A Plague of Shadows Read Online Free PDF

Abagail was aware of how much she acted like a boy and not a woman, but Rorick made some part of her yearn to be a woman in the ways women were in stories.
    But she doubted she’d ever be one of those women, and she doubted Rorick would ever want a woman who could do just as many manly chores as he could.
    “Are you just going to stand there, or are we going to take advantage of the day?” Rorick asked, turning his sparkling blue eyes on Abagail. Rorick was older than her by a year, and he was already starting to grow some of the beard that those of age could grow. It was a little premature, typically men didn’t grow their beards until they were twenty, but Rorick was going to be twenty in a few moons.
    “What did you have planned?” Abagail asked, letting the door thump shut behind her as if she hadn’t been standing there all along watching him.
    “Anything that needs doing around here?” Rorick asked.
    “Just the daily stuff,” Abagail said with a shrug.
    Rorick stood and spit the grass out of his mouth. “Well, let’s get that out of the way.”
    With two of them the daily chores went fast, and before the sun was even halfway to its zenith they were headed for the woods.
    No sooner had they entered the woods did they hear a familiar hissing.
    “Mama Coon,” Rorick said, as if scolding the animal. The fat coon stepped out from behind a tree and lumbered toward them. Rorick produced a piece of dried meat for the wild animal who took it greedily in her misshaped fingers and ate it.
    They had started calling the creature Mama Coon when they had found her two springs ago. She was pregnant, and had been caught in a trap, Dolan had said. The only way he knew that was because she was missing several toes and her teeth were broken where she’d chewed at the trap. Knowing she’d never make it on her own, they had started feeding her so she wouldn’t die. Though she was never let in either Rorick’s family’s home or Abagail’s house, she was still the closest thing to a pet they had.
    “Do you ever wonder why she still hangs around?” Abagail asked, picking up the pace beside Rorick again.
    “She knows a good thing probably,” Rorick shrugged his broad shoulders.
    The day was warm and the breeze was steady, tossing her hair around and cooling Abagail despite the heat of the sun filtering through the canopy above. Mama Coon followed them further into the woods, an ever present trail of dried meat being tossed behind them to keep her fed.
    In the woods with Rorick it was almost possible for Abagail to forget about the shadows she’d seen lurking in the depths just the day before.
    She liked Rorick’s company. When she was with him, no matter how strange their adventures seemed to be, Abagail was able to forget everything about her family that was strange. Rorick knew about Leona and Skuld, and either he thought it was just Leo still growing up, or he didn’t believe her powers were darkling. Rorick also got along with Dolan fine, and they would have long discussions about the Gods and the Light Guard that they probably shouldn’t be having. It seemed out of all of them, Abagail was the only one concerned with their heretical jabber.
    “Why so quiet today?” Rorick nudged her with a shoulder and smiled at her when she looked up to him. “I mean, you’re normally quiet, but there’s an edge to your silence today.”
    “I didn’t know silences could be edgy,” Abagail said, a smile ghosting across her face.
    “Certainly, there’s happy silences, content silences, and edgy silences. You, my friend, act as though a darkling might jump out at us any moment,” Rorick said.
    “That’s a strange thing to bring up,” Abagail noted after a few moments of silence that was broken only by their feet clomping through underbrush.
    “Do you think there’s darkling around here?” Rorick asked.
    The short hairs on the back of Abagail’s neck stood on end. This was turning out to be one of her least