Saints of Evil | Trepidation Trilogy | The Empty World Sequence

Thirteen

Sadian kissed mother goodbye and went to the door.  She put her sunglasses on before opening it, stepped out into Summer in the south of Pakistan and opened her parasol.  She walked lightly along the narrow street of packed sandy earth, past the rectangular whitewashed houses of concrete with their brightly painted doors, and awnings over each narrow rectangular window.  Sadian saw two young children of the Wolfbreed leave their house, their older brother walking out after them with a  dark umbrella open to block the sun.  Sadian noted the pace of their step, their sleekly rounded figures, their dark colouring and recognized them as belonging to the Lightfoot.  They saw her, but they did not speak to Sadian.

     At the next alley, Sadian crossed the street and walked between houses to the next Village street.  She cut through the lot of the service station where Zulfi was filling up the tank of his jeep for the commute into Karachi.  Sadian waved to him.  They boyish partangel smiled slightly and looked over the top of his sunglasses with two dark round eyes.  Sadian ran down the next alley onto Main Street where the coffee house and the druggist and all the shops were.  She stepped onto the wide sidewalk that ran along the far side of the street and followed it as other children were to the Villa. 

     Where the walk ended, the children followed the sandy trail at the right side of the long twisted drive, Sadian took a shortcut today, walking across the familiar drifts of sand, straight to the side of the Villa.  They hadn't had bad winds in a long time, or storms coming in from the sea, and so the sand hadn't shifted all that much.    She turned at its corner and ran to the tall decorated arch that shaded the front doors.   She glanced out at the wide white beach and the aquamarine of the shallow waters that was the colour of Thierry's eyes, then Sadian went in through the open doors into the cool anteroom with its bubbling fountain and hanging plants. 

     The Village mothers, and some fathers, who helped with the schooling of the children greeted Sadian with the others and guided them to the second floor where the school rooms were.  Sadian put her things in her cubby of the coat room then went out into the hall.  The second floor had a floor that matched the anteroom, it was tiled in cobalt, not carpeted as the first floor was, or paved in stone as the kitchen and some lower rooms were.  The plaster walls were decorated with ink and watercolour drawings done by past and present students.  Sadian went down the long hall to the her homeroom.  All the young children were in this room, Lightfoots, Sandrunners, young Naphaim, several young partangels, and Sadian of course, who was different. 

     Sadian sat in front of her computer terminal and logged-on.  Every so often a helper would walk up to her chair and ask how she was doing.  Sadian never needed much help.  She knew how all the devices were used, she knew how to deal with error messages, she could read English and didn't have much trouble with Arabic now, she could type with tolerable speed for a child.  She was quite good at math, especially at word problems, which always seemed to bother the other children, and she was quite far ahead of the Wolfbreed children and the Naphaim in her schooling.  Sadian, like the angelic children, were working on lessons that other children their age would not understand for several years.  Their minds and bodies matured quickly.

     At lunch, Sadian walked down to the kitchen with all the other children.  They gave her a plate of something Indian that they swore didn't have as much spice as the plates of the other children, and a small glass of blood.  Sadian carried her tray into the large Solarium at the side of the house with the windows that darkened in the sunlight.  She sat at a table with some of the angels of different ages.  Some of them liked her. 

     There were pitchers of water, and kiwi juice today, on the tables, along with plates of spiced meat, bread, and cheese.  Sadian asked for the juice, filled the glass without diluting it and then proceeded to add several spoonfuls of sugar.  She knew the food was too spicy when she tasted it.  They just didn't seem to understand how the spice turned her stomach.  She picked out the bits of vegetable as best she could and drank lots of juice with plenty of sugar.  Sadian always saved her glass of blood for last, it was like having dessert.  She took a piece of bread, a slice gone hard, but it was always served so.  She dipped the bread in the blood and ate it bit by bit.