gathering_blue_novel-2

The summer-start day was hot. Near the Edifice steps, a crowd had gathered to
watch a pig-slaughter behind the butcher's. After the choice parts were sold,
scraps would be thrown. People and dogs together would shove and grab. The
smell from the thick mounds of excrement beneath the terrified pigs and the highpitched
squeals of terror as they awaited death made Kira feel dizzy and
nauseated. She hurried around the edge of the throng, making her way toward
the weaving shed.
"You're out! What happened? Do you go to the Field? To the beasts?"
Matt was calling to her in excitement. Kira smiled. His curiosity appealed to
her — it matched her own — and behind his wildness he had a kind heart, she
thought. She remembered how he had acquired his pet, his little companion dog.
It had been a useless stray, underfoot, scavenging everywhere for food. On a
rainy afternoon it had been caught and tossed by the wheel of a passing donkey
cart. Badly injured, the dog lay bleeding in the mud and would have been left to
die unnoticed. But the boy hid it in nearby shrubbery until its wounds had
mended. Kira had watched from the weaving shed each day as Matt stealthily
crept in to feed the animal while it lay healing. Now the dog, lively and in good
health despite a tail as crooked and useless as Kira's leg, stayed constantly at
Matt's side. He called it Branch, named for the small tree part he had used to
splint its damaged tail.
Kira reached down and scratched the homely mongrel behind his ear. "I'm let
go," she told the boy.
His eyes widened. Then he grinned. "So we still be getting stories, me and my
mates," he said with satisfaction.
"I seen Vandara," Matt added. "She come out like this." He scampered to the
steps of the Edifice and stalked down them, face haughty. Kira smiled at the
imitation.
"She be hating you now for certain," Matt added cheerfully.
"Well, they gave her my piece of land," Kira told him, "so she and the others
can make a pen for their tykes, the way they wanted.
"I hope you didn't already start on a new cott for me," she added,
remembering that he had offered.