The Wait

Copyright R.D. Ellison 2004. Violaters will have their vital information hunted down and will be plagued by telemarketers for the rest of their natural lives. Possibly less.

Special thanks to auroraziazan for the beta and to K'Neesha and SilverSpoon for minor editing work. All mistakes found after their revision are probably as results of the author idiotically disregarding advice offered by the aforementioned trio of goddesses.

The girl and her mother had been making a breakfast of cooked potatoes, one apiece. Before eating they had to ensure that a sign was burnt into them according to the law of their tribe's religion. No matter that they had only a candle. So they had squeezed together over their thin, tired-looking candle with its crumbling wax, burning their fingers and trying not to giggle at the solemnity. Then came a shout that the Volunteers were here, dozens of them, all over the slums, and the girl and her mother thought no more of food cleansing rituals forever.

It wasn't unusual for a Volunteer or two, sweating with too much clothing and skirts for the men at that, to be wandering the streets. Their religion dictated that their young devote themselves to the poorest and most oppressed peoples of the world before marriage, and everyone in the slum save the girl's mother was more or less proud to be among those who warranted Volunteers. But for there to be so many, rushing and banging on doors and yelling, meant that something was happening. The girl was intrigued and the mother was pale. Bewildering speed tinted the hours afterward.

A Volunteer shouted the news up to the families in their building, with the girl's mother sticking fully halfway out of the window to catch everything he said. Everyone had spoken in the old language, so the girl was quite in the dark. Her mother did not take another bite. She ordered the girl to eat quickly, but instead the girl trailed her, asking questions in her shrill, childish voice, while her mother said nothing informative, only rummaged frantically, producing already-filled sacks from the oddest of places in their rooms. After transferring a few items from one to the other, including the girl's favorite and missing doll, whose loss she had mourned for the past month before, her mother gave her one of the sacks told her to be a good child, to run down to the city's west gates, to wait on the dais while she found the girl's brother, and to stick with a certain family they knew if she saw them.

"But why - where we goin', Mama?" The girl attempted using forbidden street talk to get her attention. Her mother's eyes betrayed that her thoughts were far away, too distant to attend to her questions.

"Hush now - off with you. As quickly as you can."

Her mother accompanied those words with a little push, but misjudged her strength, or her daughter's lack of, and the girl fell and promptly started wailing, much more from frustration than pain. "Mama!" she whined as her mother picked her up by the arms.

"Just go! Now!"

Said by the woman who had never hurried in her life, these words were convincing - half hysterical, half commanding, and as each was frighteningly uncharacteristic on its own, the combination had moved the girl to at least partial obedience. She scampered off, unable to get a firm grip on the sack, and soon slowing. With uncertain looks over her shoulder in a vain hope for the security of her mother and brother, she made slow progress through the streets of gravel and weeds, which were surprisingly crowded for such an early hour. At the dais she climbed up, needed to call a truce by the fist with two smaller boys whose mother had the same idea, and deliberately kept her eyes downcast half the time, trying not to catch sight of the family so that she wouldn't feel compelled to follow orders. The other part of the time she looked around nervously at the streaming exodus through the gate. Her eyes were peeled for two figures that, in her impatient estimation, took roughly forever to arrive. But arrive they did. She jumped off and ran to hug an unresponsive brother just a little above his knees. She had not expected her mother to find him. "What's going on?"

Her mother asked if she had seen the family. The girl shook her head impatiently and tugged her brother's sleeve. He was a grown man, and she quite small, so doing so required tiptoes. He had said very little and least of all to his family for some time, ever since his girlfriend's departure. She, as her mother had put it, had burned and frozen him to death for two years before leaving him recently with the crushing words, heard by most of those living on their street, that he was not nearly enough of a man for her.

"We're joining the line," answered their mother, somewhat breathless from the trek, as she was an inactive woman who would have been quite fat had she ever gotten enough food to allow it, and so was merely somewhat pinched-looking. Her days of beauty were long gone. Boys insulted her by telling her how fine she looked, or how that dress really brought out the lines in her face, and what did she comb her hair with that mornin', miz? At that moment, for once, she spoke with authority, despite her panting and awkward struggles with the other two bags cradled in her arms. The girl's brother was empty-handed, his slouch adding to his surly air.

