The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanted to meet you, that’s all.” Enith was embarrassed. Ellayne softened.
     
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “You startled me, and I guess my manners aren’t very good today.” Ellayne forced a smile. “Have a seat. Your name’s Enith, I think.”
     
    Enith sat down on a second overturned crate. “Are you going to tell me what kind of animal it was that you were playing with? I was sure it wasn’t any kind of cat.”
     
    “He isn’t any kind of animal at all,” said Ellayne. “I’ll get him to come out so you can see him, if you promise not to scream or act silly. He wouldn’t like it, and neither would I.”
     
    “I promise!” Enith said. She was much too curious to do otherwise.
     
    “All right.” Ellayne turned to the hedge. “Come back, Wytt. Let Enith see you.”
     
    From out of the hedge, on two hind legs, stepped something that most definitely was not a rat, or a cat, or anything else. It was about the size of a squirrel, but without a tail. And it had a face—and little hands! It peered right up at Enith, and all she could think was, “A tiny little man!” But it was a man covered head to foot by glossy, reddish fur.
     
    “His name is Wytt,” Ellayne said. “He’s one of the little ‘hairy ones’: it’s in the Scriptures. Omah, they’re called. He can’t talk, exactly, but he understands every word I say to him.”
     
    Enith stared. She knew nothing of the Scriptures, or of the hairy ones that were to inherit the ruins of great cities. What she saw, standing in front of her like a human being, made her speechless. How could such things be?
     
    The creature chattered like a squirrel.
     
    “He knows you’re afraid of him,” Ellayne said. “He says you shouldn’t be afraid. He likes you—and he’s never wrong about people.”
     
    Now Martis and her father had carefully taught Ellayne and Jack never to speak of their adventures on Bell Mountain and under the Old Temple. “Your lives won’t be worth a penny, if you do,” Martis said. He had to say it often because Ellayne wanted to be famous. “The country’s full of men who would sell you to the Thunder King. And some of Lord Reesh’s old agents will still be looking for you.”
     
    So Ellayne and Enith talked about other things, and by and by Enith noticed that the other girl wasn’t paying full attention to the conversation.
     
    “What’s the matter, Ellayne? Are you still mad because your father wouldn’t let you go on the trip up the river, the other day? Aunt Lanora said you were very unhappy about it.”
     
    “Aunt Lanora ought to mind her own cuss’t business,” Ellayne said. “No, it’s not that I’m mad. And it’s not that I’m lonely, either. But I do have a bad feeling that I don’t like! It bothered me all night, so that I could hardly sleep. It just won’t go away.”
     
    “What do you suppose it is?”
     
    “I wish I knew—just a feeling that there’s something wrong, somewhere. Something bad. Don’t you ever get that kind of feeling?”
     
    “Well, yes.” And after a while it came out that Enith’s mother ran away one day, years ago, when Enith was little more than a toddler; and her father ran after his wife, and neither of them ever came back. Enith couldn’t have said why she told Ellayne about it. She never discussed that with anyone. But of course at home, in Obann, the whole neighborhood already knew the story.
     
    “That’s why I live with my Grammum,” she finished.
     
    Just then Wytt hopped off Ellayne’s lap and pounced on a beetle, which he proceeded to devour with an unpleasant crunching noise. That distracted both girls from thinking about really more unpleasant things.
     

     
    That night, just before bedtime, Ellayne discovered what her bad feeling was all about.
     
    Herger came pounding at her father’s front door, and when the baroness opened it, he practically fell into the hall. His clothes were streaked with dried, dark mud, his hair was flying