The Rock Child by Win Blevins Read Free Book Online

petrified as his spirit.
    Dr. Harville preempted his speech. “She’s not ready. She can keep walking a little, best outside. During the warm part of the day. I’ll go with her.” Dr. Harville actually rose to confront Tarim now. “But she’s not ready to do any work of any kind, and won’t be for weeks.”
    Tarim cocked his head sideways around the doctor and pointed at her. “One month sick, one year more work,” he said, waving his hand like a blade.
    Sun Moon didn’t care what he said. I won’t be here one year, much less five or six .
    Tarim stalked away.
    “Thank you,” she said. Often she thought she could get up and work. She wanted to. But even a short walk with Dr. Harville tired her out.
    As they walked, and any time they were together, she was learning to speak English better and better. Sometimes he also read to her, and helped her puzzle out the sounds of the English alphabet one by one and put them into the strange words.
    “You are a good student,” he said. “You work hard.”
    She nodded. I am becoming a good student of the ways of the warrior-goddess. What would you think if you knew my reason for learning to read? She looked at him. No, she wouldn’t tell him. There was little he could do for her. Unnecessary risk.
    Finally Dr. Harville let her help Tarim in the store, finding items for customers, counting their coins, or weighing their dust in payment. She stayed on her feet as long as she could—she was determined to learn about Tarim, his household, his businesses, his customers, both white and yellow. Even red. I need to learn everything .
    Tarim’s tavern was a new business, she found out, but the store had operated for a year. “I am a trader,” he said from time to time. The white, black, red, and yellow customers peered at Sun Moon and whispered among themselves.
    She learned to weigh things in the American scales. She learned to make change with the unfamiliar coins. She learned to take in gold dust, weigh it, and give credit. Once she dropped a few grains of gold dust between the scale and the jar. Tarim hissed while he swept it up.
    She noticed then how carefully he swept the floor of the store and the tavern at night, checking the ordinary dust for flecks of yellow.
    From the whispers she found out more. Tarim had arranged the grand opening of his tavern so that Sun Moon would be the mainattraction, the deflowering of the virgin nun. She had spoiled his grand opening. She smiled grimly.
    Sun Moon watched for chances to walk through the store in the dark, when Tarim was gone. He lived in the store, and kept a Tibetan mastiff on guard besides. But sometimes he disappeared for an hour or two after the tavern closed, and Sun Moon heard that he went to a woman. She made tentative friends with the big dog, named Sonam, which seemed mean and stupid. I will not be your second Tibetan lackey .
    She began memorizing a list of what she would take when she escaped.
    At the first opportunity she also stole a pocketknife from a kitchen drawer and kept it in her clothes every hour of every day, to be ready to fight. She reminded herself to steal a whetstone later, so she could keep it very sharp.
    Openly, she roasted barley on the stove and ground it into fine powder. This would be the torma she would offer to Mahakala. To perform the ritual she had begged a small shipping box to use as an altar, a place to burn incense, a place for the food for the protector deity, an object for her prayers and chants.
    As she made these preparations, she worried. Will my face repel the white men enough? Or not? It doesn’t matter. They will have to kill me before I whore for them .
    One night when Tarim was gone, she lit half a dozen candles and placed them next to the full mirror in the store, the one customers used to look at their new clothes. She averted her eyes until the crucial moment. She drew herself up straight in front of the mirror. She laced her fingers over her eyes. She opened the fingers