To one so small as the girl, the crowd was a mobile, changeable forest of limbs - legs were trunks, arms were overhanging branches. She clung near her mother and brother and begun the wait.

The first hour, in comparison to the others, was not so bad. Once situated, her mother offered some explanation. The Volunteers had alerted them to something everyone had expected for some months now: the government would go through the overcrowded cities, rounding up urban members of the two predominant native tribes. Said tribes they dismissed as uncivilized and troublemaking. The latter label referred to their ages-old and bitter rivalry, which still shaped the country's culture and politics although both tribes were long since out of power. The army would send them all to forced labor in The Isle, the name for a nearby island known for the richness of its minerals and of its foreign tourists.

So the girl spent that hour indulging in melodramatics to deal with her emotion. But, after her mother explained over her crying that they were all lining up because the Volunteers had arranged for ships to transport them abroad before the army reached their city, she cheered up immensely. As scared as her mother and resentful as her brother seemed, she was rather intrigued. She alternated between sobs at leaving her familiar life and wonderings of if friends might be waiting for her across the sea. Her mother hadn't let her play often with the neighbor's children, saying that they were common and vulgar. "You're a bigoted af-fil-lent racist," the girl had proclaimed once through sobs during a fight on the subject, with only the haziest idea what the words meant, and her mother had said no, she was nothing of the sort, lest of all affluent, but she didn't want her to pick up their manners or their slang or their lice.

Tantrums served as a good amusement only for a short time. The girl only had so much energy, especially after skipping breakfast. And her surroundings offered no entertainment. Past the west gate was a path to the harbor, about two miles long. Wall-like fences of woven straw one inch thick had been erected, seemingly overnight. Not all of the two miles had been covered: the girl could squint and see foreign men finishing up at the far end, almost at the harbor, putting up the high walls that scaled the head of every person in line. The fences made both the two tribes inside nervous indeed. Unease melted centuries of grudges away as one family of fearful faces asked a family of the same, who would be equally at a loss for the facts, but sometimes more knowledgeable of the rumors.

"Why aren't we moving?" the girl asked impatiently.

Her mother wasn't sure. It seemed they wanted to fully put up the fences on both sides, which she eyed with distrust. The walls blocked all but a narrow glare of pale sunlight, but chilly morning wind blew through easily.

After one hour the girl started complaining, not with tears and screams and ground-fisting, but with a voice past the realm of plaintivity into that of whininess that made her mother sigh and even provoked her brother, who had been keeping up a good impression of a man whose five senses had all failed in regards to everything else. "Wicked men with eleven fingers carry off little girls who snivel too much and make them behave," he informed her in a deadened monotone. The threat proved unsuccessful. Frightened as she was by the bogeymen in question, the girl was delighted to make him speak again and gave him another thigh-embrace.

The girl adored her brother in spite of sundry humiliations, harsh words, occasional blows, or times (and there were many) that he had ignored her as she trailed and showered him with devotions, all of which only convinced her more firmly than ever that "my big brother" was the embodiment of manhood and greatness. His recent moodiness had not dampened her affection in the least. Although she could never have articulated it, she felt deeply, instinctively, and unconsciously that demigods were supposed to brew and lash out in baffling cycles; they were trials for their subjects to endure and prove their worth by. Although she often failed in her standards of fidelity and screamed over his rejections, she seldom grew truly angry with him, and then only for bursts of resentment that lasted mere half-hours. All it would have taken for the girl to comply with their mother's latest request was one word from him, but from the depths of his self-pity, it never came.

"Sell my doll?" the girl had just howled in response to her mother's whispered urging. She started crying, the very idea too much on top of the strain of the morning. She pulled it out of her bag and held it tightly to her chest with her hands, which were characterized by little grubby fingers and a fierce grip that only her brother could break, shaking her head with scowls and flopping braids every time her mother hinted at it afterwards. The Volunteers had come in among the tribes, whom they called "refugees," offering food. The girl was too upset to eat. Her mother traded items from the bags, including a beautiful golden headpiece, a gift from her son's father, for extra. She had been born into a family that had been well-off during her childhood. Here in the harsher present, she was not the only one bribing the Volunteers, although too few did.

The girl stopped pouting long enough to ask why the Volunteers needed money; they had never asked for any payment before.

"Because they haven't the money to buy extra food themselves," her mother explained. "Now hush."

