The Wrong Grave Read Online Free PDF Page B

only sweetness in Halsa was in her singing. Even Onion loved to listen to Halsa when she sang.
    Mik and Bonti gave Onion shy little kisses on his cheek. He knew they wished the wizard’s secretary had bought Halsa instead. Now that Onion was gone, it would be the twins that Halsa pinched and bullied and teased.
    Tolcet swung a long leg over his horse. Then he leaned down. “Come on, boy,” he said, and held his speckled hand out to Onion. Onion took it.
    The horse was warm and its back was broad and high. There was no saddle and no reins, only a kind of woven harness with a basket on either flank, filled with goods from the market. Tolcet held the horse quiet with his knees, and Onion held on tight to Tolcet’s belt.
    â€œThat song you sang,” Tolcet said. “Where did you learn it?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Onion said. It came to him that the song had been a song that Tolcet’s mother had sung to her son, when Tolcet was a child. Onion wasn’t sure what the words meant because Tolcet wasn’t sure either. There was something about a lake and a boat, something about a girl who had eaten the moon.
    The marketplace was full of people selling things. From his vantage point Onion felt like a prince: as if he could afford to buy anything he saw. He looked down at a stall selling apples and potatoes and hot leek pies. His mouth watered. Over here was an incense seller’s stall, and there was a woman telling fortunes. At the train station, people were lining up to buy tickets for Qual. In the morning a train would leave and Onion’s aunt and Halsa and the twins would be on it. It was a dangerous passage. There were unfriendly armies between here and Qual. When Onion looked back at his aunt, he knew it would do no good, she would only think he was begging her not to leave him with the wizard’s secretary, but he said it all the same: “Don’t go to Qual.”
    But he knew even as he said it that she would go anyway. No one ever listened to Onion.
    The horse tossed its head. The wizard’s secretary made a tch-tch sound and then leaned back in the saddle. He seemed undecided about something. Onion looked back one more time at his aunt. He had never seen her smile once in the two years he’d lived with her, and she did not smile now, even though twenty-four brass fish was not a small sum of money and even though she’d kept her promise to Onion’s mother. Onion’s mother had smiled often, despite the fact that her teeth were not particularly good.
    â€œHe’ll eat you,” Halsa called to Onion. “Or he’ll drown you in the marsh! He’ll cut you up into little pieces and bait his fishing line with your fingers!” She stamped her foot.
    â€œHalsa!” her mother said.
    â€œOn second thought,” Tolcet said, “I’ll take the girl. Will you sell her to me instead?”
    â€œWhat?” Halsa said.
    â€œWhat?” Onion’s aunt said.
    â€œNo!” Onion said, but Tolcet drew out his purse again. Halsa, it seemed, was worth more than a small boy with a bad voice. And Onion’s aunt needed money badly. So Halsa got up on the horse behind Tolcet, and Onion watched as his bad-tempered cousin rode away with the wizard’s servant.
    There was a voice in Onion’s head. It said, “Don’t worry, boy. All will be well and all manner of things will be well.” It sounded like Tolcet, a little amused, a little sad.
    There is a story about the wizards of Perfil and how one fell in love with a church bell. First he tried to buy it with gold and then, when the church refused his money, he stole it by magic. As the wizard flew back across the marshes, carrying the bell in his arms, he flew too low and the devil reached up and grabbed his heel. The wizard dropped the church bell into the marshes and it sank and was lost forever. Its voice is clappered with mud and moss, and although the wizard