The Truth-Teller's Tale Read Online Free PDF

open, and a few people exchanged greetings. Then I heard a woman say, “Are you the Truth-Teller?” and my sister reply, “Yes.”
    If I have failed to mention it before, let me just say here that Adele hid a wide streak of mischief behind her demure demeanor. Whereas I find it impossible to tell a lie, Adele finds it fatiguing to tell the truth. It was entirely typical of her to make such a response to such a question.
    I jerked away from the dressmaker’s fingers. “I have to go,” I said, trying to pull the half-finished gown over my head. “Someone needs me in the shop.”
    Lissette and my mother each clamped their hands around me. “You stay right here,” my mother said. “We’ll be done in just a minute.”
    â€œBut you don’t understand—Adele—someone has asked for me—”
    â€œAdele will do just fine,” my mother said calmly. “You hold still.”
    And though I tried to squirm away, I couldn’t break free without tearing the dress—and it really was a lovely dress. By the time I was able to step out of the purple frock, don my own clothes, and hurry out into the front room, the only people there were Adele and the shop assistant.
    â€œWho was that?” I asked my sister. “Who was here?”
    She gave me an innocent stare from those wide eyes, one green, one blue. “No one was here. Just me.”
    I stamped a foot. “I heard someone come in. You told her you were me.”
    â€œOh,” Adele said. “I can’t tell you what she said.”
    I turned to the assistant, a colorless girl a year or two older than we were. “Did you see who it was whispering to my sister a few minutes ago?”
    The girl nodded, uninterested. “It was Widow Norville. I didn’t hear what she asked about, though.”
    I looked back at Adele, my face full of surprise. “The Widow Norville? I’ve never spoken to her in all my life.”
    â€œI know,” Adele said cheerfully. “She doesn’t usually talk to people like us.”
    â€œWhat did she want?”
    â€œShe had a question. I gave her an answer. You don’t need to be concerned.”
    And that was all she ever said about it.
    I spent some energy trying to determine what the Widow Norville could have wanted to ask of me. Though I never could say definitively, I eventually assumed she had wanted some information about old man Haskins, who had recently lost his own spouse and clearly had been trying to find himself another one. Maybe Widow Norville wanted to know if he was a kind man; maybe she was asking if he was really as rich as he seemed to be. The answers to those questions, in order, were yes and no, and so I would have told her. I have no idea what Adele said to her, but three months later the two of them wed, and from that day on they seemed to be very happy together. My guess was that Adele had somehow obtained secret information about old man Haskins—that he harbored a great fondness for the widow, perhaps, and that he was desperately lonely—and she used this information to tailor her reply to the Norville woman. Though I greatly disapproved of her methods, I could hardly fault her results. And, as I would come to realize time and time again, even if I could not trust Adele’s truthfulness, I could trust her good heart. She would never deliberately see someone come to harm. If she lied, it was with a purpose, and usually toward a good end.
    I, of course, never lied, even with those motives.
    From time to time, people would approach me on the street or in the market square and ask me if I was the Safe-Keeper. “No,” I would always reply quite roundly, and then they would beg my pardon and back away and go off in search of someone a little more discreet. But sometimes they failed to pose the question the right way, and then they got a different kind of counsel than they bargained for.
    For