9 The Ritual and the TorAS A COLD BUT pleasant spring afternoon wore on, Oiechē, the miller’s daughter from Tarnesh, was starting to tire of watching dragonflies by the riverbank below the Braldhach falls. Next to her sat the gangling figure of Rurhdt, a local farm hand. The things Oiechē imagined doing with him were going to require a little more privacy than they were likely to find by the much-frequented river.
“Look!” he said, breaking into her thoughts. “There’s a dragonfly the colour of your eyes.”
“Oh, y’re sweet,” Oiechē told him. “Y’ really does cheer folks up, y’ know.”
“Does I?” exclaimed her swain. “I never thought of it. How does I do that, then?”
“Well,” said the girl tantalisingly, “Y’re sort of daft—”
“Daft?”
“Oh, in a nice sort of way. Y’ funny, like. Y’ makes folk l
