Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75388 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“Are there extras somewhere I can borrow?” Part of me wants to pull my hand back out of his grip, and the other part of me wants him to stroke his thumb down the length of my upturned palm. Or kiss it. Yeah, kissing would work.
Oh, god, now I’m having weird sex fantasies about the guy that kidnapped my sister.
I snatch my hand out of his and he looks surprised, then seems to shrug it off. “The storage cave.”
I think of the layout of the tribal cave. There’s a room or two in the back of the ‘new’ wing—the area with all the rough-cut rock—where a lot of extra furs and bones and things are kept. “I think I know where that is. I’ll look.”
“We will meet there in the morning,” he corrects me. “I will pick out the appropriate weapons for your hand size and we will train on those.”
I want to object to his chauvinistic ‘I will pick for the lil’ lady’ attitude, but I actually don’t know if my hand size is going to affect things after all. Maybe I’m just being defensive. I look at the big knives strapped to his belt and try to imagine them in my hands. Okay, yeah, he might be on to something. “We can go back there now—”
“No. For now, I am going to take you home.”
Arrogant jerk. “Why?”
“Because there are metlaks in this area and it is not safe for you.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and slowly turns me back toward the direction I came. “So I am going to guide you home and then I am going to go and find Taushen and make sure that he made it back to the cave, too.”
Taushen? Huh? “Okayyyy. What time are we meeting in the morning, then? Because I have to warn you, my schedule’s pretty full,” I say flippantly.
“Schedule?” The way he says the word is funny, all drawn out and strange. “What is this?”
“It’s a joke,” I reply dryly. “Never mind.”
I fart around in the tribal cave for the rest of the day. Really, there’s nothing for me to do and everyone else seems so preoccupied that I feel awkward asking if anyone needs help. And really, there’s not much I can do to help with a lot of stuff. I don’t know anything about babies, or skinning, or fletching arrows, weaving, or any of that stuff, so I mostly end up sitting around the fire looking bored. Normally there are a few people sitting around shooting the shit, but today the cave feels incredibly empty. There are a few elders sitting around, and I can hear a baby crying in the distance. The fire keeps burning down to ashes and so I have to keep stoking it, which is…not something I’m good at. I end up shoving a lot of the big dried dung chips onto the fire and hoping for the best.
Which means that I’ve got a huge blaze going by the time someone drops by.
“Jeez, cold?” Stacy swings back through with her papoose and gives me a curious look. “Do you need more furs? Because stoking the fire that high won’t do more than just burn a lot of fuel—”
“It was an accident,” I say, feeling defensive. “I didn’t mean to make it so big. It just kept going out.”
“Oh. Well, you have to stack the chips really close together to get it to burn for a long time. That’s why some of them are bundled together.” She bustles over to the fire and uses a couple of the poking sticks to shove all the fuel into a tight, tidy little pile. The flames die a bit and settle back to a less-than-blazing roar.
“Thanks,” I say, and try to sound like I mean it. I hate that everyone’s constantly correcting me on how to do even the most basic of things.
“Of course,” she says, and the expression on her face tells me she is contemplating a strategic retreat from the fire. Damn, am I that unpleasant to be around?
I smile at Stacy, a little desperate for company. I pat one of the nearby stools, encouraging her to stay. “So what are you up to?”
The tension eases from her body and she relaxes. She doesn’t sit in the stool next to me but pulls up one across the fire and produces her frying pan from her satchel. “Josie’s been sick all afternoon, so I thought I’d make her some cakes. They’re easier on the stomach than raw meat. Or cooked meat.”
“Or that peppery dried meat stuff.”
Stacy wrinkles her nose. “Yep. So I thought I’d make cakes.” She pulls out her little pot of grease and rubs down the surface of the skillet, and I watch her. The skillet itself is pretty junky looking—a square with bent-up edges to form a lip, soldered onto a long metal handle with a bone grip. Where they got the solder, I have no idea. Stacy’s the only one with a skillet though, and that kind of makes her the unofficial cook of the group, just like Tiffany’s the unofficial gardener. They both have skills they’re putting to use.