The Winged Histories (23 page)

Once we found ourselves on the road after dark, and we went to Valedhara without having warned Uncle Veda that we were coming. We found him in the front room—a cramped little parlor with a green carpet and smoke-stained walls—tying up a dog’s injured paw. The whole place smelled of dog. There were a few other visitors there, as always, a few old men and a herdboy with a fever. And Uncle Veda jumped up and kissed us and squeezed the breath out of us, so happy to see us, you could see that he was delighted. Right away he began to turn the house upside down to find things for us to eat. He had a servant, a sort of high chamberlain if you will—steward and valet and butler all at once. A lot of Kestenyi gentlemen live that way, dependent on just one servant. This steward of his was a very capable organized sort of man and Uncle Veda used to praise him to everyone, and really it was probably true that he kept my uncle from losing his lands, Uncle Veda was so softhearted and hopeless at business. Of course the steward was always at his wits’ end—I still remember his pained expression and how we children used to mimic it. But he was devoted to my uncle, despite the difficulties, and when my uncle moved to Bain, he left Valedhara to his steward.

That night, the night I was telling you about, Uncle Veda patted him on the shoulder and said, There, there, I leave everything to your intelligence. And the steward created a wonderful supper, nuts and cheese on toast and an egg pudding, and we spread out an oilcloth and ate on the parlor floor. You see it was the only room with a fire. And when we had finished Uncle Veda gave us each a tiny glass of Eilami brandy. I was only thirteen or so, it was terribly special to be allowed to drink brandy. It made me feel so warm on that cold night . . . But it wasn’t enough for Uncle Veda to feed us, he began frowning and fidgeting and snapping his fingers, and finally he stood up and exclaimed, No, it’s too dull for young people, we must have a dance! It was already very late, but he knew everyone and he sent to the village for several of the young men who could play the diali and the guitar, and he ordered in all the servants, even the herdboys and the gardener and the grooms, and the girls who used to come up and clean the house on feast days. There were twenty or thirty of them. And they rolled the carpet back, and the musicians, winking at each other and looking very amused, began to play so vigorously that you felt like dancing at once. Even the girls, who were terribly shy, took off their shoes . . .

She is quite drunk when she tells this story but not so drunk that she does not know when to stop. Her listeners have lost interest. She raises the glass to her lips. Looking at the windows white with steam where, among the floating lights, dancers turn like the bodies of the drowned.

The morning after her uncle’s dance she slips downstairs in her stockings, into the rustling, sighing sound of communal sleep. She peeps into the parlor where, among the herdboys stretched out on the carpet, dogs lie snuffling against their tails. Some of the dogs have already gone into the kitchen, to be near the stove. A pearly glow falls through the oiled paper pasted over the windows. Uncle Veda turns, holding the handle of the coffeepot. “Ah, my dear. I knew you’d be up before the others.”

“What time is it?” she asks.

He glances at the windows. “Nearly noon. Now try this.” Pouring coffee into a blue tin cup. “That’s fresh milk from our Sinoud.”

She laughs, sitting down at the table. “Surely you haven’t been milking already.”

“And why not?” he cries, as he seats himself before his own battered cup. “She wasn’t dancing all night, poor beast. Why should she suffer? Ah, you see, there’s nothing like fresh milk. Now, what to have for breakfast?” He frowns, smoothing the few sparse hairs on his ruddy head.

Dear Uncle Veda. No one can help being happy in his presence. Even the smoky and cluttered kitchen seems cheerful when he is beside the stove, in his brown work shirt and a blue scarf fastened about his neck with a pin. His pipe diffuses the comfortable smell of rooms where people have come in from hunting. When Tav and Dasya come down he pours them coffee and hands out sticks of raush. Just to hear him exclaim in triumph when he discovers a cheese in the pantry, to see him put on his vast green hat, is enough to make one laugh out loud. He waves to them from the porch for a long time.

By the red field,

by the black field.

Oh, the impossible distance.

There is no rest, no rest on the road

that leads to Harmavyedh.

By the red field,

by the black field.

Great fields of singing wheat,

pity me where I walk in the silence and bitter solitude

of the tras.

