value amongst the four legged race.
Her mother's ancient servant maid took the child, fed her the milk snatched from camel's teat while father snored away the acts of his oblivion. By travel, the child was covered in skirt to avoid a whip or blow from a man who despaired his loss. Loss of a breeder he had bartered two white stallions for so little time ago and most now dilute his wine for again.
Love sheltered her five years. Her body growing quick on the rick milk, her mind miraculous growing even quicker on the blank desert view. The ancient supplicant was herself no fool, had an art of healing and in the final year was constantly marvelled on the retention of the tiny mind. Hardly a day passed without some potion, some herb, some broth being passed easily mind to mind with only a rare syllable dropped.
But a night came in a spree drunk with senseless rage; the horses untethered from a single rope bridal to bridal; before the other herders could interfere the madness or decide on the courage, the fright-maned thundered away, hurled from the foam and flame bulging from a nightmare's eyes; eyes rocking above a beard grape-stained with insane droolings.
The shorts and leaps at the men-fire turned the dust away from that shatter against tents, but alas, the turning drove the wild release towards a solitaire tent; set apart by a fatherly verdict that: "no dung of death shall give a stench to the place of man; let the night's beasts dwell together". So the ancient care and motherless child had gathered sleep under a ragged discard of tent skin; only a stick, a vigilant though puny fire and old determined eyes kept the jaws of skulking dart away from her morsel tender of human flesh.
Awakened then, wrinkles peered instantly at the danger and exchanged stick for earth. As any mother, any woman has only one gift, one weapon, one sacrifice. Her body. This the fragile skin to cover the child yet hard as stone back as well. For as the tent was devoured by plunge, as the hooves rode death upon her flesh, the hands held dust and would not allow the already lifeless corpse to roll away.
As if all life will had gathered in finger tips that nailed themselves into death for this saving of another's life.
The child lived.
For a few weeks, the labourers tried to take turns caring, comforting the girl who now seemed strangely grown so old in eyes, so hardened of some character, some stone of destiny. Their love was trying upon them as for the old woman for much was the whip and tongue they were lashed, for spending time on "The lesser beasts."
But it was not of just this, the father increased his hate, though no one in close of the five years could have imagined a carcass bloating more menacingly, more maggot crammed into a skull.
But fear can. For now times, the tiny girl would stand on a rock, the desert winds her brush of hair and silently pursue every inch of her father's way. Every step, every turn, he knew her eyes and feared. Feared a five year old girl with ancient views. His fear bred with hate and festered release.
A few weeks of this stalking cringe and the overboil reached for bow and bent its task to arrowed crime; in the descending red of a wind's drop. The glare of a childling form laid a 100 paces away, its huntress chin and incline resting on a low rock, its lioness eyes never asleep.
Before purpose came to full raise, one of the labourer's delivered a 'No' at Sin's ear and immediately trembled at the echo of its death tone now turning towards him.
The labourer groped for life and offered a flicker of memory for welcomed barter. He spilled the clink of silver into evil’s ever yawing purse..
That there was a secluded, shunned village a few leagues away. Why he asked his master would you wish spill good wine to soak dust? He had called 'no' not for a child's heart beat but for a master's purse. As any good servant would who knows an empty purse hollows both master and servant.
Sent with the 'stank eyed bloat of a camel's udder' to capture the silver next morning, the labourer rode toward this village he remembered. When he had conferred to his fellows that night of the actual memory, they sparked indignation, horror, even onto a curse of his interference.
For the place of her destiny was a bitter place. An oasis ignored by the common trek for the water laid heavy with salt and few figs struggled for life. It was a place left to those unmoving across the desert. A village blunted with human huddle about the stunted olive. A leper colony.
The other men tore at the conscience of this but in the end were silenced by a shrug and the statement:
"Better a chance of life amongst the halves than certain death amongst the unwhole."
The next day, story and barter were exchanged over a long distance, a low wind driving words in confusion, so hoarse was the labourer's tongue from dust and doubt and so muffled the lips of the leper 'king' wrapped in the blackened rags at his teeth.
