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@@ -108,7 +108,10 @@ Opening scene on the boat establishes birdie, always aware of her surroundings, Also needs to to introduce Lulu and Henri, Kobayashi, Tambo and his wife to be. At the end of the chapter, they land on Edisto, set up camp. Papa goes to fetch the cousins. -A flat boat is a fast boat. + + + +They sail in the next day, father tells a story of some kind, a gannet dives at the boat to add some drama. they reach edisto, sam and charlie, the cousins come out from Owen twon. Tamba and tk and cuthie, he gets introduced, they set up camp, play on the dunes, find the arkhangelsk, make tar, go inland to get chicle, hunt and fish and swim. Then north to Owen town, then the storm. The death of Sam and then the family heads north again. """ @@ -668,39 +671,116 @@ They landed and pulled the net in, there were easily hundreds of fish. They coul "Francis! Get out! Now!" Birdie dropped the net and ran for the bank. Francis was right behind her, but as Birdie scrambled up on the dry sand she realized the fin was curved, not straight. She started to laugh. At first Francis thought she had played a trick on him, but then teeth closed around his leg and he screamed. +Fortunately for him, they were not shark teeth, but it took a moment of screaming and terror and panic before either Francis or Birdie realized this, because seeing a curved fin might have made Birdie feel better, but dolphins don't bite. Except this one did. It bit and Francis fell to the sand and it began to drag him back into the water, Birdie grabbed his hands and pulled and Francis kicked the Dolphin gave up and darted off to deeper water. +The sat panting on the sand, watching the fin trace circles around the boat. +"Let me see your leg." Birdie went to the boat and pulled on her skirt again, tightening the tkbelt and pulling her knife from her belt. She cut back his pant leg and surveyed the wounds, there were five punctures, none more than a quarter inch across, and none very deep. But there was still plenty of blood and it looked like it would hurt. Birdie felt a wave a fear come over her and she wanted to run away from the blood and the torn flesh and the pain it must have been causing, but she quickly set that aside and went to work. She cut off Francis's pant leg to the knee, and then cut it into strips. She helped him down the water's edge—which was getting closer as the tide came up—and washed out the wounds with salt water. Then she wetted a few of the strips of torn pantleg and wrapped them gently around his leg. She tied to strips together and wrapped that one over the others, gently tying it to help hold everything in place. -The spray, the silence of the boat cutting through the water, the creak of the mast, the sound of the wind on canvas. Birdie catches a tuna on the hand line. +"That's the best I can do. When we get in we'll go to Kadi's and her grandmother will know something to put on it so it won't get infected." She glanced over that Delos. "Let's get you in the boat." -The tack and sail up to the bank. They anchor and get out and stand on the sandbar in the middle of the ocean. +"No, let's deal with the fish first." -This place is so amazing. Like walking on water. A turtle swims around them. They throw out the net with one end tied to the boat. They use the boat to sail out and then jibe around and drag it back, which is when they pick of the baby dolphin. Then they come back to the bank and get out to haul in the fish. as they're pulling it in the mother dolphin attacks. At first they think it's a shark, but then birdie fingures out what's going on and goes underwater and has the enounter with the dolphin. +"I'll open the net." +"What? No. We've never had this much, we have to bring it in somehow." -They untangle it and help it back to the mother. +Birdie considered it. It was a lot of fish. "Are you sure you're okay?" -The dolphin rolled slightly and turned its eye toward her. +"I'm fine, help me in the boat and I can help you from inside, that way I can sit down." Francis stood and she helped him limp to the boat. Birdie stepped into the water, looking around for the dolphin, but she saw no sign of it. She waded out to her knees and started to pull the net full of fish over to the hull. That was when she noticed a lot of fish guts already in the water. Had the dolphin attacked because it was hungry? She turned the net pulling up the bottom and heavy the top into the boat. Francis took it and began to pull it out of the water and into the boat. That was when Birdie noticed a very different eye in the net, not a fish eye, staring at her. "Stop!" -Then later she's on the beach and ocean comes to her, too sudden, too fast. +"What?" +"There's a baby dolphin in the net" -Birdie lay in the sun, feeling the warmth against the cool of her skin, the slight chill of the wind as it dried the salty drops. At first she thought perhaps it was just the linger pitch and roll of the boat, but the world seemed suddenly to undulate again, as if she were floating in the water. It came so suddenly it was terrifying, something emmense and unfathomable washed over her, a kind of blackness with a precense. She was afraid to open her eyes. A voice, no, that was the wrong word, something thought