Free Moon-Flash by Patricia A. McKillip Page A

boy’s smile disappeared again; he gazed with pride at his arms. Then he reached across the fire, touched Terje’s bare, upturned arm.
    The lack of pictures on it seemed to bewilder him. He tapped Terje’s wrist a few times, his eyes demanding an answer to his puzzlement. Kyreol giggled at the image of a painted Terje.
    “He has as many signs on him as the betrothal carpet. Look, Terje, there’s a butterfly. And two snakes. Maybe it’s just . . .”
    “Just what?”
    “I don’t know.” She brushed a flat space in the sand and drew their own signs. “This is me. A tree and a turtle. And this is Terje. Three Rocks.” She added, “That’s all we have.” She touched her forehead. “We paint them there.”
    The smile shone again; the boy nodded approvingly. He tapped his left wrist and then his heart and then his wrist again. He held his arm above the fire for them to see his sign.
    A white circle, a star of fire . . . Kyreol’s voice went small with astonishment. “Moon-Flash.”
    The boy’s head lifted. The moon was only a thin curve of white in the sky, but he stretched out his arm toward it, showing his sign, in a movement that was at once a ritual and a proud gesture of kinship. Watching his face, Kyreol thought,
The moon recognizes him. He is the moon’s child. The son of a healer, maybe, or a ruler, like the Sun-Woman.
    “But where is his home?” she asked aloud. “And where are his bells?” She tilted her head, shook something invisible near her ear. “Bells.” She tapped her ear, then pointed at the boy and tinkled the invisiblebells again. The third time she did it, the intent look left his face, and he laughed.
    He untucked the end of his cloth and spread it flat on the sand. Kyreol, gazing at the small collection of possessions, realized that he had nothing else. He had his sandals, the voluminous length of cloth, the vast blue sky, and the endless sand. He separated things carefully, laying them out on the cloth, his long fingers gesturing, talking. A stone for fire. A tiny net of leather laces attached to a bone handle. He demonstrated that, sending a stone hurtling out of the net into the night. A small knife with the most beautiful handle Kyreol had ever seen. Bells. He had wound cloth tightly around them to keep them silent. He shook them into his palm: tiny bells stitched to circlets of leather. He slid them over his wrists and shook them, smiling at their expressions. A few bundles of dried herbs. A small skin for water. That was all.
    Terje drew a breath. “He’s all alone in the desert, taking care of himself.”
    “Maybe he’s learning to be a hunter.”
    “Maybe. But he doesn’t have a spear or arrows, or traplines. Not even fishing line . . .”
    She watched the fearless, eager eyes flicking back and forth as they talked, as he listened for one familiar word. But he seemed patient with his wordlessness, as though their language was just one more noise among all the vast and varied noises made on the earth. He caught her eye, and the ready smile sprang forth again. She smiled back.
    “Maybe,” she said, “he’s just learning to live.” She drew houses in the sand, little people, and finally he grunted. He gestured away from the river. Hispeople lived that way, under the rising sun. He raised his arm again, showed his sign to the moon, then swept his hand around him, circling the desert. Then he tapped the moon on his wrist, and then his heart.
    They shook their heads over that one. He grinned, and raising the ball he had given Terje, he cracked it in two like an egg against a stone.
    “It’s something to eat!” Kyreol said. He handed them the dripping halves, and they drank a sweet, milky liquid. He showed them how to pry the thick white flesh from its shell. They offered him fish in return, but he shook his head, munching at the fruit. Then he made a small face, and they laughed. Fish, his expression said. Nothing to eat but fish.
    Then he was gone. A shadow,