Day melted into day, distinctions lost in a haze of heat, dust and exhaustion.
The paddock herds grew and grew, the bins were full of fleeces, ready for winter’s combing and spinning, the culls were finished and butchering done. The Brushies collected their pay in woollies, meat, cloth and sugar and prepared to leave.
It was over.
##
Matja Allina stood on an upended fleece bin and spread her hands as if she blessed the wrung-out workers looking up at her.
“It is done,” she said. “Well done.”
A patter of hand against hand.
“You have worked hard and played hard.” She smiled at them, letting her eyes wander across the faces of chal and chapa and the harder, darker faces of the Brushies. “I have no doubt there’s a crop been planted that will come to light nine months from now, a lusty squalling crop of sons and daughters.”
Laughter and some long smoldering looks exchanged between Brushies and certain of the chal and chapa.
“This is a happy day for all of us.” She spread her hands again. “It is a great sadness for me to blacken these good feelings, but I need to warn you all, especially those of you going back to the Brush. Procagharadad is in Kirtaa with two Families. You know that. Know this. The Arring Pirs called me last night to warn me. Kamaachadad has hired a hundred tumaks to hit at Ghanar Rinta. I said a while ago that Shearing waits for no man’s war to end, but, Amurra bless, the war has waited for the end of Shearing. It won’t wait much longer. The tumaks will be here before the month is out. You know them, you know what they’ll do. If they catch you in the Brush, they’ll play with you until you wish for death and send you home to be a warning. They’ll fire the Brush; yes, they’re fools enough to do that. They’ll kill whatever they can’t catch. We’ve had tumaks before, but never so well armed and supplied. So take care, people of the Brush. If the time comes when you want shelter behind Ghanar walls, if I still have the say…” she broke off, her composure momentarily shattered.
A sigh passed through the crowd. They knew what she was not saying; if Pirs was killed, someone else would be ruling on who was let inside Ghanar walls.
“If I have the say still,” she went on, her voice hoarse but, determined, “you will be welcome here. Go, then, our friends, and take care, take very good care of yourselves.”
9
“You let her run wild, Matja. Wild. Out all times of the night, by herself, no one watching her. The Jili should be whipped for neglect, hasn’t the girl learned anything? What if she’s not virgin? What if your own daughter has got herself a Brush bastard? Who’s going to marry her then?”
Matja Allina was nursing Paji and staring out the window, her shoulder turned to Polyapo. She twitched like a horse trying to shoo off a troublesome fly. But this fly wouldn’t be twitched away and wouldn’t stop its buzzing. She sighed, shifted around so she was facing Polyapo, moving carefully so she wouldn’t disturb her baby. “Ingva’s no fool.”
“Any girl’s a fool when her blood is up.”
“No. You don’t understand her. She’s got a cool head, my girl has. She knows what she wants, and she’ll get it.”
“Not if word of how she behaves gets out. Even if she is still virgin, who’ll believe it?”
“What’s so wonderful about being wed to some grizzler three times her age? That’s what she’s got to look forward to and you know it, Polyapo Ulyinik. With my history of stillborn sons and daughters, a second wife or a third is all she can hope to be. Hope!”
“What else is there? Poor relation in some other woman’s house? No, running to the Brush. That’s it, isn’t it. That’s what you want for her. Running to the Brush. You didn’t have the nerve to do it yourself, so you want her to.”
“I want her to have what she wants.”
“She’s a child. She doesn’t know what she wants.”
“You’ve said your say, Polyapo Ulyinik. I don’t want to hear any more on this subject.”
“If the Arring knew what you’re doing, he’d be furious.”
“Arring Pirs and I know each other’s thinking quite well. And if I find you bothering him with this when he needs all his mind set on staying alive, you’ll see such anger you’ve never seen before, Polyapo Ulyinik. Must I remind you, it’s only by my forbearance you are not-chal. Hear me, Polyapo, continue to annoy me and you’ll find yourself swearing the oath. Now, get out of here and consider your future carefully.”
Polyapo pinched her lips together and left the room.
Paji whimpered, his milk supply interrupted by the knotting tension in his mother. “That woman, AH! that woman…” Allina rubbed the baby’s back. “Oooh, baby, ooo aaah, lovey yum yum. She drives me wild sometimes. Yes, baba-lirri, Paji-ji, yes my lovey. Kizra, come play me that funny little song, um, that stepchild song, I need something to wash that bitch from my blood.”
Shadith brought the arranga and a cushion across the room, settled herself and began picking out the song. “Step easy, Stepchild,” she sang…
Step easy, Stepchild
Watch where you walkin
It’s wolfdays, Stepchild
Bourghies in your garden
As the days grew longer and hotter, Matja Allina napped through the middle of the afternoon, leaving Shadith on her own.
The Grays closed around her.
What is this?
She threw the question at the grayness and got no answer, but she didn’t really need one. Her memories were back, the good and the bad. The Grays were closing round her. When she allowed herself to think, she told herself:
I will die here, still dithering.
It wasn’t as bad as the time in Ginny’s ship when she saw no way out and just started to die.
She knew the way out. She just couldn’t scrape up the energy to take it. She couldn’t plan, she couldn’t go on preparing for the run to Nirtajai, the escape she kept putting off and putting off-all the reasons she found for not leaving were good reasons, logical reasons, but fake.
She slept as much as she could, spent what waking energy she had not-thinking, waiting for the Grays to pass. They would, she knew that, with interference or without, the Grays would go away. Until then, all she could do was stay alive and wait.
Then the tumaks hit them.
##
The Herbmistress had Eeda and Jassy and the rest of the garden chals out before dawn, working in the home gardens, harvesting the first planting of tubers. After the Shearing and the departure of the herds, Matja Mina had, set chal and chapa to getting in all produce mature enough for preserving; she wanted the storage bins and shelves filled as much as possible before the tumaks made working outside the walls too dangerous.
They were digging up the roots, brushing them off and tossing them into baskets, laughing, chattering, Jassy teasing the girls about lovers in the Brush, Eeda throwing tubers at her sister when she got too graphic. A cheerful lot, working hard, trying to get the field clean before the sun got too high.
There was a shot. Another.
Jassy’s head exploded, she fell sprawling across a row of tuber plants. Eeda screamed, crumpled across her sister as another pellet punched through her heart.