The Returning Read Online Free PDF

Stepmother patted Graceful’s back. “I knew she’d fixed her fancy on him.”
    â€œShe’s a maid, and maids do change their fancy like they change their underlinen.”
    â€œArno!”
    â€œHe has not even a full count of limbs. How could he well look after her, my Graceful?”
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    ISLA HELPED GRACEFUL dress in her best gown and surcoat.
    â€œA fortnight ago, I was securely betrothed.”
    â€œDidn’t take your da long to arrange for it all to be undone.” Isla pinned a small bunch of wildflowers to her collar. “Love Knots,” she said. “All the maids do wear them, in summer, to draw their sweethearts.”
    Graceful went downstairs to toy with her morning meal. Afterward she sat so Stepmother could do her hair. Not because she had a lot of it, but because she did not. It was fine as baby hair, and as thin—limp here, flying away there—and it never grew past her shoulders. Graceful could not get it all up or nicely down, but Stepmother’s clever hands could.
    â€œMoppet,” said Stepmother. “Are you still worrying? Like as not, the Attlings will be glad to be reimbursed what they gave when you were betrothed. And your father wishes you to marry well, for your own sake, that you will be happy.”
    Garrad had the cart out and Agerst in the shafts. Father stood to help Stepmother, and then Graceful, up.
    â€œI can get up myself.” And she did, ignoring Father.
    â€œAh. Like that, is it? It’ll be a long ride in to the village, then.”
    â€œOh Father, I really do not want to.”
    â€œIt is better so.” Father tucked the riding blanket about her, to protect her skirts from dust.
    â€œYou listen to your father.” Stepmother turned and smiled at her. “When is he ever wrong?”
    Father hitched his belt up under his belly. “And you listen to your stepmother, for she is always right. Ha, ha!” His weight pulled the cart down on that side as he stepped up to the seat. He sat and it settled on its springs, still canted to his side. “I want the best for my Graceful.”
    Who, wondered Graceful, if the Attlings, important as they were in the village, were not best enough?
    â€œCome up!” Father slapped the reins and Agerst’s huge shoulders leaned into the collar, his huge feathered hooves lifted, and they moved sedately out of the yard.
    The drive ran out of the gate and wound around and down the hill to the flats, where it met the East Road. There, Father stopped the cart.
    â€œI’ll tell you something funny, Daughter. You look at the wall.”
    A low earth wall circled the breast of the hill. It was gone in places: dug away to let the driveway in; a whole section carried downhill in a mudslide one sopping spring.
    â€œOnce, there was a wall built atop the earthworks.” Father pointed. “But the stone was taken from it and used to build—”
    â€œThe New Wing,” said Graceful.
    â€œHa, yes, that’s my girl. Oh . . . some hundred fifty years ago! The New Wing. Ha, ha.”
    Father always stopped the cart at the flats, and always told the same story, and always laughed as if it were funny, a joke. When Graceful had been small, she had laughed too.
    The sun was peaking in the sky as they drove through Kayforl. The Ridge Road was empty, and the shops all had their shutters closed against the heat.
    Just past the village proper, Father halted. From here they must walk, for the track up to the shrine was too narrow for a cart. Graceful dreaded it. What if they should come upon the Attlings, and must walk with them? But Stepmother linked her arm with Graceful’s and she felt much braver. They took the path, step, step, step, in time.
    The shrine was so old, the wood was worn silver. One whole wall flipped up like a shutter and opened the shrine to the yard, a patch of raked gravel with a high stone wall all about it. The wall was very much grander