Foretold Read Online Free PDF Page B

imagine I will,” she said with a glare. She wasknee-deep in leaves, and kicked them aside. “I’ll just be going now.”
    His grin vanished. “Going? But—”
    Pippin stalked from the room, barefoot and with her chin in the air. Matty followed. The big room wasn’t as empty as the other, with his rocking chair, a table, the lamp, and some tools lying about. There was his bit of wood carving, and there were his shoes kicked off. He was in socks with a couple of toes peeking out. Matty toes.
    All this Pippin saw on her way to the door, before he came around her to block her way. “Wait. Can’t I fix you some tea?” he asked.
    In the stone fireplace hung a copper kettle she knew for his mother’s old one. “There’s no fire,” she pointed out.
    “I’ll make one. I even have a tin of biscuits.”
    “Biscuits?” She stared at him. Was he really talking about
biscuits?
    “And …” He got shy. Matty was never shy. “I could show you the house if you wanted.”
    She’d wanted to see it bad enough to shimmy up a tree, but now she couldn’t say why. It was like eating ash, imagining him living here with someone else. “I’ve seen it,” she said shortly. “And I can’t stay. I have dragon business, remember?”
    His brow furrowed. “Dragon …? Cath, are you … 
mad
about something?”
    “What would I be mad about?” she asked, in a voice that said
I most certainly am
.
    He was still in front of the door. She made to go around him and he touched her shoulder. She jerked away, and he pulled back quick like she was some unpredictable cat. “What’s the matter?” he asked her. “Did something happen?”
    “Oh no, nothing at all,” she said, flat, looking anywhere but at his out-of-reach lips.
    “Didn’t you … 
see
something tonight?” Matty glanced out the window.
    Only the future
is what Pippin thought. “Nothing worth mentioning” is what she said.
    Matty looked smacked. His face went red, his eyes mad, then meek, then mad again. “I see,” he said, tight. Then, “So why are you here, Cathy?”
    She took it for a recrimination. “I’m sorry, all right? If I’d known you were here I’d never have come.”
    “Well, why did you?”
    As if she knew! “Maybe I just wanted to climb the tree one last time before—” She stopped herself and swallowed.
    “Before what?”
    Before there were wife things flapping on a laundry line, baby toys on the porch, and happiness-clutter that wasn’t her own. She couldn’t say any of that. Breaking for the door, she only said, “I don’t know how you got back here so fast anyway.”
    His expression changed then. From dismay it squinched to lost confusion, then snapped to attention, sharp and glittering. “
Back
here?” he said, and this time when he reached for her shoulder, he didn’t let her tug it away, but held her firm and gentle. “From where?”
    She gave him a look. “From down the hill, where do you think?”
    His response was not what she expected. His grin came back as bold as she’d ever seen it, and he looked
relieved
, and just as pleased as pleased.
    More mocking, was it? “And what’s that grin for, Mr. Smiles?” Pippin demanded.
    He said, like he was telling her a good secret, “Cathy, I’ve been here since sundown. I haven’t left the house.” Still grinning, and his teeth so white. Before she could protest thatit was a lie, he said, “I swear it. I’ve been sitting right here, making that for the front door.”
    The plaque. She saw it was words he was carving. They caught her eye.
Crow’s Nest
. It was a little shock—him naming his house after their place in the oak—and it hid the big shock behind it so Pippin was slow to understand. But there it was. If Matty’d been here all evening, then …
    Oh!
    Her heart, her heart. All of a sudden it felt like the fire bell and someone was ringing it fit to summon the whole valley. Did he mean …?
    Matty’s hand slipped from her shoulder down to grasp her own