Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 6

Tricks and Tools


Country Store


April 14, 1005 CE


It was a day before the girls approached the demon, when Pefif and Gorth got to the strange place where the demon had apparently come into the world. Pefif and Gorth hadn’t found it difficult to track the two monsters. A blind squirrel wouldn’t find it difficult to track them. Then they got to the place where they had come into the world, and they hadn’t come in alone.

There was a wall. The wall was not very tall, no more than a few inches and usually much less, where their world and the grass and trees of their world just stopped, and a different world started.

Pefif and Gorth didn’t want to cross that wall, short as it was, because who knew what might happen to them if they did.

Finally, Pefif got down on his hands and knees and put his head past the wall, so he could look at it. It was as smooth as a water-smoothed stone and as flat as . . . 

It was flatter than anything he’d ever seen in his entire life. But there was a place, a gap in the wall, where the monsters had climbed out, breaking the wall with their round feet. And that path made it clear that the wall was nothing but earth. The area that had been changed was wide, but longer than it was wide, and a part of a building was in it. Part of the building was missing and it was the part that would have extended out of the changed place. There were also tracks within the changed place.

They considered going into the elongated circle, but this was a matter for shamans, not hunters. They went back to Jabir and told Gada what they’d found, but by then the decision to send the girls to feed the demons had been superseded by the fact that the demon apparently didn’t eat young girls, but made them comfortable and set up camping places for guests.

“Good work, you two, but for now we will leave the demon people’s place to them,” Gada told them.


Kadlo Mound, Hocha


April 16, 1005 CE


The runner sat on the pad and sipped water as Roshan watched. “Hamadi sent me because I had seen the demon building,” the lad said. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen.

“So tell me what you saw,” Roshan demanded.

He did and it was frankly unbelievable. Roshan wouldn’t have believed, except the lad had a token from Hamadi and Roshan trusted Hamadi. Roshan would have been happier if Hamadi had waited until they knew more before he’d sent the runner, but Roshan knew what Hamadi was thinking. If the demon thing was a threat, something that might destroy the village and kill everyone, he wanted the clan warned.

Roshan considered telling the priests. No. If they don’t know already, why haven’t their stars and magics told them? And if they do know, why weren’t we warned? Increasingly, Roshan was coming to dislike and distrust the priesthood. They had a lot of power and a lot of influence, but he lived here in Hocha and saw the way they used that power to abuse anyone who showed the least resistance to them and to demand anything they happened to want.

Roshan’s immediate reaction was to go to Jabir and see the thing for himself, but he couldn’t. He was the clan chief of the Kadlo. His movements would be watched. But he needed someone to go look. He needed more information than this terse report and description of a building that could move like some sort of giant snail. Fazel. He was the senior shaman of the Kadlo, and didn’t trust the priest kings of Hocha any more than Roshan did. No. That wouldn’t work. The priests would be watching him even more closely than they watched Roshan. Rogasi. It would have to be his nephew Rogasi. He was a good lad and thoughtful, and Roshan wanted to get him away from the influence of the priesthood anyway.

Roshan called in his nephew and made the arrangements. Hamadi’s messenger and Rogasi would leave in the morning.


Camp Peterbilt


April 16, 1005 CE


Jogida returned the next morning, carrying her fifteen-month-old brother Ubadan in a baby pouch on her chest and towing her five-year-old brother Faris by the hand. Ubadan was asleep. Faris was awake, alert, and intensely curious about everything.

They didn’t come alone, though. Three adult males came with them. Two appeared to be in their thirties and one was a decade or so older. There were also two women. One seemed to be the same age as the two younger men, and the other wasn’t what you’d call “elderly” but was on the border of the term. That was a guess on Michael’s part. He wasn’t great at guessing ages, but she had a little gray in her hair and lines around her mouth and eyes. Yet she wasn’t an old crone.

Oaka and, especially, Achanu were delighted to see them. One of the younger men was his uncle Hamadi and the other was Tomar, also one of the clan’s chiefs. The older man was Gada, the one (and only) shaman in the village of Jabir whom Achanu liked and approved of.

The younger of the two women was his mother, Etaka. The older woman, Kasni, was the head of the women’s council.

