Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee (beach read book txt) 📕

fields.But, because he had shown some aptitude for learning, the landowner, muchfairer than most, sent him twice a week into town, to be schooled.

Theschool was ramshackle. In winter, icicles formed high on the indoor beams underthe attic where the roof leaked. The children would huddle around an iron potwith coals in it. There were fifty boys and about fifteen girls whose relativesthought them odd enough to need lessons. All but one of the girls were aliencreatures, whose nurses always came with them. In winter, they brought theirown iron firepots, too. The last girl was poor and came alone. She sat boltupright in a clean ragged darned dress. Her hair was always clean, too, a longfair flag that hung down her back and onto the bench. The well-off little girlswould not speak to her. They had remarked loudly to each other that she was ahussy, having no nurse to guard her. The poor girl remarked as loudly, to theair, that she, being virtuous and trustworthy, required no guard, as theyplainly did.

Drosaw her twice a week, each of the two days that he came to the school, forthree years. Then, one day when he was thirteen, he suddenly noticed her. Shewould play dice games with the boys, which she usually won, and run races withthem, which sometimes she won. She would also climb trees, though not incompany with the boys, for she expressed the opinion that this would beunseemly. The day Parl Dro noticed her was an evening in early summer. He cameout into the field behind the school and saw her sitting in an apple tree. Thesun spilled down her hair like molten honey. She was talking to herself, or tothe birds, or the tree. He climbed an adjacent tree and sat and looked at her.She did not seem offended or abashed when she saw him. They began to conversequite easily. What they spoke about was unrecalled and meaningless. It mighthave been books or the state of the crops.

Whenhe came back to the town on his next school day, he arrived early, and walkedslowly by her house. It was a tiny hovel, held up mainly by two other hovels ateither side of it. Yet it was the cleanest hovel for miles around. When shecame out she did not seem amazed to see him. Her only kin was a grandmother,who that morning had been baking. The girl had two slices of warm cracklingbread, spread with dripping, one of which she presented graciously to Parl withthe compliments of the house.

Shehad a name, but he never called her by it. Her nickname, which her grandmotherhad given her for her hair, was “Silky.” Parl and the grandmother, but no oneelse, called her that.

Throughthe summer, they spent a lot of time together. Sometimes they played truantfrom the school. They roved about the hills. They talked of myths, legendsbound up with the land, and ancient times when emperors had ruled empiresthere, and women with hot blood had ridden over it to battle. He showed her howto catch fish in the streams. She told him he was cruel to catch fish he didnot need to eat. Later, when the grandmother suffered a setback in her meagrelife style, Silky begged him to show her again how to catch fish. They took thecatch back to the hovel together, the colour of river pebbles and fine to eat,particularly when starvation was the alternative. He stole bread for them, Silkyand the grandmother, from the landowner’s ovens. When times grew fatter, Silky,by way of repayment, stole a knife for him from the steelsmith’s. Parl had alittle trouble replacing it in the forge before it was missed. They were veryyoung, and their sexuality was limited by their youth, their situation andtheir codes of honour regarding each other. But they learned certain lessons offire together, light fierce kisses, the rapidity of a heartbeat, hands andbodies and the press of summer grass. There would have been more, if things hadevolved differently.

Whenthe harvest came due, the landowner called in all his workers to the fields.For three or four weeks, Parl would not see the school, the town, or Silky.They parted gravely, as if for a year, beneath the apple tree in the fieldbehind the school.

Theharvest went as it always did, which was back-breakingly, but well. The weatherwas hot and the sheaves like tinder, and men were posted to keep watch forfires. At night, Parl fell asleep in the open, the stars dazzling overhead. Theair smelled of grapes and wine and scythed grain. Fireflies sprinkled thebushes. He hardly thought of Silky, comforted that he did not need to think ofher, because she would be there for him when he returned.

Inthe last week of the harvest there was a storm. Roaring and trampling, it toredown on the fields like a gigantic animal. Great smacks of wind clapped thecorn flat to the ground. Lightning drove steel bolts through the earth. A treeblazed up on a hill, exploding with white electric fire and noise.

Theyworked against the gale and the lightning. When the rain came, they workedagainst that. Purple and wailing in the wind, the fields surrendered themselvesto destruction. The last of the harvest was taken by the storm.

Somehowworse than the material loss, the threat of reduced rations, cut wages, whichmust inevitably follow, was a primitive distress which fell over all of them.The storm was like some supernatural show of wrath, sent as if to punish them,as if to demonstrate that however settled life might seem, nothing was certain.It was no surprise to Parl when the landowner, riding by him through the soddenruin of the stacks, tapped his shoulder. “No more school for you, boy. I’msorry. I’ll need you here.”

Itwas another month before Parl could find the space or energy to make the twohours’ trek to the town. And then he had to set off two hours before sunrise,hoping he would not be missed when the other boys and men turned out soon afterdawn. Probably he would get a beating. The idea of it seemed very distant.There had begun to be a