Free The Unfinished Song: Taboo by Tara Maya

have time, I will have to comb it again.”
    She washed her own hands, tidied up, then she took out legwals of fine quality, neatly folded in the depths of one of her travel packs. She dusted them out in front of him, and he saw the leather strips had been cut for a man, though they’d still be somewhat short on Rthan.
    “These belonged to my husband,” she said. “Before he was killed.”
    “You still carry your dead husband’s clothing? How recently did he die?”
    She faced him with crossed arms and pursed lips. “ You have no good choices. We’re both clear this isn’t some dreamy love match spun from moonlight and faery song.  You hate my people, you hate me, I know. You’d slit my throat if you could, but you know if you do, your own life won’t be worth twice-chewed goat cud. And you know damn well you didn’t get into this fix because you’re such an innocent puppy either.
    “So.” She took a deep breath. “How do you want to do this? If you give me your word that you won’t try to hurt me—or my daughters—I’ll untie you, let you dress yourself with what little dignity you have left, let you sleep on a mat and feed yourself, treat you like a human being. A slave, maybe, but not an animal. If you won’t give me your pledge , you can stay tied to a pole outside, naked, like a goat on a feast day. Is that what you want? To be an animal, tethered on public display?”
    Rage, warm and familiar ever since the day he’d found the bodies of his wife and children, suffused him. He told her in two words what she could do with herself. And added, “It doesn’t matter whether I escape or not. Do you really think this is over? Do you really think my people won’t unleash another typhoon of smack-your-face after all the back-stabbing muck we’ve put up with from you people?”
    He clamped his mouth shut, before, in his anger, he revealed too much. Go on , he willed her. Dare me again. Threaten me. Try me. I can take it and give it back twice as hard .
    Anger as scarlet as his own flooded her cheeks and fired her eyes. He knew she was about to snap out some furious insult or command, and welcomed it. Anything that helped him remember she was the enemy.
    Before she could say whatever she intended, a voice called from outside the hut, “Mama?”
    An adolescent girl, carrying a squirrel, of all things, shoved aside the reed hanging that served the hut as a door. “First of all, I’m still not talking to you,” the girl began, speaking so fast, that, between her odd prattle and Yellow Bear accent, Rthan wasn’t sure he caught but half her words, “So don’t think I’ve forgiven you. But I need some of that leaf paste you made for that boy who burned his knee, because this squirrel got trapped in the lodge and the girls were chasing it and the poor thing was scarred and then the boys heard the girls screaming, so they came into our lodge, and when they saw the squirrel, they chased it too, and it ran through a fire pit and I think the poor thing might have been burned, see?”
    She thrust out the squirrel into her mother’s face.
    “Gwenika, this is not a good time…” Brena said, repositioning herself to block Rthan from Gwenika’s line of sight.
    Gwenika noticed Rthan in recesses of the dimly lit hut for the first time. She tried to peek around her mother. “Oh! Is that your slave?”
    “No! Yes.” Brena frowned. “Gwenika, you must leave. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’ll be teaching.”
    “But I need the burn paste—”
    “ Now , Gwenika.”
    “Fine. I don’t care. I’m not talking to you anyway.” The girl rushed out of the hut.
    Brena covered her face with her hands. When she removed them, terror remained frozen into her expression, aging her with lines he hadn’t noticed before. She threw this bleakness back on Rthan.
    “You win,” she said flatly. “You’re right. I can’t tame you. I can’t keep you. I know your kind, because my husband was one. All you care about is