After the Rain | Page 7

place is like the war never happened?"
"I'm the wizard, that's why," he said. "I can make magic."
His robots tied up her extra clothes in waterproof grip sheets for her,
then helped her into a warm slicker with a hood. "Tell your mother that
you met someone from the city who fed you and gave you a change of
clothes," he said, holding open the door. He'd explained to her where to
go from there to get out to the old shopping street and from there she
could manage on her own, especially since he'd given her one of his
little pea-lights to carry with her.
"You're not from the city," she said.
"You got me," he said. "So tell her you met a wizard."
She thought about what her mother would say to that, especially when
that was the answer to the question Where have you been? "I'll tell her I
met someone from the city," she said.
"You're a clever girl," he said.
#

One week after her father died, Valentine stopped carrying water.
"There's not enough food," her mother said, over a breakfast of nothing
but dried fruit -- the cereal was gone. "If you -- " she swallowed and
looked out the window. "If you dig in the trenches, we'll get 150 grams
of bread a day."
Valentine looked at Trover. He hadn't had a tantrum in days. He didn't
cry or even speak much anymore.
"I'll dig."
She dug.
#
Six months after her father died, Valentine stood in the queue for her
bread. It was now the full heat of summer and the clothes the wizard
had given her had fallen to bits the way all printer clothes did. She was
wearing her father's old trousers, cut off just below the knee, and one of
his shirts, with the sleeves and collar cut off. All to let a little of the
lazy air in and to let a little of the sluggish sweat out. She was dirty and
tired, the way she always was at day's end.
She was also so hungry.
She and her mother didn't talk much anymore, but they didn't have to.
Her mother was sometimes away on long missions, and increasingly
longer. She was harrying the enemy with the guerilla fighters, and
living on pine-cone soup and squirrels from the woods.
Trover stayed over at the creche some nights. A lot of the little ones did.
Who had the strength to carry a little boy up the stairs at the end of a
day's digging, at the end of three days' hard fighting in the woods?
The bread-rations were handed out in the spot where the cine once
stood. She couldn't really remember what it had been like, though she
remembered Reeta, the things Reeta had said that had made her leave

the shelter, which had probably saved her life. Poor Reeta. Little bitch.
She was so hungry, and the line moved slowly. She had her chit from
the boy from the city who oversaw the ditch digging in her part of the
ditches. He was only a little older than her but he couldn't dig because
his hands had been mutilated when a bomb went off near him. He kept
them shoved in his pockets, but she'd seen them and they looked like
the knucklebreakers had given them a good seeing-to. Every finger
pointed a different direction, except for the ones that were missing
altogether. There was also something wrong with him that made him
sometimes stop talking in the middle of a sentence and sit down for a
moment with his head tilted back.
The chit, though -- the boy always gave her her chit, and the chit could
be redeemed for bread. If she left Trover in the creche they would feed
him. If Mata didn't come home from the fighting again tonight, the
bread would be hers, and the cabbage, too.
#
Eight months after her father died, her mother stayed away in the
fighting for three weeks, and Valentine decided that she was dead and
started sleeping in her mother's bed. Valentine cried a little at first, but
she got used to it. She started to negotiate with one of the women who
lived on the floor below to sell her narrow little bed for 800 grams of
bread, 40 grams of butter and -- though she didn't really believe in it --
100 grams of ground beef.
She never found out if the woman downstairs had any ground beef --
where would you get ground beef, anyway? Even the cats and dogs and
rats were all gone! For Valentine's mother came home after three weeks
and it turned out that she'd been in hospital all that time, having her
broken bones mended, something they could