Read The Kin for Free Online Page B

toes. Then she did the same to Tinu and found her twisted mouth.
    â€œWhat is this?” she croaked.
    Tinu was too scared to speak, but Noli explained that she had been born like that.
    â€œWere others among you so?” asked the woman.
    â€œOnly Tinu was so, in all the Kins,” said Noli.
    The woman shoved Tinu away and went on to the small ones. The people watched, muttering.
    Suth studied them. There were ten and a few more. Some were old, and needed a stick to hobble on. Two of the men had eyes of different colours, like Dith’s. A young woman had a withered leg. A girl, who was standing beside a pregnant woman, moved her hand and Suth saw that there were flaps of skin between the fingers, like those on the feet of the birds at Stinkwater.
    Otan bawled as the old woman felt him over, but quieted when Noli took him back. The people started to move around, as if the examination of these strangers was done. Dith and Mohr left to finish digging out the juiceroot. The sense of danger ebbed away, but Suth stayed tense. He found the behaviour of these people very strange. He didn’t know where he was with them.
    The pregnant woman came up to admire Otan.
    â€œThat is a big voice,” she said as if this were a special compliment. “It is the voice of a lucky hunter.”
    â€œHe is hungry and thirsty,” said Noli. “Where is water?”
    â€œYou have not drunk?” said the woman, sounding surprised.
    â€œWe drank yesterday, in the morning,” said Noli.
    The woman nodded and went and spoke briefly with the old woman, then called the girl with the strange hands and sent her running down the slope after Dith and Mohr. She reached them just before they disappeared into the scrub. There was an argument, but after a bit they started back up the slope. When they reached the camp they were clearly angry, but Dith said, “Come. Be quick,” and led the way down again. Suth took Otan, to give Noli a rest. The girl with the strange hands came too.
    â€œWhere do we go?” Suth asked her.
    â€œTo the lake,” she said, obviously surprised by his not knowing. “Where else is water? What is your name?”
    â€œI am Suth. These are Noli and Tinu. The small ones are Ko and Mana. The one I carry is Otan, who is Noli’s brother. We have no fathers, no mothers. Our Kin was Moonhawk, but it is gone.”
    â€œI am Sula,” she said. “Paro is my mother. She gives birth today, before sundown. My father is Mohr, that one, and the other is Dith. Mosu made them take you to the lake. They are angry about that.”
    â€œWhy do grown men come?” said Suth. “Do we steal a lake?”
    Again she stared at him, astonished that he didn’t know.
    â€œAll go together to the lake,” she said. “The men guard us.”
    They were on a well-worn trail that went leftward down the slope. As they entered the bushes Mohr dropped back to the rear of the line, and both men raised their digging sticks to a ready position and walked more warily. The trail was wide, and creatures other than people had left their prints in its dust. This was something that Suth had seen before, near water holes in places rich in game, but never so many, nor on a trail that so reeked of people.
    This trail led directly into the trees, out of the blazing sunlight and into a dark green tunnel where the air was dense with strange odours, sappy new growth, unknown pollens and fungi, decaying litter. The men walked carefully, peering left and right into the shadows between the huge still trunks. It was a world unlike anything Suth had ever known.
    He started violently as a flock of green and yellow birds flew chuckling across the path, and then froze, with the hair on his neck prickling erect, as the same weird whooping that he’d heard before rose from somewhere almost overhead.
    All five Moonhawks stopped in their tracks. Mana put her hand in Suth’s and huddled to his