Songs of her heart, Kestenyi songs. Songs of Bron and Tevlas, of the hills. They sing as they ride, following the rhythm of the hoof beats. One night when they hear music they creep out and crawl on their stomachs up the rise to where the feredhai are camped on a plain of stones. Fires in the night. Shadows move to and fro, shadows of women and of horses being led to the big artusa. Shadows of hands clapping. And the tents lit by the lamps inside, taking on the color of the human body. She watches, her eyes as huge as the stars above, hardly breathing, desperate to memorize each line of song as it pierces the cold air. Knowing that she may never hear this song sung in this way again, that the feredhai will carry it away with them into the desert. As they will carry their knowledge, all the secrets of survival in a wilderness of sunlight, wind, and chalk. The map of the wells, the taste of mare’s milk. She seizes the song and draws it into her as she would draw that nourishment, that knowledge. She drinks two songs, three songs, entranced. When the camp is silent at last and she and her sister and cousin slip back to the house, she will not speak to them, she can only hum and mutter to herself, helpless as if in the talons of a fever. And lie on her bed with her eyes wide open, lightly touching her fingers together, singing. Perhaps she even sings in her sleep. At dawn she is rewarded by the music she still remembers, notes that have not deserted her in the night.

The windows are pale, the room very cold. She reaches out with her mind, as if groping to lay her hand on a book in the darkness, and is sad because she cannot remember the tune of one of the songs although she tries it with a number of variations. The words, too, some of the words are missing, as if the gold leaf has begun to crumble from an illumination, and the more she struggles with it the more her efforts rub away at the delicate surface, inflicting further destruction. But she is happy with the songs she has and she sings them over and over as she puts on her mantle and slippers and pads downstairs, and as she enters the kitchen where Nenya is already boiling milk for the coffee and Tav is washing her hair beside the stove.

It is not fair, it is not right.

Four gold moons on a branch,

four gold moons.

Oh unhappy spirit,

drink at another well.

“Don’t sing that in the morning, it’s bad luck. You should sing happy songs.”

“But the feredhai don’t have any happy songs.”

“
Then don
’t sing feredha songs,” says Nenya, pouring the thick hot coffee into a glass. Siski takes it outside to drink on the empty terrace. Her breath is white and frost hangs on the trees. She does not believe that feredha songs can ever cause bad luck, not in this place where the words and music seem to be a part of the air, the shadows of the mountains, and the sky.
He lay with his face alight, alight. And his hands in the light alight, alight. Alight, alas, and the color of molten silver.
In the music she sees the boy struck down and wrapped in his mantle on the sand with an oil lamp burning beside him through the night. Killed in one of the feuds that sweep through the desert, setting everything ablaze. His soul goes walking over the mountains into Oud.
Shall we ever see that place, shall we ever find him, our winged stallion?
She watches sunlight color the trees.

“
I follow you, Iselda
.” She turns with a cry of delight to see her cousin walking toward her, rubbing his eyes.

“Do you remember all the words?”

“What are we doing up so early?” he says, squinting into the brightening orchard.

“Never mind that, do you know the words?”

He grins, sets his coffee glass on the balustrade, theatrically clears his throat. Then his voice, sad and true, darkens his eyes, which can never retain their mocking light once he has begun to sing.

I follow you, Iselda.

My arms are bleak with love.

Oh silver brooch, clear spring,

wind that brings the rain from the mountains.

I dream of you, Iselda.

My eyes are ringed with love.

Come lift the door of my tent

at the hour of confidences and lamps.

I torment you, Iselda.

My heart is white with love,

and you spit at my shadow as if at an evil thing.

It’s growing colder and soon Dasya must go back over the mountains, back to his home on the Isle before the first snow. Tav scratches at the stove with the tip of her Amafeini dagger, unhappy because the autumn is almost over. Because at Ashenlo their tutor awaits with his dreary diagrams, maps of the empire penciled on rough paper. Dinners with seven courses, riding the horses round and round the little yard. And wet woolen stockings. And their father.

“Don’t think about it,” Siski says, tweaking one of her sister’s plaits. The hot stove makes her glow all through her clothes. And Dasya comes in yawning, looking strangely tall from where she sits on the floor. He wears a white tunic with short sleeves.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asks him.

“No.”

He leans back, propping one heel against the wall. “Where are we going to ride today?”

That’s it, she thinks. He doesn’t think about it, I try not to think about it but he, he really doesn’t think about it.

