OCR Text |
Show WORTHING FARMA field. The plants crunched loudly when he stepped on them. Where he had walked the.dust rose three feet into the air in a thick cloud that didn't dissipate for half an hour-just slowly settled on the windless air. When he got the buckets home there was a slime of dust floating on the top. He pulled it off with a spoon and poured the water into a large pot. Then he set it on the fire to boil. "Can I drink some?" Worin asked. The four-year-old had wet his pants, and dust clung thickly where it had dried. "I'm thirsty." Elijah didn't answer, just began to cut up chunks of rabbit into the pot. "I'm really thirsty." The water isn't clean, Elijah thought. Go away until it's boiled. But he said nothing, and Worin heard nothing and went away outside to play. Elijah sighed. The sigh was echoed from a few steps away at the other end of the room. He looked up into Alana's eyes. She was old. The fever had wrinkled her and greyed some of her hair, and she always looked pale and faded now. Her hair was snarled and her eyes waited heavy lidded for some kind of expression to come. None came. She just looked at Elijah with heavy eyes. He looked back, refusing to break the trance. At last Alana looked away, defeated, and Elijah was free to answer her. "Never while I'm alive," he said. She nodded, breathed heavily again, and sat on a stool to cut up the roots she had gathered the day before. Her back was bent. Elijah saw in his mind the woman she had been only six months before, |