The Temple at Landfall by Jane Fletcher

Author:Jane Fletcher [Fletcher, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Lesbian, Contemporary, Romance, Erotica
ISBN: 9781933110271
Google: VH4WAAAACAAJ
Amazon: B0042P5GDK
Publisher: Bella Distribution
Published: 1999-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN-A DREAM FOR THE FUTURE

im was not sure exactly what she had been expecting of the

heretics' farm. Gina had warned her that it was little more than a collection of temporary huts, and she had accordingly overlaid the image of hovels onto a memory of her parents' farm. What she had not been ready for was something the size of a village, comprised of fifty to sixty round huts, the home to nearly two hundred women, plus their cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and horses. The buildings were arranged around a central square. They all had conical, turf-covered roofs, and dry stone walls, about a meter high, the cracks filled with mud and grass. Judging by the trails of smoke seeping from the apex of the roofs, the ones in the middle provided dwellings for the inhabitants. The outer huts were slightly more variable in size, and were doubtless storehouses and animal byres.

The place gave the overwhelming impression of poverty, which Kim found hard to pin down. After all, many farm laborers in the Homelands lived in conditions that were equally basic, if not worse. The heretics themselves all looked well fed and clothed, and the farmlands were clearly fertile. Fields golden with ripening corn were interspersed with rows of beans, cabbages, and other vegetables. Thriving herds dotted the surrounding hills.

Only when she had dismounted in the open space at the center of the village and looked around did Kim finally put her finger on the discrepancy. It was the uniformity of the community. In a place of a similar size in the homelands, a few, the poorest, at the fringes, would have been living in an even worse state, but there would have been others in fine homes of dressed stone, with tiled roofs and under-floor heating. The village would have had a welcoming tavern, a public bathhouse, and a council hall, the main civic building, which would have functioned as school, law court, meeting room, and church at the appropriate times. There would have been gardens. And without these, the place seemed uncivilized, crude, and shoddy.

Word of the Rangers' arrival had spread, and a fair number of heretics had left their work to watch the column of green and gray clad women ride in. As she ran her eyes over the gathering, another difference to the homelands struck Kim. Many elderly faces were dotted among the crowd, but the range of ages hit a sharp cutoff at the other end. There were no young girls abandoning their lessons to run behind the Rangers, or toddlers peering from behind their mothers' legs, and Kim found their absence far more unsettling than she would have believed.

Kim did not have long to dwell on her first impressions. Gina was waiting at the head of a small group of elders who welcomed the Rangers to the village. The welcome was noticeable both in its informality and in the speed with which it turned to practical matters: which huts had been cleared for barracks, where the horses should go, who could allocate food.

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