Jire

Dawn

The neighbors said that Bale hadn't always been a drinker, at least not until the Kurasiti came to the city. But come they did when she was only four years old, and her father had found his way to drink ever since. All the older folks said nothing in the whole city had been the same after that, but Jire didn't know any different. What she did know was that she needed money for food tonight, and her drunkard father wasn't going to get it for her.

Gray dawn light spilled over the mountains to the east, casting a beam narrow as a blade of grass across her still-closed eyes. Her thoughts stole away from a dream she'd had for the last three nights now, always running from hands she couldn't see without knowing why she ran and only knowing that she had to escape them. The details hadn't changed since the first occurrence; only the dread had increased. She shook her head as she sat up, clearing away the last remnants of her terror and swinging around a cloud of charcoal-black hair. It settled in front of her eyes as around a high peak.

Her corner of the little shack she shared with her father was as she left it. Across from her, Bale still slept clutching a glass bottle of some dark liquid, the contents of which barely overpowered the stench of urine coming off his ragged clothes. She hated him. As much as she couldn't put in words the fear she'd felt in that dream, running from hands that she was sure would choke the life out of her, she hated her father but couldn't say why.

There he sat, propped up against the back wall near the extinguished fire of the stove, his broad nose of broken veins and rotting teeth lost in the same mass of dark curls he'd given to her. Jire had thought long ago that she only worked to feed him because he'd worked to give her life, but she doubted that he'd worked a single day in his life after that, and so she hated him.

Knots in her legs and arms threatened to keep her in bed, but she didn't let them. If she didn't get to the river soon, then she'd be stuck waiting there with her water sack until the sun was nearly overhead. That would mean she'd be late getting back home, and even later arriving at Master Morres' manor in the center of the city. The last time that had happened, Master Morres had done what he could to make sure it never happened again.

Shooting one final glare at her father, Jire rose from her bed, smoothed the only shirt she owned with her hands, and grabbed the water sack hanging off its nail near the stove. It would be a long walk to the river.

At this early hour, the slums of Wajukəra—the Kurasiti called it Lunumbau, whatever that meant—only saw dogs and women awake. Women like Jire, whose errands would take them to the river for water, the market for trinkets, and the manors of fat, old men like Master Morres for... She couldn't bring herself to think of it anymore. Only today's water mattered.

Little thrown-together huts like the one she shared with her father lined both sides of the dirt road, now dried after the rain two nights before. What would become a crowded, sweaty din a few hours later was still dully lit silence, pierced occasionally by the crowing of roosters and the shuffling feet of others bound for the riverbank like herself. Jire cast her eyes around, looking for familiar faces. She caught sight of Hinera, who gave her a closed-lipped smile back; the other girl had never been one to talk much. Laene, on the other hand, would gladly gossip and inquire until the both of you starved, and she was the very next person Jire saw.

It was like this most mornings. Laene shuffled up to join her, bearing two water sacks and a smile she shouldn't have borne considering her circumstances.

"Ji!" she said, matching Jire's pace with her longer legs. "Did you hear the news?" With Laene, there was just so much news that Jire could never have heard it all.

"What is it?"

"Guranu came back from the gambling pit last night, more drunk than Teni had ever seen him before. He bet their whole brood of roosters on the cards and lost! Can you believe that?" Jire could believe it. This was the same Guranu who more than once had spent Teni's meager income from weaving on what he thought was a prize rooster, only to have it die in the pit the very next evening. The same Guranu who only sought a day's wage as a digger for the big Kurasiti church so he could waste it all that night in the same drinking houses as Jire's father. Hearing news of his latest misfortune only made Jire hurry her steps, away from this muddy little street and toward the river.