On Blue's waters by Gene Wolfe

We never got far with her, and I don’t suppose she’ll ever be born unless my husband takes a new wife, poor little thing.”
    I tried to be sympathetic.
    “So there wasn’t any reason not to. I couldn’t have my own child anymore, the child that had been my dream for all those empty years. Since I could not, I thought it might be nice to teach bio children like you again, the way I used to when I was younger. The ordinances of the Chapter let married women become sibyls, His Cognizance said, under special circumstances like mine, provided that the Prolocutor consents. He did, and I took the oath all over again. Very few of us have ever taken it more than once.”
    I nodded, I believe. I was paying more attention to Mucor, who sat silently with the apple untouched in her lap.
    “Are you listening, Horn?”
    “Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”
    “I taught there in New Viron for a good many years. And I kept house for His Cognizance, which was a very great honor. People are so intolerant, though.”
    “Some are, at least.”
    “The Chapter has fought that intolerance for as long as I’ve been alive, and it has achieved a great deal. But I doubt that intolerance will ever be rooted out altogether.”
    I agreed.
    “There are children, Horn, who are very much like little Babbie. Not verbal, but capable of love, and very grateful for whatever love they may receive. You would think every heart would go out to them, but many don’t.”
    I asked her then about Mucor, saying that I had not realized it would take her so long to find Silk.
    “She has to travel all the way to the whorl in which we used to live, Horn. It’s a very long way, and even though her spirit flies so fast, it must fly over every bit of it. When she arrives, she’ll have to look for him, and when she finds him, she’ll have to return to us.”
    I explained that it was quite possible that Silk was here on Blue, or even on Green.
    Maytera Marble shook her head, saying that only made things worse. “Poor little Babbie’s quite upset. He always is, every time she goes away. He understands simple things, but you can’t explain something like that to him.”
    Privately, I wished that someone would explain it to me.
    “He’s really her pet. Aren’t you, Babbie?” Her hands, the thin old-woman hands she had taken from Maytera Rose’s body, groped for the hus, although he was far beyond her reach. “He loves her, and I really think that she loves him, just as she loves me. But it’s hard, very hard for them both here, because of the water.”
    For a moment I thought she meant the sea; then I said, “I assumed you had a spring here, Maytera.”
    She shook her head. “Only rainwater from the rocks. It makes little pools and so on, here and there, you know. My dear granddaughter says there are deep crevices, too, where it lingers for a long time. I’ve had no experience with thirst, myself. Oh, ordinary thirst in hot weather. But not severe thirst. I’m told it’s terrible.”
    I explained that a spring high up on the Tor gave us the stream that turned my mill, and acknowledged that I had never been thirsty as she meant it either.
    “He must have water. Babbie must, just as she must. If it doesn’t rain soon…” She shook her head.
    Much too late, I remembered that the uncomfortably large object in my pocket was a bottle of water. I gave it to her, and told her what it was. She thanked me effusively; and I told her there were many more on my boat, and promised to leave a dozen with her.
    “You could go down and get them now, couldn’t you, Horn? While my granddaughter’s still away.”
    There had been a pathetic eagerness in Maytera Marble’s voice; and when I remembered that the water would not be of the smallest value to her, I was deeply touched. I said that I did not want to miss anything that Mucor said when she came back.
    “She will be gone a long, long time, Horn.” This in her old classroom tone. “I doubt that she’s