Gathering Blue. Lois Lowry

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СКАЧАТЬ is clear that exceptions can be made.”

      “Exceptions can be made,” one of the guardians repeated, reading the words, his fingers moving on the page.

      “So we may set aside the assertion that it is the way,” Jamison announced with certainty. “It need not always be the way.”

       He is my defender. Perhaps he will find a way to let me live!

      “Do you wish to speak?” the defender asked Kira.

      Touching her scrap of cloth, she shook her head no.

      He went on, consulting his notes. “She was imperfect. And fatherless as well. She should not have been kept.” The second repetition hurt, because it was true. Kira’s leg hurt too. She was not accustomed to standing so still for so long. She tried to shift her weight to ease the pressure on her flawed side.

      “These accusations are true.” Jamison repeated the obvious, in his steady voice. “The girl Kira was imperfect at birth. She had a visible and incurable defect.”

      The guardians were staring at her. So was Vandara, with contempt. Kira was accustomed to stares. She had been taunted throughout her childhood. With her mother as teacher and guide, she had learned to hold her head high. She did so now, looking her judges in the eyes.

      “And fatherless as well,” Jamison continued.

      In her memory, Kira could hear her mother’s voice explaining it to her. She was small then, and wondering why she had never had a father. “He did not return from the great hunt. It was before you were born,” her mother said gently. “He was taken by beasts.”

      She heard Jamison repeat the words of her thoughts as if they had been audible. “Before her birth, her father was taken by beasts,” Jamison explained.

      The chief guardian looked up from his papers. Turning to the others at the table, he interrupted Jamison. “Her father was Christopher. He was a fine hunter, one of the best. Some of you probably remember him.”

      Several of the men nodded. Her defender nodded as well. “I was with the hunting party that day,” he said. “I saw him taken.”

      You saw my father taken? Kira had never heard the details of the tragedy. She knew only what her mother had told her. But this man had known her father. This man had been there!

      Was he afraid? Was my father afraid? It was a strange, unbidden question, and she did not ask it aloud. But Kira was so afraid herself. She could feel Vandara’s hatred as a presence by her side. She felt as if she were being taken by beasts; as if she were about to die. She wondered what the moment had been like for her father.

      “The third amendment applies here, as well,” Jamison announced. “To the accusation ‘She should not have been kept,’ I reply that according to the third amendment, exceptions may be made.”

      The chief guardian nodded. “Her father was a fine hunter,” he said again. The others at the table, taking their lead from him, murmured in agreement.

      “Do you wish to speak?” they asked her. Again she shook her head. Again she felt, for the moment, spared.

      “‘But she has not contributed,’” Jamison read next. “‘She cannot dig or plant or weed, or even tend the domestic beasts the way other girls her age do. She drags that dead leg around like a useless burden. She is slow,’” he continued, and then Kira saw a hint of a smile as he concluded, “‘and she eats a lot.’”

      The man stood silent for a moment. Then he said, “As defender, I am going to concede some of these points. It is clear that she cannot dig or plant or weed or tend domestic beasts. I believe, however, that she has found a way to contribute. Am I correct, Kira, that you work at the weaving shed?”

      Kira nodded, surprised. How did he know? Men paid no attention to the work of women.

      “Yes,” she said, her voice soft from nervousness. “I help there. Not with the actual weaving. But I clean up the scraps and help prepare the looms. It is work I can do with my hands and arms. And I am strong.”

      She wondered if she should mention her skill with the threads, her hope that perhaps she could use it as a way of making a living. But she couldn’t think of a way to say it without sounding vain, so she kept still.

      “Kira,” he said, looking toward her, “demonstrate your flaw for the Council of Guardians. Let us see you walk. Go to the door and back.”

      It was cruel of him, she thought. They all knew about her twisted leg. Why did she have to do this in front of them, to submit to their humiliating stares? For a moment she was tempted to refuse, or at least to argue. But the stakes were too high. This was not a tykes’ game, where arguing and fighting were expected. This was what would determine her future, or whether she had a future. Kira sighed and turned. She leaned on her stick and walked slowly to the door. Biting her lip, she dragged her aching leg step by step, and felt Vandara’s contemptuous eyes on her back.

      At the door Kira turned and came slowly back to her place. Pain started in her foot and seared through her twisted leg. She longed to sit.

      “She does drag her leg, and she is slow,” Jamison pointed out needlessly. “I concede those points.

      “Yet her work at the weaving shed is competent. She goes each day for regular hours, and she is never late. The women there value her help.

      “Does she eat a lot?” he asked, and chuckled. “I think not. Look how thin she is. Her weight refutes that accusation.

      “But I suspect she is hungry now,” he said. “I am. I suggest we take a break for a meal.”

      The chief guardian stood. “Do you wish to speak?” he asked Kira for the third time. For the third time she shook her head no. She felt terribly tired.

      “You may sit,” he directed Kira and Vandara. “Food will be brought.”

      Gratefully Kira lowered herself onto the nearby bench. She rubbed her throbbing leg with one hand. Across the aisle, she saw Vandara bow—I forgot again! I should have bowed!—and then sit, stony-faced.

      The chief guardian glanced down at his own stack of papers. “There are five more charges,” he said. “We will deal with them and make a decision after the meal.”

      Food appeared, brought by the door guard. A plate was handed to Kira. She saw and smelled roasted chicken and warm, crusty bread scattered with seeds. She had not eaten anything but raw vegetables in several days, and had not tasted chicken in many months. But she could still hear Vandara’s voice, shrill with vindictive accusation: “She eats a lot.”

      Fearful of the consequences if she showed her ravenous hunger, Kira willed herself to nibble at the tempting meal. Then she set the half-empty plate aside and sipped water from the cup they had brought. Tired, hungry still, and frightened, she stroked the scrap of cloth in her pocket, and waited for the next round of accusations.

      * * *

      The twelve guardians went elsewhere, leaving through a side door, probably to a private eating place. After a while guards came to take her food tray away and announced a rest period. The trial would resume when the bell rang twice, they told her. Vandara rose and left СКАЧАТЬ