words for her, she could not understand them, a jumble of words falling in her mind so fast that she could not catch them, could not find the order of them, not even the meaning. She felt as if something massive and uncontrollably wild had seized her. She became afraid again and forced herself to breathed in slowly and then out slowly. As she did this is was like the thing gave up, she felt it slipping away. She blurted out, No! She wanted it to stay, it was just too much, too sudden she wanted to say, give me a minute, but it was already gone, slipping away, the world settled, she opened her eyes and it was just the shore, looking as it always did. She stared out a the flat horizen of the sea. Come back. But nothing happened. She got up and dressed. She hurried back to camp. +"What?" +"There's a baby dolphin in the net" In flash she realized why the dolphin had attacked. It hadn't attacked, it had defended. ---- +"What do we do?" Charles stared at her. +"I don't know." She thought for a minute. They could haul it all in, and risk crushing the dolphin. Or she could cut the net, let the dolphin out, but she'd lose possibly all the fish and she'd have a net to repair. She wondered what her father would do. And then she cut the net. She cut just in front of the baby dolphin, which had already eaten half of the fish in front of it, so there was no thrashing when her knife stabbed that fish. When she had a hole big enough for the dolphin to get out she worked the fish out first, and another came shooting out after it. Then the dolphin kicked once and shot free. It paused and seemed to eye her for a moment. I'm sorry Birdie said softly, staring at its big dark eye. It twitched and disappeared under the boat, out of sight. +Birdie tried as best she could to keep the net closed while Francis pulled it into the boat. It took them a good twenty minutes to get it into the boat, but in the end they saved well over half their catch. The ride back into shore was shared with six dozen flopping fish, and once, Birdie thought she saw a dolphin streak by. +After she had helped Francis limp back to their camp, and her father and Tambo had organized a trip upriver to see Kadiatu's family, Birdie came back out the beach to sail Delos back to her home at her cousin's camp around the north end of the island. She pushed off, but the wind was blowing off shore, forcing her farther out than she wanted. She ended up right back at the bank. She took it as a sign. There was only a small spit of sand still above water, wet sand, but she ran aground on it and climbed out. She looked around for a fin, but saw nothing. A turtle swam by in the shallow water. Birdie She sat down on the sand and lay back in the sun, feeling its warmth against the cool of her skin. She felt the chill of the wind as it dried the salty drops of water running down her arm. +She lay back on the sand and closed her eyes, and she immediately felt something strange happening in her body, or to the world around her, she couldn't tell. At first she thought perhaps it was the linger pitch and roll of the boat, which stayed with you even after you got out. But then the whole world seemed to undulate, like a rippled passing through it. She felt as if she were floating in the water, but she was laying on solid sand. Then it came so suddenly it was terrifying. Something immense and unfathomable washed over her, a presence that stretched through her, encompassing her and everything she had ever known or done in an instant. She was afraid to open her eyes. A voice, no, that was the wrong word, something thought words for her, inside her. She could not understand them, a jumble of words falling in her mind so fast that she could not catch them, could not find the meaning of them, not even the order. She felt as if something massive and uncontrollably wild had seized her up in its arms and was taking her on some wild, frightening, but exhilarating dance. She became afraid again and forced herself to breathed slowly in and then slowly out. As she did this is was like the thing gave up and set her down again. She felt it slipping away. She blurted out, "No! Wait!" She wanted it to stay, it was just too much, too sudden, she wanted to say, give me a minute, but it was already gone, slipping away, the world settled, she opened her eyes and there was the sea, Delos, looking as it always did. She stared out the flat horizon where the sky bled into the blue of the sea. Come back. But nothing happened. She got up, she pushed off and climbed in Delos. She raised the sail and turned the boat toward home. -They sail in the next day, father tells a story of some kind, a gannet dives at the boat to add some drama. they reach edisto, sam and charlie, the cousins come out from Owen twon. Tamba and tk and cuthie, he gets introduced, they set up camp, play on the dunes, find the arkhangelsk, make tar, go inland to get chicle, hunt and fish and swim. Then north to Owen town, then the storm. The death of Sam and then the family heads north again. - # Winter ## Fire +It was mid afternoon by the time Papa rounded them up and set them about gathering grass and small sticks. He would light the kilns when the sun went down and he had a very precise mixture of grasses and wood of all sizes that was entirely