by Stacey Berg
She lifted another stone, judging its size and shape carefully as she brushed sand and grit from its pocked surface. By now she had a space, not much more than a burrow in the rocks, to sleep under cover from sun and protected from any predator bold enough to hunt this close, and a smaller vestibule where she could light a fire if she wished without filling her shelter with smoke. She had been careful to clear the area around of any flammable materials; the ruins were marked everywhere by fire, and she had no wish to die that way. She had not troubled to store edible plant material as she would in the desert proper, for scrubby vegetation, roots reaching deep for the buried water, had established itself here and there among the crumbled rock. Instead she methodically gathered and stacked ancient bricks, bits of pipe, even twisted metal bars and other parts that had once been structural. The desert was filled with such riches. Her predecessors had not managed to strip everything of value even in four hundred annuals, and there would still be resources for the clever four hundred annuals from now, if they could manage to make it that far. She could not envision what the city must have been like at its height, when these vast wastes had been densely inhabited, the great empty spaces filled with buildings, people, life. What the Church guarded now was nothing but a fragmentary remnant.
She could survive indefinitely in the desert with much less effort than this; it seemed foolish to invest so much energy in a structure she had no intention of inhabiting. Yet she kept working ceaselessly. If she paused, if she let her guard down for so much as one moment, she was there again: standing in the Churchyard that night, in that moment when words against the Patri burst their way through her lips, when she had actually accused him before the body of the Church, had named him capable of—of what?
It wasn’t only what she had said that tormented her now, though the words had been deserving of his wrath. She had spoken recklessly, in anger and dismay, but words alone were insubstantial. They could be reexamined later, if later came. Far worse was what she had felt, in that awful moment.
He had done nothing but pocket the stunner. Yet she had accused him, as if he had triggered it himself. Tana was dead; a weapon’s case was scratched. She had no other facts, no evidence of wrongdoing. Yet something had happened in her brain, some defect uncovered by the shock, perhaps, and in that moment she had doubted—not only the Patri, who after all was just a man, but everything. She would not have thought that a hunter could even be capable of such a transgression. She could scarcely believe it of herself. She tried not to think about the Saint at all; even in memory, the girl and what she had become deserved better than to be sullied by the touch of Hunter’s thoughts.
Sometimes in the night when she had just managed to fall into a restless sleep, she awoke with a start, imagining it all the nightmare of some toxin, some incapacitating wound, until her outflung hand struck rock, and she remembered where she was, and why. Then she knew, deeply and beyond any doubt, that she had earned this exile. She did not know whether it was mercy or the worst punishment of all that the Patri had not simply had her put down, culling her as she deserved. Either way she determined to do her penance, as long as she was able, and when she finished she would walk farther out into the desert and find an end.
Yet sometimes she doubted whether she could hold even to that simple plan. She found herself, in her weakest moments, making contemptible excuses for herself. Could the Patri, she wondered then, have planned this all? In one way it could serve his purpose: an exiled hunter, one publicly humiliated, might seek shelter among the cityens, make common cause with the disaffected. Might find her way, eventually, to the very man the Patri sought: the Warder. Be ready, the Patri had told her; had he meant for this?
No, surely not; it was impossible. For then his plan would have had to include Tana’s death—her murder. And he would have had to count on Hunter’s reaction, expected her to go against all her training, the very purpose for which she was made, and do what no one could have guessed she would—he would have had to know, to use, how very unsound she was, how fatally deep her doubts—
No.
These were only her excuses. She only wanted it to be the Patri’s plan so she did not have to face the enormity of her failure. She kept recalling her meeting with him, the way he had offered her forgiveness. The way he had trusted her. She had proven that she was unworthy, that was certain. Maybe it was his own weakness. I am fond of you, he had said. There might be hope there: if she could somehow do his bidding, regain his trust, one day—
She buried the thought away where she could not betray it too, then emptied her mind and set the next stone in place.
Some hours later she sat in the cool shadows of the vestibule, carefully stripping meat from the bones of three of the tiny animals that scurried among the rocks throughout the ruins. Hunting here was easier than in the remoter desert. The canids rarely came close to the forcewall, and the small game was less wary, though soon the ones nearby would learn that her approach meant danger, and then she would have to venture farther for her meals. Or into the city.
But not yet. She gathered the bones in her hand, and, after deciding that she did not need to extract the meager marrow for a soup, walked a little way away from her shelter to bury them.
A shadow followed her, making tiny scuffing noises. Bare feet, she judged, and small. She bent to move a rock, making a show of setting down her pack, that her observer would know still contained meat, then shifted far enough away that he or she might underestimate her range. When the shadow moved, she was ready, striking with hunter speed to grab the wrist attached to the hand that closed around her bag.
A male child, hardly bigger than a toddler, dangled in her grip, face screwed up in pain. The arm she held was alarmingly thin, the bones her fist enclosed scarcely more substantial than those she had just buried. She set him down on his feet with a hard thump, not letting go, though her grip eased. “You need to be more careful when you scavenge from predators larger than you.”
