Luoth followed the procession of a group of jesters who taunted everyone with toy musical instruments and mocking voices, improvising rhymes and acrobatics. Two of them wore an amusing costume, the lower half of which was shaped like a beast of burden, and they amused themselves by pretending to gallop around. Childishness, sure, but once a year one needed to let it go!

  Without paying attention to the path, he had reached the Course of Light, which pierced Nelatte in the sense of width. That majestic gallery, with its vaulted ceiling so far away that it was almost invisible in the mist of some mornings, always thrilled him, especially when, as now, he found himself about to meet the sun.

  The feeling of leaving behind the darkness and all that was heavy. Rebirth. Even if this splendor brought him back to the still painful memory of the flames and the violence of the heat...

  He was literally overwhelmed by the market.

  Shoulder-loaded stalls and wheelbarrows of goods poured into the square from every side street; from the alley behind him, a group of spindle sellers had come running, bumping into him and spinning him around like a top. Or like a spindle. He almost fell into the well!

  “Who wants to spin, beautiful women!” the merchants sang in time to the drums and whistles of the clowns. In a few moments they would assemble the stalls with the goods glued to them.

  Another burlesque sketch, Luoth thought as he picked up his hat. In carnival days it could be difficult to distinguish fiction, the joke, from truth, but come on, who in Nelatte still spun by hand?

  Hadn't someone pointed out to him that those old folk songs about spindle sellers were probably jokes full of double entendres? Straight, smooth spindles that spun well in the hand...

  He turned away in embarrassment.

  Not long before, he had witnessed a rather disturbing, though comical, performance. Three dancing actors were losing body parts with great realism. Full, aesthetically convincing prosthetics, legs, arms, and heads falling and rolling around had caused him great discomfort. If there had been fake blood spurting, he would have fainted. But this was not a violent affair, they had explained to him: The act and the accompanying syncopated beat music had been part of the folk tradition for at least three centuries and represented a sketch from a long carnival composition of the ancients. An absolutely festive affair, the host, eager to convince, had repeated.

  Luoth believed it. Ancient, the work of a great composer, all right. But it could have stayed where it was. Nor did he want to know what the rest of the composition was like.

  Rather, he had heard and seen many Pipers around. And if this blockhead Moi had decided to get out of the house, maybe he could learn more by looking around that day than by doing all those things only he knew about with his instruments on the roof of the academy.

  For Pipers and Swallows the city festivals meant nothing, but somehow the former felt the atmosphere of joy and the latter became less shy.

  The nasal sound of the reeds echoed through the streets as the Pipers communicated with each other and with the sky. Luoth had seen them high on the roofs of buildings, suspended upside down, dangling under bridges, and always finding the energy to modulate their voices in imitation of trumpets. Clean, ringing notes echoed through the air along with whistles and flute trills. Occasionally, a Swallow would fly lower than usual, lingering to spiral down over the plazas, giving passersby a few moments to admire it.

  Luoth quickened his pace to avoid hearing the vulgar songs of the false merchants. From the gardens ahead came more delicate sounds. He left the central space of the Course of Light to walk among the hedges.

  It was a music machine that traveled slowly in circles through the driveways. A singing automaton with the voices of stringed instruments and jingling bells. The Pipers followed it, and one even came down to perch on a lamppost to watch its movements; ears vibrating and snout alert. Luoth paused to stare at the creature in turn. He did not like to get too close to these things, which in his opinion smelled of burned lamp oil and had excessively long claws. But it was the first time he had seen one up close that was not hanging upside down from something.

  The Piper brought its paws to its face and began to play on its own pierced nose, this time like a flute. It was a musical phrase ending in a crescendo, a modulated question. The music machine turned in the direction of the creature. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but in the meantime, it had changed its song. It played the refrain of a new composition and then returned to the previous one, or rather a fragment of the previous one, which immediately changed to something else. And the Piper played again. The machine creatively used parts of the memorized songs to weave another language.

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  Were they talking? Were they playing together?

