[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
wanted.
Holasheeta reached that spot and lay panting for some moments. Then she pushed herself up on her left
hand and leaned against the wood. Using her left hand again, she caught her right hand and tucked it
firmly into the angle between rock and wood. She closed her eyes, bit down on her lower lip, and
heaved her weight against the trapped arm.
With an audible crack and a flash of agony, the shoulder shot into place again. She could again move the
fingers on her right hand. The pain she ignored. It was unbearable, but she must bear it, so it was better
to disregard it entirely.
In fact, so battered and painful was her entire body that it somewhat diluted the agony of the shoulder
and of her broken leg. When she got her breath again, she managed to straighten the leg, although it
almost brought a shriek from between her clenched teeth. When she could see again, through the blur
that momentarily clouded her vision, Holasheeta was relieved to find no bits of shattered bone sticking
out through the flesh.
She had seen many broken bones, and those that sent shards outside the skin usually putrefied and killed
the person suffering from the break. This was broken, yes, but it seemed to be a clean break.
She might be able to straighten the leg and bind it, but for now she must rest. It would help nothing if she
fainted while trying, or betrayed her position with an outcry. She must close her eyes, breathe deeply,
and gather her strength for what must come.
She was sure, all these many seasons later, that she must have become unconscious, for when she
opened her eyes again, there was darkness in the sky above the leaves. No sound broke the silence
except breeze rustling the growth about her.
Not even a wolf howled. She had the bitter thought that those who ate meat were probably busy above,
devouring the people who had died in her village.
My children, she thought, and her heart grieved, but she did not allow herself to think of them for more
than a heartbeat. "I will live," she said aloud. "I will find those Long-Heads and kill them, one by one, if I
can. And if I cannot, if my leg heals crooked and prevents any long travel, I will sit on some height for as
long as I live and call down curses upon them from the most ancient of spirits."
And so she had. The leg, though usable, was shorter than the other, crooked, with the toes turning
inward, which made walking very awkward and slow. Yet she had made her way here, once it healed
enough for moving. The journey had been terrible, hungry, painful, but she had succeeded.
She had caught lizards with her hands, killed chipmunks with skillfully flung rocks, eaten roots and rose
hips and even beetles and earthworms. To the hungry, any food is good, and she had lived despite her
injuries and the difficulty of moving about.
The thought of the Long-Heads kept her going when she would have preferred to die, until at last she had
crept and crawled and inched her way up this series of great slopes to the ridge where she now lived.
Though she was unable to hunt larger game, she had developed a technique for finding the runs of
rabbits, which she snared in the meadows that lay lower on the steps of the mountains.
Antelope sometimes ranged her way; she had made many generations of spears with which she
skewered them. Sometimes she lay flat and waited, often all night long, beside the brook where they
came to drink. The hides of all her kills became clothing, blankets, the door flap of her cave that kept out
the cold winds of winter.
If Holasheeta was lonely, she was no longer aware of it, so used was she to listening only to the wind
over the rocks, the calls of hawks and eagles, the howls of the great wolves, or her own heartbeat. The
world had shrunk to this mountain ridge, the valley flanking it around the curve of the height, the
meadows below, and the spring that had cut a channel down the ridge to form the stream where she
hunted.
When one morning she saw something tiny moving in the long valley below her ridge, she thought it must
be an antelope or a deer or perhaps one of the huge bears that sometimes ranged down from the
forested heights. But it was not any of those, she realized very soon.
It walked on two legs. It carried dead game, a child, or perhaps a bundle on its back. Its hunched
position told her that it carried a burden.
Down there, almost too far away to see, walked a man or a woman. Long-Head? Not alone, for those
fierce people hunted only in packs.
Interest stirred dimly in Holasheeta's mind. It had been so long since she'd spoken with another human
being& but this might well be an enemy, even though he was alone. And she had grown too old, her
ill-healed bones too filled with misery, to go out of her way to provoke a fight.
The single time the Long-Heads had climbed onto her ridge, they had found a terrible surprise, she
thought, grinning her toothless grin. They had thought her a mad old woman, there to be used as a slave
while they camped on the ridge. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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wanted.
