The Perfect Host Read Online Free PDF Page A

let him go, smiling a little as his powder-puff quarters disappeared through the trees. She had the grouse, and no way to carry anything extra. In addition, she had perfect confidence in her ability to get more food when she wanted it.
    From a basalt outcropping she got an edged stone. She stripped some dead reeds for the soft, dry pith inside, crumbled it, and pounded with the stone on the rock until she had a spark. Nursing it carefully with her breath, feeding it with more pith and then with leaves, she soon had a healthy little fire. She spitted the bird with a green stick, singed it, plucked it. Then, pinching out the soft underflesh, she cut it with her stone against the rock and cleaned the grouse. With two forked sticks she made a frame for the spit. She piled stones around her fire to shelter it and to concentrate the heat. Then she squatted beside it and, between turnings, occupied herself by patiently combing out her long heavy hair with her fingers, and braiding it tightly.
    At last it was ready—or at least, ready enough for her clamoring appetite. She ate slowly, however, and she ate the whole bird. She took the neck-bones apart for the tiny succulent strips of muscle there, and she cracked the other bones and sucked out the marrow. Then she gathered up the remains, scooped out a hole, and buried them. She drew up a large chunk of root to the fire, to keep it fed for the next few hours, wiped her hands and mouth carefully on some grass, and with a green twig meticulously cleaned her teeth.
    Then she stretched out in a bright patch of warm mid-morning sun and quietly, half somnolently, began to think.
    She had nothing—no clothes, no shelter, no knife or axe or other tools. She did not question the fact that she must take care of herself completely for at least a year.
    She was not worried, and she was certainly not frightened. Fear is a functional thing, and she was happy to yield to it when it had a function. Now it had none, so she was not afraid.
    She rolled over and cupped her chin in her hands. Food? Well, hunting was good. She could snare or club what she needed, and if she had to go a day or two without, she could stand it. There would be nuts and berries throughout the fall, and eggs aplenty in the spring and early summer. There was plenty of ash to be fire-cured and shaped and trimmed with stone, so that she could make bows and arrows. She had killed deer before this way. Clothing? She wanted none, at least until the cold came. By then she should have enough pelts to keep her warm—fox and deer and skunk and possibly coon andbeaver. There were caves in these parts; she could certainly find one. She could make rope from grasses for her snares, and possibly dig a pitfall or two. It would be hard, sometimes, but she would survive.
    She lay still for a long while, her mind flickering over this detail and that. Gradually she let it go blank.
What is complicated is by definition not important
. This above all was her father’s creed, and she had learned from babyhood that, after a time of preoccupation with details, it paid to leave them for a while to see what basic, if any, emerged from their framework.
    It came, without effort on her part. It was a sudden realization that her father had not turned her out so that she could prove her woodcraft. That was past proving. Had he expected her to live off the land for a year, he could have judged her ability to do it years ago without this specific trial. No, he expected her to go farther.
    She forced her thoughts to turn to the towns. The only one she had ever seen was the one near the house. She had never been there, but she had seen it from the mountainside. She remembered:
    “Why are they all clustered together like sheep in the winter, Father?”
    “Like botflies on carrion,” he had answered. “They are built that way because they are used by folk who cannot bear to be by themselves.”
    “Why not?”
    “Each of them seeks better company than he