The Returning Read Online Free PDF Page B

than the shrine.
    Attling’s Oldest leaned against a post and watched them come in. The Headman, Da Palfreyman, sat on the step, nodding, as old people did. “I’ll tell Da,” Cam said, and without turning, called, “Da! They’re come.”
    Master Attling came to the doorway, and helped Da Palfreyman to his feet. Together they came over, Da Palfreyman going ouf, ouf, ouf under his breath. Graceful thought of Father with his two ends for one means, and understood now what Father’s second end had been that day they had driven by the Uplander camp: this, the undoing of her betrothal. The Headman shook Father’s hand. “Master Fenister. Mistress.” He bowed, an old man’s stiff, creaking bow, to Stepmother, and kissed her hand, then Graceful’s.
    Father, Stepmother, Master Attling, and Da Palfreyman went within, to talk over the dissolution of her betrothal to Attling’s Oldest, and Graceful was left in the yard.
    Attling’s Oldest stayed propping up the same post. “I didn’t know he had that in him, the old rogue.”
    â€œAre you keeping the shrine from falling?” said Graceful. Then she gasped and put her hand to her mouth. It was the sort of thing Father would say to her, and out it had popped, without her even meaning it to.
    He smiled, and the day, dark with worry, brightened. “Are you bothering yourself about it?” he asked. “Do not you—Ah, they are wanting us.” He straightened and made to offer her his arm, to lead her up the steps and into the shrine, but Graceful was too shy to take it.
    Inside, Master Attling and Da Palfreyman alike showed as much of what they thought as might a lump of stone. Cam, though, smiled a strange cool smile, which touched his eyes with a coolness too, for all his kind words to Graceful.
    They each held the end of a rope, Cam Attling and Graceful, a rope braided from flax. Master Attling and Father between them cut it, and Graceful was betrothed to no one. Where will my road go now? she wondered.
    â€œBrave girl,” said Stepmother as they walked back down to the cart. “Not a tear.”
    â€œI’m crying them inside.” But she wasn’t, for they began falling from her eyes now.
    Â 
    FATHER WOKE GRACEFUL late that night, to take her down to the horse paddocks. Alyn the bay mare was foaling.
    â€œLet’s see about that wager we made, shall we?”
    When they got there, the foal’s head and forelegs were out. The mare was standing straddle-legged and stiff-tailed, sweating.
    â€œPoor thing,” said Graceful. “Brave little mare.”
    Father took her hand and tucked it, with his, into his pocket. The mare lay down, got up again to pace, lay down, and with every shift Father’s fingers clenched so tight on Graceful’s that it hurt. “Sorry, Daughter,” he said, and wrung her hand numb again.
    The handlers sat on their heels in a corner of the field. One of them would try from time to time to come at the mare, but she always shied off.
    â€œLeave her,” said Father. “Leave her be.” He was saying it to himself.
    Alyn wore herself out and lay down, the handlers stroking her sweating neck, whispering love words to her, and then the foal was out and into the world. One handler came tramping over, blood and birth-muck to his elbows. “A filly, My Lord,” he told Father.
    â€œA mare for my Graceful.”
    â€œFirst you’ve won from him, little Mistress,” said Garrad.
    How strange things were, thought Graceful, for every lost wager with Father had been in its way a win. Perhaps it made sense, then, that she felt this time as if she had lost.

Boy and Dog

    C ORBAN FARMER HAD glass windows. In all Kayforl, wood or hide was good enough. The new Lord in Dorn-Lannet likely had not better. But Corban Farmer had glass.
    Acton sat on the gatepost up on the ridge and gazed at the sun’s splintering against the