The Year of the Witching Read Online Free PDF Page B

untouched and unread. These were books on botany and medicine,books of poetry and lore, atlases and histories of Bethel and the settlements beyond it, even little pamphlets that taught things like grammar and arithmetic. It was a wonder they had been approved by the Prophet’s Guard at all.
    After tethering Judas to a nearby lamppost, Immanuelle drifted toward the stall. Despite knowing she was supposed to be well on her way to the livestock district, she lingered between the shelves, opening the books to smell the musk of their bindings and run her fingers along the pages. Although she had stopped her formal schooling at age twelve, as all girls in Bethel did to observe the Prophet’s Holy Protocol, Immanuelle was a strong reader. As a matter of fact, reading was one of the few things she felt she was truly good at, one of the few things she prided herself on. She sometimes thought that if she had any Gift at all, it was that. Books were to her what faith was to Martha; she never felt closer to the Father than she did in those moments under the shadow of the book tent, reading the stories of a stranger she’d never met.
    The first book she selected was thick and bound in pale gray cloth. There was no title, only the word Elegy stamped along its spine in golden ink. Immanuelle opened it and read the first few lines of a poem about a storm sweeping over the ocean. She had never seen the ocean before, or known anyone who had seen it, but as she read the verses aloud, she could hear the bellow of the waves, taste the brine of the waters, and feel the wind snatching at her curls.
    “Back again, I see.” Immanuelle looked up to find the shopkeeper, Tobis, watching her. Beside him, to her surprise, stood Ezra, the Prophet’s son, who’d sat with her and Leah by the riverside the day before.
    He was dressed in plain clothes, same as the farmers who’d come fresh from the fields, except for the apostle’s sacred dagger, which still hung from the chain around his neck. He was holdingtwo books in one hand. The first was a thick copy of the Holy Scriptures bound in brown leather; the second was slim, clothbound, and titleless. He smiled at her in greeting, and she dipped her head in response, slipping the book back into its place on the shelf. She couldn’t afford it anyway. The Moores barely had enough to put food on the table and pay tithes to the Prophet and his Church; there were no coppers to waste on frivolous things like stories and paper and poetry. Such privileges were reserved for apostles and men who had money to spare. Men like Ezra.
    “Take your time,” said Tobis, strolling closer, the spiced scent of his pipe smoke wafting through the shelves. “Don’t let us trouble you.”
    “You’re not troubling me at all,” Immanuelle murmured, stepping toward the street. She motioned toward Judas, who stood beneath the shadow of a lamppost, striking the cobbles with his hooves. “I was just leaving. I’m not here to shop, only to peddle.”
    “Nonsense,” the shopkeeper spoke around the stem of his pipe. “There’s a book for everyone. There must be something that catches your eye.”
    Immanuelle’s gaze went to Ezra—to his fine wool coat and polished boots, to the leather-bound books tucked beneath his arm, so well made she imagined the price of one would be enough to cover Abram’s medicines for weeks to come. She flushed. “I have no money.”
    The shopkeeper smiled, his teeth riddled with steel and copper. “Then how about a bargain? I’ll trade you a book in exchange for the ram.”
    For a split moment, she hesitated.
    Some foolish part of her was willing to do it, willing to sell Judas for a few scraps of poetry. But then she thought of Honor with wads of cloth packed into the toes of her shoes to fill the holes and stop the wet from seeping through, of Glory in herhand-me-down dress, hanging off her shoulders like an old grain sack. She thought of Abram and his barking cough, thought of all the