in his head, but Lulu and Birdie and even Henri had long since learned which thing they needed more of just by glancing at the piles, which they kept separate. Grass, then oak, then walnut. Papa claimed that to get the most tar out of the roots, you needed the right temperature kiln and to get that you need the right combination of each wood, plus there was always some trickery with wind and venting. The secret was to get the wood hot, but control the flow of air so that it burned very slowly and under some pressure that caused it to give up the liquid sap that hid inside of it. This tar or pitch tricked out the base of the kiln into buckets which were then put in barrels and either used by ships that called on their camp, or sold to the shipyards in Charlestown. + +This year Papa had built three kilns, each used the side of a dune as its primary structure, reinforced with a layer of split logs, and then packed earth and then packed clay. The other side was built up of logs and earth until a conical shape was formed and then the whole thing was filled with clay. For days Lulu, her father, and Kobayashi had hauled the rich red clay of the banks upriver down to the beach and packed it into the kilns until they were smooth as glass. Then they little smoldering little fires to dry the clay and bake it hard. This took several days, but when it was done the kiln was ready to make pitch. + +Kobayashi and her father worked all the next day dragging last year's stumps to the kilns and took turns splitting them with the axe until all the roots had been neatly stacked. Tambo, her uncle, and Francis had gone inland to gather walnut logs in the wagon, while Lulu, Birdie and Henri gathered downed oak and stacked the grasses they had cut and dried several weeks before. + +Now they had everything neatly stacked and ready. Lulu was chewing something Francis had brought back from his trip inland. A Mvskoke woman they'd run into far up river had given him a strip of partly dried spruce gum. Francis did not like it. "It's like eating a tree," he said. + +"Because you're eating a tree." Lulu told him. He gave the rest to her. She enjoyed it. It *was* like eating a tree. And there was something wonderful about eating a tree. Like it gave her some of its huge spirit. Lulu could almost feel herself expand as she chewed, though she did wondered if the tree people minded her walking among them chew up the flesh of one of the fellow trees. She asked an oak, but it just shrugged off a few leaves in the wind. Everything gets eaten eventually. + +The forest was a clutter of shadow and light. Lulu sat down on a log and watched the shimmering leaves dancing in the breeze high up in the tree tops. Everything was so different up there. She decided to climb up and have a closer look. She cast about for a suitable tree to climb. She was near the marsh, in a mostly oak and pine forest. She would liked to have climbed a pine, but there was nothing to hold onto, the trunks were bare well above her head. She settled an youngish oak that had a huge low limb she should get on and then make her way up it, to the trunk where another branch allowed her to pull herself up. She kept at this for a while, ignore the scrapes from rough bark and trying to not pay attention to how high up she was. It took her a good ten minutes but she manged to get high enough up that she was afraid, and could no longer drive the fear from her mind and continue. She made herself step up to the next branch, the last that seemed like it would support her. She sat down on it, and wrapped her other arm around the trunk and looked out over the canopy. She was higher than the tk's mast, she knew that because she'd been hoisted up it several times to fix things. The mast was 35 feet. She guessed she was forty feet up. High enough to see out over the tops of the trees anyway. She watched two squirrels who'd scolded her the whole way up retreat through the thin branches to the next tree over where they took up their scolding again until Lulu threw a nearby acorn at them and they took off for good. + +She watched an eagle circle the marsh, slowly, lazily, hardly ever beating its wings, just rinding the air like a boat. Lulu wished she could fly. That would be even better than sailing, to glide on the air and go and down with the thermals and drafts rather than be stuck on the ground, moving side to side across the water. Although that was fun too. She twisted her head to try to see if she could see the beach from up here, but there was another tree in the way. Just then the breeze kicked up again and Lulu felt the whole tree sway. + +She wondered what it would be like to be up here in a storm, to ride the winds. She closed her eyes to enjoy the music of the leaves tinkling around her, mixing with the percussive clatter of palm fronds drifting up from somewhere below her. The tree smelled of a tonic of warm, wet wood, not unlike the tk, mixed with traces of scents coming off the marsh and farther off the sea. A briny mix of salt coming in undulating currents across the marsh to wave the leaves of her tree. + +Birdie and her father loved the sea in a way that Lulu understood, but did not. She loved the wind. The wind is everything. The wind is everything it has ever touched. You could always