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"I survived," she reth

"By night-start tomorrohen she feels the claws at her throat," she went on, "this two-syllable irl ish she had died of sickness beside her reement, the wo and kicking at the small tykes by their sides The sun was low in the sky now They would attend to their evening tasks, preparing for the return of the villageof wounds

One woht, and the others would attend her,the value of the infant Others would be coupling tonight, creating new people, new hunters for the future of the village as the old ones died of wounds and illness and age

Kira did not knohat the Council of Guardians would decide She knew only that whether she was to stay or go, to rebuild on her mother's piece of land or to enter the Field and face the creatures aiting in the forest, she would have to do it alone Wearily she sat on the ash-blackened earth to wait for night

She reached for a nearby piece of wood and turned it over in her hands, htness For a cott, should she be perths of solid wood She would go to the woodcutter named Martin He had been herto decorate a fabric for his wife, in exchange for the beams she would need

For her future, for the hich she thought she ht pieces of wood This one was too pliable and would not do, she realized, and dropped it on the ground Tomorrow, if the Council of Guardians decided in her favor, she would look for the kind of wood she needed: short, sether at the corners She was already planning to build a new threading frame

Kira had always had a clever ith her hands When she was still a tyke, her h woven fabric and create a pattern with colored threads But suddenly, recently, the skill had beco burst of creativity, her ability had gone far beyond herNoithout instruction or practice, without hesitancy, her fingers felt the way to twist and weave and stitch the special threads together to create designs rich and explosive with color She did not understand how the knowledge had coertips, and now they treerness to start If only she was allowed to stay

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Aat an insect bite on his neck, came to Kira in the dawn and told her that sheWhen the sun was approaching midday, she tidied herself and went, obedient to his instruction

The Council Edifice was surprisingly splendid It remained from before the Ruin, a ti, none of their parents or grandparents, had been born The people knew of the Ruin only fro

Rue was the annual presentation of the Song, prepared his voice by resting for days and sipping certain oils The Ruin Song was lengthy and exhausting It began with the beginning of ti the entire story of the people over countless centuries It was frightening too The story of the past was filled arfare and disasters Most especially it was frightening when it recalled the Ruin, the end of the civilization of the ancestors Verses told of sreat fractures in the earth itself, of the way huge buildings toppled and were swept away by the seas All of the people were required to listen each year, but sometimes mothers protectively covered the ears of their s the description of the Ruin

Very little had survived the Ruin, but somehow the structure called the Council Edifice had re and firm It was ilass of deep reds and golds, a such re s, ones in which the colored glass had shattered, were now paned in a thick, ordinary glass that distorted the view through bubbles and ripples Other ere si's interior were darkly shadowed Still, the Edifice was es of the village

Kira, reporting near er, walked alone down a long hallway lit on either side by sputtering flames from tall sconces fed with oil She could hear the voices of the uing Her stick thu brushed the boards with a sweeping sound, as if she dragged a broom

"Take pride in your pain," her er than those who have none"

She remembered that now and tried to find the pride that her htened her thin shoulders and smoothed the folds of her coarsely woven shift She had washed carefully in the clear strea She had combed her hair with the carved wooden comb that had been her e sack after herher hands to interweave the thick dark strands deftly, tying the end of the heavy plait with a leather strip

Steadying her apprehensions with a deep breath, Kira knocked on the heavy door to the rooress It opened a crack, spilling a wedge of light into the dim hall A man looked out and eyed her suspiciously He widened the opening and gestured her inside

"The accused orphan girl Kira is here!" the door guard announced, and thesubsided In silence they all turned to watch her enter

The chae Kira had been there before, with herThen, they had sat with the crowds on rows of benches, facing the stage that was furnished only with an altar table holding the Worship-object, the mysterious wooden construction of two sticks connected to forreat power in the past, and the people always bowed briefly and humbly toward it in respect

But now she was alone There were no crowds, no ordinary citizens, only the Council of Guardians: twelvetable at the foot of the stage Rows of oil laht, and each of thestacked and scattered papers that lay on the table They watched her as she made her way hesitantly up the aisle

Quickly, re the procedure that she had seen at every cereed her hands in a reverent position, cupped together, fingertips below her chin, as she arrived at the table and looked respectfully toward the Worship-object on the stage The guardians nodded approvingly Apparently it had been the right gesture She relaxed a bit, waiting, wondering ould happen next