Foretold Read Online Free PDF

love.
    She released her hug on the tree and went to the next, and then the next. Tree to tree she went around the little clearing, saying goodbye to each one in her way, until she came to the oak. And once she was touching it, there was no help for it, it had to be climbed. She knew the best route and was up it quick as a skink, her shoes left behind on the ground, and she told herself all the while that she was just climbing her favorite tree. She was not in any way planning to peer down into Matty’s roofless house.
    Because that would be spying.
    And when her bare feet found themselves on the longhorizontal bough that was as broad as a bridge, she still was not going to spy, and when she skimbled down where it thinned and wrapped her knees around it so she could scooch out farther, she was innocent in her heart. Even as she found a likely branch to cling to so she could lean out and look down, it was not at all spying, and then it was spread out beneath her: Matty’s house, built with his own good hands. It had three rooms; the two little ones Pippin supposed would be bedrooms. One was beneath her, empty except for a swept leaf pile and a leaning twig broom. And next door there was the big room where the lamp was lit—
    —and the room was not empty!
    Pippin gasped.
    Matty was there. Matty was sitting there in his chair with the lamplight gleaming on his red hair and he was bent over, carving something on a plaque of wood. The hoarse leaf chorus drowned the sound of his chisel, and it must have carried off her gasp too, because he didn’t look up. Pippin sat frozen. How had he gotten here ahead of her? He couldn’t have! She’d run all the way!
    How?
    As mystifying as it was, him being here, it wasn’t her foremost care as she swayed above his head like some kind of nosing tree creature. And after all her foolish talk and trying to kiss him and running off! Oh, what would he think if he caught her
spying?
    She inched backward, the bark rough between her knees, and if she’d gotten away unseen, she would have just crept off. That was the way things were unfurling. She’d have forgotten her shoes on the ground, and Matty would have found them and always wondered, and that would have been an end to the night: a sad little ending made out of pride and heartbreak.
    Thank the green god then for biddies who didn’t cease meddling just because they happen not to be human anymore!
    Before Pippin got more than two furtive scoots back along the branch, a shape came hurtling at her with an ungodly screech. It was an owl, wings widespread and feet flexed, claws coming right at her like she was a mouse it wanted for its feast.
And why not, since you’re acting like a mouse?
Nasty Mary would have said if she still had words, and Pippin gave a little cry, throwing out her hands to protect herself.
    Matty looked up just as she lost her balance and fell into his house.
6. C ROW ’ S N EST
    She landed in the leaf pile and wasn’t hurt, only so mortified she half considered turning bird right then to escape seeing the look on Matty’s face. She didn’t, of course, and when he dashed in not two seconds later, what was on his face was nothing scornful—only surprise and concern. And if that was a bright dash of happiness too, Pippin missed it entirely, being as she was so busy with her own humiliation.
    “Cathy! What …?” Matty looked up, then at her, then up again, as perplexed as if she’d ridden in on a cloud.
    She picked herself up with as much dignity as she could scrape together. “You see what comes of having a roofless house, Matthew Blackgrace?”
    He blinked. “Fairies fall in?” He reached out and plucked a leaf from her hair.
    “I never fell. I’ll have you know an owl pushed me off.”
    “I see. Good thing I didn’t sweep out the leaf pile.” He grinned his devilish grin and Pippin bristled to see it. “Shall I leave it, do you think? Will you be needing a landing pad in the future?”
    “I don’t