The Glass Casket Read Online Free PDF

asked, and he caught Jude making the motions of being ill.
    “Ah, my boy, you can wipe down the counters, you can,” she said, handing him a rag. “Was your brother giving you grief, then?”
    Tom leaned against the bar. “The family that just moved into the village, have you met them yet?”
    Elsbet raised her eyebrows. “The girl I haven’t met, but I’ve met her mother. I dropped off a basket of scones this morning. The woman was very kind. She said she’d be over to see us as soon as she had a moment, but the glassblower, he couldn’t see fit to come to the door for a simple hello.”
    “He’s a glassblower?” Tom asked as he moved the rag in careful circles atop the oak bar.
    “Mmm.” Tom’s mother nodded. “I’ve heard he’s quite skilled—gifted, even—but what’s that beside some common courtesy? Couldn’t be bothered to say hello, though I could see him sitting right there by the fire. He doesn’t seem to think we’re worth his time. I can tell you one thing, though,”she said, leaning into the counter. “The mother, Lareina’s her name, she’s quite lovely.”
    “She’s the stepmother,” Tom corrected, working his way down the bar.
    “Neither is the girl’s parent, my boy.”
    “Really?” Tom, surprised, set his rag down and sat upon one of the high barstools. “Rowan didn’t say.”
    “Sure,” Elsbet said, brushing the curls from her eyes. “The girl belonged to Rowan’s mother’s brother and his first wife, but that one died when the girl was small—sickness of the blood. And then only last year, he died as well. The glassblower is some distant friend of the family, swooped in to provide and protect, but he seems a rough sort to me. Not sure I’d want the kind of protection he could give.”
    “Mother, you don’t even know them.”
    Elsbet shrugged, and picking up Tom’s rag, she began pushing it along the counter in steady sweeps, going over what Tom had already done. “I know people in general, Tom, and that’s worth more than knowing any one person any day of the week. Now be a love and gather some wood for me, will you? Don’t stray too far into the forest, though. I don’t care what your brother says. There are wolves breeding in those trees.”
    “Mother,” Tom sighed.
    “Get on, now. The stove won’t light itself, child.”

    That evening as Rowan walked home, she kept her eyes on the trees. She trusted her father when he told her that thevillage beliefs were no more than superstitions, yet she could not deny that there was a magic to the forest—perhaps not goblins and fairies, but it held an otherworldly beauty for her, and even at dusk, she usually found herself taking the path that skirted its bewitching wilds rather than walking through the center of the village. She considered the woods her second home. And while she would never hazard them at night, she and Tom had spent most of their childhood running through the trees and combing the forest floor for insects. In the summers they would swim in Seelie Lake, and resting on its shores, they would gaze up toward Cairn Hill to the slate outcropping of Lover’s Leap—perched as it was above the waters, it was where widows went to weep. But now the villagers were losing their heads over a wolf, the forest declared dangerous even during the day, and Rowan felt anxious and displaced.
    When Rowan reached her home, she could see the candle lamps burning in the window of her father’s study. As she stepped into the foyer, Rowan caught a whiff of a scent that always made her think of her mother. She knew there was no way she actually remembered her mother’s scent—she’d died when Rowan was only hours old—yet sometimes, Rowan could have sworn that she did.
    Rowan knew very little about her mother. Her father, still grief-stricken after sixteen years, refused to discuss her, and if Rowan ever asked any of the villagers about her, they would sweep their eyes away, not wanting to answer, not wanting to