Calamity's Child Read Free

and
ought by rights to simply curl up on the moss by the dying fire and
sleep off the sorrows of the day.
    In the heart of the fire, an ember
exploded in a rush of scarlet ash. Slade jerked -- and
froze.
    Walking swiftly across the trampled
and vacant moss came a tall reed of a woman, her dark hair braided
with feathers and flowers, her short robe of soft suede, her legs
and feet naked.
    Forward she came, until he could see
her face in what remained of the firelight. Wide, pupil-drowned
eyes stared down at him from a bony, long-jawed face. Abruptly, she
checked and looked wildly about, but there were no other hunters
shivering and lachrymose around the dying fire. He was the
last.
    As if the realization galvanized her,
she jumped forward and grabbed his wrist. Her fingers were cold;
her grip strong. Without a word, she turned and marched into the
darkness beyond the fire. Slade, perforce, went with her; all but
oblivious to exalting songs and catcalls from the
standers-by.
    The sounds and warmth fell away behind
them, and there was dust underfoot, her shape distant in the night,
and her hand, unrelenting, to guide him.
    She came at last to a small tent in
the next-but-last circle. Brusquely, she pushed the flap aside and
ducked within, dragging him after, her fingers bruising his
wrist.
    Inside, he was at last released, as
his captor -- his wife -- turned to lace the flap. Slade looked
about, finding the interior of the tent as cluttered as Gineah's
had been neat and shipshape. In the center, beneath the air hole,
was the fire, banked for the night, bed unrolled beside
it.
    He felt a hand on his arm and turned
to look up into the face of his wife.
    In the relative brightness, he saw
that she was younger than he had at first supposed -- scarcely more
than a girl, even by the standards of the Sanilithe -- her forehead
high, and her jaw square. Her lean cheeks had been painted with
stripes of white and yellow and red; those on her left cheek were
smeared. Her eyes were the color of summer moss -- gray-green --
and very wide.
    Still, she said nothing to him, merely
reached with hands that trembled to begin working the knot in his
kilt. His manhood leapt, eager, and she gasped, the first sound he
had heard from her, snatching her fingers away.
    Gods
, Slade thought, his mind
sharpening slightly within the shrouds of drugs and
exhaustion.
She's
terrified.
    "Wait," he said softly, catching her
hands. She flinched, and looked at his face -- at least she did
that -- and did not pull away. "Wait," he said again. "Let us trade
names. I am Slade."
    She swallowed, and glanced to one
side. "Arika."
    "Arika," he repeated, struggling
toward gentleness. "It is not necessary --"
    She pulled her hands free. "This tent
requires a hunter."
    "Yes," he said, trying to soothe her
with his voice, trying to ignore the increasing demands of his
body. "Yes, I will hunt for the tent. But it is not necessary to
continue this, now, with both of us tired and
frightened."
    She stiffened at that, and awkwardly
reached for his hands, looking sideways into his face.
    "I -- there is nothing to fear, inside
my tent," she said, haltingly. "Slade. There is no harm here. I am
-- Tonight, I will teach you a mystery which will, will bond us and
make us stronger for the tent."
    A set piece, poorly learned, he
realized, holding her cold fingers. And all honor to her, that her
first thought was to soothe his fears. He smiled,
carefully.
    An unmarried hunter of the
Sanilithe was a naive creature. He learned of the mystery of sex on
the night of his Choosing, from the woman who had Chosen to become
his wife. It was that same wife who would later decide how many
children the tent might rejoice in -- and a married hunter was not
at all certain quite how those children came to be. Verad spoke of
seeds, but in the context of a fruit eaten, perhaps from a tree
known only to the
erifu
of women.
    Though obviously herself
terrified of the upcoming mystery, Arika would be