“Are you gonna kill me?” He spoke with the slurred drawl of the cityens, so familiar from the tithed girls who only gradually acquired the precisely measured syllables of the Church over their years as nuns.
“I will if you try to steal my food again.” She let him ponder that for a minute, then released his wrist. He stood rubbing it silently, still eyeing her bag with cold calculation. She revised her estimate of his age upward to eight or nine annuals. She wondered with mild interest what he was doing out here, and how long ago he had come. It must have been some time: he was filthy, with long matted hair that had been hacked short enough in front to stay mostly out of his eyes. The shirt that hung around him had enough intact seams, barely, to keep it from falling off. Either he wasn’t its original owner or he had once been much heavier. She doubted the latter. Bones stuck out of him everywhere, not the sinewy lean build that a hunter girl his age would have, but the desperate thinness of starvation. “As it happens, I have extra. Here.” She tossed him the last two little animals from her bag. Beneath the faint squeak of her shoes on dust as she walked away, she heard him scrabbling in the dirt.
She almost turned back, to warn him that he should take shelter before some larger scavenger came to steal his meal in turn. Then she stopped herself. He was not a hunter child having a lesson. However he had gotten here, he had survived until now. How long that lasted was not her concern.
Close to morning she became aware of sounds around her in the ruins that she had not heard before. She was not without defenses: the static wand was one of the things her hands, still competent even with her mind whirling in turmoil, had thrust into her pack that night. She had checked it carefully, as soon as she was alone, for signs of sabotage; there were none. Now, lying in the shelter, she refrained from reaching to assure herself that it was nearby; she had laid it close to hand before settling to sleep, and she knew it was still there. The faint urge troubled her, nonetheless.
With the languid movements of a sleeper, she rolled onto one side, looking through barely slitted eyes towards the opening of her vestibule. The watchers were unlikely to notice the way the apparently haphazard post propping the roof could be pulled out in a second, trapping any invader under a fall of stone and brick while she escaped through a bolt-hole from the shelter.
She heard the noise again, saw transient darkness as someone passed the crack in the curtain. Someone small, followed by another, and another. Just children, but enough of them could be a threat. She feigned sleep for a long time, waiting to see what they would do. Nothing happened. A small breeze kicked up as the dawn drew near. It brought her the scents of the desert—silica, dust, a hint of vegetation. Nothing of predators tonight. Closer, the mild but distinct taint of prepubertal humans, unwashed. She frowned in the dark. Hunters that age would already know to stay downwind if they wished to remain undetected. One of her watchers carried with him the smell of her last meal. Maybe he and his friends hoped to steal whatever else she might have to eat. If so, they were surprisingly patient. Maybe they were smarter than that. Either way, she could likely handle untrained children. She rolled onto her back, settling in for a wakeful night.
But just in case, she pulled the static wand closer.
When she rose at sunrise, her watchers had disappeared. Probably, like the little animals she ate, they found refuge in the cracks and crevices and caved-in structures that spread for miles out from the forcewall. She studied the scuff marks outside the vestibule. Three or four of them, none bigger than the boy she had captured yesterday, one considerably smaller. Still big enough, perhaps, if it had a blade, or a large rock, and she grew careless.
She checked the traps she had set the night before, carefully disguised so that other animals would not steal her prey. Normally she would skin and clean what she caught far from her camp, scattering the offal in a way that would not draw scavengers. Today she brought everything back, settling on her heels outside the shelter, making certain that what she was doing would be easily visible to anyone peeking out from nearby gaps in the rock. “I seem to have extra again today,” she said aloud. “I would welcome company.” There was no answer. She shrugged, cooked all the meat over a tiny fire she lit with the static wand, and ate a small portion with more gusto than she felt. The rest she left cooling while she went off noisily to collect more water. When she came back, it was gone.
She followed that routine for three more days. On the fourth morning, instead of leaving the camp, she settled back on her heels out of arms’ reach of the food, but in plain sight. She heard little rustling noises, small bodies rocking back and forth in indecision. Finally a stone chinked nearby as someone, hunger winning over fear, crept out of his hiding place. The same small male child she had first seen. He looked from her to the food and back, plainly judging whether he could dash off with it before she could grab him. “If I wanted to catch you I would have already.”
He frowned, cracking dirt in unaccustomed lines. She lay back on her elbows, a position that looked relaxed, though she could rise from it fast enough if she chose. “Go ahead, I’ve been leaving it out for you and your friends.”
At friends, his eyes darted telltale to a crevice that must widen out into a hiding place big enough for all of them. She carefully did not follow his gaze. “You can take it. I won’t chase you.”
Finally hunger prevailed. He darted forward, scooped the treasure into a bag he had slung over his shoulder, and went running off without a word. She smiled to herself; he had the good sense to head away from his hidey-hole. She went inside her shelter. A few minutes later she heard the barest of scuffling as he slipped into the opening in the rocks she had marked.
The next day she waited again. When he appeared she said, “You don’t have to run away.”
Immediately the scowl, a show of anger to hide fear, common tactic for a small creature that could not afford to look weak. “What d’you want?”
“Nothing.”
“Ever’one wants something.”