The girl hushed and tried to reconcile her mind to this new, mundane, humanly fragile aspect of the Volunteers. To her the Volunteers, with their strange appearances, fluency in the old language that surpassed even the natives, and generosity with gifts, had been gods on a level even a little above her brother, who now told her impatiently that Volunteers were simply human beings, young missionaries from a strange religion that worshipped various stars and wild rice, a foreign plant. He was diverting her attention so that her mother could talk to a Volunteer in peace. His reward was that she found out the Volunteers themselves were building the high fences, as a rudimentary protection in case the government men arrived.

"Protection?" yelled a rival tribeswoman, in common. "They just left us with no way to run! They won't even let us get to the boats!"

And then a Volunteer shouted to him that the boats they had arranged for hadn't come just yet. A fellow tribesman in the girl's hearing muttered that he'd damn well swim if he had to. Another man nearby nodded and said that or kill himself, no way he'd ever be at the aliens' beck-and-call.

The Volunteers climbed back over the fences, leaving them to matters. The girl, ignorant of what was to come, reflected never been so miserable. Her arms were sore from her bag, which was heavy after an hour in her small arms; the tantrums had left her with a headache; gravel left uncomfortable indents when she sat but standing was worse; she was hungry from a foodless morning, regretting her twice-defiance of her mother's orders; the imminent future was uncertain at best; and her mother's proposal concerning her favorite doll put her in a mood that was sad and scared under many levels of pouting anger. Her mother was anxious; none of them spoke. Members from both sides had started verbal battles from boredom. Another young girl from the rival tribe had put her hands over her ears as the shouting grew in volume and frequency.

Then, by some invisible signal, people at the very front, half a mile down the path from the city gates, began to move. The others followed - hesitating, but only for a moment. Then, just as the girl's mother said, "Oh, thank heaven, there are storm clouds from the south," the mass of people exploded into chaos. The girl and her family were shoved from behind, then buffeted from the side, then, in a confusing impression of bodies and motion and shouts, found themselves pressed against a wall, and not the one they had been near only a moment before. The mother inhaled sharply as the commotion moved on. "Well don't just stare at them," said her son, giving her a most unfilial shove. "Let's go!" But although they tried the mother couldn't tug her daughter fast enough, and her son lost his momentary spirit when he saw that the girl prevented them from being competitive. Thanks to the mother's orders they had been within skipping distance of the line's front before; now they straggled and brought up the rear, ahead of just a few families with small children of their own.

Facing them at the very end of the path was a Volunteer with his hands stuck out as if to hold them back. He wouldn't have been able to, of course. Luckily he didn't need to. A final wall had been raised, blocking them from the harbor. At the sight of it the girl developed her first instance of mild claustrophobia.

"Please, people! We have tried to accommodate you as near the harbor as possible, but there are no boat as yet and it would be unsafe for any of you to go further."

There were mutinous undertones at this, but, cutting through all this sharp and clear, came, "Mama!" The cry was the girl's. "It's - Him!" She dissolved into an involuntary grin at the very thought of even saying His name, which she had always avoided doing. Although she couldn't see Him or much anything but legs at the moment, she knew quite well to whom the voice belonged. It was the amiable young Volunteer who mostly worked in their own neighborhood. He had given her a peppermint once. She held Him on a level only slightly below that of her brother - higher on those rare days her brother injured her too deeply to keep hold of her hero-worship.

Her mother, too, seemed to relax fractionally. "Hush," she said, listening intently for any other news. But He only suggested that they pray. "To the gods of everyone here," He said dryly, and the girl could picture his familiar grin. "Just in case two-thirds of us are dancing for the wrong guy."

The prayers put many into a generous mood and fortune seemed to turn around. "Let the families with the kids through," proposed a rival tribesman loudly. In response were voices of agreement. The girl and her family found themselves pushed slowly almost to the front again. She rewarded those who moved aside with a smile displaying her baby teeth that burst through her tear-streaked face as she still clutched her doll.

Evening came, with small amounts of food from fence-climbing Volunteers. The mother, casting a worried eye at the wall that blocked the view of the harbor, let them eat very little. Her son snarled at her, swiped some from a loose-fingered Volunteer, and ate everything in his hands. The girl lacked that option.

