Here are the second two of six installments of the novel Mud.

Merchants never came to the common; the diversions of that place were beneath their station, but their soldiers, herdsmen, clerks, and servants flocked there every evening to take their crude and colorful pleasures. A grown Chamarana would be beaten if found there, except after midnight when they went to clean the grounds, but Chamarana children hung from the trees and hid in the bushes to watch the excitement.

Mostly, I watched the women.

I could always look at Chamarana women, working, always working, in their thin, torn clothing, washing themselves naked in the Renal, or relieving themselves in the bushes. There was no part of a woman’s body that was not familiar to me.

This was different. These women were soft and rounded. Their breasts were not flat. They were clean, powdered, and perfumed. They were beautiful; more important, they knew they were beautiful, and showed that knowledge in every graceful movement. They walked across the common, swaying their hips with a half-smile that said, “I know you are looking. Go ahead. Enjoy.” It was a pleasure to watch them walk. It was a burning torch in the heart to watch from concealment as they shed their clothing and opened their legs to their lovers.

As a child, I could look. If one of the men caught me they would kick me and laugh and let me run away. But in a year or so, when I was just a little older, they would beat me unconscious for daring to look at a woman who was not a Chamarana. So I looked, and looked, and then looked again.

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When I was surfeit with watching the women, I would watch the warriors at play. It was practice, of course, with blunted weapons. Often enough it left them bruised and bloodied, but they enjoyed themseves so hugely, that it looked like play to me. And why not? They were powerful men, with bulging thighs and masses of muscle in their arms and shoulders. Their bodies spoke of plenty of exercise, plenty of food, and plenty of rest. Our lean, slat-like Chamarana bodies spoke of little food, unending work, and rest that rarely came.

If I had a body like that, I thought, I could have women like that. But it wasn’t true, because I was Chamarana.

If I weren’t Chamarana . . . but that was a dream that couldn’t even be dreamed.

3

In the summer of my twelfth year I quit going to the common. I had been beaten twice in one month, and the second beating had left me unable to move for three days. Clearly, I had grown too old to be tolerated there.

Never again to look upon a beautiful woman – it was too much to bear.

The world is wide, and only Renth has Chamarana. I had heard this from the mouths of foreign sailors in the common, when I was young enough to listen from hiding. If I were a sailor, I could sail away. If I were a warrior, I could ride away. But I was Chamarana, and all I could do was carry away the waste too foul for a man to touch, grow food for others to eat, become leaner every year, and die.