two brick buildings angle apart. Murmurs, smell of tomatoes.
Kunty erupts among them like a cannonball; they scatter. Some can feel the clout like breath, and hear the low whipping sound her hands make as she slashes just short of their fleeing backs and legs. They leap up to the eaves or bound through the windows to escape her, she raking with her nails a few of the slower and less fortunate, who cry out. Darting this and that way, attacking at will any who are near, excited to fury, Kunty suddenly pounces on a light-haired girl in dirty grey leotard, knocking her on her back and coming down on top of her.
The girl holds off Kunty’s claws, hands and feet, with both her hands and legs. Kunty’s face lunges out of her mop of hair and snaps, straining forward to bite. The strength of the girl underneath ebbs, her limbs slacken jerkily — then she rams Kunty in the gut with one knee, and releasing Kunty’s arms, slams her across the face with her open hand, knocking Kunty aside, slip out from under her. Kunty is surprised, but she ripostes at once, lunging forward to be met by another crack across the face in exactly the same spot as the first and so quickly she can’t see it coming. With a shout she swings toward the movement and is struck twice more, slaps in the face with a little hand so fierce that it twists her head — see stars. There’s the other girl winding up, the light behind her — moving first she shoots forward nails out and that hand bangs her down, once again hitting her precisely in the same place. Kunty staggers a little and the other lifts her two hands and claps Kunty’s ears between them with a splat. Kunty’s legs jerk and she jumps back with a loud cry, holding her sensitive ears. She buckles back onto her ass, then pivots and scrambles away, stops about halfway down the alley, still rubbing her ears, hissing with pain and confusion.
Run Burn! (a window shouts)
and, after a moment’s hesitation, looking after Kunty whose gasping is already reverting to snarls of rage, the girl in the grey leotard bounds up the wall and away.
Still wobbly, Kunty rushes back, crouches, and jumps up the wall. Hanging by her hands — she sees they’re gone.
*
Pigeon girls gather on a pitched roof top, squat down huddled with their backs to the wind, all keeping fairly close to a warm chimney. The news travelled rapidly among them —
Burn beat up Kunty!
The exclamation in each case followed at once by —
Which one is Burn?
She goes by that name, having no other, and no one to name her. She’d just slipped in among them some day, from the upper city, from the other side of the boundary.
Gathered around, pigeon girls quietly ask her, with pointing hands, again and again, to show them how she did it. Patiently, Burn re-enacts the fight with scrupulous exactness, a series of postures without rage fear or the flaring excitement already becoming a dance, conjures the phantom of Kunty in the hollows of her own body’s motions, every time striking the same mark in the air with her hand.
If you watch pigeons (she says) The way they move their wings. They move their wings like.
She brings her raised hands down and together — pop! Looks at them for signs of understanding.
They look at her. All of them are looking at her. In the distance, she sees a huge black bird turning circles over the city, between her and the mountains, collapsing into a virtually invisible black line as it comes toward her, then tipping to the side and huge again, like a pair of black swords, toward her, away, toward her again.
deKlend:
On his third day at the Daubeb Xafif Madrasa, deKlend awakens to the sight of an enormous man looming over him. His seamed face is hard to read from this position; he gives the impression of being at once severe and impassive. deKlend starts violently, both in surprise and with a spasm of the leg caused by a weird feeling, like the muscles had just been given a speculative squeeze by a ghostly
Kunty erupts among them like a cannonball; they scatter. Some can feel the clout like breath, and hear the low whipping sound her hands make as she slashes just short of their fleeing backs and legs. They leap up to the eaves or bound through the windows to escape her, she raking with her nails a few of the slower and less fortunate, who cry out. Darting this and that way, attacking at will any who are near, excited to fury, Kunty suddenly pounces on a light-haired girl in dirty grey leotard, knocking her on her back and coming down on top of her.
The girl holds off Kunty’s claws, hands and feet, with both her hands and legs. Kunty’s face lunges out of her mop of hair and snaps, straining forward to bite. The strength of the girl underneath ebbs, her limbs slacken jerkily — then she rams Kunty in the gut with one knee, and releasing Kunty’s arms, slams her across the face with her open hand, knocking Kunty aside, slip out from under her. Kunty is surprised, but she ripostes at once, lunging forward to be met by another crack across the face in exactly the same spot as the first and so quickly she can’t see it coming. With a shout she swings toward the movement and is struck twice more, slaps in the face with a little hand so fierce that it twists her head — see stars. There’s the other girl winding up, the light behind her — moving first she shoots forward nails out and that hand bangs her down, once again hitting her precisely in the same place. Kunty staggers a little and the other lifts her two hands and claps Kunty’s ears between them with a splat. Kunty’s legs jerk and she jumps back with a loud cry, holding her sensitive ears. She buckles back onto her ass, then pivots and scrambles away, stops about halfway down the alley, still rubbing her ears, hissing with pain and confusion.
Run Burn! (a window shouts)
and, after a moment’s hesitation, looking after Kunty whose gasping is already reverting to snarls of rage, the girl in the grey leotard bounds up the wall and away.
Still wobbly, Kunty rushes back, crouches, and jumps up the wall. Hanging by her hands — she sees they’re gone.
*
Pigeon girls gather on a pitched roof top, squat down huddled with their backs to the wind, all keeping fairly close to a warm chimney. The news travelled rapidly among them —
Burn beat up Kunty!
The exclamation in each case followed at once by —
Which one is Burn?
She goes by that name, having no other, and no one to name her. She’d just slipped in among them some day, from the upper city, from the other side of the boundary.
Gathered around, pigeon girls quietly ask her, with pointing hands, again and again, to show them how she did it. Patiently, Burn re-enacts the fight with scrupulous exactness, a series of postures without rage fear or the flaring excitement already becoming a dance, conjures the phantom of Kunty in the hollows of her own body’s motions, every time striking the same mark in the air with her hand.
If you watch pigeons (she says) The way they move their wings. They move their wings like.
She brings her raised hands down and together — pop! Looks at them for signs of understanding.
They look at her. All of them are looking at her. In the distance, she sees a huge black bird turning circles over the city, between her and the mountains, collapsing into a virtually invisible black line as it comes toward her, then tipping to the side and huge again, like a pair of black swords, toward her, away, toward her again.
deKlend:
On his third day at the Daubeb Xafif Madrasa, deKlend awakens to the sight of an enormous man looming over him. His seamed face is hard to read from this position; he gives the impression of being at once severe and impassive. deKlend starts violently, both in surprise and with a spasm of the leg caused by a weird feeling, like the muscles had just been given a speculative squeeze by a ghostly
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