What a fine image! But what could Ahl do with it?

Later, in that same port, she came to an unwalled tavern. Vines grew over the roof. Underneath were benches. Perig sat on one, a cup in his hand. She shouted his name. He glanced up and smiled, then his gaze slid away. Was she that old? Had she become a woman? Maybe, she thought, remembering the black-furred girl.

Where was Cholkwa? In the south, Perig said.

Because the place was unwalled and public, she was able to sit down. The hostess brought  halin. She tasted it, savoring the sharp bitterness. It was the taste of adulthood.

“Watch out,” said Perig. “That stuff can make you sick.” Was his company here? Were they acting? Ahl asked. Yes. The next night, in the town square. “I’ll come,” said Ahl with decision. Perig glanced at her, obviously pleased.

The play was about a hero, of course: a man who suspected that the senior women in his family, his mother and her sisters, had committed a crime. If his suspicion was true, their behavior threatened the family’s survival. But no man can treat any woman with violence, and no man should turn against his mother. And what if he were wrong? Maybe they were innocent. Taking one look at the women, Ahl knew they were villains. But the hero didn’t have her sharpness of vision. So he blundered through the play, trying to discover the truth. Men died, mostly at his hands, and most of them his kin. Finally he was hacked down, while the women looked on. A messenger arrived, denouncing them. Their family was declared untouchable. No one would deal with them in the future. Unable to interbreed, the family would vanish. The monstrous women listened like blocks of stone. Nothing could affect their stubborn arrogance.

A terrible story, but also beautiful. Perig was the hero and shone like a diamond. The three men playing the women were grimly convincing. Ahl felt as if a sword had gone through her chest. Her stories were nothing next to this.

Afterward, Ahl found Perig in the open tavern. Torches flared in a cool ocean wind, and his fur—touched with white over the shoulders — moved a little, ruffled. Ahl tried to explain how lovely and painful the play had been.

He listened, giving her an occasional quick glance. “This is the way it’s supposed to be,” he said finally. “Like a blade going to a vital spot.”

“Is it impossible to have a happy ending?” she asked, after she finished praising. “In this kind of play, yes.”

“I liked the hero so much. There should have been another solution.” “Well,” said Perig. “He could have killed his mother and aunts, then killed himself. It would have saved his family, but he wasn’t sure they were criminals.”

“Of course they were!”

“You were in the audience,” said Perig. “Where I was standing, in the middle of the situation, the truth was less evident; and no man should find it easy to kill his mother.”

“I was right, years ago,” Ahl said suddenly.  “This is what I want to do. Act in plays.”

Perig looked unhappy.

She told him about her attempts to weave and be a sailor, then about the plays she had acted in the hayloft and the stories in her mind. For the first time, she realized that the stories had scenes. She knew how the hero moved, like Perig acting a hero. The  tli had Cholkwa’s brisk step and mocking voice. The stone was a stone. Only the girl was blurry. She didn’t tell Perig about the scenes. Embarrassing to admit that this quiet aging man lived in her mind, along with his lover and a stone. But she did tell him that she told stories.

He listened, then said, “If you were a boy, I’d go to your family and ask for you as an apprentice — if not this year, then next year. But I can’t, Ahl. They’d refuse me and be so angry I might lose their friendship.”

“What am I to do?” asked Ahl.

“That’s a question I can’t answer,” said Perig.

A day later, her ship left the harbor. On the long trip home, Ahl considered her future. She’d seen other companies of actors. Perig and Cholkwa were clearly the best, but neither one of them would be willing to train her. Nor would any company that knew she was female. But most women in this part of the world were broad and full-breasted, and she was an entirely different type. People before, strangers, had mistaken her for a boy. Think of all the years she had acted in her loft, striding like Perig or mimicking Cholkwa’s gait. Surely she had learned something!

She was seventeen and good at nothing. In spite of the witch’s prediction, it wasn’t likely she’d ever be important. It seemed to her now that nothing had ever interested her except the making of stories — not the linked verse epics that people recited on winter evenings, nor the tales that women told to children, but proper  stories, like the ones that Perig and Cholkwa acted.

Before they reached Helwar, Ahl had decided to disguise herself as a boy and run away.

First, of course, she had to spend the winter at home. Much of her time was taken by her family. When she could, she watched her uncles and male cousins. How did they stand and move? What were their gestures? How did they speak?

The family warehouse was only half-full, she discovered. This became her theater, lit by high windows or (sometimes) by a lamp. She’d bought a square metal mirror in the south. Ahl leaned it against a wall. If she stood at a distance, she could see herself, dressed in a tunic stolen from a cousin and embroidered in the male style. Whenever possible, she practiced being a man, striding across the wood floor, turning and gesturing, speaking lines she remembered out of plays. Behind her were stacks of new-cut lumber. The fresh, sweet aroma of sawdust filled the air. In later life, she said this was the smell of need and possibility.

In spring, her ship went south again. Her bag, carefully packed, held boy’s clothing, a knife and all her money.

In a town in the far south, she found an acting company, doing one of Perig’s plays in ragged costumes. It was one she’d seen. They’d cut out parts.

So, thought Ahl. That evening, she took her bag and crept off the ship. The night was foggy, and the damp air smelled of unfamiliar vegetation. In an alley, she changed clothing, binding her four breasts flat with strips of cloth. She already knew where the actors were staying: a run-down inn by the harbor, not the kind of place that decent female sailors would visit. Walking through the dark streets, bag over her shoulder, she was excited and afraid.

Here, in this town, she was at the southern edge of civilization. Who could tell what the inland folk were like? Though she had never heard of any lineage that harmed women. If things got dangerous, she could pull off her tunic, revealing her real self.

On the other hand, there might be monsters; and they  did harm women. Pulling off her tunic would do no good if something with fangs and scales came out of the forest. At most, the thing might thank her for removing the wrapping on its dinner.