Achanu knew exactly what this signified. Jabir’s chiefs and the women’s council had finally had enough of the growing power of Hocha priests. They were now taking their own path. Whether they could persuade the rest of the clan to do the same remained to be seen, but he thought they had a good chance of doing so. Jabir was the second largest of the clan’s villages, and the chiefs of the largest village, Kallabi—the women’s council even more so, from what his uncle Hamadi had told him—were riven with disputes. For the moment, at least, Kallabi did not speak with one voice.

The demon and its human attendants, of course, was the factor that had swung opinion around—and since it now dwelt very close to Jabir, his was the village that had been most quickly and powerfully affected.

Exciting times!

* * *

Michael had exactly the same assessment as Achanu, although he didn’t know any of the specific political and social factors involved. But all he had to do was observe the self-assured and self-confident bearing of the newcomers to know that decisions were going to be made and carried out by the people who could do so.

The first thing that happened was that introductions were made all around—and this time initiated by the natives, not the outsiders.

The second thing that happened was that one of the two younger men gestured for the Americans to follow him. His name was Hamadi and Achanu seemed to have an attachment to him. He led them to the lean-to and spread his hands to indicate that this was the immediate issue he wanted to deal with. That done, he moved slowly up the creek, stopping about every twenty feet or so to indicate that he wanted to erect a similar structure in those spots. How similar was unclear, of course. Obviously, he couldn’t duplicate the lean-to.

Four such structures brought them to the pool. Leaving a space—presumably to provide easy access to the pool—Hamadi then made clear he wanted to erect two more structures moving away from the creek at a ninety-degree angle. The end result would be six structures of some kind forming an L shape around the Peterbilt. The structures would be close to the truck, but not crowding it.

Hamadi then collected the women and children and, using simple but clear sign language, made clear that these would be the people inhabiting whatever structures were constructed. Achanu was included in the mix, as was the older man Hamadi. Hamadi then made gestures indicating that neither he nor the other man his age would be part of it.

“That all seems clear enough,” said Melanie. “They want to settle a bunch of women and children, up through teenagers—including at least one boy—and at least one old man. Well, oldish man.” She paused for a moment, to recall his name. Gada, that was it. “Gada looks to me like he’s somewhere in his fifties.”

Her husband had his hands planted on his hips and spent a bit of time looking up and down the creek, gauging how big such an addition to their area would be. Their “turf,” as he thought of it.

“I’ll want to see an example of the kind of building he wants to put up here,” Michael said. “I assume we’re talking about homes of some kind. If nothing else, I want a better idea of how many people we’re talking about. Fifty’s one thing; five hundred, another. But if I’m reading his mind right, so to speak . . . ”

“I like what I think he’s proposing,” said Alyssa. “Basically, we—and our three kids—will be immersed in a society mostly made up of women and children. That’ll be a perfect environment for us to get to know them—and their language—and vice versa. But he’s making clear that there won’t be very many men of fighting age in the mix.”

“It still wouldn’t be hard for them to send warriors up here at night and overrun us,” said Melanie. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “I doubt there’s much danger of that, myself, but we can’t ignore the possibility.”

“Ignore it, no,” said Michael. “We’ll have to make sure we maintain a watch from the truck at all times, and never leave it unoccupied. But I don’t believe there’s much danger, either. What I think is that this young chief of theirs is a very smart cookie and it looks like he’s related to the boy, by the way. What he and his people can learn from us will put them in a much stronger position.”

He looked at both Melanie and Alyssa. “Are you both okay with this? If so, I’ll go take a look at whatever village or town they’ve got around here. There’s got to be one. I’d guess it’s on the other side of that rise”—he nodded toward the nearby little hill—“that blocks our view of the northern stretch of the Kaskaskia.”

“We should only send one of us, though,” said Melanie. “And I don’t think it should be you, Michael.”

“Neither do I,” said Alyssa. She glanced down at her still uncovered chest. “I’m the youngest—not to mention the smallest—of us, and I’m the one wearing a costume that’s the closest to theirs. To put it another way, I’m the least threatening adult whereas Michael”—her glance now went to him—“is the opposite. I’d rather he stay back here in reserve, since he’s potentially a lot more threatening than I am.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Then Michael said, “Okay, makes sense. You want to take my Glock with you?”

Alyssa shook her head. “I don’t see the point. If it’s an ambush and they swarm me, I’m screwed anyway. I’m an academic, not John Wesley Hardin. By the time I fumbled the pistol out of the holster, I’d be cut to ribbons.”

