[Sorry for the delay in submitting this chapter. Life and work got in the way of writing smut. There is lesbian sex in this episode.]
Chapter 3 - Life in the forest
Even before there was enough twilight to see colours in the trees around the sleeping camp, the Woodlanders' cockerel, 'Adam the seventeenth', had climbed to his perch on top of the coop, filled his lungs with cool crisp air and screeched a lusty greeting to the impending dawn.
His raucous haloo echoed off the walls of the huts and the nearby trees. Wildchild, who had been fast asleep, warmly cuddled between Tamar and Annela, woke alarmed, threw off the thread-bare blanket and crouched in a defensive posture, trying to see who was attacking them, groping on the reed mat for her hunting knife. Tamar also sat up, pushing her long hair off her face to rub the sleep out of her eyes.
"What is it, what is it?" she asked.
"Shush girls," Annela reassured them. "there's nothing to fear. It's just our cockerel, Adam,"
"What a horrid noise!" Tamar exclaimed as Adam repeated his call. "Why the blazes do you keep him?"
"Shush," Annela repeated in a whisper, smiling at the archaic word 'blazes' (which she took to be ruder than it was); "Ezra seems to have slept through the racket. Let's go outside. We might as well get up, anyway."
The girls grabbed their clothes and dressed quietly under the awning in front of the hut. Wildchild yawned and stretched while Tamar looked at the activity in the camp.
Though it was still only half-light, many of the women were emerging from their huts, some singly, others in pairs, most walking out of the camp toward the shallow river that flowed lazily in a semi-circle to the north to perform their morning ablutions. Descending the bank to the river's edge, they became shadows in the mist that hung in wisps around the camp.
There were sounds of stirring in the next hut, which belonged to Erin and Carlin. Annela whispered at their door and pretty soon Carlin came out, a shy smile on her shiny morning face.
"Carlin, will you look after Wildchild and Tamar for a while? I have some chores before breakfast."
Carlin nodded.
"Are you hungry?" Annela asked Wildchild and Tamar.
Wildchild shook her head. "No, not yet," said Tamar.
"Very good. Go along with Carlin. She will show you around and bring you back here for breakfast. But don't make much noise. I want Ezra to sleep as long as he can."
Carlin silently beckoned the girls to follow her and soon the three girls were out of sight in the mist as they also headed for the stream.
Women were milling about the camp as Annela fetched Erin and they went together to their morning chore. One of the matrons, Casti by name, carried a basket of seed to the chicken run. She caused havoc among the greedy hens by scattering their food while she pilfered their nests, weighing each of the night's produce in her hand, taking most of the eggs but leaving a couple of the more promising ones to hatch. Another matron was adding dry kindling to the perpetual fire in an ancient iron pot-belly stove. Two younger women hoisted baskets onto their backs and headed out of the camp to forage for mushrooms in the forest.
Dagma, the dumpy young woman who first met Ezra and the girls, marched across the camp to the hut of Sharne and Pepi, carrying two stone axes with long wooden shafts. She scratched on the doorpost and Sharne immediately appeared. They whispered together and Sharne returned inside. Seconds later, she came out, folding a heavy cloak over her shoulders and donning her green peaked cap.
Sharne waved at the matron tending the fire. She was an old black woman, once athletic, now stout, clearly Sharne's mother. She smiled and waved back, gave the fire one last stoke and, walking with a stick, hobbled over to Sharne's hut and went inside to sit with her granddaughter, Pepi, while her daughter and Dagma strode away from the camp into the forest, balancing their axes on their shoulders.
Parvinder, an old Indian woman, sat on a low stool to milk Bessie, the Woodlanders' wizened old cow, who lived contentedly in the meadow and gave little milk. After taking off a few cupfuls in a pan, she went to the iron stove to begin cooking.
Meanwhile, Annela and Erin began their tasks. They shovelled damp ash from the central fire into a heap inside the chicken run. Here, when the sun had burned off the mist and brought a heat-haze down into the forest-clearing, the hens would bathe in the dust, wriggling bottom-first into the pile to stir up the cooler ash beneath.
Afterward, Annela and Erin rebuilt the central fire with dry logs from under the awning of a storage hut. Fifteen minutes later, they had done.
Annela went quickly back to her hut. She wanted to check on her patient and avoid talking to the women frying up breakfast over the stove, who would pester her with questions about Ezra. She found him still asleep and stood gazing at him for a few minutes.
After taking Tamar and Wildchild to the river to relieve themselves, Carlin led them into the forest. They said hello to the women picking small brown mushrooms in the undergrowth. Their names were Dipti and Urulla. Dipti was an Indian woman in her late twenties; short, very dark and with a round happy face and long straight black hair. Most of the younger Woodlanders were skinny. Dipti was more curvaceous. Urulla was nineteen: tall, pale, brown-haired, thin, flat-chested and serious-looking.
Both women had greeted their guests kindly last night and this morning desired to know how the girls had slept. The story of how they met Ezra had been told and re-told many times around the camp-fire last night yet everyone was eager to hear it again at first-hand; but the girls wanted to be on the move, so Carlin shyly explained she was under instructions to show the girls around. They answered as briefly as they could and trotted off deeper into the forest.
Carlin gave the girls a tour of the nearby forest. All around the camp there was abundant wood to build huts and fences and make the camp-fire. Within a ten-minute walk of the camp were many kinds of berries and nuts, which came into season by no set rhythms and were checked periodically throughout the year. Further away there were fig trees, oranges, lemons and other fruits. Even further away was a stand of banana plants. If one followed the river downstream a couple of miles, then it flowed into a wide lake where ducks could be hunted and reeds cut for basket-weaving. The furthest place the Woodlanders regularly visited in the forest was a small bamboo plantation, where they got canes for roofs and fencing.
Carlin had to explain what ducks were. They were a rare luxury because they were much harder to hunt than pigeons. She also told them the river was too shallow for big fish, so the only fish she had eaten were dried and salted ones bought from the Mariners at the monthly trade.
On their way to see if there were any ripe hazelnuts, they heard the thwack of axes on trees. It was Sharne and Dagma about a quarter-mile away, chopping up logs.
They reached the hazelnut bushes in another five-minutes. The girls had fun gleaning the small brown nuts but they brought no basket or bag and could only put the hazelnuts in their pockets or break them open and eat them. Tamar carried her hazelnuts by folding the bottom of her skirt into a bag. Chewing a few hazelnuts piqued the girls' appetites, however, so when the older girls' pockets were full, they started back to the camp for a proper breakfast.
Mirselene emerged not long after Annela had finished her tasks. She beckoned across the camp to Annela to come and visit her.
"How is our guest?" Mirselene asked when Annela entered the hut.
"He's still asleep," she answered. "Also, I don't think his arm is broken, only badly sprained."
"That is good news. When he wakes, I'll have Parvinder take a look at it."
Annela was not offended by this suggestion: Parvinder was the best nurse in the tribe; but it did raise a question. Before Annela could ask it, however, Mirselene was giving more orders:
"Annela, you need not do your chores if you are busy nursing Ezra. Getting him better takes priority and I'll assign your work to others instead. Also, when Ezra wakes, I want you to bring him to visit me. There are some things I'd like to ask that young man."
"As would the rest of us, Madam. Ezra will not be safe from questioning while he stays with us."
