Free Yuen-Mong's Revenge by Gian Bordin Page A

versatile timoru
mash and it was her usual source for sweetberries. Its shape was that of
a shallow irregular flat bowl that collected the rain water where it seeped
into rock caverns that supplied the constant dripping in the shower. Since
there was a short downpour most days an hour or so before dawn, she
could not remember ever having run out of water.
          They gathered food and fuel; they caught fish off the boulders near
their rock using hook lines, ate some of them fresh, cooked others, and
salted and dried the rest. Since there were few flying insects, fish could
just be dried in the sun on top of the sun-warmed rock.
          She showed him where she made salt along the rocky shore near the
cave by filling a large shallow indentation on a huge boulder with sea
water once a week and letting it evaporate. Once a crust an eighth of an
inch thick had formed, she could scrape off the salt crystals.
          Where mature broadleaf trees had been toppled by the storm, the first
leafless shoots were pushing from the earth ‘like asparagus spears’, as
her mother had told her. At that stage they were still easy to cut and by
far her favorite vegetable. After boiling, the skin could be peeled off and
the soft inside had a slightly sweet, but tart taste. For a while, they would
have plenty of them.
          Atun was eager to make himself a bow and arrows, and was disappointed when she told him that suitable flexible wood branches could
only be found in the mountains, a day’s walk farther inland. She
promised to take him there as soon as they could spare two days. In the
meantime, she showed him how to fashion arrows from the thinner top
branches of the thorntree. The density of that wood was such that
scorching the tapered end produced a very hard point that readily
penetrated even the tough skin of the craw.
          "If this is so, why didn’t you kill the one that attacked us twice?"
            "What for?"
            "So that you don’t have to worry anymore about crossing that
estuary."
            "It is no trouble, in fact, it is a challenge to fool him."
            "But if anything goes wrong, he’ll get you."
            "True, that is why I killed his mate, so that I only have to contend with
one.’  
          "You really did kill a craw?"
            "Yes, all my clothing, this pack, and the craw decoy are made of its
wing skin."
            "How did you do it?"
            "They are defenseless when they crash. Anyway, killing the other one
is of little use. Within no time another mating pair will take its place and
then I will have to deal with two again."
     
    * * *
     
    One late afternoon, a few days after their return from the shuttle, she was
washing out several small sponges and strung them up for drying on a
thin strand of a spear grass blade.
          "What are those for?" he asked, touching one.
          "I use them to catch the blood when I menstruate," she answered,
matter-of-fact.
          His hand shot back and he blushed.
          She smiled and said: "You may touch them. They are not poisonous…
That is the bane of being a woman. What do women do on Palo?"
            "Many take injections that prevent menstruation."
            "That cannot be healthy. And those who don’t?" She could see that he
was embarrassed to talk about it, but she wanted to know and did not see
why this should embarrass him.
          "They wear sanitary napkins — thin pads that soak up the discharge."
            "I think inserting a sponge into my vagina is more practical."
            "That exists too. It’s called a tampon."
            "That is probably where my mother got the idea. She showed me
shortly before she was killed." She closed her eyes as a wave of pain
briefly coursed through her.
          "Are you in pain?" he asked alarmed.
          "Not physical pain. Thinking of my mother sometimes brings up that
feeling of