The Warrior Who Carried Life Read Online Free Page B

again, perfectly.
    “Go out into the fields, child. Think over what you have learned here tonight. Remember that you have been accepted by the Wensenara. Let that give you strength. Practise, and when you feel you are ready, come to us, and flower.”
    That was all. Cara felt the women relax around her.
    “You feel different now, my daughter. You can feel strength inside you,” smiled the old woman, her hands doing a pleased little dance. She clasped them, to keep them still.
    “I always feel strength inside me,” replied Cara.
    “Will you become a bird, sister, and fly?” asked gentle Liri.
    “If I did, it would be a hawk,” said Cara. “But then hawks must spend all their time hunting for food.”
    “She could be a fish,” said Latch. “She could be as cold as her heart then. She could live in a well and dine off the flesh of my husband and son. As she did when they lived.”
    “Hate the Galu for their deaths,” replied Cara. “Sister,” she called Latch, and tried to smile, the aperture of her mouth widening only slightly over skull-like teeth. Even Latch shuddered and looked away. Cara’s face had become a weapon. “No,” Cara continued. “I want to be a beast of the field. I know what beast it is.”
    “A wolf,” said Hara, scornfully. “Of course.”
    “Oh, it is much more fierce than that,” Cara answered. “Though it hunts with dogs.” Then she added, “I will try now.”
    “I do not think that would be wise,” warned Mother Danlupu in a voice that was meant to be insinuating and unsettling.
    “Why, Mother, are you afraid that the spell doesn’t work?” Cara asked. She closed her eyes, and began to speak it. “Lalarolalaraleenalaralaralokilararolalaraleena . . .” Her voice became a drone that seemed to roll and surge like the movement of waves.
    “You are trying too much, daughter. You will disappoint yourself!” Danlupu warned, and looked around, helplessly, at the others. “You must first start with the Spell of Fire!”
    “Of course, she wants it all right away. Everything she ever wanted, she always had, right away,” said Latch, with relish, drawing her poor robe and shawl around her. “She only comes to us in misfortune. You see how she disdains us. She only wants her wealth back, to lady herself over us again.”
    “Let us hope she fails,” said Hara. “Then she will go away.”
    Their words seemed to fade into silence. Cara felt only a settling at first, a calming and soothing as the words spiralled round and round in her throat and mind. Then the circles seemed to spread and echo, like ripples in a pond, bound and rebound. Somewhere distant a voice was saying them correctly, but inside her head the words grew all confused and merged into one sound, a sound like thousands of people speaking at once. Cara felt herself grow dizzy. She felt herself sway from side to side as if the hollow in the rock were a ship at sea.
    She felt something heavy inside her as well, a gathering weight like water behind a dam. It was her hatred. With each turning of the words, the weight seemed to turn over on itself and grow. Suddenly in her mind there was an image of a rock that had begun to roll down a hill. The hill steepened, and it rolled faster and faster, picking up dust and debris as it tumbled, growing larger and gaining strength and speed. She became frightened. She tried to stop the stone, but she could not. She tried to stop the words, but the voice somewhere else kept saying them. Everything inside her pitched and lurched and shuddered, the ground fell away before her. Ahead was a precipice. The stone was the size of a temple and it spun out into empty air. Cara tried to scream, but found that nothing in her body obeyed her any longer. She could feel herself falling, everything in her rising up towards her mouth. The ground was suddenly before her, coming up insanely fast, like a fist. She hit, and felt herself shatter into shards and fragments, broken, splintered, sharp.