The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,21

our lives.

I don’t even remember what it was we was talking about, except that it was nothing much. All I was thinking of was how good it was to be with Spinner. To be close enough that I could smell her sweat, as though in a way I was breathing her into me.

I reached out my hand to grab hold of a bucket or something, and it touched her side. I started back, sudden like. I wasn’t meaning to touch her without no leave nor warning, and I didn’t want her to think I was.

Spinner turns to look at me. “What was that, Koli?” she asks me, putting her hands on her hips.

“It was…” I stammered. “It wasn’t anything.”

“Then why’d you jump back like you was burnt? I’m not hot to touch.” She put her hand on my cheek. “See? That doesn’t hurt now, does it?”

I didn’t know what to answer. I covered her hand with mine, and kept on looking in her eyes. It didn’t hurt, but it did burn somewhat.

She leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. There was a salt taste on her lips, from her working and sweating hard. It’s nothing much to tell, but I wondered at it. That Spinner had a taste, and I had tasted it.

She put her hand over mine, and then stroked it along my arm. Her skin looked so light next to mine. Like my brown arm was a branch of a tree, and her pink-white fingers was like the blossom of the same tree, moving in the wind.

And shortly after, I stopped thinking at all. I had kissed girls before, in the Summer-dance, and I had kissed a boy, that was Veso Shepherd. Veso hadn’t decided back then whether his love was for women or men, and he put both to the test somewhat. I had even tumbled with a girl once, when the fire was dying down and everyone took hands and walked off into the dark to carry on the dancing without any music. This was different though. For me it was, anyway. When Spinner took me into her, I was taken in whole and delivered to some other place. I don’t know how to say it better than that.

Afterwards we lay naked on our own shed-off clothes, arms around each other, and commenced to talk again.

“I been thinking about doing that a long while,” Spinner said. “And I’m glad I did.”

That give me a glow in my heart. I said I had been thinking about it too. “Yes,” Spinner said. “I knowed that, Koli. You didn’t think you was hiding it, did you? Dandrake help you if you ever need to keep a big secret.”

You might think that would of been a good time to tell my feelings, but I was sure in my heart that it wasn’t. It would of been like I was just trying to thank her for the tumble, and not meaning it. The words didn’t come out anyway.

Spinner seen I was abashed, and laughed me out of it. She kissed me, and I kissed her just as readily, and so we went back and forth a while until we both seen the sun was almost touching the ground and it was past time to go back inside the fence. We walked those hundred feet hand in hand, like lovers, but parted just before the gates and walked in like friends, our arms swinging at our sides.

It was one of the best days I had ever lived through, but I wonder still whether that coming together, sweet as it was, was the thing that kept me from speaking out when words might still of been to the purpose.

Probably not, I’m bound to say. The general belief was that Haijon was strongest out of all of us and I was fastest, but my best skill was always standing too long and deciding too late.

We said goodbye at the water tower, and I watched Spinner cross the gather-ground to the tannery before I turned onto the path that led down to the mill. I was angry with myself, a little, that I didn’t speak to her, but I promised myself I would take the next chance. Tomorrow would do, I thought. And like most people who think that, I was dead wrong. There’s only ever one day that matters, and it moves along with you.

11

I worked the next two days at the lookout, but Spinner never come. I stayed late each day, hoping