The Glass Casket Read Online Free PDF Page B

make a child pine all the more for a mother she’d never known. Her only knowledge of her mother wasthrough her dreams. She came to Rowan when she was sleeping—of that the girl was certain. In her favorite dream, they were in her mother’s room. The light from the window seemed to sparkle, and her mother moved her shining face close to Rowan’s. In one hand, she held a wooden egg; in the other, a rope woven of pure gold.
    Ah, that’s better
, her mother would say, and then she would kiss Rowan on the cheek, her lips soft as butterfly wings. Rowan would always emerge from those dreams feeling as if they were somehow more real than her conscious life.
    Stepping out of the foyer, Rowan tried to put thoughts of her mother from her mind. She moved through the corridor and into the central hall with its high arched ceiling and heavy wooden beams. She was running her fingers along the carved rosewood panels that lined the walls when Emily emerged from the kitchen, spoon in hand, her cheeks splotchy from the heat. The candles in the mounted sconces played upon the girl’s features, illuminating them with bursts of color.
    “Late enough,” Emily said, and scrutinizing Rowan’s dress, she grimaced. “That’s right wrinkled, isn’t it? What have you been doing in that thing?”
    “Nothing,” Rowan answered as Emily’s dog, Pema, bounded up to her. She ran her hands through the dog’s thick black fur and patted her on the head. “That’s a good girl,” she said, her heart warming with just one look from the dog’s watery brown eyes.
    “Well, put it aside for me to work on,” Emily said, alreadyturning to head back to the kitchen, Pema in tow. “And go in and say hello to your father.”
    Rowan gave a soft knock at her father’s study door, and he called that she should enter. He sat at his desk, surrounded by books. Before him was a thick stack of papers.
    “Working on something new?” she asked.
    He set down his pen and smiled at her.
    “I am. I’ve had a new shipment from the duke conservateur. Some really interesting documents coming into the royal library these days. One is a text that was only recently discovered in the hills of Montatrea, where they unearthed that massive trove of ancient texts. It’s fascinating, really.”
    “Fortunately, they have you to translate it for them,” said Rowan, who always took a quiet pride in her father’s expertise.
    He leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Well, it’s not as if they have a choice. There are simply too few men trained in the Midway language these days. It’s a pity.”
    “I can read it too, remember,” she said, grinning.
    “Don’t say I never taught you anything. Have you and Emily had your supper yet?”
    “Not yet, no. I was just about to go and see if she needs help in the kitchen.”
    “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.”
    “Father,” Rowan said, looking at the shelves that lined the wall, at the endless stacks of books. “Those men who died. What killed them?”
    He fixed his eyes on hers. “A wolf, naturally. But, Rowan, you mustn’t trouble yourself about such things. Fear is thedomain of the small-minded. You are to be a scholar, my dear, and scholars do not go around fearing the wind and quivering away at the thought of wolves.”
    Rowan smiled, knowing she was lucky to have a father like hers who so valued a girl’s mind, who thought his daughter had the capacity to become as great a scholar as any son. In Nag’s End, most girls were married off as soon as possible, and once married, they had no chance of being anything but helpmate to a husband. That was why Greenwitches never married. To yoke oneself to a man was to cleave yourself in two, so her father always said. He had told her many a time that if she studied, and if she attained the level of skill he desired for her, when the time was right, he would take her to the palace city. He’d once held a well-respected position there but had left the city upon