"I can't sleep, Mama," she muttered, bleary-voiced, bleary-eyed, bleary-headed, at the suggestion. Somehow she knew that no one was bothering to listen closely enough to decipher her little-girl speak that always seemed so strange and unintelligible to them. "I'm so hungry it feels like there's something chewing its way outside my stomach and the ground's too rocky and can't we go back home for tonight…"

"No, baby. We have to keep our spot in line."

Eventually she fell asleep, half draped over her mother. Even in sleep she was somewhat aware of shouts and scuffles and a light drizzle. Midway through the night a boat came in. All the sense of goodwill earlier in the day vanished. The boat could hold only twenty. There was at least ten times that inside. The people started a stampede to the gate, until the girl's mother, fearful of being trampled, pressed against the wall and did not join the fight. Most of the lucky twenty (twenty-one, in the end) were young men, who had all fought each other bloodily for the privilege. The others were women of the same ages. A few strapping mine girls had fought on their own behalves; many were escorts of boyfriends who had survived the brutality. The yelling and screaming slowly died down as they left, sinking into murmurs and sobs. The girl fell asleep again and, when waking up on her brother's broad shoulders the next morning, almost at noon, she had only vague memories of a nightmarish quality of the incident. Much more than twenty others had joined the line overnight to make up the loss. The two Volunteers (He and a young woman whom the girl envied) who led them in lunch and prayer that day looked at the crowd with anxiety. Some read their expressions dourly.

"We're not all goin'," said a man nearby. The girl couldn't focus her eyes to notice from which tribe he was. "Look at 'em. The Volunteers are wringin' their hands."

His companion clucked his tongue. "Prob'ly ain't enough boats gonna come."

"No more playin' nice. Next boat comes in…"

"You think you can fight all those kids to the front? They workers in their late teens and twentishes. You twice that."

"We could just kill them all now," remarked a woman, bitterly humorous.

The first man said something in the old language, and then, "Just watch. That's what'll all come down to in the end…"

The girl asked her mother if they couldn't talk to Him and ask for help in beating the crowd. Others around them had thrown themselves into pleading every time they caught sight of a Volunteer they knew. But her mother shook her head. "We're not the only ones who have eaten with him," she said. "He can't help us all, so it would be fair to no one."

The girl didn't understand this. It started to rain that evening in earnest and she grew ever more miserable. The ground was too wet to sit; her shoes, which she had tried for months to keep so nice and clean, got muddier and muddier, soon allowing dampness to seep through and sludge to cake her toes. And she was bored beyond anything she had ever known before. There was nothing to see, nothing to do, nothing that her mother or brother seemed inclined to talk of. She couldn't even listen to people speaking nearby because the many voices had all tangled until every word was intelligible, save for flitting rumors of the government army's proximity. She fell asleep long before the usual time simply for lack of activity; it wasn't as if it were light out in any case. The rainclouds were dark and heavy.

Next morning one more boat had come. This time the struggle for the boat was nothing short of pandemonium in which the shouts of the Volunteers, calling for compassion and righteousness, were the least noise of all. All was wild motion. The combatants should have been clear against the grey sky and neutral wall, but by that time everyone was so dirty that distinguishing them even enough to dodge from their way proved difficult. At one point the girl almost found herself trampled by a fellow tribesman. He stopped, said courteously, "Sorry there, little miss," and tossed her a few sweet berries.

He then made a quick dart away and proceeded to mercilessly beat up a rival tribesman in his way of the opening that led to the boat.

Her mother, aghast at the entire exchange, put the girl on her shoulders and stomped on the nearest berry before pressing herself against the wall, closed eyes their only defense.

By evening the pathway could hold no more refugees; the Volunteers made only half-hearted attempts to stop people from climbing over the walls. Few were desperate enough to try breaking in through the gate, right in front of which lay an ever-widening, ever-fouler latrine that the girl put off going to as long as possible. It rained from very early morning to a point past which the girl could keep track of time. No one was free of coughing, sneezing, snuffling. Their mother pleaded yet again with her again to sell the doll, saying that it was an old one indeed, handmade by a great tribeswoman. "Right," the girl said angrily. "And that's just all the more why I ain't selling it!" Her vicegrip on the doll put in a reappearance.

