The Wild Girls Read Online Free Page A

to Crowns. “So,” said Modh, “Crowns let the Root people live in the City, let them have this house or that, in exchange for the work they do and what their slaves grow in the fields—is that right?”
    “As a reward for working,” Nata corrected her, always gentle, never scolding. “The Sky Father made the City for his sons, the Crowns. And they reward good workers by letting them live in it. As our owners, Crowns and Roots, reward us for work and obedience by letting us live, and eat, and have shelter.”
    Modh did not say, “But—”
    It was perfectly clear to her that it was a system of exchange, and that it was not fair exchange. She came from just far enough outside it to be able to look at it. And, being excluded from reciprocity, any slave can see the system with an undeluded eye. But Modh did not know of any other system, any possibility of another system, which would have allowed her to say “But.” Neither did Nata know of that alternative, that possible even when unattainable space in which there is room for justice, in which the word “But” can be spoken and have meaning.
    Nata had undertaken to teach the wild girls how to live in the City, and she did so with honest care. She taught them the rules. She taught them what was believed. The rules did not include justice, so she did not teach them justice. If she did not herself believe what was believed, yet she taught them how to live with those who did. Modh was self-willed and bold when she came, and Nata could easily have let her think she had rights, encouraged her to rebel, and then watched her be whipped or mutilated or sent to the fields to be worked to death. Some slave women would have done so. Nata, kindly treated most of her life, treated others kindly. Warm-hearted, she took the girls to her heart. Her own baby boy was a Crown, she was proud of her godling, but she loved the wild girls too. She liked to hear Bidh and Modh talk in the language of the nomads, as they did sometimes. Mal had forgotten it by then.
    Mal soon grew out of her plumpness and became as thin as Modh. After a couple of years in the City both girls were very different from the tough little wildcats Bela ten Belen’s foray had caught. They were slender, delicate-looking. They ate well and lived soft. These days, they might not have been able to keep up the cruel pace of their captors’ flight to the City. They got little exercise but dancing, and had no work to do. Conservative Crown families like the Belens did not let their slave wives do work that was beneath them, and all work was beneath a Crown.
    Modh would have gone mad with boredom if the grandmother had not let her run and play in the courtyard of the compound, and if Tudju had not taught her to sword-dance and to fence. Tudju loved her sword and the art of using it, which she studied daily with an older priestess. Equipping Modh with a blunted bronze practice sword, she passed along all she learned, so as to have a partner to practice with. Tudju’s sword was extremely sharp, but she already used it skillfully and never once hurt Modh.
    Tudju had not yet accepted any of the suitors who came and murmured at the yellow curtain of the hanan. She imitated the Root men mercilessly after they left, so that the hanan rocked with laughter. She claimed she could smell each one coming—the one that smelled like boiled chard, the one that smelled like cat-dung, the one that smelled like old men’s feet. She told Modh, in secret, that she did not intend to marry, but to be a priestess and a judge-councillor. But she did not tell her brothers that. Bela and Alo were expecting to make a good profit in food-supply or clothing from Tudju’s marriage; they lived expensively, as Crowns should. The Belen larders and clothes-chests had been supplied too long by bartering rentals for goods. Nata alone had cost twenty years’ rent on their best property.
    Modh made friends among the Belenda slaves and was very fond of Tudju,