smell the land from the sea. Whenever they were coming down the coast, any time the wind blew offshore Lulu could tell how far it was by how strong the scene of flowers. She assumed the opposite was true as well, that if she ever went far enough away from the sea, she would know just how far she had gone be how faint its tangled smell of salt and tk and tk and tk had become. It suddenly occurred to Lulu that she had never been far enough from the sea not to smell it. She knew the smell of land more as a stranger scenting exotic perfumes on the wind and reading them than she did of walking on it and losing herself on it. She resolved to one day walk inland far enough that she no longer smelled the sea and smell perhaps what other tales the wind had to tell as it passed over all those mountains and valleys and forests and deserts that lay between here and the infinite Lulu would walk toward. She sat swaying in her tree, planning grand expeditions to chase the sun around the world. She would cross the deserts, she would walk with lions, she would climb the mountains and stand on the peaks with her snowy leopard companion, and then she would say her goodbyes and journey deep into the jungle with her jaguar guide to see the lost cities of gold. Then she would say goodbye to her jaguar and walk again to the sea where she would build a boat and return home. + +The sun has already disappeared into the thickets of distant trees on the western horizon when she noticed for the first time that it was finally growing cooler. There was some almost imperceptible drop in the humidity, some deep part of her awareness noticed just slightly less sweat seeping out of her int he course of the day that trigger some unconscious part of her to conclude, that winter is nearly here. She shivered slightly at the thought and then made a mistake. She was thinking only of getting down, but to do so she had to look down and when she did, a hot flash of fear shot through her. She realized suddenly she was along in the forest, high in a tree. No one was coming to help her. It was possible they might hear her if she yelled loud enough, but it would be after dark before they found her and that would be worse. No, she realized, I am alone. I have to do this myself. She sat back down and gripped the trunk of the tree until she felt stable. She forced herself to breath deeply and slowing. She heard her father's voice in her head, count to four as you inhale, hold that breath while you count to four. Count to four as you exhale, count to four with your lungs empty. Slowly and steadily in and out. Lulu did this until she began to lose count and found that she was just breathing normally. She opened her eyes and looked down. The last rays of the sun had poked their way through the forest thickets to fall here and there on Lulu's tree. It seemed to her as she looked below—she was careful not to look down, but at the trunk just below her feet—that the light was illuminating a kind of path down the tree. She could see the irregularity of bark in startling detail, it began to form a pattern of moves in her head, knobs seemed to jump out at her and she moved her foot down to the first one, easing her wait onto it as she gripped a branch above her with both hands. She shifted her weight onto that foot and gently moved forward, off the branch where she'd been sitting. She was up and moving. Now she looked down again and saw the perfect branch just below her other foot. She stepped down. And down again, her arms finding the branches her feet had given up only moments before. She moved in a zig-zag pattern down the tree, using branches like a staircase, back and forth across the trunk, until she found herself back at the large branch she'd used to get up. She walked out on it, away from the trunk, balancing with her arms out, to where it very nearly touched the ground and then she vaulted off to the ground. + +She turned back and looked at the tree, up at where she'd been. The light was gone now, twilight spread evenly through the forest, turning everything a soft gray that made it hard to tell where tree ended and sky began. "Thank you." she said to the tree. + +The smell of simmering boar reached her well before she got to camp. She found her siblings sitting near the fire where she joined them and listened to the grown ups talk. It was dark in the east, stars were out on the horizon. + +Then her father stepped toward the fire and raised his hands. Everyone fell silent. "Friends," he began. "Thank you for being here with me." He paused. Lulu looked around the fire at all the faces flickering warm and orange in the firelight and she realized everyone she loved was here in one place, at one time, it did not happen all that often and it made it even better when it did. She felt a wave of warmth pass over her, noting in passing that it washed over her much like the fear had passed through her earlier in the tree. Emotions move like waves, we just have to ride them. + +"Her father + +Ceremony here. + +He then walked over to Aunt Māra who stood by the fire, stirring the kettle of simmering stew. He handed her a bowl and she ladeled some stew into it and gave it back to him. Lulu's father lifted the bowl in the air, the abalone shell glittered and sparkled in the