Michael chuckled. “True enough.” In a baritone that even managed to carry a tune, he softly sang: “John Wesley Hardin was a friend to the poor.

“Much as I love Bob Dylan,” said Alyssa, “he got that all wrong. John Wesley Hardin was a murderous psychopath. But I admit I wouldn’t mind having him coming along with me. Just in case.”

She started walking toward Hamadi. “May as well do it now.”

Alyssa’s skill with impromptu sign language wasn’t up to par with Hamadi’s, but it wasn’t bad. It didn’t take him more than a minute to figure out what she wanted. He waved Achanu and Oaka over and had them come along, presumably to reassure her with people she already knew, more or less. The two older women, Etaka and Kasni, also joined them.

* * *

She got back in the middle of the afternoon, after five hours—long enough for Michael and Melanie to start getting a little worried.

“Sorry it took so long,” said Alyssa, sounding not sorry at all. “I wound up spending more than two hours sequestered with Kasni and Etaka and six other women having a sign language equivalent of an introductory get-together.”

“A hen party, huh?”

Both Alyssa and Melanie bestowed a look upon Michael that was not complimentary.

“Sorry,” said Melanie. “Hubby’s usually better trained than this, but now and then the underlying male chauvinist subconscious comes to the surface.”

Alyssa wasn’t actually offended, since Michael’s tone of voice made clear he’d been joking. A stupid joke, granted.

“Actually, no,” she said. “It became clear soon enough that that group of women carried a lot of weight in the natives’ society. I’m not positive yet—sign language only takes you so far—but I think their culture is matrilineal. Oh, and they call themselves ‘Kadlo,’ by the way. Or ‘the Kadlo,’ maybe.”

“Is that good or bad?” asked Melanie. “Sounds good to me, but I may be missing something.”

“No, it’s good. Patriarchy is a real pain in the ass, especially in primitive societies.”

Michael was frowning a little. “You mean women are in charge?”

Alyssa shook her head. “I said matri-lineal, not matri-archal. Matriarchy is pretty much a myth, anyway.” She sniffed. “You won’t find women running the show by bullying everyone the way men so often do.”

“You tell him, girl!” said Melanie.

“A matrilineal society is a lot more egalitarian,” Alyssa continued. “I have a friend—had a friend—at SIU who was an anthropology professor. She was part Cherokee, which is relevant because the Cherokees—I think all the southern tribes, if I remember right: Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminoles also—were matrilineal. She could get downright enthusiastic on the subject.”

She looked around to see if there was somewhere to sit. Happily, in her absence someone had set up the folding chairs they’d found in what was left of the store. She’d been on her feet since daybreak and plunked herself down.

“It’s quite likely, you know, that the Cahokians—the Mississippian culture, I should say, since that’s what anthropologists and archaeologists insist we should call it—were the ancestors of at least some of the native tribes. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, anyway. Maybe not the Cherokees, since their language is Iroquoian, which means at some point they migrated down from the north.

“Never mind. You’ve got to forgive academics for our obsessive fussing over details. The point I’m trying to get at is that if the later tribes, about which we know a lot, are any sort of guide to the Kadlo, then men will be in charge but under some pretty strict limits. The women will have a council of some kind and they not only have to approve someone’s elevation to chieftainship, but they’ll act as judges when disputes arise. Plus”—here she gave Michael something of a scowl—“they don’t have to put up with too much crap from their husbands. Women keep their own property in a matrilineal society and can always give their husbands the heave-ho if need be.”

“Yikes,” said Michael. But he was smiling. By now, Alyssa had gotten to know the Anderle couple well enough to know that while their marriage wasn’t perfect—no one’s ever was—it was pretty damn good.

“If I can change the subject,” said Melanie, “what sort of structures—buildings, whatever—do they want to put up here?”

“What they want to do—I’m almost sure I’m right about this—is put up half a dozen of the same kind of houses that they live in. Oh, yeah—I forgot to mention this. Michael was right.” She turned her head and pointed toward the rise. “Their village isn’t too far on the other side of that hill. Not more than a mile, I’d say. They’re right on the river.”

“What sort of houses are they?” asked Michael.

