If you have someone who figures they are going crazy because they hear voices, and there is no one to make a diagnosis of either demon possession or schizophrenia, what happens when that person meets another person who makes the voices stop?
Gale (we met her a little while ago) hears voices. And they aren't talking to her at all. They're talking about politics and succession, and killing people who get in their way. Sometimes they talk about sex. Obviously they have nothing in common with her and the village wherein her family lives, but their voices are so loud that they are all she can hear. The voices of everybody around her are reduced to moving lips and pantomime.
Gale has been hanging on to her sanity by working with the dye pots. It is a job that she knows by heart and she finds herself again and again when she is putting colors on fabric.
Loren is a traveling story collector. He bumps into Gale as she is on her way back to the dyehouse after bathing, and she notices the temporary absence of all thought but her own.
She discovers that when she is around Loren, the voices are quiet. The conversations continue, but they are outside of her hearing. However Loren is a traveller, so after collecting stories, his plan is to leave.
Is this enough of a motivator for Gale to leave her village and travel with him?
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