Free Thieves at Heart by Tristan J. Tarwater Page A

big one did have a stick. What if they made fun of her? What if they pulled her ear? Or called her names? She recalled she had tried to punch a grown man for making fun of her pa, scratching at him with her sharp little nails. Would she defend herself the way she had defended Derk’s name? She knew how to hit. And a scrap between children probably wouldn’t call the guard’s attention, just the parents.
    The bunnies were too cute. Tavera frowned, wondering why she was already thinking about fighting these children. She had the money in her hands, ready to buy one of the rabbits from them and she felt her face become hot with embarrassment, her hands both wanting to touch the soft fur of the animals and push through the children. She dropped the coins into her boot, wiggling her foot till they both lay firmly under her heel and she took a deep breath, taking a rather forced step towards the children.
    One of the middle children looked up first, smiling at her happily. Tavera could hear them talking, the cadence and accents telling her they were from the country as she thought. The fat rabbit hopped forward and Tavera giggled, putting her hands in front of her mouth. The biggest girl looked to her and smiled, her front teeth making her look a bit like a rabbit herself.
    “Hello,” the big girl said, friendly enough. She really was a big girl, wearing the wide belt around her middle that women wore, her small breasts already pushing past the soft leather. Her brown hair was plaited into two long braids, each one fastened at the end with carved bone fasteners. The boy had reddish brown hair and a ruddy face, his cheeks making his face teeter somewhere between childhood and adol-escence. Tavera wanted to pull at her own hair and wished it was longer. It grew in slow but thick and she wondered if she would ever be able to have fat braids like the big girl.
    “Whas your name?” the middle girl asked, scratching the fat bunny on its head. Her hair was a bit curlier than the older girls, and she looked to be of age with Tavera, though Tavi was taller. The middle boy had dark curls and light eyes while the one with the doll had the same reddish brown hair of the older boy, curls piled around her head.
    “Kera,” Tavera said, kneeling down besides them. “Can I pet your bunny, please?” She held her hand out as she did and the other children moved so she could reach the fat one, her fingers sinking into the fur, giving away how small the rabbit actually was under there. “I like your rabbit,” she said.
    “Iss name is Burly,” The oldest girl said, smiling. The rabbit was so incredibly soft it made Tavera draw in her breath. She wanted to sleep in a pile of rabbits though she knew they could kick hard with their back legs. “I just got me rabby today,” the girl said, looking very pleased with the giant grey bulk of hair with ears. “Ee should bring a gripper of lunars, don’t yeh think?”
    Tavera just nodded, petting the rabbit. All she knew about rabbits were they tasted good and were soft. How hard could it be to keep a rabbit? These children did it. “D’you live close?” Tavera asked. The big boy nodded. His stick was right by his hand and the middle boy took it up, skipping over to a little ledge made with stones and balancing there, carefully putting one foot in front of the other. Tavera could have walked it in her sleep, she thought.
    “A ways away, down byern the Lady’s Necklace, in Bluegrass. Yeh heard of it?”
    Tavera shook her head slowly, watching the boy try to balance on the ledge, almost falling to the hard packed ground but catching himself before he spilled. “Uh…yeah. That’s south of here, right?”
    “And where yeh from, city girl?” the one that had been balancing asked, spinning on the front of his foot. All of the country folk chuckled except for the littlest, too busy playing with her doll to notice what the big kids were doing.
    Tavera almost spat at him but she didn’t. The