A Turn of Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

life.”
    “And what might that be today?” their father inquired, stepping through the kitchen door with a broad grin. He’d scrubbed until his already ruddy cheeks shone like little apples, his sister having told him very clearly how a man mustn’t bring the soil and dust of his work into his home. As Radd Nalynn was the miller, and usually coated from head to toe either in chaff and flour, or powdered rock from dressing his stones, coming home clean took special effort. That he did it with such goodwill said everything necessary about his love for his sister.
    His daughters kissed him lightly in greeting, one on each damp, overscrubbed cheek. Jenn showed him the tray. “What I want is to put supper on the table.”
    Their father looked at the bowls, then at the door to the parlor. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “It’s glorious outside. Birds singing. Sun shining. We could eat on a blanket by the river.”
    Peggs handed him the loaf and butter, then collected the pottery cups and ewer of water. “No, we couldn’t.”
    “I suppose not.” Like a man girding himself for battle, Radd Nalynn led the way into his own home.
    A more unlikely battlefield couldn’t be imagined. The Nalynn parlor was a welcoming place: bright, warm, and comfortable. This time of year, the potbellied heat stove was filled with cut flowers and the heavy throws were neatly folded in a chest against any damp, ready for winter’s comfort, while pretty quilts covered the bed in the corner. On the floor, baskets of bright rags waited to be made into rugs and bundles of straw waited to become baskets.
    And, though formidable in her way, Sybb Mahavar was hardly a foe. She was the female version of her younger brother, though diligent application of powder forestalled any unseemly apple spots on her cheeks. The two had the same thick dark hair, salted white at the temples, and the same strong lines at jaw and chin. Both had soft creases at the corners of eye and mouth that suggested old grief until they smiled, which was more often than not.
    Radd wasn’t a heavy man, but decades in the mill had laid muscle through his chest and arms until his body resembled a smallish barrel. Sybb was frail beneath her layers of linen and wool, her wrists and neck skin over bone. Neither was tall. Peggs was a head taller and Jenn, since last year, could look her aunt in the eye.
    Something she carefully avoided doing as she carried the tray to the family table.
    To encounter an unexpected problem.
    For the first time ever, the long wooden table that filled the other half of the room was covered by a cloth; one of the sheets from the chest, by the look. Worse, there were flowers in what, this morning, had been a large jar of pickles in the kitchen.
    As for the flowers . . .
    Radd stopped in his tracks, loaf and butter pot forgotten in his hands. “We don’t pick her roses,” he said in a strangled voice. “You know that, Sybbie.”
    “Which is why I was surprised to see them here,” his sister replied calmly.
    Everyone turned to Peggs, who shook her head. “I wouldn’t touch them.”
    The roses nodded from the jar, each dewy fresh. Loose petals patterned the white cloth beneath, forming a perfect spiral outward.
    “I wasn’t home,” Jenn reminded them. The display was Wisp’s work; she was sure of it. Another apology.
    But . . . he didn’t come to the village.
    Not that she’d noticed before.
    If it was Wisp . . . a breeze was one thing. How had he managed the pickle jar?
    And, a new worry, where were the pickles?
    “I’ll look after this.” Peggs put down her tray to take hold of the jar, not without a meaningful glance at Jenn, and carried it to the window right of the front door. It fit, just, on the deep sill.
    “Supper smells marvelous, dear. Radd?” Aunt Sybb rose gracefully from her place on what she called their settee—a wide bench against one wall, layered with blankets and backed with cushions—and stood by her chair at