Star of Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

his shoulders, mounted his horse, and rode on. He would tell the police at TuesdayMarket. It was their job, not his, to hunt runaway boys.
    But poor Hamid dared not stop running, and Kinza, with her body nearly shaken to bits, gave jerky wails and hiccups on his back. There seemed to be nowhere to hide. Once, he caught his foot in a root and fell headlong. Bruised and dirty, he was up in a second. He had noticed a rock jutting out ahead of him. He made for it blindly, rounded it, and found himself close to a thatched hut, and beside the hut was a mud goat shed.
    Hamid was quite certain that his enemy would appear at any minute around the rock, and this was his very last hope of escape.
    He sprang into the close, dark shelter of the goat shed and found a sick goat and her kid lying on some straw. There was a pile of hay stacked against the wall, and Hamid burrowed into it. Then, like a hunted rabbit, he lay panting and shivering for half an hour.
    When his heart was beating more normally, he wriggled himself around in the straw and began to think about his situation. He felt very ill; he was burning hot, and his head ached dreadfully. His limbs were heavy and stiff, and the straw pricked and rubbed his bleeding feet.
    They had had nothing to drink that morning, and his mouth was parched from fear and running. Kinza, too, was miserable and wanted a drink. She had started to cry, sounding like a starved kitten, and he could not silence her. If anyone came to the shed, they would certainly hear her.
    He looked around desperately, and then for the first time he began to consider the sick goat, which had broken its front leg. He cheered up at once, for here was the answer to his problems. Hamid understood goats, and a mother with a kid would have plenty of milk.
    He wormed his way out of the hay and, creeping to the doorway, grabbed hold of a piece of broken clay pot that had been thrown away. Then, with one eye on the house, he made friends with the goat and the kid, fondling their ears and letting them lick his hands. Then, once she trusted him, he lay down on the floor beside the mother and milked it into the piece of pot. He carried the sweet, warm, frothing milk to Kinza, who drank it all up and mewed for more. They drank as much as they could and soaked hard pieces of bread into it, for they were parched and starving.
    The excitement of milking, the pain in his feet, the stuffy heat of the straw pile, and the fever in his body had kept Hamid awake all morning. He was terrified of going to sleep, too, in case Kinza wandered off again. He looked around for a piece of rope to tie her to him, but there was nothing suitable, and he dared not go out until it was dark. At last, exhausted, he clasped her tightly to him and fell into a deep sleep.
    But Kinza, realizing he was asleep and wanting to do just as she pleased, crawled out of the pile of hay. She took a few uncertain steps and bumped straight into the goat.
    Kinza loved goats and felt perfectly at home with them, so having found what she wanted—friendlycompany and a place to lie that did not scratch—she crawled under the goat’s chin and curled up to sleep. The little kid, no doubt feeling jealous, butted its way in, so they lay together with the goat’s front legs around them, both quite content—the newborn kid and the lost baby.
    Hamid, turning feverishly in his sleep, soon tossed away the straw and lay with his arms and face exposed. Toward sunset, the mother of the household came in with a bucket to milk the lame goat. For a moment she thought it had had another kid— then she looked more closely and found it was a little girl curled up in a ball.
    “May God have mercy on me!” exclaimed the woman. “It’s a baby!”
    She looked around, puzzled, and caught sight of Hamid’s top half sticking out of the straw.
    “May God have mercy on my parents!” she cried out. “There’s a boy as well!”
    She marched quickly over to him and prodded him with her