The Promise of the Child Read Online Free PDF

little crude, as if a child had made them. Briza, Drimys’s young son, occasionally asked if he could help Lycaste with his work, but the boy was absolutely forbidden. He’d caught the child playing with the house once, in the days when he still left the door to the chamber unlocked, and banned him from the whole top floor of the tower. This was his, and only his.
    Lycaste carefully moved the figures to one side, counting them under his breath as he did so, to make space for the extension, which he placed on a folded square of stained white linen. The prince needed more space in his palace for all his new pets, a number of which Lycaste had just made. He reached under the table for the metal tray of powdered colourings, pausing to look at them as he put them on the table. They were a gift from her, after he’d finally found the courage to show her this locked-away place.
    He barely heard the knock on the door. Impatiens pushed it open an inch and peered in.
    â€œHow’s your doll’s house, Lycaste?”
    â€œIt’s a palace,” he muttered, dipping his brush in the water pot.
    â€œMy mistake.” Impatiens surveyed the model for a moment, as if looking for something. “Did you find my—”
    â€œYes, thank you.” Lycaste dug in a drawer and handed him the skeletal, rather mummified body of a lizard he’d found set upon the miniature dining table one morning, the tiny figures arranged around it as if at a great feast. “I’ve made my own food for the table.” He indicated the painted bowls and cups, some tiny coloured beads and woollen balls placed inside them with tweezers.
    â€œThey must get fairly hungry, locked away up here.”
    Lycaste wiped his hands and went back to his painting, ignoring the man.
    Impatiens sighed and rubbed his great bushy beard, listening to the rattle and clatter of preparations downstairs. “It sounds like your dinner party’s happening without you. Coming down?”
    Lycaste nodded, reluctantly setting aside the paintbrush and practising his breathing techniques. Old, familiar butterflies rose to dance in his stomach at the thought of having to entertain guests, fluttering more manically still as he glanced at the paint tin, knowing she might have already arrived.
    â€œYou can’t swim at the Point.”
    â€œThe Lesser Point, they said.”
    â€œStill—”
    Drimys pushed his plate away, leaning back and staring at the vaulted white ceiling of the dining room. “You don’t think the boys were just trying to impress you?”
    Lycaste glanced at both men and shrugged. He’d done little more than pick at each of the many courses of his supper, relieved and yet disappointed that only two guests had arrived after all. “They told me they saw Jotroffe out there again.”
    â€œNow there’s an odd creature,” said Impatiens, leaning to cut into the vast block of fruit-studded cheese in the middle of the table. “Even looks strange, doesn’t he?”
    Lycaste could only agree. He’d met the man many times, usually when he was out walking, though the hermit appeared to take care never to make a habit of trespassing, despite the boundaries of Lycaste’s land being exceedingly poorly marked. Jotroffe was extremely short, like a child, willowy and slender, though almost certainly not young; anyone who spoke to him could see that. His face was deformed, unfinished somehow, like seeing your reflection in a small concave mirror. His speech, though understandable, took a very long time to form, the words following each other with an agonising slowness that could snare unwary travellers into a whole afternoon’s conversation.
    â€œThe last time I saw the fellow, we talked about the weather for most of the morning,” muttered Impatiens, spreading the cheese carefully onto a biscuit, “then finished with a good long session on whether walnuts were superior to