Adversity Read Free Page B

heart-shaped face. Her
dark curls, her lips that smiled more often than not, and her
ingrained need to please, made her a gift of a different kind. She
had the sort of face people liked to see, a face that people
rewarded. Drina and Jaelle were of much greater value than Kali
because they brought home more, but Jaelle was growing swiftly,
losing that baby adorableness that the gaje seemed to go weak
for.
    As she
and her sister approached the village, Kali’s nervousness grew ever
stronger. Something tried to push her away, to refuse her passage,
but she ignored it. Her instincts warned her to avoid the village,
but she needed her sister. She also needed to be useful enough to
win a place at her camp. She would push past imagined dark omens in
order to please her sister.
    “ Wait.” Drina pinched her daughter’s cheeks, flooding the
sallow skin with red. “It’s time, baby. Time to smile for the
people.”
    “ This is so wrong.”
    “ But necessary,” Drina said firmly before pinching Kali’s
cheeks as well. “It’s a strange village, sister. The people are
overly familiar one day and cruel the next. Be aware, and watch
your tongue. Keep yourself out of trouble, and give them what they
want.”
    She gazed
into Kali’s eyes. “Stay with me.” The words held weight, and the
meaning held depth. Kali knew she couldn’t refuse her
sister.
    They
strolled in, side by side. A few watched their entrance with
interest, but many cold stares fell upon Kali, chilling
her.
    “ Most of the homes are on the outskirts and beyond the village.
There are some grain farms and orchards, but most of the men work
on farms belonging to another. Being mostly poor, they hate anyone
who owns anything. Many of the women gather in the centre of the
village to buy and sell goods; others come to gossip only. They are the ones to
watch.”
    Drina
herself was charming, and she managed to find a couple of older
ladies eager to hear their fortunes before the midday sun did its
worst. The younger ones, girls closer to Kali’s age mostly, tended
to be secretive about their desire and curiosity. Drina had learned
a lot about the villagers in the months she had lived at the camp,
and she knew enough to forewarn her younger sister. Kali didn’t
often need her warnings, though, for she knew enough—too much,
really—whether she wanted to or not.
    The
Ukrainian summer was sticky and humid that year. Kali had been all
over Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, for the last two years.
She was tired of moving, though the nomadic lifestyle was in her
blood. Her people were driven to wander, but an unspoken desire to
settle down had been stirring within her of late. She wanted to get
used to a place before she moved on to the next one. Life without
her sisters had been lonely, and she’d hoped her father would
finally leave her in a camp one of her sisters belonged to. As long
as she got away from him, she didn’t care which one, but if she had
the chance to pick a sister, she’d choose Drina without
hesitation.
    Kali told
fortunes while Drina sold pieces of cheap jewellery, and as
outsiders, she and Kali had to set up their wares far from the
village centre, where ruddy-faced women haggled over prices.
Slowly, ever so slowly, however, the curious made their way over to
Drina and Kali, and most of them made a show of cooing over Jaelle
before they finally succumbed to their curiosity about their
futures.
    The
fortune telling went as usual. Some wanted cards; others requested
palms. Kali disliked reading palms, because the act was too
personal, too many dizzying images flashed at once. With the tarot
cards, she could take her time and make up a pretty story to shroud
the truth. Her dream was to scry into a crystal ball. She wanted
her own home to gaze in. The women would come to her for a change,
and that would be her money-maker. People always asked about the
crystal balls, but there was no beauty in scrying on the side of a
dusty track.
    Her