Into The Darkness by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy

Two years from now, Leuba might, on a good day, pay some attention to a warning. Now she didn't even understand it. Her mother's toile might have meant something, but not when she was intent on her game. "Ma-ma!" she said happily, and went right on after the closest chicken.

The chickens were a lot faster than she was, but she had a singlemincled determination they lacked. Garivald was heading toward her to pick her up when she did manage to grab a hen by the tail. The hen let out a furious squawk. An instant later, Leuba started crying: Sure enough, it had pecked her.

"There, see what you get?" Garivald scooped her off the ground.

Leuba, of course, saw nothing of the sort. As far as she was concerned she'd been having a high old time, and then one of her toys unaccountably went and hurt her. Garivald examined the injury, which was [..min..].

"I expect you'll live," he said. "You can stop making noises like branded calf"

Eventually, she did settle down, not so much because he'd told her as because he was holding her. When he set her down again, she starts after the nearest chicken. This time, luckily for her and the fowl, it spit her and escaped.

"She's a stubborn thing," Garivald said.

Annore looked at him sidelong. "Where do you suppose she gets that Garivald grunted. He didn't think of himself as stubborn, exceptins far as a man had to work hard to scrape a living from the soil. "What's dinner tonight?" he asked his wife.

"Bread," she answered. "What's left of last night's stew is still in the po peas and cabbage and beets and a little salt pork thrown in for flavor."

"Any honey for the bread?" he asked. Annore nodded. He grunted again, this time in satisfaction. "Well, that won't be too bad. And the stew was good last night, so it should be good again today." He sat down o a bench along the wall. "Get me some."

Annore had been stuffing guts with ground meat for sausages. She set aside what she was doing, got a bowl and a spoon, went over to the iron pot hanging above the fire, ladled the bowl full, and brought it to Garivald. Then she went back to the counter, tore off a chunk of black bread, and carried that and the honey pot over to him, too.

He broke the bread, dipped some in the honey, and ate it. Anno went back to work. Garivald spooned up some of the stew, then ate another piece of bread. "In the cities," he said, "they make fancy flour so they can have white bread, not just black or brown." His broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug. I wonder why they bother. By what hear from people who've eaten it, it's no better than any other kina."

"City people will do anything to be in fashion," Annore said, and Garivald nodded. People in the farming villages where most Unkerla lived were deeply suspicious of their urban cousins.

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