The Four

Kalicka

A tall, broad, manly looking girl.

It wasn’t the tears really that clued Starling in to the child’s s*x, it was the great hulking sobs that pressed the girl’s tunic tight against her breasts… Starling stared at this child she had known for 8 years and felt as though she was ten kinds of stupid for not seeing it before.

Slowly she approached the girl trying not to spook her. She need not have bothered, Kalick was so oblivious to her surroundings that at this point a tree falling next to her wouldn’t have stopped the flow of grief that was pouring forth.

Things suddenly made sense to Starling as she settled back onto the log, the sobbing girl in her lap. How Kalick had hounded her every day, her swaggering around acting like a boy and tossing insults at the one woman in town that gave her an idea of how she would look as a woman grown.

Sighing she rocked the child back and forth, knowing the grief the girl felt but not knowing how to give her release. She murmured to her and ran a soothing hand down her back as the girl cried her heart out, until finally subsiding into hiccups.

At first Kalick tried to wriggle out of her arms when she was done crying, but Starling was having none of that and gave the girl a smart tap on her bottom.

“Enough Kalick, I know your secret now and you are going to tell me the rest.”

The girl’s eyes and mouth formed their familiar stubborn expression she usually wore and her hand rubbed at her bottom a bit. Starling could see the battle she was waging with herself crossing through her eyes and waited.

Eventually the girl seemed to make up her mind and straightened her shoulders.

“Fine,” she said. “I will tell you everything, but I would like to sit down on my own… Please.” Starling could tell that the please hurt her to say and she appreciated the effort. With a nod she let the girl up and gave her time to compose herself.

Kalick sat in thought for a few minutes, never looking at Starling. Finally, she began. “My name is Kalicka, not Kalick.” The words came out slow and stilted.“I started going by Kalick so that I would seem more like a boy, since I looked like one. People in the village, they talked about me behind my back but their children loved throwing their parent’s words in my face. I was called ‘Horse’, they said that I looked like one and was as strong as one and that no man would ever find me attractive.” A hiccup interrupted this speech and Starling waited patiently for her to go on.

“I thought that if I dressed like a boy and acted like one that the name calling would stop.” She snorted at herself, “I guess it worked a little too well.” She wiped at her eyes as Starling waited and listened.

Kalicka sighed, “The boys in the village stopped making fun of me when I could beat them all up. They even started hanging out with me, treating me like one of the guys. Like I had earned some sort of place with them. I learned eventually that it wasn’t really what I wanted, but by then it was too late, my place among them was solid. Other girls were growing pretty, developing into young women, and I was too, just not in the same way. My breasts are small compared to the rest of me, and it was easier to hide them and keep acting like a boy.” This speech seemed to take a lot out of her and she paused.