Tinder Stricken Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gita's selfrope had slipped,
settling in the fold of two bent fence rails that crackled under
the strain: Esha gripped the knots and pulled but her pain-stabbed
joints couldn't lift Gita's weight more than a fingerwidth.
    “Climb back up,” Esha choked out.
“Hurry!”
    The phoenix screeched still; movement hummed
along the taut rope.
    “Take the phoenix,” Gita shouted. “Here,
it's on your selfrope— Agh! Wait, wait!”
    Esha leaned forward on the sagging fence, an
awful idea that made her guts lurch with terror: down there
dangling, Gita was still fumbling with tangled loops and beating
wings.
    “Forget the bird! Just come back up!” Esha
gripped Gita's selfrope again but it was a useless precaution: she
couldn't bear her sister's weight if the fence failed.
    “No,” Gita spat, a high cry like desperate
wind, “ no! I’m not throwing this prize away. You're not
going to be a beast woman stared at in the street. I just need
to—!”
    “Gita! Gods’ balls, it’s just a
bird! ”
    The top rail cracked, jerking to a stop
against the bottom rail. Time hung and the bottom rail moved as
well — yielding, bowing toward the abyss.
    Gita hesitated. She was bleached with fear,
gripping both lifeline and the stupid, screaming phoenix. “Very
well. Just—“ She reached reaching one-handed for Esha's dangling
rope.
    Esha looked again to the bowing fence rail,
to its splintering bamboo and now its iron nails baring like teeth.
“This part is failing — get onto my rope!”
    And Gita did, gripping Esha's selfrope
between her feet, letting slack into her own rope. Still weathering
the phoenix's one-winged blows, Gita crept upward. She had to be
exhausted, and more fearful than anyone but Esha could know.
    Another fibrous snap — this time a cavernous
sound, ringing out of a hollow-cored pole. The top rail of the
second fence section was failing too, and Esha's tied rope jerked
against the bottom rail, the last one remaining.
    Gita looked up at her, a farmer’s worn face
with eyes as wide as a child’s. She hadn’t tightened her headwrap:
her fur-dense hairline showed.
    Esha's hands hovered by the snapped
hollowheart rail, wanting to seize her selfrope and her sister's
weight but she was rotted through with terror. These rails
definitely couldn't bear weight but why would they be made into
fences at all?
    Gita was climbing, grasping rope and pulling
nearer.
    Another snap from the last rail, another
hollowheart pole shattering. Gita fell away, white-eyed, attached
to two slack ropes — until she jerked against the fence shambles
and then those gave, too, ripping from the shredded earth. Esha was
screaming, kicking back against her own balance point and the cliff
beyond it as Gita fell open-mouthed and silent, the phoenix
thrashing in her fist.
     
    Then there was only silence and wind.
     
    Esha stayed crumpled on the worldedge,
gripping nothing at all with her useless fists, her voice fading to
wet grief in her throat. She got up and crept to the torn worldedge
— dreading the sight of sari blue slumped over Betel's worldedge
rails. But Gita wasn't there. Just emptiness, like Esha had come
here alone.
    She didn't want to imagine Gita bouncing,
cartwheeling, falling even farther. She could still see the
phoenix’s plumage, burned into her mind as bright as sun-blindness.
For the want of that one vermin bird, Gita was dead. All they
wanted was a little money. All they wanted was to retire at peace,
that wasn’t so much to want. But the earthreaders gave wrong
advisories and the Empire-made fence was made of garbage bamboo —
and it didn't matter, because they were field women, just field
women. Gita Of The Fields was dead and that left Esha even more
alone.
    She knelt there wet-faced, for how long she
couldn’t have said. She wiped her cheeks dry and felt every
wrinkle. With numb hands, Esha touched the empty sensation around
her torso where her selfrope ought to be.
    And she found her gaze resting on