  Luoth remained dreamily watching and listening, aware that he was witnessing a phenomenon completely unknown to most, and he found himself enjoying the music, even if the intervals were at the very least odd and the harmonies became hostile and unpleasant, until the automaton turned back toward him with a snort, and then he jerked as if caught in the act because, he remembered, unlike the Piper, the machine could see him. He sped away, limping ridiculously from his haste, and he was not sure he could slow down until he had left the track behind him and thrown himself into the heart of the crowd that had gathered to witness the mayor’s arrival.

  °°°

  After the first few arias and duets, Seluma could take no more. The voices of the singing crickets all sounded the same to her: very pleasant and soothing at first, but in the long run, they became nauseating, like an overly sweet cake.

  So she said goodbye to Moi, who watched with rapt attention, following the music note by note with slight movements of his head, and resumed her walk.

  Her overthinking crawl led her to follow the larger flow of people, as reassuring as the current of a quiet river. She had made no plans, at least for this day, she wanted to be surprised. Dozens of different shows were going on at the same time in different parts of the city, repeated cyclically and often moved: just walking around, one could come across all kinds of entertainment, from the buffoonish and somewhat trivial jokes of clowns to the refined dance of aerial water lilies, from puppet shows for children to lotteries, from shooting games to kite competitions.

  It was with great disappointment that Seluma found herself trapped between a crowd pushing behind her and a metal barrier in front of her. The street in front of her was blocked so that nothing could pass… and even worse, just as she was struggling to retreat, the people around her let out screams and high-pitched whistles that made her eardrums vibrate painfully. And what on earth was going on?

  And what is coming, the free ice cream machine?

  She guessed it before she saw it, reading the ecstatic rapture on the faces of the young girls and mature women around her.

  Attan Ze Kosh walked gracefully between two wings of the cheering crowd, not failing to greet them with a warm smile every few steps; he was just ahead of the wagon carrying the Zerafian emissaries, but most of the enthusiasm was for him alone.

  Throughout her long life, Seluma had often wondered what exactly this “sexual tension” she had heard so much about might be. Because of her constitution, she knew of nothing comparable. She had gotten the idea that it was a violent appetite, a thirst, a powerful physical need. But on the other hand, she did not see unrestrained mating or fights for dominance every moment, so people could keep that need in check. It could not be something as inescapable and invincible as hunger, sleep, or the need to empty one's bladder.

  She had never felt lacking because she was unable to experience that feeling.

  But as her friend walked by, waving, nodding, step by step, in his teal robe, its train flowing over the cobblestones like an immaterial wave, the white headdress framing a face of perfectly symmetrical features —all too much so— she had to admit that she felt close to understanding what made these women's eyes shine so brightly.

  She herself felt the desire to touch Kosh, to cradle his golden skin with her whole body, skin so smooth that it should, by all logic, have aroused her revulsion. Would she have wanted to embrace him, make him hers? she wondered ruefully. She had never wanted that, not even with those with whom she had actually done it, not even with Myriaky, whom she had loved in a special way...

  What was she thinking? The mayor had passed by without noticing her. Seluma tried in vain to catch a glimpse of the movement of his musculature under the light but stiff fabric of his tunic, remembering that she had never seen him unless wrapped from head to toe, covered by loose clothing that revealed nothing of the form beneath. All she knew of him was his face, his neck, his hands.

  And his feet. Kosh hid them, but Seluma had caught a glimpse of his appearance during one of the informal visits to his office. In her presence, Attan Ze relaxed and sometimes, without thinking, crossed his legs under the desk, lifting the hem of his dress.

  They were hoofed, like horses. Why hide them? Who knows, she told herself, if those feet were attached to hairy, animal-like calves, or even more monstrous limbs... perhaps the mayor had several pairs of limbs, was some kind of centipede with an almost human face.

  Fine, think of something ugly.

  Stupid Seluma, looking at men as if I could do something with them.

  Still, her heart clenched with the desire to crawl in front of him, to do something, anything, that could bring a smile from this creature. Something that would make him happy, satisfied with her.

  What are you thinking, you idiot!