The Returning Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t you?” Isla said to her. “The silk?”
    â€œWell . . .” Graceful knew how they made linen, but . . . “Well . . .”
    â€œThey boil the cocoons, to kill the caterpillars before they can hatch and damage the silk thread.”
    â€œOh!” said Graceful. How did Isla always know these things? “The poor caterpillars.”
    â€œAye.”
    Why did Father want to change the order of things? It made her insides jump. Father was sun and earth and all things between, and no one was greater than him, not even the gods, but Fenister Fort Farm had boundaries, boundaries set so long ago that no one knew who or how or why, but that they were set. And Father was pushing them around. Merrydance field would grow, eating the forest so that it could be planted all over again with trees, trees of a different kind, Uplander trees. How strange the world looked this evening. Before it had been light or dark, but now it was both mixed together and there was no sorting them one from the other.
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    PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES of the land meant pushing the people of the village. Kayforl pushed back. It pushed back at her, Graceful.
    She went one day to Kayforl village with Father. Father was inside Sanderlin’s store and Graceful outside, waiting for him. Around her a crowd of village women and children grew.
    â€œAlways do think of their pockets, that lot,” said the women. “Sell their own mams off they would.”
    â€œScrull,” a boy hissed.
    â€œEeeh!” That came from all of them, all laughing. They looked at her with cold eyes. They’d always looked at her with eyes cold and laughing!
    One leaned close. “Uplander toadies.”
    Laughing no more, the women wandered back to their stoops, to stand and sweep and stare. The children stayed.
    â€œFat scrull,” said the same boy.
    Graceful wished she had gone in with Father.
    â€œFat, ugly scrull.”
    The children held their bellies and staggered about, legless with laughter. Graceful stared at them, shame burning in her face, and thought, Ugly? Am I?
    â€œFat, ugly, ah!” The boy was hanging by his collar, and his collar was fisted in Cam Attling’s hand. “Leave her be, Farrow Gorlance,” he said. “Or I’ll be hearing about it.”
    The children scattered.
    Said her betrothed, “Miss Graceful, are you all right?”
    â€œOh!” said Graceful. “Yes.” She felt the red run up her face to her headscarf, down her neck under her collar. “Oh, yes.”
    The village pushed back, but her betrothed did not.
    He smiled, and though he was dark as Stepmother was pale, his smile was like hers because it warmed Graceful. “I’ll be going, until your da pays his Welcome Visit.” And off he strode. Cam Fenister , thought Graceful. Cam and Graceful Fenister . She blushed again.
    â€œGar!” Father had, at last, come out of the store. “Will you look! Dung to his trew cuffs.”
    Graceful thought him magnificent. “Father? Will you be visiting him soon?”
    But Father was busy chirruping at Agerst, and didn’t hear her.
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    GRACEFUL SAT TO dinner in the hall. She spilled her tea, refused her meat, was refused dessert.
    â€œWhatever is the matter with you?” said Stepmother.
    Graceful did not know. She watched tears plip-plop onto her plate. “Why will you not visit Attling’s Oldest?”
    â€œMoppet.” Stepmother put her arms about her. “Moppet . . . ”
    â€œI’ll tell her, Vivrain.”
    Father took her on his knee. “You are getting too big for me to do this much longer, my little Graceful.”
    There was something awful to come, Graceful knew it.
    â€œYour betrothal to Attling’s Oldest is to be undone.”
    Graceful wailed. “But it can’t be.”
    â€œYou did not want to be betrothed to him in the first instance.”
    â€œWell, now I do.”
    â€œOh!”