black harsh reined like stone winds, the lumps and contorts of its fallen flash scattering the landscape outside the fence of this more seasonable nature.
Food was not prayed for but preyed for. Pried for. What could be grown wrenched from the tiny plots of endless service, was barely enough. Little trade was allowed or done by the village for who would wish a half hand shook upon barter over even the smallest meagre purchase? When the eyes hunger wide at no relief what will the empty left hand do when the right hand's coins are spat away? Animal wants breed animal means, The left hand darts quick in the darkness of inhuman times and secures a living from out of stone.
Darts are not swords to be carried bold, large and heavy. They spring small, thin and lithe, under cover of a dead moon's welcomed for, these children issued from the scorn. Stealing amongst the healthy grasp of passing caravans or bandit tents. A dangerous occupation, its very unhealthy of consequence, this dance before slumbered eyes, for any failure tastes of blood not bread.
Breathless mother or unlegged father waited while love crouched with waiting shadow for some dog or revery to slump into opportunity. Then little hands to gather the fruit of a thief in labour and return; laden with life for the empty garden.
A game, a contest like any doing with a child's heart. Brought back to the village, the spills tucked in rags or indifferent sacks, the collected mounded in a single pile for a fair village share. But each hawk knew the size of his or her catch, the largest spoil strutting in an off hand manner, filled with the prideful pot of a father's eye or the idyllic glance of some younger fledgling.
The parents did try to curtail this contest for the added reach yields added risk. But what could they do? After love, pride yields the most human stance. If their dignity rose solely in their offspring, how difficult it was to find ill in the childrens' pride in themselves. To subdue the clamour and skipping of tales; of victory stolen under the perch of some fat hover stone perch.
Or the pursuits, the shouts and curses, easily confused by such weaves and illusions of dust and stone. Hiding in burrows stolen from a lizard, standing an hour poised along the profile of some twist of plant.
But tragedies did come. Caught in some stumble of trap, death released a different song of freedom. Each child carried a little knife, sheathed, poisoned at the edge. A small cut delivered in a moment, the child, from any tortures or terrors (and the release of a village's existence).
Even a child, perhaps especially a child, has a strange ferocity at this entrance to death. For a few stunned encroachers have bled to death in the swift scratch of this single hawk's claw. Destiny of a song's share in a single dying moment. When sunset spills, a shadow of soul lifts a wing from its liquid surface; many times a small flock follows its climb.
Yet, though those nights gave the village such a hollow feast, grief has the same fuel as joy,and must be fed. A few nights silent of the spreading of small grins; then the time would come. The coal- smeared tiny gladiators gather, the spectators wreath their necks with an excess of kiss and hugs; tears of warning and prayer; then, to the shadows spread hungry footsteps.
In all this, it was the older who trained the younger, an art more than an apprenticeship. Being such a whirl of quick wind and rigid stance. Such an eye for the landscape of dark and threatening light. A study in seconds where a less knowing eye would lay blind for hours. The act of the eye, the foot, the hand and the knife, till the snake, the mongoose, the gazelle and the lion, were sculpted in fluid form. This act learned hand to hand, stalk upon stalk, shadows mimicking shadows.
Only the knife art was taught by larger knowledge, a man of solitarity limb, his throwing arm; which before the ravish of disease, had carried his living as a trickster performs. Now propped against some stone or tree, he taught the children how to laugh at death. To pierce anything that was flung, rolled or tossed in view. The combat at close body; where to wound and where not to wound; when to kill outward and when to kill inward.
All this then, the girl learned and learned well. Driven even more by just love and duty, pride and game. Her black anger, seldom seen outward, embraced the nights and the knife. Her very soul loved the dance for the sake of the dance itself, for its power bordered on inhuman. Truly feline, at day her mother's warmth and caresses kept her calm; curled and playful in the whole human village touch. But in the night's dawn, something inside her would stretch long and crave the stalking ahead.
