At Dawn's Speed
My people are never still. Even when we sleep, our bodies sort of twitch and shake. We call ourselves the Run People – because that’s what we do. Run. And run. Through the dark. Always in the dark. Away from the dawn. Until it’s time for one of us to silver. Like now.
My mammer picked a birth-name for me that would make me faster as I grew older – Swift. She is a wise woman. I’ve only just reached my full height and I can already outrun anyone in our tribe except Bardon, the guider. I sort of like to pretend in my head that I could one day be a guider like him, but ’course, I know that’s silly. Girls like me grow up to be mammers, and mammers don’t run that good when they’re carrying babies.
We started our silvering dance in the dark, like we do everything. The youngers never really do it right. I remember when it was hard for me to slow down and make the body shapes that the adults made. My heart used to pump hard, and my muscles sort of fought against me trying to make them do things that weren’t normal. Now I can do it as good as almost anyone. My mammer taught me the secret. She is a wise woman. It was the same as the secret to running, really – it was all in how you breathe. If you breathed real steady, you could slow the stuff in your head, and if you could slow what’s in your head then you could make your body do anything you wanted. I could make my body dance the silver rhythms, and it was like I wasn’t in my head anymore and was in the sky dancing with the star-rains under the curves of the two blood moons.
Without breaking my rhythm, I watched the first blade of sunlight appear on the horizon and followed it as it moved across the plain down below us. I used to think dawn didn’t really move so fast, that the Run People could easily get up way ahead out of danger. But then I understood that dawn never sleeps or eats or gets tired or sore. It just keeps coming forever. And, anyway, we had to stay close enough to do the silvering dance when we needed to.
Then my eyes sort of locked on the silverer lying in the still-darkness in the middle of the plain. I knew I shouldn’t. You’re not supposed to think of them like they were still one of us. But I couldn’t help it. For a moment the stuff in my head starting racing again. The dance. It’s all ‘bout the dance. I tried to force my breaths back into the silver rhythms. The dawn border-line now stretched right across the plain in a curve, travelling steady over the stones and dirt towards us.
My breath stuck in my throat like the bone of a mudfish. I can’t control what I’m thinking when that happens to me.
My mammer picked a birth-name for me that would make me faster as I grew older – Swift. She is a wise woman. I’ve only just reached my full height and I can already outrun anyone in our tribe except Bardon, the guider. I sort of like to pretend in my head that I could one day be a guider like him, but ’course, I know that’s silly. Girls like me grow up to be mammers, and mammers don’t run that good when they’re carrying babies.
We started our silvering dance in the dark, like we do everything. The youngers never really do it right. I remember when it was hard for me to slow down and make the body shapes that the adults made. My heart used to pump hard, and my muscles sort of fought against me trying to make them do things that weren’t normal. Now I can do it as good as almost anyone. My mammer taught me the secret. She is a wise woman. It was the same as the secret to running, really – it was all in how you breathe. If you breathed real steady, you could slow the stuff in your head, and if you could slow what’s in your head then you could make your body do anything you wanted. I could make my body dance the silver rhythms, and it was like I wasn’t in my head anymore and was in the sky dancing with the star-rains under the curves of the two blood moons.
Without breaking my rhythm, I watched the first blade of sunlight appear on the horizon and followed it as it moved across the plain down below us. I used to think dawn didn’t really move so fast, that the Run People could easily get up way ahead out of danger. But then I understood that dawn never sleeps or eats or gets tired or sore. It just keeps coming forever. And, anyway, we had to stay close enough to do the silvering dance when we needed to.
Then my eyes sort of locked on the silverer lying in the still-darkness in the middle of the plain. I knew I shouldn’t. You’re not supposed to think of them like they were still one of us. But I couldn’t help it. For a moment the stuff in my head starting racing again. The dance. It’s all ‘bout the dance. I tried to force my breaths back into the silver rhythms. The dawn border-line now stretched right across the plain in a curve, travelling steady over the stones and dirt towards us.
My breath stuck in my throat like the bone of a mudfish. I can’t control what I’m thinking when that happens to me.
|
