Free Fish Tails by Sheri S. Tepper

a stick. There was a loud noise. Still holding the stick he had intended to hit Needly with, Slap lay in a corner, black-­and-­blue in the face and upper body. Across the room from him, Grudge nursed a broken arm. Even after Slap and Grudge were healed, no one touched Needly. It was almost as though someone had dropped a veil of invisibility over her.
    If and when girls were de-­uglified to be sold or mated, most of them stayed alive for quite some time, just as Trudis had. Men didn’t spend that kind of money on somebody who’d be around only a year or so, unless they were like Old Digger, and Old Digger bought really young ones, sometimes as young as eight or nine years old, and kept them only three or four years. Never past their womanlies, though. Once they started to get breasts, Digger was finished with them. They disappeared and he’d go back to digging salvage or gold out of the buried cities until he had enough to buy another one.
    Gralf liked to annoy Grandma by talking of selling Needly to Old Digger. If he sold her to anyone else, he’d have to pay taxes when the king’s tax-­hogs came by Hench Valley, the far east edge of what the King of Ghastain considered his own lands, but nobody’d know he’d sold her because Digger didn’t keep them long. There’d be no taxes on a girl who just disappeared. “There’s no taxes owing on girls who just run off, and that’s what I’ll say she did, run off.” Gralf considered himself clever, and he bragged drunkenly to Grandma about his plan to sell Needly and fool the tax-­hogs.
    â€œWho’s going to fetch the water then?” Grandma asked the air in her casual murmur, speaking the garbled, half-­swallowed tongue Hench Valley ­people spoke rather than the speech she had taught Needly to use when they were alone. “Needly goes, I’m gettin’ too old to do much. Alla’ yer boys but Slap and Grudge’re gone. Y’think they’ll decide to help? Y’think Trudis gonna stir ’rself allofa sudden? Wonder who’ll feed the stock and hoe the garden?”
    The mutter was mere misdirection. Grandma had spurred the first and second of Gralf’s sons into departure with stories of cities and women and drink. Slap and Grudge would follow very soon. As for Grandma herself, she had no intention of being anywhere in Hench Valley once Needly was out of it, and the minute Gralf started talking about Digger, she knew it was time for Needly to go. If some purpose was to have been served by Needly’s being here, in this place, that purpose had had plenty of time to declare itself. Grandma said this quite frequently and loudly! She was letting THEM, the Planners, know. Whoever THEY were.
    Yes, Grandma decided. The purpose had either been met or canceled, and Grandma intended to be gone in the dark hours, taking the child with her. Dull-­witted as he was, Gralf half suspected that’s what would happen. Grandma had gone away before, she’d likely do it again. He could kill the old lady, of course, but that wouldn’t get the water brought either. Besides, some said she was a witch, and killing old witch ladies was jitchus, real jitchus.
    When he considered selling Needly, Gralf hadn’t thought about who’d do the work. Trudis didn’t turn her hand to anything. Couldn’t cook worth spit. Couldn’t fetch water without spilling most of it. Couldn’t fork out hay without catching a pitchfork tine into the hide of the cow or milk goat she was supposed to be feeding! Hellfires, he had to put his own water in the kettle on the back of the stove at night to be sure he had tea water hot in the morning! Had to do it his-­own-­self ! Well, he made damn sure there was only enough water for him. Trudis wants hot water, she c’n make her own fire, fill her own kettle! Far’s he c’d figure there was only one thing Trudis did do fairly