Once done, a little silver was bundled and propelled by the one strong arm of the village, to lay in a little swirl of hollowed dust. A little closer the horse was nudged, the labourer piercing the cloth and lifting it high and distant from his touch. He did not count it, preferring death immediate by a master's rage of ill-bargain than death oozed into the grave by a long, long unglueing.
It was held instead as a flag for the return, a black sack upon the mast; a drum clinking destiny's spoils; like a shrunken head, he thought, black and wrinkled with the glassy eyes inside rolling about for vision.
Shaking his head, he lifted the girl down to leave her. But she at five was well aware of the disease of her betrayal, her abandonment. Holding to the bridal she begged the early reap of her heart, her blood, even a return to the churning black of her father's mad, anything than this life promised now of visual disgust and horror. The daily hate, the death by hard heat is never so welcome but when in the clawed embrace of nightmares endless in their swarm.
He nudged his horse to trot, then gallop but the girl had learned the grip of her godmother, her tiny legs simply brushing the sand almost merry in their playful sweepings, touching sand here and there as bird glides down a beach.
He considered prying her white grip away but worried the spill may go undertow and the hooves finish a previous feast. Or only maim. Though she desired death, he could not stomach killing.
He halted his horse and retrieving some thong from his sidepack, he pried her hands away and bound them. Then her ankles to avoid an attempt for a two handed grip on his escape.
She ceased to cry or weep but lay soundlessly declined to her fate. But her eyes raked his face and throat with the claws of a small rat furious; its body raging in twists at capture; her soul snapping the whip of its tail at this teeth of deception. The heat of this hate blushed his faced; a scar tearing to his man-heart to be never cooled. But short time compels action oddly to be not assessed as forever unforgiven until the long time unfolds; that is a man can blindly do in an instant what a life time of vision will never allow repent.
He rode away, leaving her wound in the dust; she, unlimbed, bound to her fate; he bound forever to his herder's fates.
Half feet came to her. A few fingers untied her. A partial of arms cradled her back to the village shrouded in terrible ill.
It was a childless woman who had purchased her. Not childless out of maidenhood, for love lies amongst lepers, the eyes of a lover are still no less a moon in the gentle mask of night but rather the strange decrees of fate had simply laid the marriage barren. A woman of some means driven to the village by a family of closed doors that she would not ever again open upon her lips.
After the first year of horror and revulsion, a gentle reach had recovered her heart but alas no other gift was allowed her stark altar. Till this child bought from death.
Condemn might ask 'of what right do lepers have to love and worse bear fruit to only decay unnatural?' One might look to the insides of a city and demand the same recrimination. Decay is decay but at least the outward decay can find some peace in early discard; at least it will not bring foul to the final taste of a soul.
Be that judge as it will, the village had sprung also upon a strange magic. Though of no healing
to those already diseased, it was joyfully found over time that the daily bathing of a child in the bitter salt of the oasis (and as well the separation of cutting utensils between those of full and lesser grip) prevented the grim reapings upon youthful limb and skin.
Strange in an unworldly way, were then raised these children who remained whole in the love of the sick and diseased. Who knew no fear of the gradual pull of grave, the rot of death, who would joyfully embrace sores; feeling only the heart.
Here then in this village refuged from unwelcomed scorn, the girl exchanged five years of love cowering from robust and muscled hate for five years of love borne open and free in a place of muffled, staggering rot.
In fact, only a single condemnation might be said of this schooling: will not such children grow to hate their own whole state as a thing unlovable since love seemingly must wear a disfigured cast? Perhaps this result if only one child was sweet limbed and thus oddly began a deception of adolescent outcast. But enough full flowers grew in the harsh garden, that what revealed was love that shed itself without any particular means of grasp or reach. That is one did not have to 'have' or 'have-not' to love. Love was a continuous gentle rain fresh to any now or battered cup and any cup could gather and be sipped from.
Outside this garden of love, however,,