“What women survived for millennia,” Daneh replied. “And don’t come crying to me about your problems, I guarantee that you don’t wake up nights in a cold sweat seeing McCanoc’s face in front of you. Or worse.”
Sheida paused for a moment then shrugged. “Daneh, I can… how to put it. This can go away for you. No more nightmares.”
Daneh thought about it for a moment then shook her head. “Can you do it for all of them?”
“In time, perhaps,” Sheida said after a moment. “It doesn’t take much more power than simply talking like this.”
“No,” Daneh said after a moment. “No, that’s not the answer. I’m fine, really, except for the nightmares. And they’ll go away. They have to,” she trailed off.
“You need to talk about it,” Sheida said. “I’ve… accessed some very old texts. Rape is as forgotten as…”
“Everything else,” Daneh nodded. “Rape and economic and sexual domination. We were shielded from it for so long. ‘Machines freed women and computers empowered them.’ But it’s all back and in a way it’s all of a piece. Take away the technology and women are nothing but pawns to the males. We have to find a way to deal with it now and in this world. Not patchwork in the old world.”
“Then find someone to talk to.”
“That’s what everyone keeps saying, except the women who went through it. And we don’t want to talk about it, thank you. Especially to family, Sis.”
“That’s… what the texts said you’d say. But they also are definite. You need to talk about it, to get out the… bad thoughts and find out what is real in you and what is an effect of the rape.”
“I don’t suppose you can get some of these texts to me?” Daneh said sourly.
“Not yet, soon maybe,” Sheida said. “Sending an avatar is one thing; teleporting texts or even items that can receive updates is another. We’re on the thin edge of losing right now. If we can just get some breathing room, maybe then.”
“Well until then, thank you but no thank you. I’ll just put up with the nightmares. And ‘get back on the horse.’ ”
“Be careful with that,” Sheida said. “You’ll probably have some ugly flashbacks. And other things.” Sheida paused and shook her head. “You’re right. There’s things I don’t want to talk to you about. Just… be careful. Everything that happens may not be… natural. Damnit, in that whole camp of historical idiots there has to be someone that has studied rape! It was a natural feature of all that wonderful history they love so much!”
“The only ones that might have are Edmund and maybe a guy named Gunny,” Daneh said. “And I don’t care to talk to either of them about it, thank you very much.”
“You’re being very stubborn about this, Sister dear,” Sheida said.
“I’m a Ghorbani,” Daneh said with a faint smile.
Sheida started to say something then looked startled. “I have to go. Talk to someone, damnit!”
“Good bye, Sheida,” Daneh said.
“Bye.”
Daneh took a deep breath after Sheida left and thought about the roster of people in Raven’s Mill. “Damn, she’s right” she muttered then walked to a cupboard and took out a bottle of brandy. She looked at the cups and then shook her head and took a deep pull from the bottle. “I can’t believe that I’m going to do this.”
She looked at the door and then pulled a cloak down against the evening chill and went walking out the door. She had and idea who to talk to. Now to find her.
McGibbon had just drawn a bead on the lead doe of the herd when he froze at a flash of white out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t figure out what the patch was until it moved again and then he identified it; it was that damned cat of Rachel’s.
He’d been stalking the herd of deer for the last half hour. Stalking was a highly skilled art but he’d been practicing for nearly fifty years and it was second nature to him at this point. The first part was finding the quarry, which was a matter of moving through the woods as if he was a deer himself. That required moving a few steps then pausing and actually making a bit of noise. If you tried to move absolutely silently it was impossible. So you had to move as if you were a foraging animal. A few steps. A movement of a foot. Watch, listen, smell, then move on.
The most important thing was to sight the deer before they spotted you. If you did that, you could close in on them with relative ease. Foraging white tails couldn’t spot movement when their heads were down. And they flipped their tails before they raised their head. So you kept an awareness of their movement, an alpha state in which whenever they started to flick you froze instantly and, at least at his level, almost unconsciously. They would raise their heads, look around and then go back to eating. Which let you get closer.
He had gotten to within a stone’s throw of the deer and had just drawn his bow when he spotted the cat.
On the other hand, it was doing much the same thing. He watched it as it froze in its stalk just as the deer lifted their heads again. There were about fifteen deer in the herd, foraging on fallen acorns at the edge of a natural meadow. He was on the west edge of the meadow and the cat had apparently entered on the southeast edge. Now it was doing a careful and quiet stalk, and despite the fact that the town needed the food he let the bowstring slip silently forward to watch.
As soon as the deers’ heads went back down the cat moved forward again, its belly to the ground half-hidden in the tall grass at the meadow’s center. It moved cautiously, lifting each paw and placing it so that Robert suspected it was making less noise than he would.
Slowly it worked its way to the edge of the tall grass and appeared to focus on one deer on the edge of the herd. The button buck was probably from the last year’s births and just about ready to be driven out of the herd. As a sign of its relative status it had been driven to the edge of the herd where the acorns were the fewest and it was assiduously searching for anything edible it could find. This meant it had its head down far more than the rest of the herd and far more than was wise. And if the cat wasn’t overreaching, the buck might not live to learn the lesson.
Robert watched the stalk until the cat paused at the edge of the grass, then drew his bow again. It was the only compound bow in the village and while it was a very strong draw the nature of the compound bow dropped the “hold weight,” the amount of pull necessary to keep drawn to its full length, to barely half it’s maximum hundred and fifty pounds. But even seventy-five pounds can be a lot to hold for very long and he hoped the cat would make its move soon.
It did, as the buck moved just a tad further out, searching for the elusive wind-blown acorns. When the deer got to within a bare five meters of the cat, the white and orange tom burst out of the grass in a dead sprint and leapt onto the deer’s back.
Robert hadn’t bothered to watch the charge. At the first flicker of movement he had loosed the arrow straight into the “sweet spot” behind the doe’s shoulder. However, despite having a broad-head arrow through her heart the doe bounded away with the rest of the herd, intent on leaving the commotion of the attack of the cat behind her.
Robert now watched in bemusement as the cat first shifted its grip to the deer’s throat, dragging it around and down by sheer weight. Then, as soon as the buck was on the ground, the cat made a lightning change to a clamp on its muzzle. Deprived of oxygen, the deer thrashed and twisted but to no avail; the house lion had the big buck down and down it was going to stay. With a final kick and thrash, the deer lay still.