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Tally looked around at the others, and found all of thee, copper-flecked eyes, almost couldn’t stand to face her beauty
God, he’d said The old Rusty word for their invisible superheroes in the sky
This was their world out here - this raw, cruel wilderness with its disease and violence and anile for survival Like these people, this world was ugly To be pretty was to be frood
YOUNG BLOOD
The hunters’ cauished, the party followed pitch-black trails and waded down freezing streauides displayed a strange combination of crudity and skill They were s all their weight on one leg They smelled as if they never bathed, and wore shoes so poor, their feet were scarred But they knew the forest,Tally unerringly through the darkness The hunters didn’t use direction-finders, or even pause to check the stars
The suspicions that Tally had nursed the day before were proven right These hills were laced with huliically in the darkness, the oldturns and switchbacks without hesitation The groupnoleaves
The hunters had enemies, it seemed After their cacophonous attack on Tally, she wouldn’t have i But now they sent signals up and down the line with clicking sounds and birdlike chirps instead of words They seemed perplexed whenever Tally tripped over an invisible root or vine, and nervous when she let out a string of curses as a result They didn’t like being unar their weapons at the first sign of her displeasure
Tough luck, Tally thought No lad they’d discarded the clubs, just in case they changed their minds After all, if she hadn’t fallen into the water, washing the day’s mud and muck from her pretty face, Tally doubted she would be alive now
Whoever the hunters’ enee before they reached it It made her nose wrinkle unhappily
It wasn’t just the scent of wood shter, which she knew fro rabbits and chickens killed for food back in the Smoke The smell at the outskirts of the hunters’ ca Tally of the outdoor latrines the S she’d never quite gotten used to Mercifully, the sht
The ca - a dozen huts oats tied to each, the furrows of vegetable plots casting ruffled shadows in the starlight One big storehouse sat in the s that Tally could see
The village’s borders werereached hoain, shouting the news that they’d brought back a
visitor
People began to flow out of the huts, the hubbub growing as the village gradually awoke Tally found herself at the center of a gathering crowd of curious faces A circle forers never pressed too close, as if held back by the force field of her beauty They kept their eyes averted
The littlies, on the other hand, showedout to lay a hand on her silvery jacket before retreating back into the crowd It was strange seeing kids out here in the wild Unlike their elders, the littlies looked al for their skin to show the ravages of bad nutrition and disease, and, of course, even in the city no one got the operation until they were sixteen She was used to seeing asymmetrical faces and squinty eyes on littlies, and they were cute, anyway
Tally knelt and reached out a hand, letting the bravest of them nervously stroke her palm
She also saomen for the first time Given that almost every man wore a beard, it was easy to tell the sexes apart The wo to the slance at Tally A feere building a fire on a blackened pit in the middle of town No men bothered to help the in school about the pre-Rusty custo different tasks to ot the crappy jobs, she recalled Even soht gave Tally a queasy feeling in her stoods
She wondered exactly where the god idea had come from Tally had her firestarter and other equipment in her backpack, recovered before she and the hunters had started on their way here But none of thelance Fro divinea pretty face
Of course, she wasn’t the first pretty they’d seen At least soht know soy as well
So, and the crowd parted before her, growing silent A man came into the circle, oddly shirtless in the cold He walked with an air of unh Tally’s divine force field and to within ar these people He looked strong as well, wiry and hard, though Tally guessed that his reflexes were no ht, his eyes sparkled with curiosity rather than fear
She had no idea what his age ht be His face had some of the lines of a middle pretty, but his skin looked better than er than most of them? Or simply healthier?
Tally also noticed that he wore a knife, the first metal tool she’d seen Its handle shone with the matte black of plastic She raised an eyebrow: The knife had to be city-ods’ tongue "Thanks U Not for ? "Oh, sorry," she ods weren’t supposed to apologize
"We were confused," he said "We saw your fire, and thought you were an outsider"
"Yeah, I got that No harm done"
He tried to smile, but then frowned and shook his head "We still do not understand"
You and htly unusual, like someone from another city on the continent, but not froether On the other hand, he seemed to lack words for the questions he wanted to ask, as if he wasn’t accusto for: What the hell are you doing here?