Kalik by Jack Lasenby Read Free Book Online Page A

complaints.But, when I filled a basket with meat, Lutha called me before her. Told several women there to confront me with their complaint.
    “There is only enough meat for us,” said a fresh-faced woman, plump, pleased-looking. I knew her to have two young children. “Ish helps himself to fish for the Salt Children. Now he wants to give them meat. They get fruit and vegetables. What next will he want for them?” Her companions grumbled agreement.
    “A lot of good meat is wasted, left for the dogs to clean up. The Salt Children do much of the heavy, dirty work. If we keep them healthy, feed them well, they will return that in work. They are too useful to waste.” I looked around the women. “Without the Salt Children, you would have to clean your own houses, look after your own babies.”
    The plump woman gasped, rolled her eyes. But some of the others could understand that argument. If slaves had a value, they were worth looking after. Lutha ruled in favour of my suggestion. The meeting broke up in general agreement, except for the plump woman with her smug face.
    “Better wasted than given to slaves,” she hissed.
    I turned and saw Kalik staring at me. I was pleased I had betrayed no pleasure at Lutha’s decision. As I returned to my hut, I knew he would be looking after me, a little smile on his face as if he knew something.
    “Nobody can read anyone else’s mind,” I said to Nip. “It’s superstitious to believe it!”
    The cleaner, warmer huts, the better food helped. Wounds healed. Broken legs, arms, and ribs knitted. Those with the wasting disease looked more hopeful. Still there was something missing.
    The Children had seen parents, brothers, sisters killed, raped, tortured, even eaten. There was no way of replacing their own people, their own families. And yet the spark for survival was there – in many.
    The two most apathetic children, a girl and a boy, Puli and Tama, still hunched in despair, faces hidden against their knees, arms around their legs. I worried about my inability to bring them out of their unhappiness, then remembered Heta of the Seal People. The Shaman had said she was too far gone to be helped, her misery so deep it would be unfair to keep her alive. Kala, her husband, drove her on his sledge out on the white plain, built a snow-house, and left her to die.
    Puli and Tama were too far gone in despair for me to bring back, I told myself. I must look after the ones who could be saved. And then I stumbled on a way to help them, something so obvious I might have worked it out before.

Chapter 9
Friends Must Stick Together
    One evening, after I had seen the Children eat a hot stew, the smallest of them, Chak, climbed on my knee. He reached up and fiddled with Lutha’s silver bow on its cord around my neck, part of his nightly ritual. “Tell us about when you were young?” asked Chak. I had got into the habit of telling the little ones about the days when I was a child amongst the Travellers.
    Kimi and the others came drifting to prop and sprawl against me and each other. The cooking fire had burnt down. Its light touched and flicked on chins, noses, foreheads. I thought of a story in the book I had brought all the way from the Library. And, since Lutha had the book, I told it from memory.
    “Once upon a time there was an old donkey.”
    “Hee-haw!” said Chak. I had told the Children about Hika and Bok whom Taur and I had left on the North Land. With charcoal I had drawn donkeys on the walls, so they knew what they looked like. I had taught them how to hee-haw, and several chorused after Chak now.
    “One cold night, he peeped through a crack in the door and saw his master and mistress sitting in front of a fire. The old donkey shivered. He put his big furry ear to the crack.”
    I stuck my hands up beside my head. Chak stuck up his. The others copied him. I bent my head, listened with one ear. Chak bent and listened, too.
    “‘He’s too old to be worth keeping,’ he heard his