“Maybe into the village again or around the edge of the Kesuen lands,” she says. “Maybe as far as the Well of the Hornets.”

“Yes, to the well.” By his smiling eyes she knows that it is true, that he is turned toward the future, shining, without regrets.

That night, even Tav and Siski forget their sadness, climbing a rickety footman’s ladder to light the lamps in the avla. The old lamps sputtering, black with filth. Above them hangs the ornamental dome, colorless now, showing stars where panes are missing. The children’s slippers glide across the floor, their shadows haunt the walls. They are playing londo with bits of broken marble.
Flutes. Eight. The South.
The sound of the makeshift pieces striking the mosaic floor sends echoes toward the night.

“
I don
’t think I could do it,” says Tav.

“You would if you had to,” says Dasya.

He casts the West and moves his marble chip forward with his toe. Tav stands with her hands on her hips, sucking her lower lip, observing the floor. “No,” she says. “I’d rather starve.”

“You don’t know, you’ve never starved,” says Siski. She casts a Nine.

“No, but I’ve been hungry,” her sister argues. “You remember when I got lost in the Abravei for a whole day. I was hungry but I’d never have eaten my horse.”

Tav squats and casts. Seven. She moves her chip to a square of jasper. Then Dasya casts, his wrist supple in the grimy light of the lamps. He looks up and swears and the sisters glance at one another and giggle. “We ought to make you put your tongue on the stove,” says Siski.

“Try it,” says Dasya, smiling. And because of the arrogant tilt to his chin the girls chase him, sliding and losing their footing on the floor, and the avla rings with shouts and with a high wild squeal as Siski slips on a londo piece and falls hard on the tiles. “That was mine, you shedyun,” her sister shouts. “I was winning!” Dasya is laughing, holding his stomach, leaning against the wall. Siski scrambles up and throws herself toward him, snatching at his belt as he twists away, locking her fingers under the leather.

“Get him, get him!” she gasps at Tav, her arm jerked forward as Dasya whirls about, trying to yank himself out of her grip. He seems to be dancing, the lights spinning about him. Then he falls backward on the hurtling, compact body of Tav, who has seized him about the neck. Siski falls on top of them with a scream and pulls her fingers free of the belt. “
Who am I?
” she says, her arm on Dasya’s throat. He arches his back but Tav has pinned his arms from beneath and he soon lies still. “
I don
’t know,” he says in a choked voice.

“
Who am I?
”

“A twenty-year-old mare.”

“
Who am I?
”

“
I don
’t know.”

“Say it.”

“
A shoemaker.
”

“
Ugh, get up,
” groans Tav.

Delicately, severely, Siski presses on Dasya’s neck. His eyes are bright, his cheeks turning red.

“Say it,” she warns.

“No,” he laughs.

“Say it or I’ll never get up.”

He closes his eyes and tries to shake himself free of her hair, which is falling onto his face.

Then he opens his eyes again. “You beshadun,” he grins, panting. “All right. You’re the Queen of the White Desert.”

2. And All the Windows Fade

The refugee woman stands in front of the house. She has arrived early. She blows on her fingers and stamps in the pale gold light. At last she sees her Nainish friend coming briskly down the street with two others. The refugee already thinks of this stranger as her friend.

They go around to the back door, and the quick-mannered Nainish woman knocks. A small boy opens the door and lets them into the kitchen. After a moment a footman arrives with half an apple in his mouth. At the sight of this apple, saliva floods the refugee’s mouth with sweetness.

The footman leads them into a huge, cold storeroom. Mattresses lie tumbled at one end and there are piles of cotton and down and dry leaves everywhere. The refugee’s new friend rolls up her sleeves, and one of the others, a tall, plump girl, takes a spool of white thread from between her breasts.

The new friend is called Dai Norla. The tall girl is Dai Kouranu, and the third is Dai Gersina. The refugee gives her name as Dai Fanlei. It is the first thing to come into her head, because of the apple in the footman’s mouth. She has named herself after apples, after high summer.

Her new friends are professional menders and turners of mattresses and pillows, they upholster chairs, they hang curtains and lay carpets. Their eyelids are slightly swollen, they all have the same dry cough; up close they smell faintly of red onions and bread. They want to know everything about Dai Fanlei: where she’s from, how many brothers and sisters she has, what she puts on her hair to make it grow. They laugh because Dai Kouranu once put egg on her hair and rinsed it with hot water, and then her hair was full of cooked egg!

