser did the work of three men, and sometimes six or eight others worked with him, and sometimes one or two. Once he had twelve. But never did he work alone.
    When the stone was three tiers above ground level, Osser climbed the nearest rise and stood looking down at it proudly, at the thickness and strength of the growing walls, at the toiling workers who lifted and strained to make them grow.
    “Is it Osser?”
    The voice was as faint and shy as a fern uncurling, as promising as spring itself.
    He turned.
    “Jubilith,” she told him.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I come here every day,” she said. She indicated the copse which crowned the hill. “I hide here and watch you.”
    “What do you want?”
    She laced her fingers. “I would like to dig there and lift stones.”
    “No,” he said, and turned to study the work again.
    “Why not?”
    “Never ask me why. ‘Because I say so’—that’s all the answer you’ll get from me—you or anyone.”
    She came to stand beside him. “You build fast.”
    He nodded. “Faster than any village house was ever built.” He could sense the ‘why’ rising within her, and could feel it being checked.
    “I want to build it, too,” she pleaded.
    “No,” he said. His eyes widened as he watched the work. Suddenly he was gone, leaping down the slope in great springy strides. He turned the corner of the new wall and stood, saying nothing. The man who had been idling turned quickly and lifted a stone. Osser smiled a quick, taut smile and went to work beside him. Jubilith stood on the slope, watching, wondering.
    She came almost every day as the tower grew. Osser never spoke to her. She watched the sunlight on him, the lithe strength, the rippling gold. He stood like a great tree, squatted like a rock, moved like a thundercloud. His voice was a whip, a bugle, the roar of a bull.
    She saw him less and less in the village. Once it was a fearsome thing to see. Early in the morning he appeared