The Secret City by Carol Emshwiller Read Free Book Online Page A

nod.
    “I’ll bet you’ve never seen an
allush
any more than I’ve seen a
lorp.”
    Finally a slight smile.
    “Allusha. Allusha.” I added the “ah” as if she was my lover. I’m so delighted I couldn’t help it. I’ve never said that to anybody. How can it be on the tip of my tongue?
    She flinches. If she wasn’t sitting down, she’d have run away.
    “I’m sorry.”
    We sit. Silent. I’m finding it hard to just sit when what I want to do is grab her and hug, but I don’t want to scare her.
    We’re so quiet ground squirrels rustle right next to us. A jay flies down, landing inches from Allush’s knee. I’ll bet she’s tamed them all.
    Then, like an apparition, slowly, delicately, as if on tiptoe … out from the underbrush comes a white mule. She’s like a fairyland creature—as if out of an old tale told by the grandmothers. I almost expect her to have a unicorn horn.
    The mule leans down and Allush reaches up, touches…. Tips of fingers to pinkish nose.
    For a moment it’s magic, no sound, no rustlings even, and then the mule throws back her head and gives a great hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw.

    ALLUSH
    H E LOOKS SO HAPPY AT SEEING ME . I CAN SEE IT hurts him to smile but he can’t stop. No one has ever been this glad to see me ever before.
    But then Pashty comes, makes a great noise and then trots away.
    We laugh and he gets up and reaches towards me and I get up, too. We stare and reach but don’t touch. He’s one of us for sure—those aluminum-colored eyes.
    Then we sit on the wall side by side, again carefully not touching. I hadn’t thought he’d feel as shy as I do but he does.
    He wants to talk but hardly dares. He keeps starting to say something and then doesn’t. So we just sit.
    Then there’s the sound of air, a swish. I know that sound. I shout, “No!” almost before it lands. An arrow. It hits him and he falls over backwards off the wall. I’m thinking he’s dead. I feel awful. Just when there’s a whole new person here, he’s gone already.
    I jump down beside him.
    He’s flat on his back. Stunned. But he’s not dead. The arrow is stuck in his arm.
    There’s not much blood now, but there might be if I try to get it out.
    At least down here we’re protected by the wall.
    I know who did it. There’s nobody else who would. I wonder if he’ll shoot me, too.
    I stand up and yell, “Youpas! Stop!”
    Another arrow plinks into the wall beside me as though to warn me. Would he really?
    And another.
    I duck behind the wall again and huddle next to this new one called Lorpas.
    We could crawl along the wall until we come to Mollish’s hut. She’ll know what to do.
    “Can you crawl?”
    “Wait a minute. Just a minute.”
    He lies there, and then, slowly, turns over on hands and knees. I lead the way.
    At Mollish’s, I push aside the brush and open the door. Mollish helps me pull him in, but when I tell her Youpas shot him, she’s angry that I would haul in a stranger who’s been shot by one of us. She says she won’t help, and I say I’ll use her things and help him anyway, and she says, “Well, I won’t stop you if that’s what you have to do.” I say, “Youpas always shoots first and then asks who it is.”
    First thing, I give Lorpas elderberry liqueur and herbs to chew to put him out while Mollish sits at the table looking cross.
    I cut away his shirt and reveal, not only the injury, but the burns on his other shoulder. As I examine his wound I see the home-call.
    “Look, he has a beacon. His mother really cared about him. She must have given him hers. She wanted him to go home.” I say those first words in our language we all learned before we could hardly even call our Mamas. “I’m us of one-eighty-nine. Take me home. “
    Mollish says, “Home!” as if disgusted with the whole idea.
    I pull out the arrow. Suddenly there’s a lot of blood.
    Mollish makes a disgusted noise again, kneels beside me and takes over. “Don’t just sit there, start wiping up