The Spawning (25 page)

Stepping back from the gates, she surveyed the walls speculatively. They were rough, but not rough enough to offer hand or toe holds and they must be nearly twelve feet high. There was no way they were going over them without something to help them manage it. “We need a ladder.”

“Let me just see if I can pull one out of my ass,” Mary Jane said sourly.

Miranda batted her eyelashes at her. “Could you, sweety?” she asked

sarcastically.

Surprised, Mary Jane blinked at her, but finally grinned. “I could try, oh great leader, but I’m not sure the results would be anything helpful.”

Shaking her head, Miranda turned to survey the compound. Aside from their

pathetic hut, there wasn’t anything except the fire pit and the bins. If the bins were closer to the wall they might be able to climb up on one and then climb from the top of the bin to the top of the wall, she thought. The question was, could they move one of the bins?

Doubtful, she decided, but she crossed the yard to study it anyway, testing it by pushing against it.

“I don’t think all of us together could move that thing, and I doubt we could

convince ‘all’ even to try. Besides, even from the top it looks like another seven or eight feet.”

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 111

“Which would mean balancing on the lip of the bin while somebody climbed

somebody’s shoulders,” Miranda finished.

After studying the problem several more minutes, she turned to look at the hut again. “We could use a couple of those left over poles to make a ladder.”

Deborah and Mary Jane followed her as she crossed the yard yet again and

stopped to study the poles. Picking out the two longest, she dragged them over to the wall and leaned them up to check the length. They were shy of the top by several feet, but she thought she could climb from the top onto the wall. Getting down on the other side might be a problem. She could jump, but then if she couldn’t move whatever it was blocking the gate, she wouldn’t have any way to get back in and she didn’t care for that possibility.

The walls were several feet thick at the bottom, though. Even if they narrowed at the top, she thought she could walk it and have a look at the blockage.

Pulling the poles down again, she studied the project thoughtfully. “I could cut some of the others up with the knife to make rungs, but I’m not sure how we’d put it together. There wasn’t much vine left and it’s pretty stiff now. And I don’t think there are enough poles to make as many rungs as we’d need.”

Deborah turned to study the hut. “I suppose we could sacrifice a couple of poles from the door, but that thing is so ‘holely’ now I’d really hate to. I mean, once we cut them up we wouldn’t be able to use them again.”

Miranda had to agree. “Why don’t we just see if we can tie maybe three of the poles together and make sort of a plank to walk up?”

Deborah and Mary Jane both looked doubtful, but they went with her and helped

to gather up what was left of the poles and vines. They quickly discovered the rounded poles couldn’t be tied together and kept flat without some kind of brace. Miranda took one and hacked it into four pieces and the three of them set about trying to twist the vines to hold their ‘plank’ together.

They hadn’t even managed to get the second one secure when they noticed it was getting dark really quickly. Glancing skyward uneasily, they saw a storm was blowing up from the sea—fast.

“It’s going to rain … again.”

“Shit!”

“Let’s try to get this done before it does,” Miranda suggested.

Neither Deborah nor Mary Jane looked very happy about it, but they focused on

helping her until they felt the first fat drops of rain. The two of them instantly abandoned the project and headed back to the hut, joining the other women already pouring inside.

Miranda ignored the sprinkling until it abruptly dawned on her that she was

wearing leather and that the rain wasn’t going to be good for either her boots or her pants.

She’d already shot to her feet and headed toward shelter when the hissing sizzle of the fire heating their main meal of the day caught her attention. Skidding a halt, she turned to look at the fire pit in dismay.

“The rain will put the fire out!” she yelled, panic stricken at the thought.

It wasn’t just that they’d been waiting for the meat to heat enough they could eat it. They didn’t have any way to make fire. The Hirachi had always built the fires. All they could do was to get it going from the coals if there were still live ones.

If the rain put the fire out completely they were in deep, deep trouble.

