randomplaces | Kelly's Adventure. Chapter 5

Kelly shifted and scratched absently at the bottom of her boot, curling her toes at the ticklish sensation.
The itch didn’t go away and she gritted her teeth. God, isn’t there some way I can just take off my boot and scratch it? That bandage has to be stuck on but good by now.
She scratched again, then stood and stepped on a rock that protruded through the moss, rocking her foot back and forth. “Woo, that feels better.”
Lifting her poncho and tunic, she looked at the gash over her ribs and sighed in relief. It had been swollen and itchy for the last three days, but the night before, driven by desperation, she had squeezed the nasty thing. The resultant burst of puss had been slightly alarming, but the swelling had gone down almost immediately and this morning the wound was nicely scabbed over.
Putting her clothes back in place, she glanced around the little sheltered hollow that Dano and Caudis had left her in and sat with a bored sigh.
“Ouch.” She moved off another rock and then began to idly dig it out of the dirt with a stick, the way she’d done when she was a little kid and she and Mike played archeologists.
Noting a strangely regular shape, she frowned and dug a little faster, then looked at her exhumed treasure wonderingly.
It was a lead weight with a ring on the top, similar to the ones her grade seven physics class had used for experiments.
She turned it over cautiously with the stick, then glanced up at the rootball of the giant tree that had once stood in the hole she now sat in.
A memory from that same class made her snort with laughter.
One of the boys had been swinging the weight around his head on the end of a piece of string, when he lost his grip on it and sent it sailing out the classroom door directly into the path of a passing twelfth grade football player. The football player had picked it up and stuck his head into the room, demanding laughingly to know the identity of the culprit. To a student, except for Kelly and a couple of other girls, the whole class had pointed at the teacher.
Shaking her head, she threaded her stick through the ring on her find and turned it to see if she could read the number on the side, but the symbol might as well have been klingon.
The stick dipped and dumped the weight onto her toes and Kelly gave a yelp.
“Kerry?” Caudis looked over the rim of the hollow. “What was that?”
“I dropped something on my foot.” She picked it up and climbed up to show him. “Is Dano back yet?”
“No, he’s still looking. It must have been a long time ago that he came here, or he wouldn't have to go and look for the right way.” Caudis took the weight and hefted it in his hand, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “That's heavy. What is it?”
“A piece of lead. From back when the cities were here, I guess. It looks a lot like the ones I used in school.”
“From when the cities were here!” Caudis nearly dropped it. “Kerry, are you sure this is safe to touch?”
She nodded. “Yes, lead can kill you if you eat it, but it doesn’t soak stuff up. They use it to line nuclear reactors on Earth, so the radiation can’t get out and poison people.”
“Oh.” He turned it over in his hands. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Do you have a piece of heavy string?”
“Yes.” He pulled a length of slender braided cord out of his bag and handed it to her, looking at her uncertainly.
“Hey, this is my hair.” She turned it over in her hands, frowning.
“Yes.” He blushed. “You threw it away.”
“You told me it looked funny,” she reminded him.
“I’m sorry I did that. You couldn’t look funny, no matter what kind of hair you had,” he said softly.
Kelly pinked at the compliment, dropping her eyes to her hands. “Thank you.”
Caudis reached out and tucked a lock of hair back into her hood with one finger, his expression tender.
Then he tapped the little lead weight. “Show me what you are going to do with it.” He frowned and rephrased the request. “Will you show me what you are going to do with it?”
“T’k,” she said. “Yat’nt'.”
He grinned. “You learn better than me. You sound almost like someone from my village.”
She chuckled. “No, I talk a lot slower. Anyway, this is what I’m going to do.” She tied the ends of the cord together, then poked part of it through the ring on the weight, threaded the rest of the cord through the loop and swung the weight around her head.
“Wow!” Caudis ducked and stepped back. “Watch out!”
Kelly gave him a fierce grin, then turned and brought the lead weight down onto a fallen branch with a bark-scattering crunch.
Putting her foot on the branch to hold it still, she swung her impromptu mace again and again till nothing was left of it but kindling. “That would stop a bear.”
“Here!” Caudis brought his spear up and held it in front of him with both hands, his face twisting into a fearsome scowl. “I want to hurt you! Roar!!”
“Yikes!” She swung again, catching the spear shaft squarely with the side of the weight.