The Book of a Thousand Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

a few moments. "We have salt meat... but fresh, it's a difference, isn't it?"
    "I'll say! Eating salt meat, you have to drink so much for your thirst, there's no room in the belly for food."
    "And we have salted everything here--vegetables and meat and cheese and cracker bread. Though I'm not complaining, please don't think. The food's wonderful, as long as I can keep the rats out."
    "There are rats?"
    38
    I hadn't meant to grumble, but there was this little pressure inside me, pushing inside my chest, urging me to confide some truth to him. "We've a plague of rats in the cellar. We swat at them and even got one in a trap, but I'm afraid my... my maid won't have enough to eat, after a time. My, uh, my father brought us so much food, but not enough for the rats, too."
    "Your voice is tilting down, my lady," he said, "and I guess that you're frowning. You're worried. I should go now before the guards return, but keep the rats out of your hair tonight and I'll return tomorrow."
    He left.
    I don't have anything else to write, but I don't want to put down my brush yet. I want to keep all that happened, the feel of the evening still thick in my head, the sounds of his words awake in my ears, twitching pleasantly inside me. I'd guess I'm tower-addled and talking to someone from outside just made me wistful. That's all. That's why I feel this way, twisting and floating, as though my heart is bigger than my chest.
    I do like the world quite a lot. Nothing more to say, so I'll draw.
    40
    [Image: Drawing of a Foot]
    [Image: Drawing of an Acorn]
    [Image: Drawing of a Hand Writing on a Book]

    Day 33

    It must be past midnight now, but I'll write till morning if I have to. I don't want to forget a word.
    Her khan came again. When I heard him calling, I didn't wake my lady, who was asleep upstairs. Should I have? Or was it right to let her sleep? And asleep or not, should I have ignored him and refused to continue the lie? Ancestors forgive me, in the moment I didn't think twice. I just opened the flap and let his voice come in.
    "Did you sleep well last night?" he asked. "I might take offense if you went ahead and slept with rats in your hair, after I specifically warned you against it."
    "I slept well," I said, laughing. "Sleep is always sweet."
    "Not all would say that. You're an antelope who bounds through life, I think. Here you are, locked in a tower and laughing still."
    "You make me laugh."
    "Why is that?"
    "I can't say." And I couldn't. Why do his questions make me laugh?
    "I think I'd like to make you laugh all day long. If
    41
    I could take you out of here, I'd hold a feast and a dance, and see you bedecked in a silver deel, laughing and bounding about."
    "Why silver?"
    "Because in the dark, your voice sounds silver."
    My face burned feverish hot, so hot I thought I might die of the mud fever at once, but the feeling eased as I kept talking.
    "That's a pretty thing to say." I forced my tone to sound light. "I wish I could think of pretty things to say, too, besides that your ankles are skinnier than a jackrabbit's ribs."
    He cleared his throat. "It's just the cut of these boots, I assure you. And no excuses, my lady. You've had a flowery tongue in your time. Don't you remember our first letters?"
    "It's been so long," I said, unhappy with the lie. "What did I say?"
    Her khan chuckled. "Before coming here, I looked over all our letters, and the early ones, when you were thirteen and I fifteen. Well..."
    "They were fairly ridiculous, weren't they?"
    "In truth, you weren't so bad--more formal. You're very different to speak with in person. But I found some drafts of letters that I sent to you, and in one I wrote something akin to, 'When I think of you,
    42
    my heart melts like butter over the bread of my stomach.' I thought it was very poetic at the time. Or in another letter I wrote, 'You are like a shiny red apple with no worms.'"
    I wanted to be respectful of his first words of love, but trying to hold in the laugh made me snort