Octavia E. Butler by Clay's Ark

Author:Clay's Ark [Ark, Clay's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453263600
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-06-28T15:38:00+00:00

Present 16

WHEN BLAKE AND MEDA had gone, when Ingraham had led Rane away, Eli and Keira sat alone at the large dining room table. Keira looked across at Eli bleakly.

“My sister,” she whispered. Rane had looked so frozen when Ingraham led her out, so terrified.

“She’ll be all right,” Eli said. “She’s tough.”

Keira shook her head. “People think that. She needs to have them think that.”

He smiled. “I know. I should have said she’s strong. Maybe stronger than even she knows.”

A woman carrying a crying child of about three years came into the house. The child, Keira could see, was a little girl wearing only underpants. She had a beautiful face and a dark, shaggy head of hair. There was something wrong with the way she sat on the woman’s arm, though—something Keira could not help noticing, yet could not quite identify.

The woman smiled wearily at Eli. “Red room,” she said.

He nodded.

The woman stared at Keira for a moment. Keira thought she stared hungrily. When she had gone into a room off the living room and shut the long sliding door, Keira faced Eli.

“What’s going on?” she said. “Tell me.”

He looked at her hungrily, too, but then leaned back in his chair and told her. No more hints, no more delays. When he finished, she asked questions and he answered them. At one point, the woman and child came out of the red room and Eli called them to him.

“Lorene, bring Zera over. I want you both to meet Kerry.”

The woman, blond and thin, came over with her hungry eyes and her strange child. She looked at Keira, then at Eli. “Why is there still a table between you two?” she asked. “I’ll bet there’s no table between that guy and Meda.”

“Is that what I called you over here for?” he asked, annoyed. “Don’t you want to brag about your kid a little?”

Lorene faced Keira almost hostilely.

Keira and the child had been staring at each other. Keira roused herself, met Lorene’s suspicious eyes. “I’d like to see her.”

“You see her,” Lorene said. “She’s no freak. She’s supposed to be this way. They’re all this way.”

“I know,” Keira said. “Eli has told me. She’s beautiful.”

Lorene put her daughter on the table and the child immediately sat down, catlike, arms braced against the floor.

“Stand up,” Lorene said, pushing at the little girl’s hindquarters. “Let the lady see you.”

“No!” Zera said firmly. To Keira, that proved something about her was normal. Before Keira’s illness, she had been called on to take care of little toddler cousins who sometimes seemed not to know any other word.

Then Zera did get up, and in a single fluid motion, she launched herself at Eli. He seemed to pluck her out of the air, laughing as he caught her.

“Little girl, I’m going to miss some day. You’re getting faster.”

“What would happen if you did miss?” Keira asked. “She wouldn’t hurt herself, would she?”

“No, she’d be okay. Lands on her feet like a cat. Lorene does miss sometimes.”

“I never miss,” Lorene said, offended.

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