She didn't feel safe enough to sleep and thus overheard a conversation near her, as many others had fallen asleep or were not talking out of dejection. A boy, older than herself and younger than her brother, was urging a rather old man he called uncle. This was ridiculous, he argued, and dangerous at that, but mostly, he restated (maybe not wanting to seem afraid of the madness about them), it was ridiculous.

"Ooo, the Isle," he said when his uncle brought up the fate that awaited those who couldn't escape. "Big deal. I mean, look around you. Sunshine and sand, what a tragedy."

The girl pondered this momentarily. She saw this as perfectly logical. Wasn't it everyone's dream to live on or at least visit the Isle?

Finally the uncle snapped, after sniffling wetly, "Very well, go if lifelong slavery sounds all that wonderful," and the boy, missing or ignoring the tired sarcasm, took this for an invitation. Mistakenly, it proved. When he made moves toward the west gate his uncle wrestled him back, slamming him against a fence (the boy cursed stray twigs and splinters). Their next few exchanges didn't reach the girl's ears, but then the boy yelped something that she was never, ever allowed to say, and then, "That's not true! If you really - " another unrepeatable for the girl here " - loved me then you wouldn't want me here, where it's so damned awful!"

The boy started a counterswing, which might have ended things as he was considerably the stronger, but the uncle then swiftly pinched a certain bit of his neck, which made his nephew numb and still.

The girl turned to see her family watching - her brother with something unreadable but perhaps amusement, her mother with perfectly legible horror. The boy's stand, however unsuccessful, heartened her up for further whining of her own. "Shut your trap," the brother said after some time, stifling a yawn.

She climbed over to him and into his lap before he could stop her. It occurred to her that her brother would have made a suitable champion for her and her mother during the next fight of passage - he was easily a match for everyone left there, in her opinion - but voicing this thought thoroughly roused her mother from a recent nap.

"We will not act like a bunch of heretic barbarians," she said sharply and loudly, her speech a strange mix of a lapse into a common accent and a few high-sounding words. "Our duties to the gods do not end nor lessen in times of hardship - we're gonna remember that even if no one else 'round here will!"

A few people nearby clapped lazily, sardonically. One man whistled.

After this eventful night, the next three rain-filled days passed slowly. No boats arrived, which started something that could have turned into a panic had not almost everyone been too sick, wet, cold, and hungry to handle any strong emotions. As to the last, the Volunteers had been bribing the sailors through channels of communication that often resulted in their money being lost, and funds for food were running desperately short. There were two meals a day, and ones barely earning their name at that. At first the girl thought she would simply die of that painful, stomach-ravaging hunger, and she told her family so repeatedly. Then hunger paled beside the environment. She couldn't stop shivering, and, when her mother told her to move her fingers or toes or whatever seemed too cold, it hurt to do so. Her ears hurt more than anything and only aggravated a headache that had never really abated since it first had come on the very first morning of the wait.

Her nose ran and ran. Distractedly, her mother told her not to use her hand, not to wipe it on her clothes, not to sniffle, until finally the girl shrieked that there was nothing else to do, and her mother, assessing the situation more carefully, voted in favor of the clothes, which were filthy by that point anyway. The dampness penetrated them easily, and others were much more lightly clad, such as the ones now lying down, limbs outspread. She envied them their sleep; she was unable to rest properly herself.

The only thing that happened to break the monotony occurred in the evening of the second night. A woman with thick hair ("From the rival tribe," her mother said with grim relief, "we don't breed them like that.") climbed the fence and started shouting a combination of a speech and curses, saying that they were unpatriotic and undutiful to run away and thus defy the orders of their righteous government. Such people as them, she said, were barbaric and undermined their country, society, and all of civilization. She had the air of a person who had plenty more to say, but that was far as she got, because everyone started shouting her down. Some started throwing things - the girl saw a burlap sack, a solder pan, a woven basket, and quite a few handfuls of gravel go flying - but true as their aim might have been, it was nothing to the verbal ammunition. The nicest address among them was either "fool" or "madwoman." The one that most stuck with the girl was one who screamed at her to get the hell out of there before they killed her, "you shameless government arselicker!" She ducked, but continued to urge them through the fence in surprisingly loud tones to submit gracefully to those who held the mandate of rightful rule, as of yet it wasn't too late, until some of the Volunteers did away with her.