She shrugged. “I don’t.” Which wasn’t true, Saint knew. But what she wanted she was not ready to name, even to herself.
He squatted nearer than he should, still underestimating her. Not his fault; wary as he was, it was cityens he had experience with. She admired his discipline; he couldn’t keep his eyes off the meat, but he made no move towards it. “You can have it.”
He looked at her with frank disbelief. His eyes were muddy brown, the color human irises tended towards when nothing special was selected, and it looked like his hair would be brown too if it were ever clean. His skin was tan and already weathered beneath the filth. “How long have you been living outside the wall?” she asked.
“Long time.” He shrugged. “Me and—” That was almost a slip, admitting that he had companions. He covered it quickly. “Me and myself.”
“Well, you and yourself look hungry. Take the food, there’s plenty.”
He reached out, finally, and put the pieces in the bag. All of them. “Don’t you want to eat any now?”
He licked his lips, then swallowed. Another tiny glance towards his hidey. “Not hungry now.” Going to share it fairly with the others, then. That was impressive; they wouldn’t have been able to blame him if he said he had to eat some so she wouldn’t get suspicious.
She nodded, and he stood, settling the bag on his hip. The slight burden seemed to weigh on him more than the mass of the food accounted for, the drag of responsibility. He seemed awfully young for it. “I’ll have more tomorrow.”
Again the look of puzzlement. He seemed for a moment about to ask her something, then thought better of it. He still had the presence of mind to take a different route away.
She had been awakened by a nightmare long before she opened her eyes. When she finally did the three small forms gathered round jumped back as if she had shouted. “S’all right,” the boy said, boldly settling back in his place. “She won’t hurt us.”
“You crazy,” a smaller voice said fiercely, but they did not run.
“He’s right,” Hunter said mildly. She sat up, very slowly, locking her hands around her knees where they could see them. There was her boy, a female who was even smaller than he was, though she might have the same annuals, and a tiny figure of indeterminate gender, barely old enough to walk, sucking noisily on its fingers. They rearranged themselves around her, small dangerous animals shifting into position. Hunter looked at the boy. “This is who you’ve been taking the food to?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ve done well to provide for them.”
He scowled and kicked at the dust. “There was more babies in the spring, but they wouldn’t eat the meat.”
“Didn’t have no teeth,” the fierce girl said, scowling as if it had been a character defect. “Never do.”
“Are there many babies out here?” The edge in Hunter’s voice surprised her; it made the children pull back warily, poised to run if she did anything unpredictable.
The boy looked around as if checking whether any infants had suddenly appeared. Then he shrugged. “In the winter, mostly. When’ts cold they was all stiff when we found ’em.”
“Dead,” the girl pronounced with satisfaction.
Sometimes in the desert we find dead ones. That was what she had told Tana, long ago. She felt her hands clench across her knees and made a physical effort to relax them. It was a chance to gain information closer to its source. “Where do they come from?”
The boy’s face screwed up in puzzlement. “Mating, I guess.”
She wiped a palm across her eyes. “Yes. I meant, how do they get outside the wall? How did you?”
He shrugged. “Once day our matr’ didn’t wake up. Then our patr’. After a while there was nothing to eat.”
The girl was his sister, then. Maybe the smaller one as well. “Didn’t you have anyone
to take you in?” A clever child like this, he could work, that was clear. Some cityen should have found him useful enough to keep. And the girl would have been worth it too.
He bit his lip. “Din’t like them. S’better out here.” His glance at the girl told Hunter more than enough about why.
“They leaves the babies,” the girl put in fiercely. “Heard ’em talk. Can’t feed ’em no more, that’s what they say. Leave ’em to the Saint to feed. But I don’t see how’s they can eat much anyway, when they got no teeth.”
Hunter thrust to her feet, scattering the children like the tiny animals she preyed on. Winter was a bad time to bear young; even the cityens knew that. Everything was scarce then. The arid ground froze hard, and what couldn’t hunt and hadn’t set aside a store had scanty chance to see the thaw. But once they made the young, even if they did it at the worst possible time, to leave them out to die—the waste was unacceptable.
She turned to the frightened children. “If you come back tomorrow, I’ll have more meat. Enough for all of you.”
The next day they were there again, squatting in a half circle around her when she awoke, dirty faces serious and unblinking as hunters. This time they didn’t jump back so far when she sat up. She smiled to herself. Hours later, when she returned, they were still waiting. She cooked it for them, and they ate like the canids, tearing into the meat while it was still too hot to hold, tossing the pieces from hand to hand until they cooled and gnawing down to the bones. The girl sucked the marrow noisily from a long thin bone then held it up critically to the light to be sure she hadn’t left anything. Then she tucked the sharp bit away somewhere in her rags, in case she needed an awl, perhaps, or a dagger. The other two were no less thorough; there would hardly be anything left to bury by the time they were done eating. Seeing the way they picked over the bits, Hunter tossed them the rest of her share too. The boy hesitated, a faint quizzical look on his face, but at Hunter’s encouraging nod he set into it as if he hadn’t eaten anything before. Even after so few meals, they all seemed the slightest bit less gaunt now, though perhaps that was her imagination.