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 112

Most everyone seemed to grasp that at once. The dozen or so women nearest the opening or who hadn’t yet charged inside, skidded to a halt as she had, gaped at the fire pit in dismay and then turned to look at Miranda.

“What do we do? We can’t
carry
the coals inside!”

Miranda dashed over to the open door of the hut. “Dig a pit to hold the coals close to the middle of the hut! Hurry! Somebody find something we could use to scoop up some of the coals! Anything!”

The orders got pretty much everybody moving, but for the most part they ran

around in useless, panicked circles.

“The plates!” Miranda bellowed as it finally occurred to her that they had a stack of ‘plates’ from the animal’s hide that they’d been using to eat from. Dashing toward the fire pit even as the sprinkling of rain began to come down a little harder, Miranda grabbed one of the plates stacked near the fire and tried to get close enough to the fire to scoop up a burning coal. It took her several moments of dodging, burning her fingers, and braving the fire before she managed to roll one out. Discovering it was too big for one plate, she grabbed a second, juggled the burning piece of wood for a moment and finally managed to clamp a hold with the two plates. She dropped it before she was half way back to the hut and had to stop and wrestle it again. The fire had done out by the time she reached the hut with it. She tossed it in the pit that the others had dug anyway, grabbed a handful of the bedding closest to it and tossed it over the bit of wood, blowing on it hopefully. The moment the dry grass started smoking, she dashed out to try to get another. She met a handful of other women struggling to get several pieces of burning coal to the hut in a sort of relay effort.

The rain began to come down in earnest before she reached the pit again, but she made one more desperate attempt to get a live coal, uncertain if the one she’d already gotten had caught … or any of the others. She managed to rake a glowing coal out because the rain had already pretty much killed the fire that had been burning before.

Trying to shield it with her body, she doubled over and ran with it.

The hut was full of smoke by the time she reached it. She managed to suck in a mouthful the moment she met the wall of smoke. Coughing and choking, her eyes tearing so badly from the smoke that she could barely see, she struggled toward the fire pit. Somebody jostled her and she dropped it when she’d barely gotten inside with it.

“Watch it! Hot coal!” she cried in warning, but it was too late. Someone stepped on it and screamed. Someone else kicked it back toward the door and another woman stepped on it as the entire group bailed out of the hut in a mindless stampede to evade the smoke.

Giving up on finding the coal after a few moments, Miranda followed them

outside to stand in the downpour, still coughing up the smoke she’d managed to inhale.

When she finally got her coughing under control and her eyes had stopped tearing from the smoke, she moved toward the hut and peered inside, trying to decide if they still had a fire or nothing but smoke. She couldn’t tell. She could hear an occasional hiss as water made its way through the thatching on their roof, but she couldn’t see actual fire through the pall of smoke.

Shivering, she moved away from the hut again, looked around a little forlornly, and finally followed the rest of the women, who’d plastered themselves against the wall of the compound in hope of sheltering from at least some of the water pouring out of the THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 113

sky.

The rain stopped almost as abruptly as it had started.

It was hard to feel grateful about it. They were thoroughly drenched by that time and not one of them had a dry change of clothes or anything to dry off with. Nearly a third of the women simply flopped down in the mud and squalled. Miranda felt like joining them. She decided to hold off on yielding to hysterics until she’d seen whether or not they still had a fire.

Pushing away from the wall, she slogged her way to the hut, feeling a stronger urge to weep with each squish of water from her beautiful new boots. They were ruined.

She knew it and she was going to be barefooted again!

Smoke was still boiling out of the hut when she reached it, which didn’t actually help her feelings. Abruptly worried that the entire fucking hut was on fire, she sucked in a couple of breaths, dropped to her knees and began crawling toward the pit the other women had dug to contain the fire.

She could see a couple of tiny flickers of light when she finally reached the coals.

Relief flooded her. Sniffing at the tears that stung her nose, she carefully pulled another handful of dry grass from the pallet nearest the fire and dropped it around the tiny fire.

