"But that is horrible!" I said. "Does Uclod know of this?"

According to Lajoolie, he did not. Customers were not told how marriage brokers kept their "employees" in line, and of course, the women themselves were forbidden to speak of it. Lajoolie would not tell Uclod the truth, even if she swore him to secrecy: he would be outraged, for he was a decent-hearted person, even if he came from a family of criminals who thought purchasing him a wife was a nice birthday present. In the long run, the little orange man might also start asking himself, "Does my wife care for me at all, or is she only pretending to like me for fear of injury to her loved ones?" This would hurt the little man’s feelings and undermine his faith in the Marital Partnership.

Lajoolie assured me she did like Uclod; she liked him a great deal, and thought she was very lucky. For one thing, Uclod turned out to be in a similar position to Lajoolie herself: his criminal Grandma Yulai had told him he had to agree to the marriage or else. It was a tradition in the Unorr family that older generations ruled the younger in matters of marital choice. If junior Unorrs did not obey their elders when it came to accepting a spouse, the youngsters were deemed too disloyal to be trusted in anything else. They immediately found themselves out on the street… or possibly under the street, if one was being paved nearby.

So it was not Uclod’s fault that Lajoolie was in this dire situation; indeed, she could readily understand if Uclod resented her, regarding her as an undesired stranger foisted upon him when he would have preferred to make his own choice. But Uclod had been the soul of kindness since their recent wedding — he treated Lajoolie as an equal, he included her in everything he did, and he seemed to like having her around.

In return, Lajoolie played the role that had been drilled into her through constant lessons in wifely deportment. Deference. Meekness. Modesty. A type of retiring femininity wherein she pretended to be small and demure, even though she was big and powerful.

This is why, for example, she spoke in false high-pitched tones. All Tye-Tyes had low voices — they were large people with large throats, and vocal cords like the strings of a bass viol. But the marriage brokers had decided a Tye-Tye’s natural voice was apt to remind small men (like Uclod) that the woman was a brawny behemoth who could easily cause grievous bodily harm. Therefore, Lajoolie feigned a falsetto, as well as missish helplessness and delicately modest submission.

"Does Uclod enjoy such displays of quivering frailty?" I asked.

"All men do," she replied. "That’s what I was taught."

"Why should you believe the teachings of awful people who threaten your kin? And anyone who says, ‘All men enjoy this,’ is certainly incorrect, for men are changeable ones who do not like anything all the time. In my experience, men get sudden ideas in their heads: that it is weak or unmanly to accept certain types of attention, even if they were happy with identical behavior two days ago. To your great astonishment, what they loved yesterday is the absolute worst thing you can do today… and they look upon you with disgust or pity, as if you are some loathsome insect who turns their stomach."

Lajoolie stiffened a bit in my arms. "Uclod isn’t like that," she said.

"Perhaps he is not like that yet," I told her. "Someday, however, he will be in a terrible mood because of nothing in particular, and he will glare at you and snap, ‘Why do you always talk like that, so goddamnedartificial? You could drive a man crazy!’ Or perhaps he will not say anything at all… but he will think it, and every word that comes out of your mouth will make him angrier. You will not understand why he glares so hatefully, and you will ask, ‘What is wrong?’ but he will wince at the sound of your voice. There will be nothing you can say to make him love you again, since it is your very voice he despises; but you speak to him anyway because you are crazed and unhappy, and you think there must be words to make it all better again, if you can only say them in exactly the right way. You know you are only making it worse, but you cannot help yourself…"

All this time I had been holding Lajoolie in the dark. My one arm was wrapped around her back and my other was holding her hand, a position most suitable for giving comfort to a person who has recently been moved to tears. Now she let go of my hand; a moment later, I felt her arms curl around me, pulling me in until my cheek lightly pressed against her shoulder. "All men aren’t like that, either," she said softly. "Most of them try to be decent. The man who used you and killed your sister — he was the exception, Oar, you know that."

"He was an utter fucking bastard," I whispered. "And even though he’s been dead for years, he still makes me feel most sad."

"Obviously, he affected you deeply," Lajoolie answered with the ghost of a chuckle. "Do you realize you actually used a contraction? You said, ‘even though he’s been dead.’ "

I jerked away from her in horror. Then I started to scream. I screamed and I screamed and I screamed and I screamed; then I screamed some more.

Contractions

Here is why I screamed.

My own native tongue has contractions similar to those in English — inelegant short forms created by jamming words together. In the highest literature of my people, you can tell that characters are not well-bred when they use such figures of speech. Cultured persons always speak correctly; it is only the uncultured who treat the language with slovenly lack of enunciation.

This distinction impressed itself deeply on my mother. When my sister and I used contractions — which we did occasionally through carelessness or rebellion — our mother would chide us and say that good clever pretty girls should not speak sloppily. She herself never used contractions… until one day when I was twelve years old and Mother had a slip of the tongue.

You can imagine how Eel and I teased her about it. Mother hotly denied she said any such thing: "You girls must have dirt in your ears if you cannot hear what I say!" We had to go wash thoroughly, then do a number of unpleasant chores that were completely unnecessary, since all chores in our village were handled by automatic devices.

In a day or two, Mother slipped again — another contraction. This time Eel and I prudently did not point it out; but we caught each other’s eye and indulged in a moment of sisterly acknowledgment. We did not have dirt in our ears. It was our mother who had grown lax.

Such slips soon became a common occurrence… increasing to several times a day… then almost every time our mother spoke. Once in a while, when we did not feel like good clever pretty girls — when we felt like defiant clever pretty girls — we would use contractions ourselves, right to Mother’s face, just waiting for her to berate us. We were eager to cry back at her, "You use words like that all the time!"

Alas, our mother had ceased to notice; or more accurately, she had ceased to care. Her brain was becoming Tired. Indifference to enunciation was an early sign.

When we realized that, my sister and I swore an oath to the Hallowed Ones: we would never use a contraction again. We would speak with utmost precision, never letting ourselves get carried away with excitement or emotion. It soon became fierce superstition — that our brains would never grow Tired as long as we avoided untidy speech. Deprived of contractions, Senility had no chink through which it might enter our heads.

From that day to this, I had kept my oath. I had kept myself safe. I had never said the fatal words.

Now the spell was broken.

Or perhaps it was I who was broken. That is why I screamed.