Read Online Slavemakers by Joseph Wallace - Free Book Online Page B

the same time, yowling, the other two came dancing in toward her.
    Coming for her, but still sideways, with their heads partly averted even as they showed their teeth. Not the steady, headlong lope—somehow eating up the ground in their humpbacked way—they used when they moved in for the kill.
    She’d hurt the alpha female, she could see that. But more importantly, she’d startled them, all of them. Even scared them. What was this seemingly dormant creature that suddenly sprang up and attacked? And what else was it capable of?
    Aisha Rose knew the answer to that question: not much else. But it didn’t matter. She had the advantage now. Before the dominant hyena could decide between attack and retreat, she made the decision for it. With another bellow—this one so loud that Aisha Rose knew her throat would hurt for days—she leaped at it, swinging the stone again.
    This time it collided with the alpha’s midsection, making a loud, hollow thump. The hyena staggered back two steps, and what came out of its mouth now was no terrifying howl or laugh, but an unmistakable whimper.
    That was enough. She wasn’t worth it. Game was plentiful in that season, and she’d seen at once that all three had the bulging bellies of the recently fed.
    They’d approached her because normally that would have made no difference. Hyenas would eat until they could barely move, and sometimes kill even if they had no appetite at all.
    But to have a nearly full stomach and confront an unfamiliar prey that fought back? No, thank you.
    â€œHumans are the only creatures that kill because their feelings are hurt,” Mama had said.
    Aisha Rose watched the hyenas depart, glancing over their sloping shoulders as they left to make sure she wasn’t in pursuit. Surprising herself again, she gave a hoarse laugh at their cowed expressions. Hearing the sound, the three hyenas hurried their stride until they reached the mouth of the little side canyon that Aisha Rose and Mama had made their home this year. Then, with one last backward glance, they passed out of sight.
    Still smiling, Aisha Rose tossed the stone aside and stretched her arms out in front of her. She knew these hyenas would never return, and if something else came hunting for her? Well, with Mama’s help, she would deal with it, too.
    Then she reached back with her right hand and touched the lump on the back of her head, wincing. The hair around it was matted with drying blood, but the wound itself had nearly stopped bleeding, and she could feel a scab beginning to crust over it.
    The pain took her mind away from her encounter with the hyenas, and in that instant she rememberedwhat had happened to her. What had left her so vulnerable that, if she hadn’t awoken when she did, she might have died in agony instead, or in unconsciousness, without ever realizing she’d been alive at all.
    Or at least she remembered
some
of it. And, just like that, the joy drained out of her, and she felt cold.
    No. Not cold. Afraid.
    Afraid in a way she could never be, even facing hyenas or anything else the real earth could threaten her with.
    Except this.
    *   *   *
    THIS WAS WHAT had happened:
    As she often was during the heat of the day, she’d been up in her tree, in her perch above the weaverbird colony. Sitting with her back against the massive trunk and her legs dangling over the wooden sleeping platform nestled between the trunk and one of the tree’s sturdiest branches.
    Not that there weren’t any threats up here—she’d seen her share of snakes and scorpions—but she was doubtless safer in the tree than even in the rockiest, most inaccessible corner of the caves and canyons.
    So . . . she’d been sitting safely on her perch, watching the world go by (as Mama put it), when . . .
    When she’d seen the picture of a lion. But not one of her lions . . . something slighter,