Wild Thing Read Free

to draw breath.  She struggled harder, the fury of her smaller body arching his own much larger form forward into a bow.
    But still his grip did not ease, and slowly her movements weakened even as the desperation in her cries grew, and his tears flowed harder, as if his soul broke.
    Long seconds passed as her struggles slowly faltered; and, finally, ceased.  She fell still.  For a few seconds more he held his grip, eyes closed, panting but alert even now for a trick: he knew his wife.  But at last he released his arm from her neck and awkwardly slid her gently to the ground, eyes now imploring the shaman.  'Please.  Aunt White-Eyes.  Check my wife.  Check our unborn child.'
    The blind woman moved forward, the strangely beautiful dance of terror and love that she had sensed, now settled into an awful pool of peace – and of terrible fear.  The blood dripping from his nose to the floor shone in her Sight like flares of molten fire.
    Tears flowed freely down her own face as she moved forward to sink beside the man, her hands moving surely over the woman, dreading what she would find – but soon amazed at how little injury Shining Hair had suffered in the furious melee.  She sensed the small life within, shaken and frightened, and sent it soothing waves of reassurance, of calm.
    'She is well.  Both are well.  She will wake, soon.  But what then, Crazy Bee?'
    'Then: I hope .'
    -
    She swam up into consciousness with a strange reluctance, as if not wanting-
    Remembering, ashamed, she gasped, leaping to full awareness, lurching upward, her eyes darting.
    She lay in their own tepee-dome, while her husband sat calmly across from her, sketch-pad in his lap, head down as he drew.  One leg stretched out awkwardly before him as if his kneecap ached, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.  His whole face was bruised and purpled.  Her eyes widened in shock.  I did all that! she suddenly remembered.
    One hand flashed to her belly, and the relief that flooded through her almost made her groan.  But her – other? – daughter?
    They've taken Happy Mouth!
    She lunged forward, grabbing the pad from her husband's lap; furious with herself, furious that he could be sketching-
    Oh.
    A long dark line now scored his drawing, but the scene struck her with the same force, the same sickening blow to the belly as when the shaman had shared it earlier.
    His pencil sketch showed the once-green lands of the Sky Corn community as the burned and charred wasteland of the second vision: charcoal spears that had once been pines, now sharp black bones extruded from the earth; blackened triangular spars, the skeletons of scorched geodesic tepees.  He'd been partway through drawing a carbonized skeleton.  A very small carbonized skeleton.  Her breath caught in her throat, and she flung the sketch pad away and rose, stalking to the entry-way.
    She paused.  'Where is-?'
    'When I asked you to marry me,' his quiet words from behind her somehow stopped her own.  He continued in that same gentle voice.  The same love in the tone as when he had fought her, when he'd been forced to risk their unborn child's safety by rendering her unconscious.  'I promised to respect your wishes.  Today, for the first time in our lives together I could not do that.  If you wish me to leave, to find a different tent, then… then I will.'  He pulled angrily at his hair, like he wanted to tear it out.  'Just think.  That's all I ask.
    ' Think .  I swear, ’Lita, in my bones: I know if we do as your heart begs you to do – as mine begs me! – within two weeks the Sky Corn will be a sea of ash blowing in the wind, and Fate alone knows what sick vengeance he'll visit on us.  And on Happy Mouth, to hurt us best.  He won't kill us , ’Lita.  He has people surgically altered for his amusement!  Remember his own daughter ?'
    'Have you finished, ’B?'  She refused the truth, turning away.  'Good.  Then I'm going to find where they've sent our daughter, and