Parable of the Talents

family saw it for the first time last year. She said she hoped the tide came in and carried her away.'

I shook my head. Bankole got up and went to lie on the bed.

'But Dan did it,' I said more to myself than to him. 'He found his sister, and he brought her home. It was impossible, but he did it!'

'Shit,' Bankole said, and turned his face to the wall.

************************************

Now the long day is over.

We've cleaned up the hillside battlefield and thrown ground pepper over parts of it so that any smell of blood that still clings to it wouldn't hold the attention of wild dogs.

We've collected the dead, searched their bodies, then after dark, surrounded them with scrap wood, soaked them in lamp oil, and burned them. We do a thorough job, and the smoke is less noticeable at night—less of a lure to scav­engers and to the curious.

I hate doing this—burning the dead. Of course, whether they're our dead or someone else's, it has to be done, but I hate it

We burned Dan separate from his attackers. I set his pyre alight myself. Allie chose the verse and spoke it. We'll have a full service for Dan when Nina is well enough to attend. For now, though, I think Allie made a good choice.

 

'As wind,

As water,

As fire,

As life,

God

Is both creative and destructive,

Demanding and yielding,

Sculptor and clay.

God

Is Infinite Potential.

God

Is Change.'

The other dead—the intruders—were four men and a woman, all in their twenties or early thirties. They were dirty and scratched up, but well-dressed, well-armed, well-heeled. They had plenty of Canadian money in their pock­ets. Were they slavers? Drug dealers? Thieves? Rich kids slumming? Even Nina wasn't sure. She and Dan had es­caped from their original captors and had been on the high­way, headed for Acorn when this new group spotted them and came after them.

The intruders weren't carrying identification or even a change of clothing. That means they had homes or a base of some kind nearby. We thought about that and decided to burn their clothing along with their bodies. It's of much better qual­ity than our own—newer, more fashionable, and more expen­sive. If we wear it, it might be recognized at one of the street markets. And another thing. Two of the intruders were wear­ing black sweatshirts with white crosses embroidered on them—embroidered, not printed. These weren't the long tu­nics that Aubrey Dovetree mentioned, but they were interest­ing imitations. The intruders were thugs of some kind who had decided it was fashionable to look like Jarret's people.

The intruders' guns are, like our own, good-quality, well-cared-for automatic rifles with laser sites. One is German, one's