Shepherd Hunted Read Online Free PDF

still hadn’t completely recovered from the night of sin. A few barrels graced the sides of the streets, and the markets were quiet. Here and there drab, serviceable clothing of daily life replaced the rainbow festival costumes of the previous week. Tera, for one, was grateful not to be struck blind just by glancing at someone.
    An old woman stopped and made the sign of the cross. Her face was a tangle of time. Sister Tera returned the gesture. “What can I do for you today?”
    “Sister, if you would, please pray for my daughter. She is terribly sick.”
    Tera looked harder at the woman. She realized the woman’s face wasn’t marked by time but by a hard life of labor. The brown eyes that pleaded from the tanned face were young.
    “Let us pray for her now.” Tera took the tree-bark hands into her own. Tera preferred to pray with the people. She thought it odd how other sisters preferred to pray in private.
    “Thank you, Sister.” The mother sagged and smiled.
    “Use this to buy some medicine too. God likes to work through us.” Tera pressed a silver coin into the mother’s palm. The coin could buy several months of food or a little medicine. How apothecaries priced medicine was sinful.
    The woman bowed. “Thank you, Sister!”
    Sister Tera’s thoughts returned to Evelyn. The woman had skittered away early that morning, muttering nonsense. Where Evelyn found the money for the overpriced inn room Tera did not want to know. Evelyn spent part of the night cleaning the inn, much to the innkeeper’s dismay. Tera couldn’t understand the woman’s obsession.
    The town needed moral teachings. How many wedding vows had been broken last night? Could a single fox demon spark such widespread sinning? Tera knew little about demons. Balwar said men were more dangerous. How could that be? What could a single fox do? Yet Tera remembered how the peace of the abbey had been shattered by the fox.
    A hairy, bare-chested man hefted a barrel onto his shoulder. He gave Tera a respectful nod. She pulled her habit closer around her. She guessed the man’s muscles and fur kept him warm enough. She hurried past. A few brown leaves skittered and swirled around a young man plodding down the street. His brown hair, the same color as Evelyn’s, fluttered. His gaze bored into the cobblestones, and he wore an expensive, fur-trimmed coat. Tera pushed down envy. The coat looked warm. Where had Timothy gotten such a nice coat? She crossed the street and drew close. He didn’t react until she touched his shoulder and called his name.
    Timothy looked up, eyes wet and distant. Tera didn’t see any trace of possession within them. But then, would she? Demons and possessed people were supposed to leave red in the eyes, but the fox’s eyes were green. Timothy’s eyes were the same color as his mother’s.
    “Sister Tera. Still in town I see. Are you heading back home soon?” His voice sounded flat, broken.
    “Maybe. Did something happen? Are you—”
    “I should have told her,” he said. “I didn’t because I was afraid it would hurt her, but waiting made it worse.”
    “Her? You mean the demon?” Tera asked.
    “She is not a demon, Sister. At least not that way. She is a lonely woman who doesn’t have a home to return to. She is a person who has had everyone fail her. Including me.”
    “Timothy,” Tera said. The fox seems to have lost its grip on him. Now is my chance. “Foxes are demons. They are not natural!”
    Timothy’s gaze skewered her. “‘And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.’ Are you telling me, Sister, that God made demons too? What about everything being good?”
    Tera fish-mouthed.
    “Kit is not a demon. She is a person like you and me. A person I hurt.”
    Tera grasped for words. Demons came from hell,