“An omelet!” she exclaims, shaking the end of her plait with one hand.

Dai Fanlei laughs: a brittle sound. The others exchange glances.

She tells them that she is a schoolmaster’s daughter from Barbilnes. When the war came there, the schoolhouse was burnt down and her parents killed.

The others say: “Bastards, bastards.” They pat her shoulders and stroke her arms. They say it’s all right now, there’s a new Telkan on the throne. They ask where she’s staying; she says with an aunt, in the country. No, she tells them, it’s not too far to walk.

When the mattress is turned and dropped it falls with a thud and dust flies sparkling into the air.

Dai Fanlei helps turn the mattress. She’s stronger than she looks. The others approve of this. She makes nice stitches, too. When she pricks her fingers, she sucks them. She doesn’t get any blood on the cloth.

Dai Fanlei coughs. She is cold and dizzy. At noon Dai Norla gives her a heel of bread with a scrap of onion pressed into the center. And at the end of the day, after the housekeeper comes and inspects the mattresses, each of the young women is given seven droi.

The streets are dark and frozen. Dai Fanlei bids the others good-bye. She stops at the edge of the town to buy currant buns and raush. She has no bag, so she puts the raush in her stockings and carries the warm bread in her arms, as if nursing a calm, sweet-smelling child.

All the way up the hill, she weeps. The bread will taste of salt.

She is thinking of how her new friends cursed the name of Prince Andasya of Faluidhen. Already, they told her, young children are threatened that if they don’t go to bed, Green Dashye will come up the road in his coach of bone and catch them.

Look, there it is: Faluidhen.

That spring they went there together, all three children, but Siski had already been there several times before. She had even been there alone and she knew the inn where they stayed at Noi and how it was proper to leave, on the springy white pillow, a coin or two for the maid. From Noi it is not at all far, it seems so fast when you come down out of the hills and begin to see the orderly Nainish farms and the walls of the gardens, the great black fields where the gusts of wind come wetly bringing a smell of milk and the straight roads crossing each other, bordered by cornflowers. The villages are laid out like games of cards. Passing the Neidhvian you can see the keeper riding in his red cap. Then a gentle curve in the road and look, that gray roof, that’s the house. Light gleams in the windows of Grandmother’s hothouse.

In the antechamber one always eats bread and salt beneath the portrait of Uncle Virdan, and endures Aunt Karalei’s kisses and endearments. Dasya crunches the hard Nainish bread, wipes away the crumbs, and then shakes his handkerchief surreptitiously under the table.

Aunt Karalei advances with painted eyes. “My darling niece.” She has thick fingernails, rheumatism, a long necklace of greasy beryls, and heavy hair that keeps its blackness through the arts of a coiffeur who comes from Eiloki once a month, her only extravagance. Her round lips tremble, her fingers are red from being pricked with a needle. She leads Siski upstairs with a handsome silver lamp. Everywhere there are paintings, faetha, chairs ruminating in corners and unnecessary shelves where snuffboxes gleam like beetles. This is Faluidhen, all these cupboards and vases, these high doors. After her bath, wrapped up in a cream-colored towel, Siski unpacks the dressing gown that has come from Ashenlo without being used, folded in muslin and scented with orange water. For Aunt Mardith will certainly come in. And indeed, as Siski stands
at the window in antique lace there is a soft knock at the door, and before she has spoken the tall old lady glides forward, reflecting
the lilac light of dusk with her silks, her perfect teeth, and her spun-cotton hair.

“So lovely to have you with us my dear.”
Her kiss delicate, a snowflake
’s touch. Smoothly she closes the shutters and hides the view of the fields. “Once the lamps are lit one should always have the shutters closed.”
She touches Siski
’s hair, her shoulder. “Welcome home.”

For this, this great gray house, is home. “The home of your blood,” Aunt Mardith says, turning down the lamp. “You don’t need so much light to undress. Yes, the home of your blood,” she repeats, her figure copper-colored in the mirror that hangs on the door of the tall wardrobe. Her voice is very soft, almost melancholy. “Alas, we women are so seldom granted the joy of living at home. Unless we are very lucky, marriage takes us away, it scatters us. Why, just look what her marriage has done to your mother.”

