The Kin Read Free

into the crack. Suth watched her, puzzled, as she tried it at different angles. Then, wonderfully, a drop of water appeared on a side twig beneath it, and another and another. She cupped her free hand under them and caught them as they fell, until her palm was full. She lapped the water up and looked at him, still as if she expected him to yell at her or strike her.
    â€œGood, good,” he said, smiling. “Now you show Noli.”
    While the others were learning how to use the stick, he picked up the fox and laid it on its back. Holding the flake of stone between thumb and forefinger he drew the cutting edge slowly along the seam of the belly, again and again, never pressing hard for fear of breaking his cutter but gradually slicing through the tough skin.
    The three girls watched in silence, but Ko squatted by his side, jaw set, frowning, longing to join in, longing to help. Suth was about to snarl at him to keep clear when he thought, Ko saw his father die. He saw his mother taken. He was walled in a dark place for a day and a night. He does not understand any of this. He does not understand there is no Kin now for him to belong to. I understand all this. With Noli’s help I am leader now. We are their father and their mother .
    So he told Ko to hold the fox’s tail clear while he worked. It didn’t need holding, but it gave Ko something to do, and they both felt better.
    Slowly a scratch formed. The scratch became a cut, and then Suth was slicing into the fat beneath the skin. He sawed at the ends of the cut, widening it until he could plunge his hand through and pull out the guts. Still very careful of his precious tool he cut the liver free.
    Suth was the leader now, so he ate first, cutting himself a mouthful before hacking off pieces for the others while he chewed. Fox meat was better roasted, and even then had a strong, rancid taste. Still, it was food, and none of them had eaten cooked food since the fight, when the strangers had taken away their fire log along with the women.
    They chewed in silence. Noli put her mouth to Otan’s and forced some of her chewings between his lips. He sucked them in and gaped for more.
    â€œThat is enough,” said Suth, when they had eaten the liver and the heart, though his own stomach still ached with hunger.
    â€œYes,” said Noli. “It is strong meat. Too strong.”
    The Kin were used to empty stomachs. Sometimes a Good Place would fail. They would find no game, or there would have been a bush fire that destroyed the plants they’d expected to harvest. Then they would have to travel on, foodless, to the next Good Place. Even the little ones understood that cramming a starved stomach with meat ended with a bellyful of burning stones.
    Suth cut away the parts of the fox that people do not eat and told Mana to carry them well away along the slope and leave them there. The rest of the carcass he laid against the foot of the cliff and piled rocks over it to keep it safe. Then he drank again and sat looking out over the burning plain below. Somewhere out there what was left of the Kin was moving further and further away. Soon they would be dead, in the waterless desert. He would never see them again.
    Another thought came to him. No. We six children, on this hillside—we are what is left of the Kin.
    He looked at the others. Tinu, so skinny and small, so ashamed of her odd face and speech that she had never dared be anyone’s friend. But smart all the same—the trick she had done with the twig in the crack showed that. Little Ko, who had always made everyone laugh—almost as soon as he could walk he was trying to swagger like a man. Mana. Suth realized he knew almost nothing about Mana, had barely noticed her before now, she was so quiet, though he had known her since she was born. Otan, lying asleep in Noli’s lap. He was still too small to know or guess much about. And Noli herself …
    When had Moonhawk begun to visit