The Passing-Ceremony

Hieram has started his advances again. I do not know what to do. I dare not offend him, for fear of his family, but this is unbearable.

It was all right until my birth-celebration, which was a large one this year as I turned fifteen. For girls in our part of the world, fifteen is a special age, when we have our passing-ceremony as well as the birth-celebration. Each girl has a great party to celebrate her stepping into the world of adults. For one day, she is the center of the world, and everything is done to make her happy. Aunts and cousins come, and there is feasting, and she is the guest of honor.

Preparations began three days early. My mother and Asta, the helping-woman and occasional cook, had conferences in the kitchen, and local children kept running in and out. It is the custom for children to be given sweets in honor of Kalil, the goddess of growth and learning, on a girl's feast-day, but all children, since the beginning of time, it seems, begin trying when the preparations begin. I watched them and remembered doing the same when my sister had her passing-ceremony. I remembered Asta giving me apples to quiet me - and sure enough, there they came with apples, juice all over their hands. They saw me and giggled, and I felt myself turning red.

I was and am unused to such attention. Usually my lot in life is to wander through the courtyards and echoing rooms of the museum as if I am some part of the architecture. In the village, and even in Lethiam, the larger market-town where we go once a month, I feel unimportant, unseen. True, there are a number of people who say hello, but only in passing. No special attention is paid to me. For those few days, though, people turned to me with broad smiles, saying, "There she goes!" and "She is growing, is she not? What a fine young woman she makes!" and so on. I was like to die with shame.

Which was unexpected, because I've been so looking forward to this moment!!! All my life, I've dreamed of being fifteen - being able to go where I like and just, well, be a grown person. I've dreamt of the celebration: what I will wear, how I will do my hair, how many cakes I will get to eat, how all the young men will look at me, and so on. Yet once the time arrived, it felt all wrong. All my childhood I imagined when this moment came I would be a different person. More popular or more easygoing, more adult. A person who enjoyed the attention. But I'm not: I'm still me, used to being left alone, and easy with my freedom to slip through the world without being noticed.

Worst of all was Hieram's attention.

It started on the day when my mother was meeting with the Asta. I was outside cleaning one of the Machines from the Museum, which Axel had helped me move out into the North courtyard on a cart. My hair was tied back, I had smudges on my cheeks, and my sleeves were rolled up. The machine had a million tiny crevices which all desperately needed wiping out, and I was wet and cursing when Hieram walked into the courtyard.

I didn't notice him for a moment, but after a particularly ferocious curse, I heard him say "tch, tch" behind me. I turned around fast, and there was his smiling, smug face and his immaculate clothing. He waved a finger at me as if to say "naughty, naughty" and then went on smiling as I went back to work.

He wouldn't leave!!!!! I grew more and more annoyed, what with that terrible machine and the feeling of his eyes boring into my back as I scrubbed. Finally, I lost my temper and turned on him.
"If you want to admire my work, you can come back when I'm done," I told him. "I've no mind to work my fingers off with you standing there sniggering."

He looked surprised, as if he didn't expect me to have a temper, and then sloped off to some other part of the Museum.

The next day I went to the village to see about