Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff Page A

i'Gituska, step forward."
    Red-rimmed eyes welling with tears under nearly white brows, Nadina had no choice but to do exactly as she was commanded. The semicircle of villagers shifted nervously.
    Holding the other woman's gaze with her own, Annice spoke the second of the two ritual phrases. "Nadina i'Gituska, you will speak only the truth." Now that the command had been given, the questions themselves could be asked in a normal voice. "What were you doing to the child, Jurgis, out on the bay this afternoon?"
    Above the salt-stained collar of her jacket, Nadina's throat worked, fighting the compulsion. Finally, she sniffed and rubbed her nose on her sleeve. "I was trying to get him to Sing."
    There was no mistaking the bardic emphasis. Annice blinked and wondered if she looked as astonished as everyone else. "To Sing? Why?"
    "Because I'm tired of working so hard. Tired of watching her …" A weather-cracked finger jabbed toward Taska. "…
    bring in catch after catch while my lines run empty, and my nets tangle." Nadina tossed her hair back off her face and, unable to turn, appealed to the crowd behind her with a gesture. "Why should she be the only one to benefit from the kigh? That's not fair, is it? So…" Her tones slid from injured to self-satisfied. "…
    six years ago I got me a baby off a bard who Sings water and today I took him out to Sing some fish into my nets."
    "But boys never Sing until after their voices change." Annice was so startled she lost eye contact.
    It didn't matter. "That's what I thought, too, but I heard him this morning. And I know when water acts like it ain't supposed to. I figured the Circle moved in my favor, seeing as how he wasn't the girl he was supposed to be. So why should I wait any longer? He can Sing all right. He just wouldn't." She ground out the last word between clenched teeth.
    Feeling slightly sick, Annice rephrased the first question, "What did you do to him?"
    "I shook him." Her chin went up as though she were daring anyone to deny her right. "And I shook him. He made me so angry. All he had to do was Sing and he wouldn't. Then he made this noise and the boat started to in circles and he kept saying he didn't know what I wanted, but the boat wouldn't stop…"
    In memory, Annice again looked down from the cliff top at a boat making circles in the bay.
    "… so I hit him, and I hit him…" Her hands were clenched on air and slammed an invisible burden up and down. "But the boat still wouldn't stop, so I thought, if he thinks so much more of the kigh than me, he can just go to the kigh."
    "You threw him overboard?" This from one of the men in the crowd.
    Nadina turned on him. "No! I just held him under the water. I pulled him in as soon as the boat straightened out. As soon as we started heading for shore." She was panting, moving back and forth between her neighbors. "He wouldn't Sing. I knew he could, but he wouldn't do it. And after I waited so all those years. Six years watching her bring in more fish than the rest of us combined. Then he called the kigh on me. On me. His own mother. I had to do something. Look at my hands! I almost froze my hands."
    A teenaged girl stepped back, away from her. "You almost drowned your son!"
    "Well, he's mine ! Mine, no one else's."
    "Not any more."
    Taska's voice drew Nadina around. "What are you talking about, old woman? I bore him. Me. I raised him. He's mine ."
    Annice stepped back as Taska stepped forward.
    "You do not own your children," the village Head told Nadina, her voice harsh. "Their lives are their own. By bearing them, the Circle grants you the right to guide them and to love them and raise them to be the future of us all, but nothing else. By your actions, you have proved yourself unfit for this responsibility."
    "Unfit? He owes me! He wouldn't even have a life without me!"
    Taska ignored her. "Do I have four witnesses from those who know them both?"
    After a moment's shuffling, two men, an elderly woman, and the teenage girl