Calamity's Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

toward the flap.
    "You are not allowed here!" she
hissed. "Go! Do not return until you are summoned!" Another shove,
and a third, which sent him stumbling out into the cold, ice-rimed
camp.
    Slade stood for a moment, gathering
his wits; shivering, aching and angry. Then, leaning hard on his
spear, he limped away, toward Gineah's tent.
    *
    "Rest, tomorrow and tomorrow," Gineah
said, rising from her inspection of the injured leg. "The muscles
are angry, and you -- you are a very fortunate hunter, young Slade.
You might have broken that leg, and then you would have been a dead
hunter, alone in the freezing darkness, without a brother of the
hunt nearby to aid you."
    He smiled up at her. "I was fortunate,
I know. I will be more careful, Gineah."
    She snorted and motioned him to sit
up, as she crossed to the cook fire and the pot hanging there. "At
least your head is hard," she said -- and then, "You should not
hunt alone."
    "I must," he said. "My methods
frighten Verad, and the others are more timid still."
    Gineah ladled soup into bowls and
brought them back to the hearth fire, handing one to
Slade.
    "Eat." She ordered. "And while you
eat, tell me what your wife was about, to allow a stranger to send
you from her tent."
    So he ate, and told her of his strange
homecoming, with Arika entranced or uncaring, the smoke, the knife,
and the woman who had banished him.
    "So." Gineah looked at him straightly
across the fire. "Your wife, young Slade, is a Finder."
    He blinked, trying to read her face,
and, as usual, failing.
    "What is a Finder,
grandmother?"
    "A woman of great
erifu
, who may
cast her thought out to find that which is lost. The best Finders
improve their tents many times over. Your wife is young, she has
some years before she reaches the fullness of her gift. But she is
already known as a Finder of great talent. The tent will improve
quickly, I think, and you will no longer live on the edges of the
Dark Camp."
    Surely,
Slade thought,
this
was good news?
In the house of his
mother, the birth of a Healer was cause for rejoicing. Yet, Gineah
looked more doleful than joyous.
    "This troubles you..." he said,
tentatively.
    Gineah sighed. "Finders ... do not
thrive. The heat of their gift consumes them. Not all at once, but
over a time. Sometimes, a very long time."
    He stared at her, thinking of Arika,
young and frail and fierce, and his eyes filled. "Is there no
--"
    "Cure?" she finished for him. "Child,
there is no cure for destiny."
    "Then," he asked, blinking the tears
away, though the empty feeling in his chest remained. "What should
I do?"
    "Be the best hunter you
are able. Be her friend, as I know you can be, O, wisest and
most
erifu
of hunters. If children come to the tent, care for them. And
pray that they were not born to be Finders."
    Something moved near the flap of the
tent, loud to Slade's hunter-trained ears. He came around, began to
rise -- and fell back as fire shot through his leg.
    "Rest!" Gineah hissed at him, and went
to unlace the flap.
    "Grandmother," he heard Arika's voice,
thin and vulnerable. "Is Slade with you?"
    "He is. A woman pushed him from your
tent while you were Finding, child. What greeting is that for a
hunter returned to his tent wounded?"
    "Wounded?" He heard her gasp and
called out --
    "A fall, nothing more.
Gineah..."
    She stepped back, motioning, and Arika
entered.
    She was wan, and unsteady on her feet,
her eyes great and bruised looking.
    "A fall?" she repeated, and knelt
beside him, touching the leg Gineah had wrapped. "Is it
broken?"
    "No," he soothed her. "Not
broken."
    "He must rest," Gineah said. "Tomorrow
and tomorrow. Eat from stores. If there is a call upon your gift,
you will come to me, rather than turn this hunter out. Am I
understood?"
    Arika hung her head. "You are
understood, grandmother." She looked up, and Slade saw tears
shining in her eyes. "Slade. You should not have been cast out.
Next time, I will be certain that those who watch know that your
presence will not