Quickly checking the perimeter to make sure nothing was close enough to lead

the fire from the pit to the grass pallets that burned so well, she scrambled out of the hut again and sat down, coughing at the smoke until her throat and chest felt raw.

“Did we manage to save the fire?” Deborah asked tiredly.

Miranda looked up at her through burning eyes and just nodded. “For now,” she managed after a moment in a croaking voice.

They couldn’t go back into the hut. The burning grasses kept it going but put out toxic fumes, or just smoke—they weren’t sure which. Either way there was too much smoke collecting inside the hut for them to use it.

After a while, when they saw the storm clouds were bringing on a premature

dusk, they filed down to the fire pit and tore off enough meat to appease their hunger. It wasn’t particularly hot anymore, which made it easier to get the meat, but it wasn’t particularly appetizing either.

They spent the night outside taking turns to brave the smoke and feed the fire to keep it going. It turned out it wasn’t hard staying alert enough to watch the fire. It rained again and nobody got much sleep.

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 114

Chapter Thirteen

“We aren’t going to make it without the Hirachi,” Deborah said, making an

obvious effort to keep any inflection out of her voice.

Miranda turned to stare at her dully, but she couldn’t summon enough strength of will even to convince herself that Deborah was wrong and nobody else disputed it.

“I’m open to suggestion,” she finally managed to say with great difficulty because her throat was still raw from all of the smoke she’d inhaled. She’d burned herself in several places juggling the hot coals, but the rain had pretty much cooled the burning.

“They said they’d come back after the spawning,” Deborah reminded her. “I

know it wounds your pride that they don’t seem to think we’re good enough for anything like a relationship, but, really, how different is that?”

“Not much,” Miranda admitted, “but,
before
, I had a life. It was a lot easier to ignore the fact that I didn’t have a relationship.”

Deborah shrugged. “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about having

plenty to do,” she said dryly.

“That’s true,” Stacy agreed. “You know it wouldn’t be half bad … really.

They’re sweet. They’re really good lovers. They don’t mind helping out and we really do need them.”

True, but how long was that going to last if they didn’t actually care anything about them, Miranda countered in her mind.

Of course, it wasn’t as if they had a lot competition.

Unless the damned trader decided to come back and brought more women.

Especially if he decided to aim for tall women. The Hirachi were bound to see them as a lot closer to what they were used to.

She decided not to point out that dismal prospect. It might happen and it might not. If it took the son-of-a-bitch a while to collect more and come, though, they had a little time to learn to fend for themselves a little better.

At the moment, their only shelter had been designated as the fire room. At least they could be grateful that it had been tight enough to keep the rain from putting it out, but they’d successfully stopped up most of the cracks and crevices and the result was that there weren’t a lot of places for the smoke to get out. The ground was saturated, too, and all the wood the Hirachi had gathered to keep the fire going. It wasn’t going to burn until it dried out, which meant they couldn’t even attempt to carry the coals back to the original pit until then … which meant they were going to have to sleep outside, in the mud.

“We still need to try to come up with trade goods to get some of the things we need,” she said after a bit. “I don’t think it’s realistic to believe we have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting up enough to buy our way home, but we still need a lot of things even to
make
things we need. We can’t rely completely on the Hirachi, particularly when we aren’t ‘keepers’ to their way of thinking. What if they just decide to move on? What if someone shows up with Hirachi women?

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 115

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but to me, this entire situation totally sucks!

If this is what we have to look forward to any time the Hirachi disappear for a few days, I just can’t see just waiting around for them to do something. I’d like to know, the next damned time they go into fucking spawning phase, that I’m not going to starve, or end up having to spend the night in the fucking rain!”

For once, nobody disagreed. She was actually a little surprised that the bimbo faction hadn’t immediately objected, but she supposed they either hadn’t heard or they’d decided it really didn’t have anything to do with them. They weren’t in the habit of doing any more than they absolutely had to at any time anyway. No doubt they were certain none of the others would have the nerve to suggest that they risk their necks by going outside.