The Elementals Read Free Page A

defeated.
    Surreptitiously, Fintan eyed the other female occupants of the boat. Old Nanno, two prepubescent daughters of a man who had been killed, an infant girl in her mother’s arms. And forty-six
women of childbearing age, including Kesair. Kesair, to whom the others deferred.
    This gave Kesair an attractiveness Fintan had never noticed before.
    Under his breath, he said to Byth, “Look at Ladra over there, trying to curry favor. Can’t she see through him?”
    â€œYou sound jealous.” Once Byth would not have commented on another man’s emotions. But everything had been changed by the catastrophe. Byth stroked his chin, wondering when he had last shaved. None of the men shaved now.
    â€œJealous?” Fintan snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
    â€œUnder the circumstances,” Byth warned, “it wouldn’t be a good idea to get too fond of any one woman. Think about it.”
    Fintan ignored him.
    Byth shrugged. Arthritis bit deep into his shoulder and he rubbed the joint automatically, wondering how much damage the sea air was doing to him.
    The color of the sea gradually changed. From slate-blue it became a warm, dark green. Kesair was the first to notice. She lifted her head and sniffed the wind.
    â€œWhat is it?” Elisbut asked. Elisbut was a cheerful, chubby woman who made pottery and talked incessantly. “What do you smell?”
    â€œChange in the wind,” Kesair said succinctly. She did not want to encourage a flood of conversation.
    Anything was enough to set Elisbut off, however. “I don’t smell anything unusual, Kesair. Perhaps you’re imagining things. I used to do that all the time. My mother—you would have liked her—my mother used to tell me I had too much imagination. Now I never thought a good imagination was such a liability in an artistic person like myself, but …”
    Kesair was not listening. “We’re going to change course,” she shouted abruptly to her crew.
    Within half a day they caught sight of a thin dark line on the horizon and knew they had found land.
    Sailing in from the northwest, they made landfall on the rocky coast of what seemed to be a vast island. It was hard to be certain; most of the land was shrouded in mist. The boat ground ashore on a beach of white sand studded with black boulders. After dragging
their vessel as far up the beach as they could, they secured it and set about exploring the immediate area.
    â€œNo sign of people,” Ladra reported after scrambling up the nearest cliff and back down again. “But there is a sort of wiry grass up there, and I’d say we could find fresh water if we go in just a little way. We’ve been lucky. So far,” he added darkly. “This could be a bad place. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    Kesair assigned armed scouting parties to explore the area more thoroughly. All brought back similar reports. Thin soil, unsuitable for farming, but a lushness of wild vegetation. A pervasive mist that rolled over the land, blew away, returned with a will of its own. Glimpses of distant grassland bordered by forest. Outlines of mountains beyond.
    â€œIf we have to start life over,” Fintan said, “I would say we’ve found a good place for it.”
    They built a bonfire of driftwood that night on the headland above the beach. When Kesair found some of the women throwing the refuse from the boat into the sea, she ordered them to put it on the fire instead.
    â€œWhat difference does it make?” they challenged. They did not want to carry armloads of rubbish up the slope to the fire. “One load of garbage in an empty ocean, what difference?”
    But this time Kesair was adamant. Grumblingly, they obeyed. The tongues of the fire licked at the rubbish and a dark smoke rose from it, stinking of the old life.
    Blue twilight settled over them. Down on the shore, the red boat gleamed dully in the last rays of the