By the third day hunger made a comeback at the second meal. Dull as her stomach was, the few bits of food seemed to make it expand horribly and gapingly. Swiftly and suddenly as a heartbeat, the doll now meant nothing to her.

"Mama! Mama!" She dug around frantically, only to realize she still had it in the crook of her arm. She thrust it into her mother's hands. "Here! I don't want it - I want to eat!"

Her mother only smiled weakly at her. "It's too late," she said, voice rough and fading. "No one's parted with any money for the past day, baby."

That her mother hadn't scolded, as was to be expected in such a situation, only made things much the worse. The girl wanted it to be the week before, and to be walloped for her stupidity. Time passed; her shock didn't. Even rumors of the army’s proximity didn’t shake her. Once she made a halfhearted attempt at another tantrum, but would have been too tired to keep it up even if her mother had not hushed her and said that she would disturb those who were sleeping. At this, her brother snorted, eyes fixed on a girl near them, pretty but for an obviously recent pallor and unnaturally colorless lips, and a man who may have been her father.

"They's past disturbin'," he muttered. His mother sent a sharp elbow into his side. The girl had heard but didn't grasp the meaning, only enough of it to grow ever more scared. She put in the day pleading with her mother to send her brother back to the city for supplies. Her mother refused, at first with a great deal of righteousness. Send her boy off when their boat could come at any minute! The girl pointed out, perhaps too reasonably, that they would never get on that boat in any case. Her mother fidgeted and picked at the skin around her fingernails in indecision. The brother himself offered no reassurances that he would be all right and quick at that, so it took some time.

Their mother occupied herself with the cold. She was quite tired herself, shaking the girl and telling her not to fall asleep in such cold one moment ("'Tisn't healthy") and then sinking into a doze herself the next until the girl jumped into her lap, none too gently, with a sort of inexplicable but compelling instinct born of deep-seated fear.

So her mother hugged her and ran her shaking hands through the girl's hair, which hurt some, as by then it was so knotted and messy, and started going on and on with the old stories. "You ought to know why you have to suffer this," she said, as the girl watched raindrops cling to her short eyelashes. Some of the stories were familiar and as confused in the girl's mind as ever (she had gotten the idea that a troop was a sort of small animal, a good deal like the frog, and was to be worshipped, for example) and others were new and more confusing yet. Her mother slipped in and out of consciousness, coughing out more legends when in. When out the girl pressed against her but found her mother could spare little comforting warmth and so preferred her to be in.

By nightfall as a sliver of a moon appeared her brother stomped, interrupting a tale about an early king who ate some of his subjects, in which the girl had found all the thrills and none of the morals. The stomp wasn't very effective: it splattered mud, eliciting a "Hey!" and noises of disgust from his sister, as if he had soiled her any more than she ever was, and, rather than a satisfying clump, it made a squish. It only infuriated him more.

"Quit it!" he yelled, voice lost in the huge bubble of yells even when raised. "Quit it, just quit it! You and them stupid legends! Our damned her'tage! None of that's why we're suff'ring, d'you think the government people have a single care about our past? And while you at it, maybe tell her some of the rival tribe's legends, 'cause, y'know, she 'suff'ring' for them every bit as much as our-ones; that is, she would be if they had anythin' to do with it!" His mother tried to say his name and barely got out of the first syllable. "We sittin' here dyin' and you go prattlin' on about them damned stories! 'Sif they matter! Stupid bickerin' newlyweds bicker themselves into gettin' lost on a damned boat and then go 'round orderin' a bunch of brainless troops to build a civilization, I never liked hearin' about them idiot ancestors of ours, that story never made no sense, and I have to stand here dyin' while I hear it again, as if it made one f----in' ounce of diff'rence!"

Her mother didn't answer, except for a sigh. The brother seemed to have tired himself out with his rant and soon sank into a much-needed nap. But when a boat came in, and the ensuing fight left many injured and quite a few in a state even the girl knew wasn't merely sleep, her mother changed her mind and asked him to go back into the city to find more supplies - food, or money, or something to trade for either, or new clothes, or protection, or -

"Can't go righ' now," he said sullenly, voice stupefied by sleep. "If you been listenin' to what everyone is sayin' you know there's a riot in the city; they're killin' natives. Wait 'til mornin'."

