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One of the older kids tried to scare me by telling me they would break into the town and eat us if they could, crazed by their hunger, and that their ancestors used to try, and that's why the town still has a wall with big burly guards on it.
I told my mother, and she said the traders only say mean things because they are all sick and hungry and have only poisoned meat to eat, so they couldn't get fat if they wanted to. She said the eating us part was probably true.
They usually arrived every month or so, a handful of cloth-wrapped mummies, even their faces covered, maybe just to protect them from the dust; and it was rumored: they sometimes had horrible disfiguring diseases, which were also due to living in the wasteland, and eating the nasty animals and plants that lived out there. I squinted at them long and hard, and it was hard to tell; they kept their diseases to themselves if they had them. It was always the same small group, a short, thin woman accompanied by four tall thin women. They usually had some very large and strange looking animals on leads. The animals were fascinating but stank badly, even at a distance. They always bellowed and complained loudly when they got up off the ground, just like the wealthiest women of the town. It was also rumored the tall ones were actually men, -but I and most people scoffed; no one could ever gather that many men in one place.
When they came to trade, they were kept outside the front gate, the tall thin ones stood back at the edge of the dirt yard beyond the gate, as if ready to bolt into the scrub. The short woman would come to the gate; briefly say what they were carrying, and then sit down in the dirt to wait; no cushion; not even a mat between her bony bottom and the dry dirt. Presently, rich women of the town would come waddling out in twos and fews, slip sideways through the gate master's door, and their servants would follow carrying short broad stools; then stand behind with parasols, while their mistresses' would squat down beside the trader to pore over her samples. The rich women never ventured more than twenty feet from the gate. Every so often, the outsider would make a gesture to the tall ones and one or two of them would come forth with a bag or a package from the animal's packs, cross the dirt clearing, and give it to the women. The tall ones held their bodies away from the rich women, their large hands extended at the end of long arms, as if they feared touching the townswomen or being grabbed by them. Obviously they were afraid of something, and looked up nervously at us kids sitting atop the wall, and at the guards.
The guards of our town were more muscular than fat, tending to carry their weight about their hips mostly. They surveyed what was going on from the top of the gate arch with mild interest. They never looked very scary to me, but then I was on the top of the wall too, not down below.
The traders brought various things; frequently they sold the town ladies raw lumps of gold, copper, and bundles of rare herbs.