The Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

and shouted a torrent of her own language, while the shop lady kept saying, “I don’t care where you come from. You haven’t paid for those shoes.”
    Flute twisted up one side of his face, so that half of it seemed to be smiling at Hayley and the other half looking seriously at the shop lady, and said, “I think I’d better sort this out for you.” He said to the lady, “It’s all right. She thought this little girl had gone missing, you see.” Then he spoke to Martya in what was clearly her own language.
    Martya replied with a gush of Darkest Russian, clapping the pink shoes together in front of her bosom, as a substitute for wringing her hands. They were very big shoes, much more Martya’s size than Hayley’s. Flute spoke to her soothingly while he collected his hat and shut his flute into a long case. By the time they were all walking back to the shoe shop, he was wearing rather battered green boots that Hayley had certainly not seen him put on.
    He did do some magic! Hayley thought. Quite a lotof it! she added to herself, as she watched Flute calming everyone in the shop down and making sure that Martya counted out enough of Grandma’s money to pay for the large pink shoes. Then he smiled at Hayley, said, “I’ll see you,” and left.
    Martya and Hayley went home, where Grandma was far from pleased. Hayley said repeatedly, “It wasn’t her fault, or Flute’s, Grandma. They both thought you meant the shoes were for her .” While Martya nodded and smiled and hugged the shoes happily.
    â€œBe quiet, Hayley,” Grandma snapped. “Martya, I have had enough of this nodding and smiling. It’s just an excuse for laziness and dishonesty. You’ll have to leave. Now.”
    Martya’s ugly face contorted inside her beautiful hair. “Laziness I am?” she said to Grandma. “Then of you, what? You do nothing all day but give orders and make rules! I go and pack now – and take my shoes!” She went stumping up the stairs, scowling. “Your baba is a monster!” she said as she stamped past Hayley. “You I pity from the depths of my chest!”
    It startled Hayley. She had not thought of Grandmaas a monster – she had just thought life was like that: long and boring and full of rules and things you mustn’t do. Now here was Martya actually pitying her for it. She wondered if it made sense.
    But there were no more walks, to the shops or out on the common, for a while after that. Until a new maid was found to clean things and take Hayley out in the afternoons, Hayley was sent into the back garden instead. There she wandered about among the dark, crowding laurel bushes, thinking about her parents, longing for the mythosphere and wondering if Grandma really was a monster. Sometimes, when she was right in the midst of the laurels and knew she could not be seen from any of the windows, she crouched down – careful not to get her knees dirty – and secretly built bowers out of twigs, castles made of pebbles and gardens from anything she could find. “Mythosphere things,” she called them to herself.
    She was building a particularly elaborate rock garden about a week later, made of carefully piled gravel and ferns, when she looked up to see Flute standing among the laurels with his hands in hispockets. He was staring up at the house as if he was wondering about it. Hayley could not think how Flute had got in. There was a high brick wall round the garden and no way in except through the house.
    â€œHallo,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
    Flute had obviously not known she was there. He whirled round, thoroughly startled, and his green scarf blew tastefully out among his hair. “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t see you. I was wondering what went on in this house.”
    â€œNothing much does,” Hayley told him, rather dryly. “Grandpa works and Grandma