Free Thieves at Heart by Tristan J. Tarwater Page B

rabbit hopped gently away, sniffing the other rabbit with a bit of interest. “I’m from Portsmouth.” She left it at that.
    “What’re yeh doing here in Tyestown, then? That’s a ways to come. You into fiber too?” The big boy picked up his rabbit and held it in his arms, the muscled, tanned arms of a boy who worked out in the fields. Probably herding rabbits. His rabbit seemed to want to dig inside of his shirt, its front paws scratching at his chest.
    “No,” she said carefully, looking to the two girls who hadn’t said anything yet. The middle one who said hello was feeding hay to the fat rabbit, the little one making the doll walk across the grass. “My pa’s a singer and he’s trying to get work at the dance hall. Everyone knows the dance halls in Tyestown are some of the finest in the Valley.” She said it in such a way if they hadn’t known it they would feel stupid. “Anyways, what are you? All cousins?”
    “Garin there’s me cousin, Bee there’s me sister,” the big boy said, pointing to the balancing boy and then the girl with the doll in turn. “Merika and Kela are cousins. We got to come along to sell the shearings, since we didn’t come to town proper for Baron’s Day.” He put his rabbit back in the case, closing it carefully. “Meri and I’s birthdays was two phases ago. We’s old enough to join the rest of the adults with the raising and breeding, finally, so she got Burly and I got Twitch.” He almost blushed, though there was a bit of pride on his face, behind his red cheeks. Tavera pet the fat rabbit again and decided that he liked Merika. They’d probably grow up seeing each other every day, raising rabbits and take vows and have their own babies who would grow up to talk strange and wear nice clothes just to go to the city.
    “Yeh, Ferix is big enoof to be interested in the breedin’,” Garin said, smiling slyly at Tavera. He twirled the stick in his hand and Tavera stood up, walking over to him. He spun it in his palm and Tavera’s hand shot out, snatching the stick from him.
    “Shut up,” the big boy said, the girls he was sitting with giggled behind their hands. Tavera didn’t care what the big boy wanted or was interested in. He could bed his rabbit for all she cared. She hopped up on the ledge with the stick and held the stick across her shoulders and behind her neck, draping her arms over it as she walked across.
    “How much was them rabbits anyway?” she asked. A rabbit could be kept in a little hutch and they ate hay. Hay was easy to get. A live rabbit probably cost less than a dead one. You had to pay for the butcher and the tanner and all that when you got a skin. Maybe a young rabbit that had already been weaned. She could feed it until it got bigger and kill it when it was big enough to suit her needs. It couldn’t be too hard to raise one or kill one. It could sleep with her in the meantime, keeping her warm at night.
    “We traded a whole year’s worth of shearings for these two rabbys,” said Merika, the big girl with the rabbit teeth. “These two’ll make lots of wool. The first shearings will go into a babe’s blanket.” She smiled at the little girl with her doll and then at Tavera, her eyes sparkling with hope as her rabbit hopped a few more steps, sniffing at Twitch’s box.
    A whole year’s worth of shearings? Whatever that was, it sounded like a lot and Tavera and Derk didn’t have a years worth of anything with them in Tyestown. Tavera turned on her heel and walked down the ledge again, her mouth pulled in several directions as she thought. “How many rabbits do you have?”
    “Just these,” Ferix said, putting his hand on his rabbit’s box, sitting up straight. “Just to start. But soon enough, we’ll have grips of them. They grow fast, too. But iss worth it, all the hard work, raising ‘em up, keeping ‘em safe from wild dogs and burrowbears.”
    Tavera dropped one hand from the stick, letting it swing around so that she held