Dust and Water: A Song For The Stained Novella (A MAGICAL SAGA) Read Online Free PDF Page B

straight past me. For a moment they wrestle, Wilf easily throwing Ash to the side. Dom steps up on my other side, a more serious look on his frowning face.
    “Is this the field?” he asks, walking out into the centre of the half-ploughed area that we’re all standing around. All of the others are building a whopping great fire.
    Most of the space is rough brown grass, a little of the green stuff close to the soil, and lines where the plough has already been through. Trees surround us, forest, just like at the other cleared fields.
    “Here?” Dom asks, tapping his toe on the edge of a particularly roughed patch of dirt. Like a lot of people were moving in this small space, their feet and boots digging it up.
    “Is your sister ok?” Ash asks.
    “She will be, our hand was hurt too, but she has magic,” Wilf says.
    “Your hand?” I ask, trying to see the damage.
    Dom laughs at me. “Farmhand. Someone who works on the farm and lends a hand,” he says.
    “Oh,” I say, nodding slowly. Why didn’t they just say that?
    Wallace approaches and I jut my chin out preparing to defy him.
    “No lives were lost, boys. No point mourning spilt blood. Come and help us,” Wallace says.
    The others start to follow him, and without even looking back Wallace adds, “you too, lad.”
    Kicking dirt as I go, following the others. Finding sticks in the nearby forest, and fallen logs that take two of us to carry, and adding them to the pile.
    “This will burn for a week,” I say.
    “That’s the idea, lad,” Wilf says. “Burn the evil out of here.”
    “Superstitions,” I mutter, and I almost spit on the ground. If I were still in the city, I would have, but a dozen men are looking at me, frowning, just daring me to do it. If I do, I’m going to get my seat smashed.
    So, I swallow it down and toss my sticks onto the pile.
    Wallace looks about the horizon, which is the colour of freshly laid cobble stones – sunset isn’t far off.
    “Light it up,” Wallace orders.
    A handful of torches are lowered onto the timber pile. The flames catch and lick over the dead wood.
    “Never seen a battle fire?” Ash asks.
    I shake my head.
    The swish of a skirt catches my attention. Coming down the road is a gaggle of girls, and women, carrying trays and pitchers and rugs over their shoulders.
    Ash laughs and I pull my eyes from the skirts and set my frown in his direction.
    “Never seen so many women, hey,” Ash says, chuckling at me.
    “They’ve never seen him either, always smothered in dirt and all. Bet you wish you’d washed up now, hey Hunter,” Dom teases.
    I elbow him, then take two quick steps back – out of reach.
    The girl’s here, Jenny, and her ma. But, where the rest of them have come from, I don’t know. Now that these other boys are staring at me, I feel like I need to say something to find out.
    “Just who are they? That’s all I was thinking,” I say.
    “What’s a battle fire without all the family?” Wilf answers.
    Around us, rugs are spread over the dirt, and some of the bigger logs have been kept for sitting on. Bread rolls are passed out and skewered onto sticks, or a sword if you have one, then toasted in the flames and dipped into small clay pots of seasoned drippings. The women hand out jugs of water and some of ale.
    Wilf’s rubbing his hands together, like something exciting is about to happen.
    “Where’s your brother?” Dom asks, but Wilf’s already walking away.
    “Stayed at the house with the hand,” he says, shouting over his shoulder. “I think he’s falling in love.” Then he’s swarmed by girls and lost in a mass of giggles and skirts.
    Ash chuckles. “He used to have a thing for our sister.”
    “Jenny?” I ask.
    “No, our older sister, Jacinta. She used to fancy Wilf’s older brother, Orin.”
    I shake my head. Girls are too complicated.
    “Then she married someone else,” Dom says.
    I settle into a cluster, with Dom and Ash and a lot of others around our age, and sit in