Thorns Read Online Free PDF Page B

urging me to participate.
    I searched my mind for a riddle. “Uh…what brings danger and strife, but also relief and life? We are…uh…we are prisoners of it, yet protected by it.”
    “Snow,” she answered immediately, with a sniff of triumph. She knew that one. It was one our father had told us often while we’d worked the quota as children.
    “What tells stories with its fingers and keeps hunger at bay with its hands?” Jonn asked.
    “A Weaver,” Ivy said. “Because we spin yarns and fulfill our quota. Something harder, Jonn.”
    He pursed his lips, thinking. Then he smiled. “What, when kept sharp, may win you a wife, but when dull, may cost you your life?”
    Her forehead wrinkled. “A kitchen knife?”
    “How would a kitchen knife find you a wife?” I demanded.
    She scowled. “I don’t know. What’s the answer, smart one?”
    “Wit.”
    She stuck out her tongue at me, but the mood in the room was easing from icy to warmth. “You only know it because Da always told you all the answers to all the riddles.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Hardly true.”
    “Well, here’s one she doesn’t know the answer to,” Jonn said. “What woven secret will keep you warm?”
    She pondered the question. “I don’t know.” She glared at me as if it were my fault. “What is it?”
    I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I don’t know, either—which just goes to show that he didn’t tell me everything. Da always teased us with that one, remember?”
    “Ma used to say it was love,” he said.
    “Well, I think it’s yarn,” I muttered.
    “Yarn isn’t a very romantic answer,” she said.
    “The riddle isn’t ‘what romantic secret will keep you warm.’”
    “Still—”
    “I don’t think there is a single answer,” Jonn interrupted. “Da loved to tease, and he liked to see us try to puzzle things out. Especially smarty over there.” He nodded at me. “Drove her nuts not knowing the answer to every riddle.”
    I snorted to show my derision at such a claim.
    She smiled hesitantly, and the mood in the room warmed.
    The kettle began to squeal, and I got up to make tea. “Keep working,” I said when Ivy showed signs of slowing.
    She stuck out her tongue, and as quickly as that the mood was ruined again.
    Jonn shook his head at me, and I bit back a sigh of frustration.
    My mind returned to my conversation with Adam in the barn, and apprehension gnawed at my stomach.
    He wanted an answer, but I didn’t know what to tell him.
    I was working myself to the bone just trying to make ends meet and keep my family from starvation. How could I do anything else, dire as things were?
     
    ~
     
    That night, I crept out of bed and dug in my drawer for the Thorns brooch that had belonged to my parents. The silver branch glittered like ice in the near darkness as I turned it over, and in my mind’s eye I saw Adam’s face as he handed it to me two months ago. “You’ll need it,” he’d said.
    And yet, so far I’d done nothing.
    I closed my palm around the piece, feeling the sharp sensation of the cold metal against my hand, thinking hard of my ma and da’s faces. Pain filled my chest and burned at the back of my eyes. With a hiss of frustration, I shoved it back in the drawer beneath my socks, threw back the quilt, and padded to the window that overlooked the yard below.
    The moon cast a silver glow over everything, and through the frost on the glass, the forest made a black smudge against the stark white of the snow. I pressed my forehead against the chilled glass and breathed out slowly.
    I didn’t know what to do.
    The shadows shifted and rippled, and I caught the faintest glimmer of red light glancing off the snow. A Watcher? Or simply my imagination coupled with my exhausted mind?
    I stared at the spot where I’d seen movement until my eyes ached as I strained for the sound of claws against the snow, but the night was silent.
    My sister’s breathing filled the room in a steady rasp, and my mind spun a