Chapter nine
The Whip and the ClawJilian kept singing snatches of a silly little song as we jogged along in the suns shine the next day. We had all the world to ourselves, it seemed. The sky stretched emptily and the unending grassland was studded only with small trees and bushes, a wide heath that was, in truth, deceptive, for it extended merely between towns here in eastern Thadelm. The song concerned the comical efforts of a little Och maiden and a strapping young Tlochu youth to sort out the twelve limbs they possessed between them. I found Jilian’s song silly but enchanting. It is called The Conundrum of the Hyrshiv. The eventual solution the Och girl and the Tlochu boy worked out for themselves is ironical and funny; it is touching and true, though, for it illustrates that despite d
