“No, of course not. What’s your name?”
He didn’t answer. Gesturing up the road, he urged her forward, and fell in behind her.
Surrounded by wary fighters, Enid walked carefully, her gaze ahead, not wanting to rile them by staring and making them any more jittery than they already were. But she kept watch out of the corner of her eye.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
After walking another hour or so, the smell of wood smoke tickled Enid’s nose. Someone had a campfire up ahead. They’d passed more and more cut stumps—a lot of wood harvesting went on here. The road opened to a clearing with blue sky overhead. Voices traveled, the familiar sounds of people living their lives, focused on food and shelter and shouting after children.
This wasn’t just a camp, as she’d seen before among outsider settlements—temporary arrangements made by folk who traveled, following good weather. This was a village. Permanent structures made of split logs, neatly stacked firewood stored under shelter. Cabins that used the walls of pre-Fall buildings and had substantial roofs. Worn paths and well-used fire pits between them all, a web of connections. The central clearing had the look of a market square in a decent-sized town.
No livestock that she could see, not so much as a chicken. No goats, which meant no milk. No sources of wool, at least not right here. Everything they ate, they foraged. She saw no blacksmith’s forge. Nothing that looked like complex metalworking. As she’d been told, all their metal was salvaged scrap. Anything else, they’d have to trade for.
A dog bounded out, barking at Enid. Rangy and scrappy, with short brown-and-cream fur and pointed ears, it might have been a hybrid coyote, or something that had been feral for a few generations before being re-tamed. More bristly and alert than Bear back at the Estuary. This one didn’t assume everyone was a friend. Spotting Enid, a stranger, it looked like it might charge. She stood her ground, wished for her staff. But the burly man waved the animal off, hissing a couple of words. The dog tucked its tail and slinked away to watch from farther off.
“Over here,” her captor said, pointing to an open-walled shelter on the far side of the clearing. A sturdy roof on steel supports covered a concrete slab. The concrete was cracked and repaired with multicolored clay patches that had been smoothed down, then patched and smoothed again. The beams supporting the roof were riveted and painted. This was a pre-Fall structure. Not a whole building—likely it had never had walls. But it seemed the village had turned the old shelter into a community space. A couple of teens were inside, twisting hemp, making rope. A woman was pounding something between stones. Nuts, looked like, making paste.
Activity stopped when Enid a
rrived, and people stared. She was clearly a stranger: taller, more muscular. Better fed. Dressed in linen cloth, not leather, hemp, and felt. Enid left her hands at her sides, trying to appear friendly and harmless.
“Wait,” the burly man ordered, pointing to a wooden bench. “El Juez’ll come look at you.”
The troop gathered in the shelter, hemming Enid in. More spectators emerged, coming from sheds and cottages, from farther out around the clearing, to see what this was about. To look at her. Wasn’t much different than when an investigator arrived in any town: cautious curiosity. No one wanted to get too close, but everyone wanted to see.
A dozen adults, plus as many kids. Too many kids, she thought. She made calculations that were second nature to her—how much did they grow, how much could they forage, how much did they hunt, and was that enough to feed everyone? Probably yes, if they spent all their time on it. They likely all helped, even the little ones. She thought that most of the adult women here had had more than one child each.
A set of bone wind chimes hung from one of the beams. Just like those at Last House, ribs and vertebrae on twine, with a few rough wood beads in between. They’d clack together in a breeze, but at the moment the air was still.
“Did Ella make this?” Enid asked, pointing. “Or maybe Neeve?” No one answered. Not even any nodding. She wasn’t really surprised. She glared out, a thin wry smile on her lips, and studied the faces around her, as carefully as she had done when they first captured her. Let them believe they hadn’t rattled her.
These folk might decide to kill Enid as some kind of exchange for Ella. One of theirs for one of ours, that sort of thing. Enid hadn’t been thinking in those terms, and for the first time regretted coming here. She had been considering higher notions, like truth and justice. Impractical notions that didn’t put food in anyone’s mouth.
She had to give them a stake in talking to her.
“Hawk,” she said, and the young man flinched. “Did Ella live in the camp here?” He pressed his lips shut, seemed determined not to speak. “Did you all know Ella?” she said to the rest of them. “Were any of you close?”
For a moment, she wondered if they even spoke the same language.
“What is it?” said a booming voice with a clipped accent.
The speaker emerged from one of the cabins. The man was big, tough. Brown hands used to gripping, legs used to walking for miles, all wrapped in leather and felted cloth. His unruly beard was going gray, his thick hair tied back in a tail. He glared, full of iron and suspicion. This must be El Juez.
Enid slowed her breathing and looked on, calm as she could make herself. The people seemed to expect her to panic, so she didn’t.
“Hola,” she said. “I’m Enid.”
He looked her up and down, studying her just as closely as she studied him. She wondered what he saw.
To the head of the small band he said, “Why did you bring this here?”
“She can tell about Ella, Hawk says.” The burly man spoke carefully, hands folded before him, deferential.
“Hawk said that already. Didn’t you, Hawk?” said El Juez.
“Yeah,” Hawk said, softly, his gazed lowered.
It wasn’t that the folk seemed scared of El Juez, exactly. But they offered a great deal of respect. They kept a physical space around him.