Hurley's Heroes Collection: Volume 4 by Kameron Hurley

Author:Kameron Hurley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Unblooded”

By Kameron Hurley

Nisa buried her babies in the cold silt that divided the mountains and the sea. Nisa did not remember the mountains or the sea, only the silt. Ash-gray granules. Soft skin. She watched her babies squirm against one another in the shallow depression below her, curled together, as they’d been inside her. They did not cry out anymore.

The women kicked sand across the bodies. Nisa still saw the outline of one small arm.

Another sacrifice to the insatiable desert.

Someone touched Nisa’s elbow.

“Wake up, Nisa.”

The sand consumes all you love. Even a world away from it.

“Nisa. Woman. Fighter-mine. They are bodies buried. Buried deep. Wake up.” Her mother’s voice, but her mother was three days dead.

“Leave me be,” Nisa said.

“You’re a desert woman, fighter-mine. Women feed blood to the sand. Feed it the blood of another or feed it their own. You know that. Don’t forget what you are.”

“I won’t forget anything,” Nisa said. She fell into silence then, a silence as heavy as her sleep. She wrapped her blade in leather and strapped it to her back. She walked outside the circle of her clan women. They no longer looked at her.

When Nisa finally allowed herself to wake, she and the rest of her clan were on the other side of the mountains.

When she looked up the world was only sand and gray stone. The high, hot sun rode over her shoulder. She had walked back to the sand that was her world.

“You talking yet?” Hoshana, the new clan mother, asked her as they walked. “You’re a weak woman to drag your feet in the sand over this.”

Nisa said nothing, but her gaze moved to Hoshana’s face, traced the deep creases in her dark skin.

“I’ve approved a caravan raid tonight. You know that?” Hoshana said. “The other women wanted you to lead it, bring them all down over the dunes. I said no.”

Hoshana waited. Nisa looked away from her and up at the men, women, unblooded girls, crones and children striding ahead of them.

“Nisa,” Hoshana said, “unwrap that blade and go with them. Kanika will lead them, but I want you there.”

Hoshana strode ahead of Nisa, back to the head of the line. Nisa did not unwrap her blade. She gazed down at her hands, at the red sand stuck beneath her nails, the reddish dust clinging to her skin.

The sun sank low, and the women assembled under the deepening dusky wound of the sky. Behind the circle of women, the rest of the clan—unblooded girls, men, crones, children—stood and waited.

Nisa was the only woman who stood outside the circle of women. She stood among the others like an unblooded girl, watching the drawing of the circle on the sand for the first time in—how many years? How long had her mother kept them among the ocean people?

Hoshana took up her blade and drew a line in the sand. She thrust the blade into the sand, halfway to the hilt, and then drew the dagger at her hip. One of Hoshana’s kin stepped forward and knelt in the sand before Hoshana.

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