By the light of morning - which, in the rainy season, was generally only a few shades lighter than night - the girl could see the uncle who had held back his nephew (pinching the same tendon, she realized now, as did one of their distinguished tribesmen from their legends, although she couldn't remember exactly who or why right then). Even she could tell that he was "past disturbin'." She wondered where his nephew had gone. If he had gone last night then maybe he had been lynched. The girl was well aware of lynching; apart from problems in childbearing, it was the only sort of death she had ever been acquainted with before. Looking at the old man, however, she found her mind making its own conclusions, new ones, frightening ones, but to her credit she didn't shrink from them, only stopped using the boy's logic whenever she tried to persuade her mother to abandon the wait.

With her brother gone her mother told stories again, which the girl didn't mind. She was too cold and too tired to listen (too hungry at that, but hunger had lost out in the multi-way battle of her various discomforts for her attention long ago, except when the little portions were passed around and the few bites expanded her stomach for a miserable hour or so). But the voice was comforting. When the hoarse voice gave out and the embrace weakened the girl felt strangely alone and vulnerable, and when she found that her mother was asleep the feeling grew worse. She spent a long time - how long she was never certain - staring about at all the strangers who were moving and talking fruitlessly, and feeling the chill of the air, and watching wispy grey clouds move swiftly across the sky, and noticing the lay of pebble and dirt and bugs around where she and her mother sat. It was all hugely lonesome, and she started crying a little for no reason that she could pin down - not sobbing, but a few tears that were more painful than all her previous hysterics. Her eye caught the pretty, dead young woman her brother had seen the day before and she suddenly started shaking her mother - shaking, punching, slapping, saying "Mama!" all the while.

Her mother came to with cloudy eyes. "Baby, what's wrong?"

The girl hugged her fiercely and rocked against her and buried herself in what was left of her mother's comforting fat. After a while she said that she could see her brother, farther back in line, not fighting to get to them. Her mother didn't ask if he had brought anything thing, only sighed, and shifted weakly, and said in a broken voice, "I want to see him."

Something about the words, or the voice, or both lodged into her stomach. She disengaged herself and stood on tiptoes, waving and shouting for her brother. Their eyes met once, briefly, but his dull ones looked quickly away. After a few minutes she realized her mother was beckoning. "Sit down, baby," she whispered after the girl had done just that. "Want you here…"

It took hours for the girl to wonder when her mother was going to wake, and hours more to change that to an "if," and longer yet to be certain, and some time more to accept it. Finally a Volunteer yelled that another boat was in sight, causing her to rejoin reality, the Volunteer's voice awakening her again to all that surrounded her.

She had no fear of corpses, never having been told of them, but after a while she got up quite slowly, eyes wide, feeling almost paralyzed. Her mother's chin was resting on her chest. Her hair suddenly looked brittle and her features as if they had been set like that for a hundred years. The girl stifled a sob, but she was not ready to cry. Not yet.

Little as she was, she pushed her way through the crowd of unforgiving people, most of who, heavy with weariness, did not budge easily. Her limbs moved with only a little less difficulty, but she managed, rather as sleepwalkers do.

Her brother was leaning against one of the fences, eyes half-lidded.

"'Choo bring something?" the girl asked.

It seemed she startled him - as much as he could ever be startled. The question was rhetorical, of course: the young man's hands were empty. "Where you come from?" he asked, equally pointless, and then asked, "Where's Mama?"

"She's past disturbing."

He looked down at her at this, finally bestowing upon her the attention she had craved all her short life, but the girl didn't notice, because at her own words, she broke. Her little hands clenched and unclenched and her eyes stung. Tears leaked over, but they weren't hot, as such tears are; she was chilled the whole way through. The foreign feel of those tears marked the point where she could no longer bear it.

"I'm so sick of it - d'you hear me?" She started shouting, mustering energy from goodness-knows-where. "I'm sick of it! Look at us! I'm wet and cold and hurt" - a deep breath, for her little lungs weren't quite up to her brother's caliber of rants - "all over and have been waiting here ages - " (another breath) " - and never getting and boat and f'r nothing and I want - " (another breath) " - food and a bed or most of all anything just so long as it isn't here - "

She started punching and slapping him wherever she could reach, just like every time she had ever lost patience and started childishly beating him, yet nothing at all like those times. Back then she had been secure in the knowledge that she could take out her frustration that way, because she could not hurt him, nothing could hurt him, he was strong and invincible and perfect. This time her thoughts didn't run quite along those lines.