Holasheeta reached that spot and lay panting for some moments. Then she pushed herself up on her left
hand and leaned against the wood. Using her left hand again, she caught her right hand and tucked it
firmly into the angle between rock and wood. She closed her eyes, bit down on her lower lip, and
heaved her weight against the trapped arm.
With an audible crack and a flash of agony, the shoulder shot into place again. She could again move the
fingers on her right hand. The pain she ignored. It was unbearable, but she must bear it, so it was better
to disregard it entirely.
In fact, so battered and painful was her entire body that it somewhat diluted the agony of the shoulder
and of her broken leg. When she got her breath again, she managed to straighten the leg, although it
almost brought a shriek from between her clenched teeth. When she could see again, through the blur
that momentarily clouded her vision, Holasheeta was relieved to find no bits of shattered bone sticking
out through the flesh.
She had seen many broken bones, and those that sent shards outside the skin usually putrefied and killed
the person suffering from the break. This was broken, yes, but it seemed to be a clean break.
She might be able to straighten the leg and bind it, but for now she must rest. It would help nothing if she
fainted while trying, or betrayed her position with an outcry. She must close her eyes, breathe deeply,
and gather her strength for what must come.
She was sure, all these many seasons later, that she must have become unconscious, for when she
opened her eyes again, there was darkness in the sky above the leaves. No sound broke the silence
except breeze rustling the growth about her.
Not even a wolf howled. She had the bitter thought that those who ate meat were probably busy above,
devouring the people who had died in her village.
My children, she thought, and her heart grieved, but she did not allow herself to think of them for more
than a heartbeat. "I will live," she said aloud. "I will find those Long-Heads and kill them, one by one, if I
can. And if I cannot, if my leg heals crooked and prevents any long travel, I will sit on some height for as
long as I live and call down curses upon them from the most ancient of spirits."
And so she had. The leg, though usable, was shorter than the other, crooked, with the toes turning
inward, which made walking very awkward and slow. Yet she had made her way here, once it healed
enough for moving. The journey had been terrible, hungry, painful, but she had succeeded.
She had caught lizards with her hands, killed chipmunks with skillfully flung rocks, eaten roots and rose
hips and even beetles and earthworms. To the hungry, any food is good, and she had lived despite her
injuries and the difficulty of moving about.
The thought of the Long-Heads kept her going when she would have preferred to die, until at last she had
crept and crawled and inched her way up this series of great slopes to the ridge where she now lived.
Though she was unable to hunt larger game, she had developed a technique for finding the runs of
rabbits, which she snared in the meadows that lay lower on the steps of the mountains.
Antelope sometimes ranged her way; she had made many generations of spears with which she
skewered them. Sometimes she lay flat and waited, often all night long, beside the brook where they
came to drink. The hides of all her kills became clothing, blankets, the door flap of her cave that kept out
the cold winds of winter.
If Holasheeta was lonely, she was no longer aware of it, so used was she to listening only to the wind
over the rocks, the calls of hawks and eagles, the howls of the great wolves, or her own heartbeat. The
world had shrunk to this mountain ridge, the valley flanking it around the curve of the height, the
meadows below, and the spring that had cut a channel down the ridge to form the stream where she
hunted.
When one morning she saw something tiny moving in the long valley below her ridge, she thought it must
be an antelope or a deer or perhaps one of the huge bears that sometimes ranged down from the
forested heights. But it was not any of those, she realized very soon.
It walked on two legs. It carried dead game, a child, or perhaps a bundle on its back. Its hunched
position told her that it carried a burden.
Down there, almost too far away to see, walked a man or a woman. Long-Head? Not alone, for those
fierce people hunted only in packs.
Interest stirred dimly in Holasheeta's mind. It had been so long since she'd spoken with another human
being& but this might well be an enemy, even though he was alone. And she had grown too old, her
ill-healed bones too filled with misery, to go out of her way to provoke a fight.
The single time the Long-Heads had climbed onto her ridge, they had found a terrible surprise, she
thought, grinning her toothless grin. They had thought her a mad old woman, there to be used as a slave
while they camped on the ridge. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]