Page 134 of Circle of Days
Ani looked around. She saw mainly old people and children. There were two young women, one heavily pregnant and the other breastfeeding a newborn baby. Ani was glad the children had food, but the tribe could not go on living by theft.
She said to Naro: “Where are the others?”
“Hunting,” said Naro.
“When will they be back?”
“Soon.”
Ani reached out and touched the garment of a child standing near her. She said: “This is cow hide.”
Naro shook her head. “Deer skin.”
Ani said: “I’m a leather tanner. I know the difference between one skin and another. This is not deer, it’s cow.”
“Hard to tell them apart.”
“Not for me.”
Naro became cross. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for Bez.”
“He’s not here.”
“But he comes here, and he gives you cow hides and beef.”
Naro said nothing.
“When Bez leaves here, where does he go?”
“You should leave now,” said Naro. “We don’t want you here.”
Zad told Ani that he was sick at heart because he could not fulfill his duty of protecting the herd. She believed him.
The herd supervised by Zad took up one-third of the Great Plain, but for as long as anyone could remember it had needed only half a dozen families to take care of it.
Those days were over.
Ani sat with Zad, Biddy, and their daughter, Dini, on the ground outside their house. Biddy said plaintively: “They come creeping so silently! If something goes wrong, they run and we can’t catch them. Otherwise we never see them at all, but the next day someone says: ‘Where’s the bullock with the white patch over one eye?’ and we realize we’ve been robbed again.”
Ani said: “I went to the remnant of the West Wood. Only oldpeople and children were there. A woman called Naro told me the rest of the tribe were away hunting.”
“She always says that,” Zad said. “But we never see them.”
“Where could Bez be living?”
“No one knows.”
If they could not be found, they could not be massacred, which was a relief to Ani. But they could not hide forever. At some point their secret would be revealed, and then there would be a bloodbath. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “Is there a way to stop the thefts without killing everyone in the tribe?”
“I think there is,” said Zad.
Ani said eagerly: “How?”
Biddy answered. “Double the guard.”
They had obviously worked this out between them, and Ani was encouraged.
