Great Sky Woman by Steven Barnes

Author:Steven Barnes
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780345493392
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

In the chill of early morning’s darkness, the four girls limped along toward their unknown destination. By the time the sun’s glow appeared along the eastern horizon T’Cori’s legs burned and shook. She stumbled but did not fall. Her bound hands challenged her balance, and she struggled to stay erect.

The three Others walked them at a pace just below a trot, alert as lions on the prowl. Despite their ferocious strength and power, their captors were wary. Not fearful—when she read their num-fire, the red was mixed with black: an awareness of death without terror of it. These creatures lived in the space of death. Knew it as no Ibandi hunter she had ever read. They simply were not like Ibandi men.

Fear drove thought from T’Cori’s mind, leaving nothing but dread of their fate.

What was to be their fate? Were they merely fresh meat, as some of the clansmen thought? Or were other, even more terrible hungers to be satisfied?

On and on southward they walked, through most of the day. With every passing step the southern mountain ridges grew just a hair closer, and any remaining bits of hope drained away. Her sisters were all but dead. Their heads drooped, shoulders slumped in exhaustion and despair. They had had a few rest breaks, sufficient time to chew on scraps of dried deer meat thrust into their hands by their captors.

Anytime one of them tried to speak, they were all cuffed. Only silence and sobbing were allowed.

Twice that first day they had stopped to sip brackish water from stagnant pools. Flamingos bloomed like bamboo stalks on the far side of the pond, balancing upon their single sticklike legs. Shaded in pink and white, the birds watched them incuriously. A delicate gold-and-green butterfly landed on a flower not an arm’s reach from T’Cori as she drank, but for once its beauty failed to lighten her heart.

Butterfly Spring. Yes. She was a butterfly who had seen her last spring. Tears streamed from her eyes.

That night the girls were allowed to sleep, but T’Cori’s hands were tied to a flat-topped acacia tree. One of the Others—she called him Notch-Ear because of a jagged wound on the left lobe—remained awake all the night long. It was easy to understand why. Considering how they had so recently slaughtered two Ibandi, these hunters would have little taste for risking the same fate.

And that, strangely, she found comforting. Despite their strangeness, these were men, not demons. Men who sought to avoid death.

T’Cori opened her mouth to whisper. “Dove—” she began.

The girl shivered, and kicked her leg with a thump. T’Cori could barely see Dove’s face, but her eyes shone with terror in the darkness.

Do not speak.

Dove closed her eyes tightly.

The others were no better: T’Cori could see it in Quiet Water’s slumped shoulders, the way Fawn had curled into a ball at Dove’s side.

Her sisters had already begun to abandon hope.

She would not. Could not.

And then, just before midnight, she was dreamlessly asleep.

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