The older man was lying on a bench, holding his  halin cup on his chest. He glanced at Cholkwa briefly, then looked back at the ceiling. “Is what you do more true to reality? Rude plays about animals? I’d rather be a hero in red and gold armor than a man in a  tli costume.”

“I’d rather be a clever  tli than someone who kills his lover.”

“What else could they do?” asked Perig, referring to the characters in the play.

“Run off,” said Cholkwa. “Become actors. Leave their stupid relatives to fight their stupid war unaided.”

It was one of those adult conversations where everything really important was left unspoken. Ahl could tell that. Bored, she said, “I’d like to be an actor.”

They both looked at her.

“You can’t,” said Perig.

This sounded familiar. “Why not?”

“In part, its custom,” Cholkwa said. “But there’s at least one good reason. Actors travel and live among unkin; and often the places we visit are not safe. I go south a lot. The people there love comedy, but in every other way they’re louts and savages. At times I’ve wondered if I’d make it back alive, or would someone have to bring my ashes in an urn to Perig?”

“Better to stay here,” said Perig. “Or travel the way your aunt Ki does, in a ship full of relatives.”

No point in arguing. When adults started to give advice, they were never reasonable. But the play stayed with her. She imagined stories about people in fine clothing, faced with impossible choices; and she acted them out, going so far as to make a wooden sword, which she kept hidden in a hayloft. Her female relatives had an entire kitchen full of knives and cleavers and axes, all sharp and dangerous. But the noise they would have made, if they’d seen her weapon!

Sometimes she was male and a warrior. At other times, she was a sailor like Ki, fighting the kinds of monsters found at the edges of maps. Surely, Ahl thought, it was permissible for women to use swords when attacked by monsters, rising out of the water with fangs that dripped poison and long curving claws?

Below her in the barn, her family’s  tsina ate and excreted. Their animal aroma rose to her, combining with the scent of hay. Later she said this was the scent of drama: dry, aging hay and new-dropped excrement.

The next year Cholkwa came alone and brought his company. They did a decent comedy, suitable for children, about a noble  sul who was tricked and humiliated by a  tli.The trickster was exposed at the play’s end. The  sul’s honor was restored. The good animals did a dance of triumph, while the  tli cowered and begged.

Cholkwa was the  tli. Strange that a man so handsome and friendly could portray a sly coward.

Ahl asked about this. Cholkwa said, “I can’t talk about other men, but I have that kind of person inside me: a cheat and liar, who would like to run away from everything. I don’t run, of course. Perig would disapprove, and I’d rather be admired than despised.”

“But you played a hero last year.”

“That was more difficult. Perig understands nobility, and I studied with him a long time. I do as he tells me. Most people are tricked and think I know what I’m doing. But that person—the hero —doesn’t speak in my mind.”

Ahl moved forward to the play’s other problem. “The  sul was noble, but a fool. The  tli was clever and funny, but immoral. There was no one in the play I could really like.”

Cholkwa gave her a considering gaze, which was permissible, since she was still a child. Would she like it, when men like Cholkwa —unkin, but old friends — had to glance away? “Most people, even adults, wouldn’t have seen that. It has two causes. I wrote the  sul’s lines, and, as I’ve told you, I don’t understand nobility. The other problem is my second actor. He isn’t good enough. If Perig had been here, he would have made the  sul likable —in part by rewriting the lines, but mostly because he could play a stone and make it seem likable.”

Ahl thought about this idea. An image came to her: Perig in a grey robe, sitting quietly on a stage, his face unmasked and grey, looking calm and friendly. A likable rock. It could be done. Why bother? In spite of her question, the image remained, somehow comforting.

Several days later, Cholkwa did a play for adults. This event took place at night in the town hall, which was used for meetings and ceremonies, also to store trade goods in transit. This time the back half was full of cloth, big bales that smelled of fresh dye, southern blue and the famous Sorg red.

Ahl snuck out of her house after dark and went in a back door, which she’d unlocked earlier. Climbing atop the bales, she settled to watch the play.

Most of it was past her understanding, though the audience gasped, groaned, clapped, and made hissing noises. Clearly, they knew what was going on.

The costumes were ugly, in her opinion; the animals had huge sexual parts and grimacing faces. They hit each other with padded swords and clubs, tumbled and tossed each other, spoke lines that were — as far as she could tell — full of insults, some sly and others so obvious that even she made sense of them. This time the  sul was an arrogant braggart with a long narrow head and a penis of almost equal size and shape. The  tli, much less well endowed, was clever and funny, a coward because he had to be. Most of his companions were large, dangerous, and unjust.

It was the  tli’s play. Mocking and tricking, he won over all the rest, ending with the  sul’s precious ancestral sword, which he carried off in triumph to his mother, a venerable female  tli, while the  sul howled in grief.

The Sword Recovered or The Revenge of the Tli. That was the name of the play. There was something in back of it, which Ahl could not figure out. Somehow the  sul had harmed the  tli’s family in the past. Maybe the harm had been sexual, though this didn’t seem likely.  Sulin and  tli did not interbreed. Puzzled, she climbed down from the bales and went home. The night was foggy, and she almost lost her way in streets she’d known her entire life.

She couldn’t ask Cholkwa to explain. He would have told her relatives that she’d seen the play.

After this, she added comedy to her repertoire, mixing it with the stories about heroes and women like her aunt, far-travelers who did  not have to die over some kind of unusual ethical dilemma.

The result was a long, acted-out epic tale about a hero, a woman sailor, a clever  tli, and a magical stone that accompanied the other three on their journey. The hero was noble, the sailor resourceful, and the  tli funny, while the stone remained calm and friendly, no matter what was going on. There wasn’t any sex. Ahl was too young, and the adult comedy had disgusted her. It’s often a bad idea to see things that are forbidden, especially if one is young.