Kindred by Octavia Butler Read Free Book Online Page A

wrist.
    Surprise and pain made the man loosen his grip on me slightly, and I wrenched away.
    I heard him yell, heard him start after me.
    I ran mindlessly toward the cabin door only to find Alice’s mother there barring my way.
    “Don’t come in here,” she whispered. “Please don’t come in here.”
    I had no chance to go in. The man caught me, pulled me backward, threw me to the ground. He would have kicked me, but I rolled aside and jumped to my feet. Terror gave me speed and agility I never knew I had.
    Again I ran, this time for the trees. I didn’t know where I was going, but the sounds of the man behind me sent me zigzagging on. Now I longed for darker denser woods that I could lose myself in.
    The man tackled me and brought me down hard. At first, I lay stunned, unable to move or defend myself even when he began hitting me, punching me with his fists. I had never been beaten that way before—would never have thought I could absorb so much punishment without losing consciousness.
    When I tried to scramble away, he pulled me back. When I tried to push him away, he hardly seemed to notice. At one point, I did get his attention though. He had leaned down close to me, pinning me flat on my back. I raised my hands to his face, my fingers partly covering his eyes. In that instant, I knew I could stop him, cripple him, in this primitive age, destroy him.
    His eyes.
    I had only to move my fingers a little and jab them into the soft tissues, gouge away his sight and give him more agony than he was giving me.
    But I couldn’t do it. The thought sickened me, froze my hands where they were. I had to do it! But I couldn’t …
    The man knocked my hands from his face and moved back from me—and I cursed myself for my utter stupidity. My chance was gone, and I’d done nothing. My squeamishness belonged in another age, but I’d brought it along with me. Now I would be sold into slavery because I didn’t have the stomach to defend myself in the most effective way. Slavery! And there was a more immediate threat.
    The man had stopped beating me. Now he simply kept a tight hold on me and looked at me. I could see that I had left a few scratches on his face. Shallow insignificant scratches. The man rubbed his hand across them, looked at the blood, then looked at me.
    “You know you’re going to pay for that, don’t you?” he said.
    I said nothing. Stupidity was what I would pay for, if anything.
    “I guess you’ll do as well as your sister,” he said. “I came back for her, but you’re just like her.”
    That told me who he probably was. One of the patrollers—the one who had hit Alice’s mother, probably. He reached out and ripped my blouse open. Buttons flew everywhere, but I didn’t move. I understood what the man was going to do. He was going to display some stupidity of his own. He was going to give me another chance to destroy him. I was almost relieved.
    He tore loose my bra and I prepared to move. Just one quick lunge. Then suddenly, for no reason that I could see, he reared above me, fist drawn back to hit me again. I jerked my head aside, hit it on something hard just as his fist glanced off my jaw.
    The new pain shattered my resolve, sent me scrambling away again. I was only able to move a few inches before he pinned me down, but that was far enough for me to discover that the thing I had hit my head on was a heavy stick—a tree limb, perhaps. I grasped it with both hands and brought it down as hard as I could on his head.
    He collapsed across my body.
    I lay still, panting, trying to find the strength to get up and run. The man had a horse around somewhere. If I could find it …
    I dragged myself from beneath his heavy body and tried to stand up. Halfway up, I felt myself losing consciousness, falling back. I caught hold of a tree and willed myself to stay conscious. If the man came to and found me nearby, he would kill me. He would surely kill me! But I couldn’t keep my hold on the tree. I fell,