***
Kali
Heading home alone from the village, her pouch full of shah, Kali didn’t notice the gang of teenage boys crossing the fields until the whistling and jeering started in the distance. She lowered her head and hurried on, hoping to make it back to camp before the boys worked up the courage to approach her. Their feet were almost silent on the dirt path, and when the shouts seemed to come from right behind her, she knew it was time to run.
“It’s the fortune teller!”
“What else do you sell?”
“Is this the witch?”
Hitching her skirts above her ankles, she ran as fast as she could, hoping nobody from camp would see her shame. She hoped she wouldn’t fall and that they would leave her alone. Her people wouldn’t fight back openly if any damage was done. They might even banish her if they thought she’d brought trouble onto herself. Her father’s reputation brought a harsher reaction to her deeds.
But as a novice chovihani and daughter to her father’s reputation, she might be expected to protect herself and dole out punishment by cursing the boys for their stupidity and ensuring they never harmed her again. As much as she wanted to scratch out the eyes of such ignorant fools, she knew she wouldn’t want the darkness of a curse on her conscience.
She heard the rasp of a breath and spun around to face one of the boys, forcing him to look her in the eye. She wasn’t small or dainty, and from experience, she knew that sometimes these kinds of boys lost their courage when face to face with their adversary. This boy chose to leer at her defiance.
“I bet she’s a wildcat, this one,” he said with a smirk, reaching for her. Horror left her unable to stop him. The chill of his dark, uncertain future swept over her, sickening her. He would regret his touch, she thought with a pang. She would have no choice.
Neither of them noticed the man approach until he lifted the boy off his feet and threw him to the ground like a ragdoll.
“Go home and learn some manners,” Marusya’s husband rumbled.
“’Twas your woman who told us she’s keen,” the boy insisted but then scrambled to his feet as the man took one step toward him. All the boys, although they outnumbered him, ran off, and resumed their shouting but from a good distance away.
She glanced at him again, watched his face tighten as he stared after them. He was beautiful, she realised. Truly beautiful. He was one of the few who were as good on the inside as they were on the outside. She felt the purity surrounding him and desperately wanted to touch it, absorb it, and take it for herself.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, catching her openly staring.
She shook her head.
He stood in front of her, but avoided her eyes, and twisted his cap in his hands. “Well, you better get on, then.”
She nodded, still in shock, not at the action of the boys, but at his assistance and her reaction to him. She jerkily turned to leave, and heard his footsteps behind her. She gazed back at him in surprise. He was following her.
“I’ll make sure they don’t come back. I… I know your people, that your women aren’t allowed to get… close, so I’ll walk behind. If that’s all right by you.”
She nodded, biting her lip as his beautiful, earnest eyes met hers fully for the first time and burned straight through her.
Married eyes, she warned herself. Outsider eyes.
She walked home slowly, fully aware of him the entire time. Some people had a presence that drew others in, and he was definitely that kind. She felt his eyes on her back and wondered why she couldn’t walk in a straight line, knowing he was there. He had helped her, even though his wife hated her and his people thought her less than nothing.
At the camp, Drina’s husband approached suspiciously and bypassed Kali to move directly to the man. They spoke for a number of minutes, and Kali couldn’t help watching the man’s facial expressions which seemed so different when he talked to a man, rather than a woman. Chewing her thumb, she waited for Drina’s husband to return. He only nodded at her as he passed, and she wondered what they had been talking about.
Most of all, she wondered why this married outsider had more of an effect on her with one look, than any of her own people had had on her in her entire life.