Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
You Pay:	$0.69				$0.59

eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Antonia barely remembers the Mutiny when the Paedash were freed. Now, no one will speak of it and her mother is insane. Now, she is old enough to ask questions.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Asimov's, 1987
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2005

8 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [232 KB], eReader (PDB) [30 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [17 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [17 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [77 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [87 KB], hiebook (KML) [103 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [45 KB], iSilo (PDB) [14 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [18 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [46 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [27 KB]
Words: 5412
Reading time: 15-21 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Antonia did not like the rain.

On days like this, when the summer waters came down gently, fully, inexorably, she longed for winters with their actinic sunlight.

But in the winter the Paedash migrated south near the equator and the plains were covered only by a gray, stubborn tundra. She liked that less than the rain.

So she stood on the chair to see out the dirty window towards the rose garden. The gray fence leaned in and out, crooked as a drunkard's walk, the wet wood as paintless as rock, enclosing the garden's overgrown jumble of thorns and flowers. She could see the old fountain, choked with brambles and half- filled with matted soil washed down by the rain.

Beyond the garden were the Paedash, the real reason she chose this window. If she could not walk between their boles and under their spherical leaves, she could at least watch them from a distance, swaying together as elephants in dance. Antonia had been a literate child and had seen pictures of earth elephants since she was very young. She had found them in a book, very old and broken with mold and dry rot, in the dim, dusty room her mother referred to as "the library". The library had belonged to Antonia's father, Andrei, and her mother never entered the room. Andrei and Josef, Antonia's brother, were killed in the Mutiny. The library was Antonia's favorite place.

That the Paedash were plants and only resembled elephants in bulk and slight motion did not bother her. Such details were not important.