Free The Prize in the Game by Jo Walton Page A

asked.
    "Probably Conary will leave it a day or two, to let people get over tonight." The three boys laughed.
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    "Oh, that happens here, too?" Elenn asked. She had heard about that from Maga. Nobody cared who slept where on the night of the Feast of Bel, once the children were put to bed. It was a wild festival. "People getting drunk and dancing and plowing the furrow in the fields?"
    The boys looked at each other, and then awkwardly at her. "People will get drunk," Ferdia said.
    "Then they'll be hung over tomorrow and not ready to hunt."
    "You going to do that?" Leary asked.
    "Definitely not," Ferdia said. Elenn looked at him approvingly.
    "I don't know," Darag said. "I've never had the chance before."
    Ferdia looked disappointed in his friend. "I'm not going to," he said again.
    Leary giggled. "Drunk, plowing the furrow . . . know what they say about the Feast of Bel? Feast of the
    Mother comes nine months later."
    Ferdia laughed.
    Elenn was horrified. It just wasn't the sort of thing people talked about, and especially not men and women together. It seemed almost an impious thing to say. She looked at Darag, who had neither said it nor laughed, and saw that he was also looking shocked.
    "You know what they say," Ferdia said, grinning, oblivious of the fact that nobody wanted to hear this. "They say children born at the Feast of the Mother always know for sure who their mother is!"
    "They don't say that to me," Darag said, forcing the words out. He looked as if he'd been hit quite unexpectedly and very hard. Elenn put her hand out unthinkingly and pressed his shoulder for a moment, offering comfort.
    Ferdia looked surprised and a little taken aback. "Were you born at the Feast of the Mother, then?" he asked.
    Leary also looked chastened. "Didn't mean you," he said.
    Darag looked as if he was never going to get a word out again.
    "I was born at the Feast of the Mother," Elenn said. It was true. She had always thought it a good time of year for a name day. Mother Breda gifts all children to their mothers, but Elenn had always felt especially close to her because she had been born at her festival. Besides being true, she said it because she wanted to distract Ferdia and Leary from going after Darag when he felt so bad. Maybe he really didn't know who his father was. Both his parents were dead, after all, and both had died when he was very young. She'd never heard him addressed by his father's name since she'd come here, he was always Darag, as if he were king already. "Maybe my parents went out to the fields," she said, smiling.
    "Yes, definitely," Ferdia said, much too quickly. "I'm sure they did. Lots and lots of married couples do."
    "Lots of married couples go together," Leary confirmed unhesitatingly, clearly not believing a word of it.
    Elenn now understood something of what Darag might be feeling.
    She felt stupid. She knew that Maga didn't go into the fields with Allel, but alone, to find a new and willing partner. She had never thought before, how Mingor and Emer looked like Allel but she didn't. Where babies came from was a Mystery, a Mystery of the Mother. People shouldn't talk about it like this. Not that it mattered. She'd ask Allel if it was true when she got home. Allel, not Maga. Maga knew a lot and understood things really well, but sometimes she said what she wanted to be true. Allel didn't always know, but he always told things straight out.
    Darag looked as if he was a painted statue of a young man someone had set up in the field.
    Ferdia looked anguished, clearly realizing he had hurt her, though he was staring at Darag, obviously too distressed even to look at Elenn. Leary looked uncomfortable.
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    "Think we should get more pies," he said and took Ferdia's arm.
    "I think not," Ferdia said, shaking him off. "Daragmdash"
    "Darag's thinking. Be fine in a little while. Elenn wants more pies, don't you, Elenn?"
    It would give her a few minutes to gather herself, at least. Darag looked as if he