Cobweb Empire Read Online Free PDF Page A

remains of the animal—feeling the two connect,
touch, blend, for one brief instant only, as a circuit of energy
was completed, and she was its third point, a conduit.
    The pig shuddered, in infinite relief, and
then its poor body expired, falling to the floor in a lump of
permanent silence.
    Percy stood over it, breathing fast as
though she had just run some distance. And then she turned around,
and went outside, into the growing daylight.
     
    T hey returned to
the Ayren house, with Jenna dancing every step and exclaiming in
crazed joy, “Oh, it’s free! Oh, thanks be to Dear God in Heaven!
Oh, Percy, you did it, I knew you would, I just knew it!”
    Percy walked in silence, looking straight
ahead, her expression grave. As they passed neighbor houses, she
noted with her peripheral vision how people stared at her, oh, how
they stared! From her to the happy and hollering girl they looked.
And in moments, many approached to ask Jenna what had happened.
    “The pig is dead! It’s finally dead! Oh,
it’s at peace at last! Percy helped the pig pass on! She did it!
Just like she helped her Gran, she helped—”
    “ Hush! That’s enough, quiet already!”
Percy hissed, seeing how Jenna was telling the whole neighborhood
things that could be taken all kinds of bad ways, dangerous
ways.
    “What has Percy Ayren done?” asked old
Martha Poiron, in a quavering but very loud voice, standing at her
door in her usual dark brown dress and grease-splattered apron, as
they passed the Poiron house. “What have you done, Percy? What in
Lord’s name is going on? Will someone tell me what is going
on?”
    Percy reluctantly came to a stop. She could
not just walk by old kind Martha without a response, without at
least meeting her rheumy old eyes. She stood, gathering herself for
speech, while her temples still carried an echo of grand bells.
    But Jenna took Percy’s hand and replied
first, smiling with pride. “Percy has helped the pig die! The one
that couldn’t die! It’s at peace now!”
    “What? You mean that sorry thing that Nick
Doneil had trouble with and beat to a pulp?” The speaker was Jack
Rosten, a large muscular man with a scraggly wheat-colored beard,
on his way to the workshop.
    Jenna turned to see him there, and
immediately her smile fled and she herself shrank away. Jack Rosten
and her Pa had a horrid deal between them that Rosten’s second son
Jules was going to marry her in exchange for some livestock, as
soon as spring came. Jack Rosten was hard and mean, and his sons
were even worse.
    “Let’s go, Jenna,” said Percy in reply. She
then grabbed Jenna’s arm and pulled her after her, saying,
“Morning, Mistress Martha, it’s nothing,
really. . . .”
    “Hold it, girl!” Jack Rosten called behind
her. “That’s not nothing! Hold up, I say! Did I hear that right,
you did something to make the pig die? ”
    “Forget the pig! Didn’t you hear? Last
night, she killed her own grandmother!” This time the speaker was
Rosaide Vellerin, another neighbor, and the biggest gossip in
Oarclaven.
    Just their rotten luck, thought Percy.
Rosaide, standing with her arms folded in satisfaction, in her own
front yard next to Martha’s small place, also happened to have a
longtime feud with Percy’s mother. And she really took pleasure in
putting down the Ayrens whenever possible—which was, to be honest,
not that common, since the impoverished family had a reputation for
decency.
    Percy walked rapidly, dragging Jenna behind
her, hearing Rosaide yell in her wake. “Have you no shame,
Persephone Ayren?”
    When they made it to the Ayren house, there
was Alann Ayren, together with Father Dibue and Niobea, talking
quietly on the porch, and the soldiers moving around in the
backyard among the smell of wood smoke and roasting sausage.
    “There she is!” said Niobea. Her face was
hard and pale in the light of morning, and she looked exhausted and
sleepless.
    “Where have you been, Persephone, child?”
Alann said,