Gunlaw

Gunlaw 9

(If you've waited for this part rather than come straight from Part 8 you should know I have added 300 words to the end of Part 8 - everything from the last    **** break.  Some strange Wattpad 'feature' is making the addition to Part 8 only show up for me if I reload the page ... which may mean that me telling you to reload the page will only show up if you reload this page    :D    oh well.)

Chapter 3 – Taking Truth

"What is it you want, Jenna?" Lilliana stood at the utmost edge of the Ansos pillar, a thousand empty yards behind her heels, Jenna's hands on her shoulders.

"Why aren't you scared? Do you think I won't push you over?"

"I told you. I don't know what you'll do. That's part of your fascination." Her hair streamed in the wind.

"But the drop doesn't frighten you?" It frightened Jenna, all that space to fall – it reached up for her, tried to haul her over.

"I'm old, Jenna. I've forgotten how to be scared. What is it you want?"

"I want truth! I want reasons. I can't be the first to ask?"

Lilliana smiled. "You're not the first to ask, but you're the first to ask me in a very long time. I'm hard to find, hard to remember. But you shouldn't ask for truth – truths are heavy burdens and sharp. They cut both ways and more besides."

"Men don't belong here. You watch us like bugs in a jar. You keep us trapped."

"Trapped? The trains will take you anywhere." The Old One looked over her shoulder, down at Ansos town and out toward the dry wastes beyond.

Jenna's fingers dug into Lilliana's shoulders. "The trains? I'd break them all, dig up every track. They're the bars of our prison. Everything men want can be bought for gold. We grub for shiny rocks and buy things we don't know how to make, things so far beyond our understanding that there's no point to invention. Men who have no idea how to make iron can buy guns that are shipped in from gods know where. We never change, or grow. Mankind wasn't mean to be this way."

"How can I learn what you are if you keep changing?" Lilliana asked.

"Tell me why."

"Why what?"

"Why everything."

"It will cost you." The smile left Lilliana. "There are rules. Balances. Each truth you take costs. It lessens the protection I can give you. In the end the truth will kill you."

"Protection from what, damn you!" Jenna's frustration bubbled through her, shaking her arms, shaking the child. Somehow her grip came free and although it was Lilliana who stood with her heels to the edge, it was Jenna who fell, screaming into a void, through dream stacked on dream, falling, falling toward the answer she had asked for, spinning into someone else's story, until with a thump she hit the sand.

***

Aska hit the sand with a thump. She ignored whatever root had snagged her foot, instead keeping her eyes on Hakka and the rabbit.

"He won't eat it all." Aska kept saying it to herself. "He won't eat it all." Her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth, glued there. She sucked saliva back. All of her ached with wanting, with a hunger that reduced her to one thought, one goal. "He won't—"

Her brother threw the rabbit skin down onto the pile of cracked bones. He wiped his mouth, narrowed his eyes at her, then hurried away between the tall rocks. Aska pounced on the skin. She could smell the meat – all gone now, rasped away by Hakka's rough tongue, nothing left but choking fur. One by one she picked through the bones, hunting any trace of marrow.