The Starving Little Girl Who Saved Her Tribe novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Papers

Nobody moved.

The deputy's hand had gone to his holster and stopped there.

Kesh stood in the cellar light with her daughter on her hip and her chin up.

She looked at him the way a mother looks at a bear.

"Ma'am," the deputy said, carefully. "Ma'am, I need you to keep your hands where I can see them."

Kesh didn't understand him.

She did understand the hand on the gun.

She set Ilu down very slowly, put herself in front of her, and spread her empty hands.

She said something in her own tongue, quiet and level.

"She says please don't hurt her," Ilu said, from behind her mother's legs, in a small clear voice. "She says, I'm hers. She's mine. Mama."

The word "Mama" went through the cellar like a bell.

The county woman put her clipboard against her chest.

"That's her mother," she said.

"Ma'am?"

"Look at them." Her voice was unsteady. "Look at the way the child is standing."

Everyone looked.

Ilu had both hands wound in the fur at her mother's hip.

She had her face against the cloak.

She was breathing as she had not breathed all day, in long shaky gulps, with her eyes shut.

It was the plainest sight in the world.

The deputy's hand slid off the holster.

"Okay," he said, in a voice that was trying to sound normal.

"I'm going to need someone to explain to me what I'm looking at."

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