Alyssa grimaced a little. “Nothing I’d want to live in. Basically, their homes are big thatched huts. They’re pretty sturdy, I’ll say that for them. There was one under construction which I had a good look at. They sink the posts that form the walls into trenches that are at least two feet deep, and then seal them and weatherproof them with wattle and daub.”

“What’s ‘wattle and daub’?” asked Shane.

“Wattle are strips of flexible wood or thick reeds that form a lattice they weave into the posts. Daub is a mixture of clay or mud and straw that they seal it all up with. It’s a primitive construction method that goes back thousands of years, but it works. Those places wouldn’t stand up to a tornado, but I’m pretty sure they could handle anything short of that.”

“Even the roofs?” Melanie sounded skeptical. “I don’t know as I’d want to sleep under nothing much more than piled up grass or straw. What keeps water from seeping through in a heavy rain?”

“First, they know what they’re doing and usually weave different materials together. Second, the thatching is very thick. What happens is that only the outer layers absorb water. That wet layer then acts as an insulating material.” She shrugged. “Thatching’s also been used for millennia. The big problems I’d have living in one of those buildings are that there are no windows and I’m pretty sure they’d get smoky in the winter from heating fires. And, of course, dry grass catches fire pretty darned easily.”

“Or every day from cooking.” Melanie still sounded skeptical.

“They mostly cook outdoors, even in winter. At least, I think they do. There are plenty of outdoor cooking areas.” She gave Melanie a smile that had a definitely sly look to it. “Finally, don’t forget the key thing.”

“Which is?”

“Neolithic people are the opposite of wimps.”

Michael laughed. “I won’t argue that, for sure! Still . . . ” He reached out and patted the upholstered wall of the cab. “I’m not trading in the truck, even if it is a bit crowded. Speaking of which, how many people live in one of their huts?”

“More than you might think, given that they aren’t really very spacious. Anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen, would be my estimate.”

Michael made a face. “Damn. I take back what I said about our cab being crowded.”

Alyssa shrugged. “It’s another way to stay warm in winter. The odor probably gets pretty heavy, though, especially in January and February.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Then Melanie said: “So what do we tell Hamadi? Or sign language him, I guess I should say. Do we agree to let a bunch of them move in next door to us?”

Michael scratched his jaw. “How do we say ‘no’? I mean, if they insist, what are we going to do? Shoot a bunch of them? Look, he’s being polite about it—seems to be, anyway—and I don’t really think he means us any harm. Besides, we need them. We’re three adults and three kids, no group this small can survive for long on its own. So I say, yes.”

“Me, too,” said Alyssa.

“Okay, then.” Melanie looked to their daughter, and then up at the two Jefferson kids, who were perched on the top bunk and had been following the discussion with keen interest. “What do you kids think?”

“It’d be nice having more kids around,” was Miriam’s immediate reply. “Adults can get kinda boring.”


Jabir


April 15, 1005 CE


After the dark-skinned woman left, the women’s council discussed her and the other strangers.

Etaka leaned forward. “We never should have let Priyak use the girls that way.”

Kasni lifted a hand and said, “Don’t complain. It worked out well.” Etaka gave her a dirty look and she continued. “It did, Etaka, and if you stop to think for a moment, you’ll realize it. Priyak was trying to prove that the gods were displeased with your family.”

“And you let him,” Etaka said, still angry.

“With the way you’d been mouthing off to the priesthood and complaining about the labor tax, we had little choice. When the demon arrived, someone was going to have to be sent to talk to the gods. Since they arrived at our village, that meant it was one of ours that was going to be sent. And if it wasn’t your daughter, it would have been one of ours.”

Jogida’s father had been killed two years ago and her mother had died of an infection six months earlier, and the family hadn’t been particularly important even before the deaths. She and her brothers were basically living on the village’s charity. So she’d had no one to speak for her when it had come time to choose a sacrifice.

Oaka, on the other hand, was from a prominent family. So Priyak’s selection of her was a warning that just because your family was important didn’t mean you were safe from the gods.

“Did you see her clothing?” Jogida demanded partly to change the subject. They hadn’t learned very much from Alyssa Jefferson. She was a healthy young woman, but soft. They could tell that from the way she moved. Also smart and curious. She’d been quick to examine everything from the new house to the mortar and pestle. Wealthy, they could tell from the clothing as if arriving in demons didn’t prove that well enough.

