The Grandmothers

This new woman, Raned, has achieved what every Barbarian girl wants, marriage with a citizen, and, in her case, into the leading family. If my grandson had not been such a poor type of fellow he would have aimed higher, perhaps at one of DeRod’s descendants.

understood. It was such a blow to my sense of probability: Bora believed–they all believed–that DeRod was the originator of wonderful accomplishments.

Again he seemed to be working something out. ‘But Father, everyone admires DeRod. When we had the Feast of Praise for him all the armies were singing about the new garden and the new silos too.’

This was because when we did talk I always felt I was knocking on a locked door.

It was some time since we had talked. Years, I think.

always hoping for him to say something.

Bora had never mentioned the Fall, the pool, the silos, the gardens–nothing of the things we had done, and I am sure I was

This was the moment of evident, apparently irreversible, change, when DeRod decided to build his wall.

These new people had no skills for agriculture, and it was hard to teach them, because our old ways of teaching by tales and songs and narrative poems were be

for by now we were unwilling to face him ourselves, for he had assumed such an intensity of arbitrary destructiveness for us. Never before had we faced a situation where we could not carry out a plan for lack of labour.