" - and you soo stupid and just standing here while everyone else like you is fighting and trying and - and all for their family - and not even getting nothing from town - "

"There wasn't nothing, our rooms had been all - "

" - lump, you big lump, you don't do nothing, and I just sit here and - " She started gasping, ceased her blows, fell to her knees, hand on her throat with no small amount of theatricality, but as always her dramatics were the only way she had of expressing herself " - dying, I'm dying, dying!" She gloried in the latest addition to her vocabulary. The word was so sayable, almost beautiful. "I can feel it, I can't stand this, I'm dying!"

She chanced a look up, way up due to the difference in height; he was looking down at her, a small victory, but his expression showed no more emotion than the swirling, clouded sky above him.

"You - bastard!" She choked on another sob; her mother would never allow her to say that word. She threw more insults, never to know how terrifyingly strange it was for him to hear what came out of his baby sister's mouth. "Bastard! Coward! Idiot! Arselicker!" She gave a shriek like a cat's final meow. "No wonder she left you if this is what you would have done for her!" She took a breath and went on, "I bet she could help us more'n you - there's no one but weaklings left now and you still don't - " but there was nothing for it. Already he had roared to life.

"Shut yer trap!"

The girl looked up, hardly daring to believe it - but yes, yes it was. He had spoken just like he used to, imperious and impetuous, and how he suddenly looked, with his face flushed and eyes glinting and his fists clenching. Again he was her demigod.

"Stupid little baby - you sick? You hungry? You want me to fight this line for you?"

She couldn't speak, just stared at him, eyes moist due to something quite apart from the dampness and tears. Probably veneration.

"Fine! You're going to get a boat, you are."

He stormed off. Even in the mud, his stomping once again meant something. The girl hastily rubbed her eyes with her hands, to see the more clearly.

The battle was magnificent. Her brother was not quite as graceful as others she had seen, but she saw easily that he was the strongest there; his blows had real power behind them, and his movements were somewhat slow but devastatingly sure. Something in her chest swelled; hope nearly choked her, and then conviction did make her gag. He was better than anyone else there, and a boat was coming, and this time - they would be on it.

She jumped up and darted in his wake. The end of the wait beckoned. She hadn't the faintest idea of what would follow, but so long as they were out of these fences she could learn to love it, and with her brother restored to her all would be well. She watched, fascinated, and he threw a would-be attacker over his back; the assailant laid on the ground, still conscious but too shocked and hurt to move. He landed a blow straight in another's face, charged another against the wall, dodged a knife, landed a well-aimed kick -

Three others, barely more than boys, thin and wild-eyed, tackled him at the same time. The girl had time to yell a warning, but how did one warn a god? Surely he had known, surely this was a feint.

Only it wasn't. The trio went off, moving as if they had moved together often, and her brother was still down. The scarlet blood was the one bit of color in the bleak scene, and the view of him there, spread out ingloriously, with that patch of blood extending on his temple and beyond, would stay in her memory long after she forgot her language, her grammar, her tribe's legends, the texture of her doll, the layout of her and her mother's rooms.

He had fallen mere feet from the fence. It opened, just slightly. Someone - she realized that it was He - yelled that the boat could admit thirty. She didn't respond for a long moment, and, when she realized that she was within running distance of that opening, everyone around her had rushed through, pushing, knocking the back of her head with a sack, one man whooping with joy. And then the area around her was empty.

She fell on her knees beside her brother and sobbed, deep in her throat. There was no energy for anything more; if feeling were correct then her own life would end with the sobs. And they may well have, but then a hand laid on her shoulder, which was so small that the former actually covered the greater part of her back. It seemed foreign, but the girl could not startle nor resist. And then she recognized His voice as He said her name. But she didn't feel anything at the recognition. After the past week, he was nobody, nobody at all. He had been on the other side of the fence.

"Poor little girlie. C'mere." He picked her up. Once this would have sent her into ecstasy for months. Now she would have fought had she had anything left in her. "You're a wreck, ain't'cha? I'm sorry - " with an awkward nod at her brother, whom he had known. "Come on - you're getting on this boat right now or may the wild rice never again grow on my doorstep."

The girl never mentioned the three bags she and her mother had lugged over. She left them there, leaning against her mother's body.