Children of the Storm

else she could do, at this point, except to go on with it. She hadn't the time to run all over the hilltop in search of other shaggy missiles.
        She lifted the first sphere.
        She stepped to the edge of the slope, where he would be able to see her, and she looked for him.
        He was halfway up the slippery grass incline, trying to make it on his feet and not his hands and knees.
        She raised the coconut overhead.
        He sensed her, looked up.
        He threw his hands up to protect himself, lost his balance, and fell backwards, to the bottom of the incline.
        She realized that she had lost the precious advantage of surprise, now, but she did not throw the coconut yet. She wanted to hit him when he was on the hill, so that, with a little luck, he would lose his balance again and fall to the bottom, hurting himself in the process, perhaps even breaking a leg.
        For a moment, they seemed stalemated.
        He stood by the pool, looking up.
        She stood atop the incline, looking down.
        He held the knife.
        She held the coconut.
        Then he started up again.
        He came at a run, jumping from side to side instead of making a direct line for her, covering ground in the manner he had been taught in the army, in the war.
        She waited.
        He was halfway up, his neck strained into corded ropes of muscle, his head thrust out ahead of him, bent in an odd manner to give himself the best balance and the lowest point-of-gravity.
        She threw the coconut.
        He tried to run under it.
        It struck the center of his back and bounced off him, struck hard enough to drive him down onto his stomach, dazed.
        She picked up the second missile.
        She was shaking uncontrollably, as if she had a severe fever, and she could not manage to get rid of the vision of that first direct hit, which remained behind, playing over and over again as if on some internal motion picture screen. She saw the brown ball arching… She saw it come down on his spine, saw it bounce… He crashed forward into the mud, his face driven into the mud so that he must have gotten a mouthful of it… And she could almost feel the excruciating pain which she had caused him. Having done that, having hurt him like that, even if he were less than a human being right now, she felt unspeakably sick and knew, if she survived this ordeal, here was the material for new nightmare aplenty.
        Nevertheless, she was resolved to continue this almost comic battle with coconuts and to take whatever moral punishment was her due as a result of her brutality. She had not started this private war, after all; she was an unwilling combatant.
        He lay still for long seconds.
        She wondered if he were dead or unconscious, but she knew she did not dare leave him there without being sure, for he might be hoping to trick her and then come close behind, when there was no slope for her to fight him on to her advantage.
        At last, he moved.
        He raised up on his hands.
        Shook his head.
        He looked around himself, then up at her.
        She threatened him with the coconut she held.
        He looked around him, on all sides of him, concentrating closely on the grass and mud, as if he couldn't figure out what it was-then he came up with the knife which had fallen from his hand when the coconut had hit him.
        He inspected it.
        It was in fine condition.
        Holding it out before him, not attempting to stand now, he started up the hill again, on his knees, battered by rain and wind but seemingly unaware of everything except Sonya.
        She waited another moment, gauging the distance, until she felt the time was right, then threw the coconut as hard as she could.
        It arched…
        But the wind was very strong, not strong enough to lift away so heavy an object, though forceful enough to deflect it. Because of the wind, the second missile missed him altogether.
        He grinned at her.
        He was only forty feet away now.
        The knife looked longer than a sword.
        She turned and picked up the last coconut.
        He stopped smiling when he saw it, and he concentrated on making better time on the glass hillside.
        He had no way of knowing, she discovered, that this was her last missile. He might think she had an endless supply of these and that she could, with a better aim,