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before we sleep.+
Thann sat by the small fire gently massaging the egg in xe s pouch and
watching xe s daughter sleep.
For the first time in weeks Isaho wasn t writhing in the grip of night-mares;
her face was smeared with dust and a crust of dried moss, but it was calm and
sweet, and the sight of it was balm to Thann s weary spirit.
The red faded in the dying coals as the sky lightened. Finally xe emptied a
mug of water onto the last patches of fire and curled in xe s blanket next to
Isaho, listening to the femlit breathe and wondering if xe was going to be
able to sleep. Almost in the middle of the thought xe was gone.
Thann woke not remembering where xe was, lay star-ing at the crooked lacery of
twigs and leaves over xe s head until last night s events came back to xe. Xe
sat up and smiled despite the aches and stiffness of xe s body. Isaho was
kneeling close by, a little pile of broken wood beside her. +Did you sleep
well, Shashi?+
Ground s hard. She rubbed at her side. And there was a stick poking me. But
I didn t dream.
She wrinkled her nose. Thanny, I saw some plants, they looked like pictures
in my farm book, you know, tatas, I was thinking maybe we could dig them and
cook them? And there was some qanteh, I
pulled one and it was fat and yellow, see. She reached behind her and brought
round a dirt-crusted root with the three leaves like feathers growing from its
crown. I remembered Mam ... I remember you washing them and cutting
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the tops off and slicing them for me to eat. I liked them.
+Must have been a kitchen garden, Shashi. Let me get my teeth cleaned, then
you can show me where you found those things.+ Xe pushed the blanket back and
got stiffly to xe s feet, then turned to frown at Isaho. +Did you clean your
teeth and wash yourself?+
Ahhh, Thanny ....
+No matter. We can have our wash together.+
The wild garden was quiet and peaceful in the waning hours of the day; the pop
pop from the snipers and the scream/boom of the shells from the Mountain Guns
seemed distant and somehow muted. As the sun slipped lower in the west, Thann
found xeself increasingly reluc-tant to leave. Xe and Isaho could live here
well enough, at least until the egg hatched and the anya inside began to
suckle, venturing out only when they needed things the garden couldn t give
them. They could clean out the shed and use debris from the house to
weatherproof the walls, and the war could go on around them, but they d be
safe.
Each time xe s mind traveled that road, xe would catch sight of Isaho watching
the sun, measuring how soon they could leave. Then the dream would slip away
from xe. And even without Isaho s urgency it would still be only a dream,
xe knew that. Peace anywhere was ephemeral, to be treasured and
dismissed.
They left the garden as the red was fading from the western sky and crept on
through the fringes of
city, an area deserted, ruined, gone wild. Several times they ducked behind a
wall or under a hedge to hide from ped-dlers or farmers packing in produce on
the backs of munymys, but that was only because
Thann didn t want anyone to see or question them, not because there was any
danger in these folk. The scavenger gangs never came this far, setting their
ambushes deeper in the city.
By midnight even the ruins were behind them. The road was a collections of
shell holes and erosion, but it was at least an open space in the tangle of
weeds and plants gone wild, berry bushes whose long tough canes had brittle
thorns that caught at anything that brushed against them and broke off at
the slightest pressure. The small farms that had once lined this road and
provided fresh vegetables for the city had been deserted for years, the
families who worked them driven from the land by the Pixa phelas who killed as
many as they could and burned out the rest.
Thann was back to being scared again. Xe didn t like having no straight lines
xe could depend on to orient xeself, didn t like knowing nothing about what
lay on the far side of any bend in that awful road.
Letting Isaho guide xe s steps, xe sent the thinta sweeping round and round
again, fearing that Pixa phelas or the murdering robber bands xe d heard about
on the radio would some-how slip past xe s senses and come down on them.
The anya-in-egg was restless, kicking and scratching at the leathery
shell; Thann s fear was like nettles rubbing at it. Xe knew that, but xe
couldn t control xeself. All anyas had trouble dealing with uncertainty;
they liked order and calm, with their cousins and bondkin close about them.
The road grew slightly better as Thann and Isaho left the city behind;
there were no more shell craters, only ruts and potholes decorated with
the dried manure from packer munymys and teams of draft skazz, wheel tracks
from the farm wagons and the footprints of the small lives that ran in the
briars and birds hunting out grass seeds.
Thann kept to the road because there didn t seem to be anything else to do,
but it worried xe. Their only hope of actually reaching Linojin was to stay
elusive and apart like mayomayos living near a mahay s lair. The road made
them targets.
Near moonset they came on tilled land.
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The field was enclosed by a double fence of barbed wire, the strands only a
span apart, the outer fence at least two meters high. In the narrow lane
between the two lines of barbed wire.a pack of hunting chals came running
to-ward them, throwing low threatening growls at the walk-ers in the road.
With a small squeak Isaho crowded against Thann, clutching at xe.
Thann patted her, led her to the far side of the road, one eye on
the chals. The extra distance stopped the growls, but the beasts paced
along with them until they reached the end of the field and moved into a
stretch of wasteland.
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