She smiles, her lips pressed tight. “
But I don
’t want to be so grave on your first night.” She raises her hand, attempting a light and frivolous gesture. And her six pearl bracelets, fiercely white as if lying in their box and not against flesh, gleam with an almost martial elegance.

Grass in the garden already, transparent buds on the apple trees. And the crocuses, upright and golden, piercing the earth, give off a heat that melts the last of the snow. The wind is fresh and wet clouds race one another across the polished sky. Dasya leans against a tree, grasping a low bough with one hand. His shadow, falling across Siski’s red dress, is distinct from the shadows of bud and branch, separate, with its own character and weight. He holds up the book, his thumb across the fluttering page.
Emerald skies and a storm in which your name strives for existence, far from the earth, here at the fountainhead of the clouds
. That spring they read so much poetry. Tamundien, Karanis of Loi, Damios Beshaidi, verses out of the
Vanathul
. Dasya has come with books from his father’s library on the Isle, Siski with books she ordered from Ur-Amakir.
O small bird, the spring rain presses hard on the kernel of your mouth/ and brings forth pastures of lavender, blue with song
.

It rains. She lies on her back on a white wicker bench in the conservatory. His voice moves under the cadences of the patter on the glass roof, as he sits on the floor near her head, beneath the potted oleander whose pink blooms have the artificial shimmer of satin. Reading to her. Instead of his face she sees the gray glass above her splashed with rain, instead of his mouth pale crimson flowers. Only the drunken gardener, clashing shears and murmuring out of sight, disturbs the perfection of their solitude.
For I am unhappy without you, lakes are dimmed by the absence of your eyes
. An old poem, clumsy in rhythm, harsh with longing. She sees the stern poet sitting beside the lake in which a stone, when he throws it, sinks like a man whose beloved has gone away. That’s the way I’ll feel, she thinks. She says: “That’s the way I’ll feel when we leave.” She turns on her side to look at him, and his eye, unexpectedly close to hers, meets her with its darkness in which her face is reflected as in an obsidian mirror.

In the evenings, when the weather is fine, they walk down to the edge of the lake. Moving through the infinite variations of the twilight, at the maddeningly slow pace dictated by her grandmother’s frailty and good breeding, she feels herself part of a holiday procession. Sometimes, across the deep blue sky, a flock of swans is flung like droplets of milk. About the crimson lantern carried by Grandmother’s footman, myriad fascinated country moths stumble against each other, singeing their wings when they get inside the glass. The moon gleams high and faint: a tender moon, unlike the hard moon of the desert. Someday Siski will own this house, and she and Tav and Dasya will all come here in the spring when it is too dusty to be comfortable in their true home, Sarenha Haladli. Tav will sell Aunt Mardith’s castle of Rediloth when she inherits it and spend the money on horses, weapons, and dogs. “Let’s always keep these bushes.” Siski spreads her arms and presses herself deep in the dew-laden branches of the honeysuckle. She feels the silk of her frock being stained by moisture, feels the delicate sprays of candle-colored blossoms showering her with their dense perfume. Inside the house again she wears her shawl to cover the marks on her dress, and is seated on the couch with a glass of tea, when Dasya leans and plucks a leaf from her hair, bringing into the lamplight the bitter, humid luxuriance of the garden.

Dear old Nain. Suddenly there are harp notes from the corner where Aunt Karalei plucks the strings with her curved hands. Uncle Fenya, half asleep, grunts and taps his knee with his pipe. A threadbare hound rises and shuffles across the room. The tune is very simple. Grandmother nods her head and motions for the footman to bring her another tiny glass of los. Dasya stands and begins to sing. Siski did not know that he knew any Nainish songs. She does not know the song herself.

Aragu med hauven, hauven

ande linde o.

A song, she thinks, about mist, black geese, and firelight. A song about the smoke that rises from the little thatched houses buried up to the eaves in snow, where peasants are drinking. But no, when she asks Aunt Karalei, she learns that the song is about the musk deer that come to nibble the last of the cabbages in the winter gardens. The young girls set out milk for them in bowls. But one of the girls, as she stands at the window, sees a young man take the bowl of milk from her step and drink.
Aragu med hauven, hauven/ ande linde o
.
Would you steal my milk, my milk/ and leave my deer to starve?
The young girl scolds the stranger, but he doesn
’
t answer her, he only stares at her with eyes the color of wheat. And when she runs out to chase him away, he springs off toward the forest, leaving beautiful small hoof prints in the snow.

