Read Online Tinder Stricken by Heidi C. Vlach - Free Book Online

contorted. “Goddamned feather-rat! Why?!”
     
    Nothing answered her. She stayed there,
bowed to the forest floor, staring at her leathery hands with their
hoof-tough nails.
    This morning marked another ruined plan.
Here was another boon slipped through Esha's unworthy hands,
another pole ripped out of her shaking scaffold of retirement
plans.
     
    This time, she didn't know what to do.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 4

     
    After gulping down cups of water, a
tar-strong cup of buttered tea, and some pain herb, Esha arrived at
Janjuman Farm and accepted the wage penalty for her tardiness. She
worked the fields like any other day, a stranger inside her own
body, numbly tending the yam sprouts. She was only one person
alongside her perfectly honourable field sisters. These other
women, these bent colleagues in a rainbow of coloured saris, had
husbands and children and full heads of hair under their headwraps,
and family names to encompass it all. That was how people deserved
to live.
    Maybe, Esha thought, she deserved to be
persecuted after all.
    She stopped thinking such things as the sun
descended the sky and she left the fields, gripping her pitifully
light wage packet. Habit tugged her toward the Farback, toward the
trapping circuit. Esha wasn't going back there. Her savings had
suffered a blow but she wasn't going back there. She went home
instead, and cooked a meal that she stuffed into her mouth, still
steaming. While chewing millet and grilled onion, she counted the
contents of her savings chest.
    She had enough rupees for a one-week stay in
a retirement shelter. Not a good shelter, either. Selling the gold
bracelet and wooden spoon set might buy her another few days, or a
nurse's fleeting attention. Esha had been counting on that
Kanakisipt kuhkuri — the price of family esteem plus the potent
speaking lungta of a preserved orchid from Tselaya's peak. If a
diplomat or a historian was willing to open their purse, Esha would
have gladly kept a blank face while claiming she didn't know where
this khukuri came from. Some cousin of the family, perhaps. Some
minor noble long since vanished, lost to time.
    And those lies might have bought Esha some peace if a flea-eaten phoenix hadn't ruined everything. She
didn't have the strength to be angry about it anymore; she just
sat, alone, running her fingers through a small mound of clicking
rupees. She needed to do something about this, or else resign
herself to shifting in public, horrified faces all around as she
started bleating and pissing herself. That thought made Esha sure.
She was plenty sullied and incredibly tired, but she wasn't giving
up.
    So she needed another plan. Hunting down
that thief phoenix would fix her troubles — which was foolishness
and Esha knew it. She was no ranger and the phoenix had whole
forests to hide in. Even if Esha didn't have retirement to pay for,
she didn't have the money to have one specific bird tracked down
and killed.
    Gita would look after her, said a craftiness
inside Esha. She still had Gita's nameplate, and the extra property
token, now kept safe on a necklace beneath all her layered
clothes.
    Maybe this budding plan would work if a
trapper wanted Gita's property token. Those sold for a tall sum if
the right ownership arrangements could be made. Or Esha could
enlist someone interested in capturing a phoenix — a live,
intelligent one.
    Thinking of the former Yam Plateau animist
with his hunkered pet, Esha began to remember what hope felt like.
She just needed to find an animist and make a deal.
    Rama's Day came, forgotten by Esha forgot
about until it was upon her. Janjuman's fields rang with hymns, the
workers singing together of past royals and eternal gods. The
workday ended at the noon zenith and the fieldwomen took their
reprieve as gladly as their pay.
    Esha was glad for it, she had to admit.
Songs lingered in her mouth and once she was past the guard
station, she kept humming as she walked the market street. This
would be a