When Si'Wren turned and fled, they chased her, calling vile names. They reviled her Invisible God, crying out, "Stone the idol-breaker!" and "Where is he?—I can't find him!", mocking her as an outcast of the people, a scourge upon the land, and an enemy of the gods.
They followed her as she hastened to return to the cypress bungalow of the field-hands. She continued to shield herself from the stones by holding up her arms. At the door flap to the bungalow, she threw herself through the barrier tarp and ducked within, gasping for breath and weeping from her injuries as they danced without the bungalow, chanting evil rhymes against her.
They were too afraid to enter, until the brash older boy stepped inside with a large rock upheld to smite her with. Quick as a flash, L'acoci seized him by the hair and knocked his own rock against his own head with his own hand.
With a surprised scream the boy staggered and fell over backwards, then jumped up and ran bleeding out of the bungalow, at which point the mob of kids broke and ran. The din of their screams, added to the larger boy's outraged squeals of terror all rapidly diminished as they fled, scattered like a flock of magpies.
L'acoci ignored Si'Wren's weeping as she pushed into her hands a crude clay pot of herbal tea, a bowl of paste made from honey mixed with lard and clay and crumbled leaves and flowers, and a coarse, dirty, wadded-up old rag.
"Ah!" she exclaimed wordlessly, and blanched at her imagined 'error'. L'acoci looked long and meaningfully at Si'Wren, but said nothing and turned away finally without comment.
Feeling guilty about the monosyllabic utterance, although she had not truly spoken any word, Si'Wren, trembling in fear, stepped over to kneel carefully beside a stoically suffering Habrunt, her own concerns temporarily overlooked. Head still reeling from the blows, she forgot her bruises as she flinched at the renewed sight of his terrible injuries.
She changed the bandages polluted by the stink of corruption, and soothed on the paste L'acoci had made, before gently applying the layers of fresh tea-soaked replacement gauze over Habrunt's ruined flesh, exercising special care over the most fearsome gashes. Habrunt trembled in agony at this, but when he realized who she was, he somehow managed to hold still for it, although with much difficulty.
As she worked on Habrunt's terrible wounds, Si'Wren thought with great trepidation about possibly having violated her oath of silence again, but could not help wondering if she actually had or not. Of a truth, she had sworn never to actually speak again, but now it occurred to her that perhaps she might at least intonate. The idea was such as to be normally of no great import, but now seemed so great a revelation that she felt a sense of surprise out of all proportion. The simple fact was, she realized, that one did not need mere words to express one's feelings.
Si'Wren reflected upon this at length, and considered that although she might never again know the joy of singing, she could still hum her favorite melodies, and imagine the words in her mind or merely close her eyes and sway gently to the rhythm.