The Fatal Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

hearth to give him light. When he turned back to his work he found he had lost his needle. He sighed and fumbled for it in the darkness.
    ‘It’s by your foot,’ Melissa whispered to him.
    ‘What?’
    ‘It’s by your foot.’ She had never spoken to a stranger before.
    He found it and said, ‘Thank you.’ Then he went on working in the firelight and she went on watching him.
    His face was long and his dark hair fell down overhis ears almost to his jawbone. His cheeks were smooth and his brows arched over careful eyes. He was frowning a little, peering at what he was doing as though it were somehow very, very important. Now and again he would look up and see her watching him. Then he would smile – a quick smile at the corners of his mouth. From time to time he stopped and looked thoughtfully at the shadows as if they held things she could not see.
    When he had finished he held up the black cloth in his hands. In the red-brown light of the embers Melissa saw that he had stitched the pale cloth into the centre of it. The pale cloth was a circle, but the circle was not whole.
    ‘There’s a piece missing,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, there’s supposed to be.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘It’s the moon,’ he said. ‘You are looking at the moon on a dark night. But there’s something between you and it, so you can’t see all of it. That’s what the black bit means. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’ll think about it.’ He smiled again. ‘You should go to sleep now.’
    In the morning the two visitors rode away together. The boy carried the black cloth tied to a stick that he slung from his shoulder. Mam and Dadda looked hard at it. Afterwards they told her that it had been a flag. It meant that the boy was the Lord of the March.
    ‘What’s the March?’ Melissa had asked.
    ‘It’s the land, my lovely. Where we live and all around us.’
    ‘And over the hill, too?’
    Mam laughed. ‘Much, much more than that. All the way to the lake, and north and south as far as the lake runs. And if he’s Lord of the March, he should be the King, too! And that means lord of all the land on the far side of the lake as well!’
    Melissa had heard of the lake but had never seen it. She could not imagine that there was even more land on the other side of it.
    ‘I hope he doesn’t go there,’ she said. ‘I want him to stay with us.’
    Dadda snorted.
    ‘It’s a fair wish,’ Mam told him. ‘If only he’ll keep the peace and make us safe.’
    ‘Lords bring taxes and trouble,’ said Dadda. ‘Here, we stand on our own feet.’
    Some time later – it may have been months, or a year – Melissa and her mother were outside the hut one evening. Mam was on her hands and knees by the fire. She had got the little flame going and was carefully putting the smaller twigs into place around it.
    Melissa asked, ‘Why isn’t Dadda a king?’
    Mam looked up and laughed. ‘But he is, my lovely! King of the clearing, the stream and the woods on either side. And I’m his queen and you’re his princess.’
    ‘I mean a real king,’ Melissa said crossly.
    ‘Oh, but he would not want that! The woods are what he loves. Keep going, sweetheart, or it’ll never be done.’
    Melissa had the basin on her knees and themillstone in her hand. She was grinding at the cornmeal to break it down into flour. It was hard work for her, and also boring, and she could only hear or draw breath to speak when she took a rest.
    ‘But don’t you want him to be one?’ she asked a minute later.
    Mam looked at her sideways. ‘A man’s no good if he’s not happy, now, is he?’ she said.
    ‘He’d have all that land and a crown. Wouldn’t that make him happy? And you?’
    ‘No, my lovely. I can’t make him what he’s not. And I can’t be what I’m not either. He’s my stoat and I’m his blackbird. That’s the way we are.’
    The answer annoyed Melissa. Of course Dadda was lithe and brown and silent, and very clever at catching small game in the woods.