Free Diadem from the Stars by Jo Clayton Page B

up on my sleep.”
    Winding across one corner of the ceiling’s plaster was a crack whose path she’d traced a hundred times before, a pleasant echo of the course the Raqsidan took through the valley. She sighed. “I’ll miss my river. And Vajd.…”
    She slid off the bed and turned the mattress back. The old leather book looked squashed but otherwise intact. As she picked it up, crumbs from the binding powdered her fingers and drifted in a rusty cloud to the floor. She let the mattress fall and rubbed her hands over the disintegrating cover until all the easily dislodged dust was knocked off.
    As she leafed through the pages she wrinkled her nose at the remnants of the mold stain and stared curiously at the pale brown writing scarcely darker than the age-discolored paper; then she settled back onto the bed and stretched out on her stomach and rested the book rather precariously on her pillow. On the end pages there was writing in much darker ink. The letter, she thought. For a moment she looked up, conscious suddenly of an odd feeling of foreboding that made her reluctant to start reading. She pressed her lips together resolutely.
    Aleytys—
    Good start, she thought, gets right to the point. She closed her eyes and swallowed the bitterness of abandonment for the thousandth time.
    My beautiful baby …
    Not so beautiful you bothered to keep me, she thought.
    At least, when you read this, you won’t be a baby anymore. Try to understand, my dear. I want you with me, I really do. You’re the only child I’ve ever borne, a part of me. But …
    Aleytys gritted her teeth. If you gave a damn for me, she thought, you could have taken me. This’s for Vajd. He needn’t think I believe everything he says, he’s still got you on his mind, always will have. You won a bigger piece of him than any woman ever will.
    Aleytys, I’m a selfish woman. When I want to make excuses for myself, I say it’s a racial trait, inborn in every Vryhh that ever was. Unfortunately, my dear, that’s not just an excuse. It’s something you’re probably going to have to face in yourself. It’s not an attractive feature, I admit.
    Since you’re reading this, you must know I left the Raqsidan to get back to my own people—or, more precisely, to the kind of life I’m accustomed to leading. If I were any kind of mother, I suppose I’d try to come back for you.
    Aleytys rubbed her fingers across the last words. That’s me, she thought, everybody wants me.
    Well, daughter, I won’t be coming. I can’t stand the thought of ever coming back to this valley. Once I get off this revolting piece of dirt, I’m going to forget it ever existed.
    We’re wanderers, we Vrya, spacefarers. It’s a proud name, child, a grand thing to be a Vryhh of Vrithian. The stars are our sea marks, the universe our home. To be trapped on a single world—the very thought makes my hand shake. I have to get back, Aleytys, I’ve no choice. If you have anything at all of me in you, you should be raging to get out of that day and day and day agony of boredom. With all those blind and deaf clods stifling you.
    Aleytys rested her hands on the pages and stared at the wall, remembering the times her soul had slipped from her body and spilled along the water. From my mother, she thought, some of it.… I wonder what else .… She blinked and smoothed her hands over the old musty paper.
    Enough of this. When you can’t stand the valley any longer, come find me.… I hope I scared them enough so you weren’t given to some earth crawler.… Come find me. It won’t be easy. But you’ll get there if you’ve enough Vryhh in you. Enough Vryhh. That’s a question. Aleytys, there aren’t many Vryhh-worldbound hybrids around. We’re proud of our blood and chary of spreading it around. However, with this limited data source, here’s what you