“Ho, Tenar, my little honeycomb, there you are!” The voice was husky, high as a woman's voice but not a woman's voice. “I shouldn't be here, I belong outside the door, on the porch, that's where I go. But I had to see how my little Tenar is, after all the long day of it, eh, how's my poor little honeycomb?”

He moved towards her, noiseless and burly, and put out his hand as if to smooth back her hair.

“I am not Tenar any more,” the child said, staring up at him. His hand stopped; he did not touch her.

“No,” he said, after a moment, whispering. “I know. I know. Now you're the little Eaten One. But I…”

She said nothing.

“It was a hard day for a little one,” the man said, shuffling, the tiny light flickering in his big yellow hand.

“You should not be in this House, Manan.”

“No. No. I know. I shouldn't be in this House. Well, good night, little one… Good night.”

The child said nothing. Manan slowly turned around and went away. The glimmer died from the high cell walls. The little girl, who had no name any more but Arha, the Eaten One, lay on her back looking steadily at the dark.

The Wall Around the Place

As she grew older she lost all remembrance of her mother, without knowing she had lost it. She belonged here, at the Place of the Tombs; she had always belonged here. Only sometimes in the long evenings of July as she watched the western mountains, dry and lion-colored in the afterglow of sunset, she would think of a fire that had burned on a hearth, long ago, with the same clear yellow light. And with this came a memory of being held, which was strange, for here she was seldom even touched; and the memory of a pleasant smell, the fragrance of hair freshly washed and rinsed in sage-scented water, fair long hair, the color of sunset and firelight. That was all she had left.