A Different Flesh Read Free

and disjointed his two rabbits and tossed the meat into the stewpot. The rabbits shared it with a small piece of stale venison from a couple of days before and a mess of wild onions, beechnuts, mushrooms, and roots. The smell was heavenly.
    â€œAsleep now,” Anne said, nodding toward the cradle, “but very well. She smiled at me again this morning.”
    â€œMaybe next time she will do it in the night, so I may see it too.”
    â€œI hope she will.”
    While they waited for the rabbits to cook, they dealt with the rest of Wingfield’s catch, cutting the meat into thin strips and setting them on racks over the fire to dry and smoke. After what seemed an eternity, Anne ladled the stew into wooden bowls. Wingfield licked his clean. Though matters were not so grim as they had been the first couple of dreadful winters, he was always hungry.
    â€œI would have had another cony, but for the sims,” he said, and told Anne of the confrontation.
    Her hand jumped to her mouth. “Those horrid beasts! They should all be hunted down and slain, ere they harm any more of our good Englishmen. What would I have done here, alone save only for Joanna, had they hurt you?”
    â€œNo need to fret over might-have-beens; I’m here and hale,” he reassured her, and got up and embraced her for good measure. “As for the sims, if they be men, slaying them out of hand so would burden us with a great weight of sin when we are called to the Almighty.”
    â€œThey are no creatures of His,” Anne returned, “but rather of the Devil, the best he could do toward making true humankind.”
    â€œI’ve heard that argument before. To me it smacks of the Manichean heresy. Only God has the power to create, not Satan.”
    â€œThen why did He shape such vile parodies of ourselves, His finest creatures? The sims know nothing of farming or weaving or any useful art. They cannot even set fires to cook the beasts they run down like dogs.”
    â€œBut they know fire, though I grant they cannot make it. Yet whenever lightning sets a blaze, some sim will play Prometheus and seize a burning brand. They keep the flames alive as long as they may, till they lose them from rain or sheer fecklessness.”
    Anne set hands on hips, gave Wingfield a dangerous look. “When last we hashed this over, as I recollect, ’twas you who reckoned the sims animals and I the contrary. Why this reversal?”
    â€œWhy yours, save your concern for me?” he came back. “I thank you for’t, but the topic’s fit to take from either side. I tell you frankly, I cannot riddle it out in certain, but am changeable as a weathervane, ever thinking now one thing, now the other.”
    â€œAnd I, and everyone,” Anne sighed. “But if they put you in danger, my heart cannot believe them true men, no matter what my head might say.”
    He reached out to set his fingers gently on her arm. The tender gesture was spoiled when a mosquito spiraled down to land on the back of his hand. The swamps round Jamestown bred them in throngs worse than any he had known in England. He swatted at the bug, but it flew off before the deathblow landed.
    Outside, someone struck up a tune on the mandolin, and someone else joined in with a drum. Voices soared in song. The settlers had only the amusements they could make for themselves. Wingfield looked out, saw a torchlit circle dance forming. He bobbed his head toward his wife. “Would it please you to join them?”
    â€œAnother time,” she said. “Joanna will be waking soon, and hungry. We could step outside and watch, though.” Wingfield agreed at once. Any excuse to get out of the hot, smelly cabin was a good one.
    Suitors were buzzing as avidly as the mosquitoes round the few young women who had not yet chosen husbands. Some of those maids owned distinctly fragile reputations. With no others to choose from this side of the sea, they were