“Yes, I saw it,” Kasni agreed, happy with the change of subject. The people had thread and woven cloth, but it was expensive and time-consuming to make. And none of it was as good as the cloth that the dark-skinned woman who called herself Alyssa wore. “It was all woven. Even the top of her shoes were white woven fabric. And she climbed down into the Kechu hut.”

“Should we even continue that,” Jogida asked, “if we are going to send the Kechu to stay near the demon people?”

“Hamadi is clever,” Kasni said. “He wants to send as many of the young girls to stay with the demon people as we can. He hopes that will keep them out of the eyes of the priests of Hocha.”

“Priyak is reporting everything we do to the priests in Hocha,” Etaka said.

“Then,” Kasni said, “if the priests want them for sacrifice, they will have to apply to the demon for them.”

“And you think they will say no?” Jogida asked.

“I think they won’t ask! Priyak is terrified of the demon people. You can see it in everything he says. And I suspect the priests of the city are going to be just as frightened. Besides, it’s the Hocha priests who insist we must send young girls to the gods.”

That was perhaps the biggest problem the women’s council had with the Hocha priesthood. All the priests were male, and most of the sacrifices were female, and it was known among the women that young girls could avoid being chosen by being “friendly” to the priests. But the doctrine of the priesthood was that the gods brought the rains and controlled the crops, expected to be paid for that service, and preferred young women.

The priests did know when the rains were going to come. It was the new priesthood who had brought corn to the region. That the priesthood had an in with the gods was clear.

But now these new people who came riding in demons, not in canoes, had welcomed their young girls and not eaten them.

“Fine. Hamadi is clever, but that’s not what I want to talk about,” Jogida said. “Her clothing, her devices. She knew things and knew how to make things.”

“Another reason to send young women to them. We want to know if they are the ones that make the things that they have. Or are those things made by demons?” Kasni said.


Jabir


April 16, 1005 CE


Alyssa was back in Jabir. This time she’d brought the children. It was, in fact, sort of a shopping trip. not that any money was changing hands. These people were apparently still in the barter and gift-giving system. Through gestures and the few words they’d acquired so far, Alyssa had been invited to Jabir to gather gifts from the families of Jabir to help them get set up in their camp.

Gada looked over at the older shaman. Priyak was incensed by the demon woman’s presence in the village. Jabir was a fairly wealthy village, but that didn’t mean everyone in the village was well off. And, recently, among the poorer families there had been a couple of cases of a known, but still fairly uncommon, illness.

“I think we should take the demon woman to see Shuna and Kaliba.” Shuna was poor. Her husband was not a good hunter or a good worker. She had her hut and her share of the fields, but not much else, and her family disliked her husband, so were unwilling to give her aid which she would just give to him. She had a daughter, Kaliba, who was showing the first signs of the illness. She had the rash and the sensitivity to sunlight, but her hair was just starting to thin.

“Let the demon woman see our sick?” Priyak demanded, outraged, then considered. “Why not? Maybe she’ll catch it and die.”

That was, Gada acknowledged, a point. And Gada still wasn’t sure of these demon people. If the demon woman did catch it from the child, that would tell them something about the power and weakness of the demon people. But Gada’s impression of the demon people in general was that they were as kind as they were powerful, so he hoped that this Alyssa, who seemed to be the wise woman of the group, might know something to help.

* * *

“Alyssa.” One of the shamans waved at her. She wasn’t sure of his name. Not the really old one, the middle-aged one. He gestured to her to come with him. They entered a small hut near the edge of the village, and the shaman showed her to a pallet where a little girl was seated. The girl was about five and naked to the waist. She had what looked to Alyssa like a rash around her neck, though it was hard to tell in the darkness of the hut. Alyssa picked up the girl, and took her to the door of the hut, and the girl covered her eyes. Pellagra, Alyssa thought immediately. Niacin deficiency.

“Well, I don’t have niacin pills. What foods contain niacin?” She stopped dead in her tracks. Corn contained niacin. But pellagra was common in Spain after the introduction of corn because they didn’t know how to treat it to make the niacin available. Nixtamalization it was called, because the Aztecs used it and didn’t suffer from pellagra. Why didn’t these people know about it? You treat the corn with lye diluted in boiling water. It made the corn taste better, made it easier to grind, and made the niacin more available for digestion. It also got rid of a bunch of carcinogens that occurred naturally in corn. Wait! She stopped herself. Yes, she could do nixtamalization, but it would take time and corn wasn’t the best source of niacin anyway.