To bed, everyone must go to bed—for tomorrow is the ball.

“I’ll never get to sleep,” Siski whispers.

“I know,” says Dasya.

They stand in a drafty space between two staircases. Murky portraits glower from the wall.

“It’s nothing,” Dasya says. “It’s just a party.”

“It’s not, it’s a real ball, it’s my first ball.”

“But I’ll be there. I’ll take you for the first two dances.”

“Will you?”

“Three if you don’t mind.”

“But why should I mind?” she laughs.

The thought of dancing with Dasya carries her through the hours of preparation, the face painter coming to draw an orange rose on her brow, the battle with the hooks of her gown of apricot-colored silk, the crush in the doorway of the great ballroom of Faluidhen. The orchestra plays soft music; all the walls are hung with flowers. “Congratulations, my dear,” says Uncle Fenya, kissing her cheek. Her hand in his is limp and numb as if broken, and she forgets to return the congratulations although it is his birthday. Everything makes her start: a sudden burst of laughter behind her, from across the room the popping of a cork. Every time she moves, her arm brushes against the bouquet of starry clematis fastened in her sash.

Suddenly everyone is bustling, getting into line.

“Where’s your partner?” asks a dark-browed older lady.

“There, in red.”

“Don’t point, my dear. Come now, you’re on my left.”

Music, bold and lively, fills the room.

Her eyes are foggy with tears of excitement; she can barely make out his scarlet coat and the long gleam of his scabbard. Trying to move in step, she finds with horror that she has grown clumsy during the night. At last she grasps the spar of his hand.

“It’s just like Uncle Veda’s,” he says, smiling.

“No it isn’t, how can you say so? Watch my flowers!” she hisses, turning toward the wall. The measure changes smoothly, becoming more vigorous, and as she whirls her body remembers the steps, permitting her to forget them. She begins to look around her, taking pleasure in the music. By the arilantha she hopes it will never end. And during the klugh, when she opens her little fan with the gold tassel, she feels pleasantly dizzy, light-footed, walking on mist. She laughs. There is another girl with a painted rose on her brow and Siski embraces and kisses her, a complete stranger. Everyone must be happy, everyone. It is a ball. Behind the open windows, the tapestry of night.

“Come over here for a moment my child, sit down. Didn
’
t you hear me call? I want to introduce you to our neighbor, Lord Valmion.”

A small crimped face, fingers with swollen veins, a beard that looks dirty because of the threads of black remaining in its white.

“This is Firheia
’
s daughter.”

Siski squeezes the old gentleman
’
s hand, gazing on him with pity and affection. Everyone must be happy, even this relic in the shiny coat whose face expresses chronic ill-temper and pride. “Yes, it
’
s a sad thing to give up one
’
s daughters,” Grandmother sighs, dropping her eyes to conceal their triumphant glitter. “But there! My poor girls married well! It has nothing to do with me anymore, I
’
m just an old doll to be set up on a shelf.”

Slender, erect, dressed in mauve, with recently slaughtered rare orchids in her hair and tiny beads on the hem of her gown, Grandmother is as fresh as a girl of sixteen. Success has kept her that way, her callous spirit, the arrogance of her blood. Every one of the highly bred ladies who snubbed her in her youth now sends her a basket of flowers and fruit on the Feast of Plenty. Each day a heavy plateful of letters, cards, and little presents is carried in to her by a staggering lady-in-waiting. Utterly lazy, devoid of interests, she is never bored. She spends her days in the composition of notes that drip with sweetness and malice, and in the pursuit of the physical pleasure afforded her by heated baths, new varieties of perfume, and elegant clothes. Nothing has disturbed the shallow existence in which she splashes like a duck since her brief marriage, years ago, to a lord who conveniently died of a fever. The lacquer of her prettiness, unmarked by self-reflection, conceals as soul as shrewd as a jackdaw and as rapacious as a caiman.

“May I introduce you to my son?” rasps Lord Valmion. Siski looks up to see a tall man breathing through dilated nostrils. She already knows him; she
’
s seen him at her uncle
’
s hunting parties. Red Guldo of Dhon, a notorious brawler and breaker of furniture.