moon light and not for the first time Lulu thought how lucky she was to be surrounded by such wealth, bowls that shone like gold in the light. "Uriel, bless this earth, bless this bounty we give back to you that you might bless these fires. Thank you for you love." He carried the bowl over and set it down on the first kiln. He repeated this incantation twice more until all three kilns had bowls atop them. Tambo then stepped in and lit each kiln while her father blew on the grass until each was burning. Then he and Tambo stepped back and repeated the names of the hosts and concluded with a hearty, ah-men. + +"Friends," her father turned back to face the bonfire. His face broke into a smile. "Let's feast." + +Everyone cheered and Birdie, always the hungry one, jumped up and was first in line at the kettle. Aunt Māra ladeled out of the stewed meat into abelone bowls. Lulu took hers and walked over the to kilns. She watch as the stew in those bowls slowly came to a boil while hers cooled. + + + + +She gets down and walks back to camp just as her father is getting ready for his ceremony and the lighting of the fires. + + +After the sun when down her father would make an offering to the archangels and then light the fires. By tomorrow morning the first buckets of sap would be flowing, and then the fires would not stop until the stumps were burned up. This year Lulu was guessing it would take half a moon. Birdie thought longer, Henri was hoping it would only be a week, but she knew he was wrong. + + + + +They all sweated. Sweated gathering wood in the stagnant air of the hammuckss around the marsh, sweated paddling the boats back to camp in the fierce noonday sun, sweated piling the sticks beside the fire. If they were fast they were allowed to run down to the sea and jump in between runs, but even the ocean was no great relief on such days when the shallows were nearly as warm as the air around them and they had not time to make their way out to the cool depths. It was Lulu's least favorite part of the year, making the Arkhangelsk tar, but she knew it was also the most important part of the year. She often thought the only thing that would make it worse would be having to tan hides while tending the kilns. She never complained about working the kilns or gathering wood though. She did however, complain plenty about tanning hides. Who didn't? It was a smelling boring business rubbing brains all over a hide and scrapping the fur off. She did love the shoes her mother had learned to make though. No one wore shoes in the summer, but come winter it was cold enough to want them and nothing she had ever worn felt as nice as the shoes her mother had learned to sew out of deer skin. Tk had taught her and she had learned from a Edisto woman who'd helped Tamba and tk survive after they had washed up on the island just off the coast. + +The storm had been an early one, Tamba and tk were on captain tk's boat, bound for boston with a prize they'd taken off the coast of Florida when the storm came out of the south. Their captain tried to put in at Owen town, but they did not make it, the wind broke the mast and sent the boat over. Tamba and tk knew how to swim, the rest of the crew did not. Even so, they were lucky. They clung to piece of broken mast and managed to steer themselves in the heavy chop such that they madeit to shore. Tamba told of seeing a shark in the shallows on the way in, even it was so bewildered by the storm it showed no interest in them, merely passing by close enough to touch, though Tamba did not, before settling into their wake where it stayed until the water became too shallow for it. + +--- + + + +Details on the day of lighting the kilns, games the kids play, treats they eat, the last bit of gum chichle. Then the fishing + + +Her Papa was a quiet man, prone to grunts and nods in lieu of the sort of comforting, I heard you type of comments most people make. He was often absorbed in a task to the degree that he seemed utterly unaware of the world around him and yet sometimes Lulu would notice that he was also watching her, watching her sister and not in fact missing anything that was going on around him at all, that he was in fact more aware of what she was doing than she was. She would pause and think about this sometimes and try to focus herself more fully on what she was doing, if she sould not take in the whole world around her like her father she could at least, she reasoned, pay closer attention to what she was doing. + +Thsi time of year that meant gathering grasses and helping tend the fires of the kilns. The family had three kilns which burned around the clock for weeks as the stumps slowly burned down and the sap dripped slowly down to fill the buckets below. It was a hot, dangerous time of boil liquids, burning fires and other hazards which Lulu dreaded. No one had ever been burned too badly, though her father had once scalded his hand badly enough that the skin had come off. He made sure that the children did not handle the sap until it had cooled to a less scaulding temperture. + +The sago palm fronds clattered in the wind, a clicking ticking sound like the women's shoes on the plank sidewalks of Charlestown. + + + +--- + + She took her bowl and stepped out into the shade of the porch her father