But when the mother sought to walk past the
boy without paying any attention to him, she happened to clear her
throat involuntarily.
The sound was instantly recognized by the boy, who took a step in her
direction and reached out to her with another croaking plea.
Instantly the mother, who was barefoot, stepped back and jerked herself
clear just before the boy would have touched her. With a loathsome
leer, the mother froze just out of reach, totally silent, watching her
own son as he continued to stagger in the same direction he had
initially chosen, until his own footsteps had carried him away from her.
Without a word, the mother turned on her heel and continued on her way
but did not look back either at her bleating son, nor did she notice
Si'Wren watching open-mouthed.
Eventually after they had almost all cleared out, all that could be
heard was the broken, muffled sobbing of the woman whose daughter had
been sacrificed.
Si'Wren watched as a couple of naive young slave-girls walked past the
grieving mother and one of them cursed her for her lack of loyalty to
the House of Rababull.
"Fool!" cried the girl. "What is your one daughter's life, to the loss
of all our water? She has died for the glory of the House of Rababull!
It was only a girl anyway! Why do you cry like that?!!"
The girl and her friends walked on, puffed up with their borrowed sense
of self-importance, all worked-up into a feverish blood-frenzy at the
spectacle of yet another gory victory for the family name.
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