Blue Heart

Hands on her ears, the girl crouched on her haunches, rocking back and forth. She tried to shut out everything, words, thoughts, all —

'They killed Headman Cracy an' his wife last night,' Deke sobbed, his voice full of anguish. 'Hurt 'em real bad. afore they killed 'em.'

She knew that. She'd known that long before Deke learned it. She could still feel the pain that had sent her to huddle in the back of the cave, racked with agony she could not explain.

Deke hugged his skinny arms to his chest, pausing now and then to wipe his nose and eyes with the back of his hand.

'They started on my pap and mam this morning!' Deke continued, his face screwing up into a mask of grief and bewilderment.

She knew that, too. And she knew that Deke's momma was only heartbeats from that same darkness that had taken Momma Cracy and Headman Cracy.

'Why they like that, Mikhal?' the boy sobbed, finally flinging himself into Mikhal's arms. 'Why they gotta hurt and kill people? We never done nothin'! Why they gotta hurt my mam and pap?'

Mikhal pulled the boy to him, holding him close to his chest in a sheltering embrace. While the boy sobbed, Mikhal cursed under his breath.

The girl knew why. Mikhal cursed himself for sending Deke to spy on the village. Mikhal thought he should have gone himself.

'It's 'cause they're bad, Deke,' Mikhal murmured between curses. 'It's 'cause they want what we got, an' just 'cause they life to hurt folks, an' this's a good excuse to make somebody hurt. None of it's our doin', Deke. None of it.'

The old man kept his voice high enough for the other children to hear. He was a teacher; even in the midst terror, he would teach.

'Ain't none of it our fault,' he said, and the girl felt his eyes probing the darkness, looking for her. 'We just gotta get through this, an' make sure it don't happen again.'

They hurled Momma Cracy an' Poppa Cracy, hurted 'em an' kilt 'em. The girl's thoughts were filled with con-fusion, terror, and anguish. They hurted 'em, but it's 'cause they want me. They gonna hurt Deke's momma an' poppa, they gonna hurt everybody till they get me!

She rocked back and forth, tears burning down her cheeks, trying to work out reasons and answers. But there were no reasons, and she had never hi her life touched minds like these. Mikhal was right. Mikhal was right.

But these horrible people wanted her. These people were all her family, every adult was her Momma and Poppa, every youngling a brother or sister. They all loved her, and she loved them all. It was all she had ever known, that love, that cherishing.

They're getting hurted, an' it's 'cause of me! She buried her face in her arms, and faced the inescapable. If — -if I go to 'em, they might hurt me ... if I don't, they gonna hurt everybody, an' maybe kilt 'em, too.

Her traumatized mind kept trying to resolve the questions, and finally she groped her way through the fog to an answer, and a decision.

She loved them. They loved her. They were being hurt because of her. She could not bear that. And there was only one way to stop the hurt.

She slipped away, as quietly as a mouse, running down to the village to make the bad men stop.

Baron Munn stared at the lovely girl, completely enthralled. She was more beautiful than he dreamed, more vulnerable and tender, and her terror only served to make her lovelier in his eyes. That terror fed the hunger within him in a way that even the dying pain of her elders had not done.

She was perfect in every way.

She cowered at his feet, where she had thrown herself, weeping, placing herself between him and the woman he had been torturing, trying to hold him off with her soft little hands. Hands like fluttering doves, like white butterflies.

He took her face in his hands, carefully, and raised her eyes to his. Even weeping could not make her less than lovely.