The people cheered, hugged one another, and the musicians all started a crazy anthem that was meant to be reverent, and wasn’t. In the midst of the festivities the Firelord turned to me, looked at me over the heads of the children, and smiled. He looked incredibly tired, and older, but there was triumph in his face, and his eyes burned with firestone power. I looked straight into his face, and smiled back.

Then, when the Firelord had erased the map and put out the fires, and I had cleaned the urns and placed them carefully into a woven bag, we headed the procession northeast, into the ravine where the new mine was to be. There, he divined again with his staff, paced out distances, and marked measurements with stones. He told the Quelled where to dig, and how far down the firestones were. Then we marched back to the valley, the celebrations already begun, the music frenzied and inspired, the people singing.

I walked at the Firelord’s side as his handmaid, but at a distance from him and the Chosen. Even the children, in all their excitement, remembered not to touch me or look in my face. In the midst of all the joy, all the exultation, all the celebration, I was alone. Only that night, when the Chosen sat feasting around their hearths, I slipped away and joined the Quelled.

Dannii welcomed me warmly, with a kiss on each cheek and a hug, and took me into her brother Ridha’s tent. It was crowded. Ridha’s wife was there with all her family, and his brothers and their wives and children. And many of their friends were there, celebrating with them the beginning of the new mine. Dannii had told them all of me, I knew; but still they were shy of me at first, not knowing whether to treat me as Quelled or Chosen. I talked with them of my family and Siranjaro mine, and they were at ease then, and told me about their work and of the dimensions of the new mine marked out that day.

Then the men began to eat, feasting on goats’ meat and roasted crows. While they ate I talked with Ridha’s wife, Kiran. She was a gentle, smiling woman, and she told me, shyly, proudly, that she was with child again. I watched her with Ridha; there was a bond between them, a unity that made me ache. I envied her happiness.

Afterwards I ate with Dannii and the other harsha, laughing as they told me tales their fathers had told, which were not so different from the stories my father had told me. The words of our myth-songs, too, were similar, though their tunes were different from our Siranjaro tunes. The similarity between the words surprised me, as there was no communication between the Quelled of different mines. After the feast they asked me to sing one of my home songs. I sang a chanting myth, with only the drums accompanying me, and Dannii said I had a pleasing voice. Lesharo had said a similar thing, though I had thought he liked my voice only because it was mine.