Shadowkill

1

The shed door opened.

Light blew in, cold blue-white light that broke the murky twilight inside, wiped it out, making everything clear, pristine. It even seemed to submerge the smells of sweat and stale urine issuing from the women.

Eyes tearing at the sudden brightness, Kizra followed close behind Tinoopa as the big woman marched out, then scurried around and walked beside her, glancing repeatedly and surreptitiously up at her.

Like all the women, Kizra included, Tinoopa wore a grubby gray coverall. It didn’t flatter her wide-shouldered, big-hipped body. She had beautiful skin, soft and smooth, a dark amber; her black hair was thick and coarse; she wore it in heavy braids wound about her head. She had a handsome strong face, bold cheekbones and a decided chin, heavy dark brows over eyes that Kizra had seen friendly and laughing. They went stony when the door opened. Kizra found herself believing that this was not only the motherly creature who’d tended her, but a practiced and successful predator.

The women were herded along an alley between massive stone and timber buildings and into a large pen where a number of other women were already waiting, about a hundred of them.

She stayed close to Tinoopa, clinging to her as the only certainty in a world that kept dissolving on her. She tried to be casual about it. The depth of her need frightened her. She couldn’t give in to it. That was another thing that came popping out of what she couldn’t remember; there was something inside her that said however frightened you are, however needy, hide it. Don’t let THEM see you whimper.

The beaten dirt floor was packed hard as rock by generations of feet… how many labor cadres had walked through here to what end? The walls were three meters tall, made of planks like the walls of the but with cracks and knotholes and warped places; the wind came through in much the same way. No color anywhere, nothing but gray. The unpainted wood was weathered to a soft dull gray. The fine clay soil was a grayish tan. The women were all in gray. And fair, with light-colored hair from ash blonde to dirt brown. All but one.

That one had hair so furiously red it seemed to pull in the meager sunlight and, burn with it. Red hair… Kizra tried to see her face, but the woman had her back turned… red hair… red… She looked away, angry and disturbed because there were things in her head she couldn’t get at…

There were other, more obvious problems about the look of the women in here. She frowned at her hands. Brown hands, darker than the dirt she was standing on. Dark as Tinoopa. She looked from them to the pale pink women all around her-and was suddenly afraid.