Meat. This kid needed to eat meat every day for a while, until her symptoms abated and until Alyssa could get nixtamalization going on a scale that would be useful.

She took the little girl back into the hut, then grabbed the shaman by his hand, and took him back to the area in Jabir where the villagers traded or gifted each other. There was dried turkey and squirrel meat.

She picked up some squirrel jerky, hoping that the drying process hadn’t removed the niacin. Holding it in one hand, she pointed to it with the other. “Feed this to the girl.”

The shaman, Gada, that was his name, looked blank. Still holding the squirrel jerky, she dragged him back to the hut. Dragging him inside, she pointed to the girl and the jerky, then made eating motions. “Every day until she gets better.”

* * *

Gada wasn’t slow or stupid, not in the least, and he knew the illness. Further, he knew that it struck most often in families who were down on their luck and eating mostly corn and beans with not much meat in their diet. That wasn’t universal. Some of the more wealthy people had the same symptoms, but as he thought about it he realized that many of them preferred the sweet corn to the more savory flavors of meats. Nor was it universal the other way. There were poor families that ate mostly corn and beans that didn’t have the illness, and he had no explanation for that. But that didn’t matter. Meat was the cure for the illness. That was what mattered, assuming that she was right. He nodded his agreement. He would see to it that the little girl got meat stew every day, and he would learn if it worked.


Camp Peterbilt


April 17, 1005 CE


Michael watched the men at work and shook his head. Just for safety’s sake, they were keeping someone in the Peterbilt at all times while the men and women of the village apparently called Jabir were digging holes in the ground to do something. Michael wasn’t sure what. They were doing it with wood and stone tools, mostly wood. And it was going to take forever at this rate.

They had brought most of the tools from the country store, not to mention the seed rack for garden seeds. What they hadn’t brought from the store was the five sacks of seed corn that had been stacked on the front porch and cut in half by the whatever it was. They should have brought those. Over the last couple of days, they had been hosted by the villagers and seen the fields where they were planting corn and it was mostly planted by now.

Michael watched the men and women digging out holes to become the foundation for what he supposed would be houses and came to a decision. He called Achanu over. “Bring five”—Michael held up a hand with fingers spread—“and come here.” He accompanied his words with gestures. Achanu said something in their language and went off to collect some friends, while Michael went to speak to his wife.

* * *

He climbed up into the Peterbilt and said, “I’m going to take some of the natives and go to the country store.”

“What for?”

“Seeds. Remember that stack of seed sacks on the front porch of the country store that we didn’t bother with? I think we should have.”

“I thought they were done with planting?”

“They are, but only just,” Michael said. “I figure there’s still time if we use the pickup to help clear a new field or two.”

* * *

The young men of Jabir were nervous about climbing into the bed of the pickup truck, but they did it. There were shouts of dismay when Michael started the truck, and more when it started to move. But they settled down quickly enough once they were moving.

Until they got to the few hundred yards or so of blacktop that was all that had come back with them. At which point, Michael put on the gas. Not a lot, but they got up to thirty-five before he started braking. Then he pulled into the parking lot of the country store, and led the young men to the sliced sacks of seed corn. The birds and squirrels had been at it, but there was still a lot of the seed corn left. Using show and tell, he got them to load the corn sacks and loose corn into the back of the pickup and they were assiduous in collecting up every seed. The walls, most of them, and several of the windows were still there, even still unbroken, and it occurred to Michael that a window in the huts they were making might make them a lot more livable.

He climbed up into the back of the pickup and pulled out a hammer, and went to work on a wall next to a window. He got the two-by-four stud loose and started on the paneling below the window. It was plywood with artificial wood paneling on the outside and painted sheetrock on the inside. He was collecting the nails while the locals were collecting the seeds. Achanu came over to watch, and asked about the nails. Michael could tell that much. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell what Achanu was asking about the nails. Michael showed him a bent nail and then used the hammer to unbend it a bit, and something about that impressed the heck out of Achanu.

Meanwhile, one of the young men Achanu had brought with him had cut himself picking up a broken piece of glass. He’d dropped it and it had broken into smaller pieces, which seemed to upset the kid more than the cut. They got him bandaged up, then headed back to Camp Peterbilt.


Back | Next
Framed