had built. She sat on a stump and ate. The more she ate the hungrier she felt and before long whe went back inside for anoter bowl. That's my firl said her father, ladeling another bowl for her. Lilah stepped in fater her . Henri still pretended to sleep in the far corner of the hut where he slept with his mother. He was still very much a Mama's boy, probably always would be Birdie figured. @@ -710,7 +790,7 @@ She took her bowl and stepped out into the shade of the porch her father had bui Birdie stopped at the shore. Lulu knlt and let the rushing water of the wave fill her bowl and pull the bit of fish at the bottom back out the sea. Birdie watched but she made no move to wash her own bowl. She stared out at the sea where she though she saw something white on the horizen, someting that might be a topsail coming into view. -"Lou, what is that?" +"Lu, what is that?" Lulu stood up, she was shorter than Birdie by half a head, but she saw it too. "Sail?" @@ -765,24 +845,6 @@ Birdie looked down on the garden, the corn still only knee-high, not yet support --- -It was mid afternoon by the time Papa rounded them up and set them aout grathering grass and small sticks of oak and walnut. He had a mixture of woods and rasses an sizes that was entirely within his own head, though Lulu and Birdie and even Henri had long since learned which thing they needed more of just by glancing at the pipes, which the kep tseperate. Grass, then oak, then Walnut. Papa claimed to build by heat, but that seemed completely crazy to Lulu since the kilns really had only one temperature -- really, insanely hot. - -They all sweated. Sweated gathering wood in the stagnant air of the hammuckss around the marsh, sweated paddling the boats back to camp in the fierce noonday sun, sweated piling the sticks beside the fire. If they were fast they were allowed to run down to the sea and jump in between runs, but even the ocean was no great relief on such days when the shallows were nearly as warm as the air around them and they had not time to make their way out to the cool depths. It was Lulu's least favorite part of the year, making the Arkhangelsk tar, but she knew it was also the most important part of the year. She often thought the only thing that would make it worse would be having to tan hides while tending the kilns. She never complained about working the kilns or gathering wood though. She did however, complain plenty about tanning hides. Who didn't? It was a smelling boring business rubbing brains all over a hide and scrapping the fur off. She did love the shoes her mother had learned to make though. No one wore shoes in the summer, but come winter it was cold enough to want them and nothing she had ever worn felt as nice as the shoes her mother had learned to sew out of deer skin. Tk had taught her and she had learned from a Edisto woman who'd helped Tamba and tk survive after they had washed up on the island just off the coast. - -The storm had been an early one, Tamba and tk were on captain tk's boat, bound for boston with a prize they'd taken off the coast of Florida when the storm came out of the south. Their captain tried to put in at Owen town, but they did not make it, the wind broke the mast and sent the boat over. Tamba and tk knew how to swim, the rest of the crew did not. Even so, they were lucky. They clung to piece of broken mast and managed to steer themselves in the heavy chop such that they madeit to shore. Tamba told of seeing a shark in the shallows on the way in, even it was so bewildered by the storm it showed no interest in them, merely passing by close enough to touch, though Tamba did not, before settling into their wake where it stayed until the water became too shallow for it. - ---- - - - -Details on the day of lighting the kilns, games the kids play, treats they eat, the last bit of gum chichle. Then the fishing - - -Her Papa was a quiet man, prone to grunts and nods in lieu of the sort of comforting, I heard you type of comments most people make. He was often absorbed in a task to the degree that he seemed utterly unaware of the world around him and yet sometimes Lulu would notice that he was also watching her, watching her sister and not in fact missing anything that was going on around him at all, that he was in fact more aware of what she was doing than she was. She would pause and think about this sometimes and try to focus herself more fully on what she was doing, if she sould not take in the whole world around her like her father she could at least, she reasoned, pay closer attention to what she was doing. - -Thsi time of year that meant gathering grasses and helping tend the fires of the kilns. The family had three kilns which burned around the clock for weeks as the stumps slowly burned down and the sap dripped slowly down to fill the buckets below. It was a hot, dangerous time of boil liquids, burning fires and other hazards which Lulu dreaded. No one had ever been burned too badly, though her father had once scalded his hand badly enough that the skin had come off. He made sure that the children did not handle the sap until it had cooled to a less scaulding temperture. - -The sago palm fronds clattered in the wind, a clicking ticking sound like the women's shoes on the plank sidewalks of Owen town. --- |