By eight or nine years old, she had become the best though many times it was a puzzle when she would return with some mere morsel taken from incredible risks. She never killed though many dark moments a yellow bile rose clawing vile at her throat begging for flesh upon its teeth. Crouched at some stank of snoring drunk, she would have to deny again and again the reach for her knife, the fierce trembling in every muscle so that in the end, she would in the end leave with hands both empty of bread... and blood.
The old knife thrower knew this and worked her skills the harder than any other child. For he believed the more one knew how to kill the less one was likely to kill, if the heart could remain above the black. His philosophy seemed to work. For her art of knife and movement grew so refined, that grace seemed to spin from her rapid gestures. Others would watch spellbound as she at twelve now, tall for her age and lithe as the stalk of wind, would combine feet, knife and hand into a true dance, martial in intent but easily following into rapture.
And some how this expression of terrible beauty kept her sane, kept unified her dark animal blood and cool human skin.
Then one night, a week before she would be a natural thirteen, one of the older boys did not return from his forage. He had come upon a heavily armed caravan of some royal personage. Sense called for retreat but his heart beat more rapid at the thought of pride; pride in the succulent fare he could gather amongst the finer silken tents. With so many guards, the change of watch was frequent through the night. Few slumbered. He was caught, a swift sword stroke severing hand which drew his knife, cut away before its salvation could be hurled upon.
His courage was not larger than their torturous means, though valiant, few boys and fewer men can withstand their unflowering by firebrands, He talked into his death of the village lepers and where. A few days passed and then... Before dawn, at no warning, suddenly at a casual distance, a hundred archers circled the village. Pots of flame appeared all around the flat horizons illuminating the groups of horsed Death. Pitch for their arrows.
No words were challenged. A single command barked at the partial moon and the sky began raining Hell.
Half the village died in their huts roaring of tinder and greasy rags. The rest dragged by their children or crawling, stumbling, were easy targets, illuminated in the grotesque scene. Each new kill flamed high to cheat its neighbour of any shadowy cringe.
The children, lost in the anguish of their parents holocaust forgot all sense of cower or hide. Panicked, screaming their upright horrors made still more targets for the archers vision.
In the end only one survived. She did. She had a frequent custom of sleeping crosslegged on the solitary large rock in the village, so that Dawn would bless her eyes open at the first penetrate of horizon. But that right forgetting her wrap in grief for her missing friend, she had grown cold in the sleep of the night. She had crawled half under the rock, a warm spot in the day's sand. And been awakened by the flames and shrieks.
Running to the tent of her mother, it was already half ash, her mother's blackened hand a half claw hanging out the blazing flap of door. Already lifeless. Even with the flames peeling at her skin, her mad will tried to pull her mother's corpse out. She could not and fell back just as three arrows sang before her face. Instinct, she crawled back to the burrow, her tears stinging on raw flesh.
And if she had remained there, her presence would have gone unnoticed for no archers would dare come close to the leper village, purified by fire or not.
But the carnage, the stench, the screams and mostly her grief pummelled at her mind. The animal urg
e for flee into the desert's womb snapped at her heels. She began crawl, bellying out of the light deadly in its show. The archers where thinly lined, eyes blind to a closer darkness as they raked the glare for more victims. Careless in their laughter and singing strings.
She passed their feet, only yards away, a silent snake amongst hooves.
Then more yards, knowing their backs were blind even in the beginning sun, she stood up and ran.
A mistake. A gamble weighed against the sun rising when the horizon she must cross was empty. Soon, the archers may turn away and spot the mark of even her crawl. A gamble, then, successful but for a full bladder.
One of the archers had descended from his horse a moment after her pass to relieve himself. Facing away from the flames, his eyes grew stronger in the cooling darkness and saw the gazelle spring for her escape.
He shouted. Half shouted. On hearing the beginning of his alarm, her knife had reached his throat, thrown without her falter of purposed gait; just a half of upper body and eye to a taste of this first blood; a new religion, perhaps of a mecca pilgrimed from Death itself.
A dozen archers wheeled and began squint the length of their arrows, peering shallow eyed, awaiting the fire stone to roll from their