Old Green World Read Free

why.” He fired two more in close succession, each of which struck closer to the center. He looked back at Mura and smiled. “I think I got it,” he said, and approached the target to free his arrows.
    “Good.” Mura said. The setting sun cast itself right across her face, and Albert could see the variegation in her color that only came out in full light. There were small flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes. Her hair was close to the scalp, but he could still see the reds that mottled the dark brown. “Are you all right?” she asked.
    “I’m fine. I’m just thinking, I guess.” He paused. “I won’t be shooting targets for much longer. I’ll be a soldier, like you were.”
    Mura shrugged. “I guess you could call it ‘soldier’? We didn’t have a word like that. It’s different from what we have here. We were just a group of people with weapons and a goal.”
    “You met Mama and Papa then,” Albert said. He plucked at the bowstring absently, firing nothing into the ground.
    “We fought near the village where Mama and Papa grew up,” Mura said. “There were raiders there, making chaos, and we were trying to stop them. But we failed. Some of us escaped, but the village was razed. I think you already know about that. It was tough. A lot of people were killed.”
    “So you saved Mama and Papa when you all escaped,” Albert said.
    Mura smiled. “It’s probably truer to say we saved each other. But yes, we escaped. There were others as well. We all got away together.”
    “What happened to the rest of the people?”
    “The trip was difficult. Some people didn’t make it. Most of us did, though. We found a village in Baixa, and most of the group settled there. You know the rest. Mama and Papa and I kept going. We wanted to get far away. We wanted to make sure we were somewhere peaceful. So we crossed the sea and found this place and made a life, and we had you.”
    Albert drew and fired several bull’s-eyes silently before speaking again. “So you and Papa and Mama are married, right? Thomas has to get married to that girl in Over-town. It’s the same thing, right? Just that Administrators have rules and ceremonies for it?”
    “I don’t know, really. I don’t understand what their ritual is all about. It has more to do with land than anything else, I think. Papa and Mama are village kin, and Mama and I love each other. We all raise you together. Maybe Thomas can tell you what that would mean for them.” Mura studied Albert for a moment. “Why is this so interesting to you all of a sudden? Is Thomas putting something into your head?”
    “No, of course not. It’s not Thomas at all. He doesn’t want any of it,” Albert said. “Maybe he’ll say no. I don’t think he should do it.”
    “I see.” Mura sighed. “Of course.”
    He said nothing. He was scared of what would come out if he spoke. He did as he first learned from Sister Alice when he was very small: he stood very still, turned to the sound and feeling of his breath, and let the things he held in just wash over him.
    Mura stared at Albert for a long time, then gave him a kiss on the cheek. She crossed her arms, hugged herself, turned, and walked toward the house.
    Albert took some time to collect himself. He shot a few more arrows: they were all true. He could shoot an arrow, no matter how he felt. When he felt calm enough, he headed toward the house.
    Mura tended to the fire. Mama Lini and Papa Arto were making supper. Lini was the tall, stout epicenter: her red hair cascaded from her head in all directions, and the energy of the room danced around her. Piles of chopped soup vegetables sat before her in a frozen orbit. Arto was a compact block of a man, short and sturdy, with a thick black beard the only hair left on his head. He held down the floor with his gravity. He was dropping biscuits for cooking.
    The Todorovs spoke a casserole of dialects. The languages of the White Island and Viru made the meat of it, but it was