Voices Read Online Free PDF Page B

lion stood side by side. When they moved, the clear space of pavement moved with them. The crowd had gone almost silent.
    I saw the top of some kind of carriage behind the woman and the lion. They turned towards it. The pavement appeared as if by magic in front of them as the crowd backed away. It was a little caravan wagon. The two horses hitched to it stood calmly, facing away from us. The woman opened the back door of the wagon, the lion leapt up into it, it’s tail disappearing in a lovely curve, and the woman latched the door. She came back at once, and the crowd backed away from her again, even without the lion.
    She knelt by the Ald officer, who was sitting up looking dizzy. She spoke to him a little, and then stood up and came to me where I was standing, still holding the horse because I didn’t dare let it go. The crowd drew back with some pushing and shoving, which scared the horse again. It jerked against my grip on the bridle, and the market basket on my arm fell open and the fish and cheese and greens all flew out, which scared the horse worse, and I could not hold it—but the woman was there. She put her hand on the horse’s neck and said something to it. It shook it’s head, with a kind of grumble in it’s chest, and stood still.
    She put out her hand and I gave her the reins. “Well done,” she said to me, “well done!” Then she said something else to the horse, close to it’s ear, softly, and blew a little of her breath into it’s nostrils. It sighed and drooped it’s head. I was frantically trying to pick up our food for the next two days before it was trampled on or stolen. Seeing me scrabbling on the pavement, the woman gave the horse a hard pat and bent down to help me. We tumbled the big fish and the greens into the basket, and somebody in the crowd tossed me the cheese.
    “Thank you, good people of Ansul!” the woman said in a clear voice and a foreign accent. “He deserves a reward, this boy!” And to the officer, who was now standing up shakily on the other side of his horse, she said, “This boy caught your mare, Captain. It was my lion frightened her. I ask your pardon for that.”
    “The lion, yes,” the Ald said, still dazed. He stared at her, and stared at me, and after a while dug into his belt pouch and held out something to me—a penny.
    I was fastening the clasp on my basket. I ignored him and his penny.
    “Oh, so generous, so generous,” people in the crowd murmured, and somebody crooned, “A fountain of riches!” The officer glared around at them all. He finally refocused on the woman who stood in front of him holding his horse’s reins.
    “Get your hands off her!” he said. “You—woman—it was you had that animal—a lion—”
    The woman tossed the reins at him, slapped the mare lightly, and slipped into the crowd. This time the people closed round her. In a moment I saw the roof of the wagon moving off.
    I saw the wisdom of invisibility and ducked away into the old-clothes market while the officer was still trying to remount his mare.
    The old-clothes vendor called High Hat had been watching the show, standing on her stool. She clambered down. “Used to horses, are you?” she said to me.
    “No,” I said. “Was that a lion?”
    “Whatever it is, it goes with that storyteller. And his wife. So they say. Stay to hear him. He’s the prime lord of storytellers, they say.”
    “I have to get my fish home.”
    “Ah. Fish don’t wait.” She fixed her fierce, mean little eyes on me. “Here,” she said, and flipped me something, which I caught by reflex. It was a penny. She had already turned away.
    I thanked her. I left the penny in the hollow under Lero, where people leave god-gifts and poorer people find them. I still didn’t care if the guards saw me, because I knew they wouldn’t. I was just starting up West Street away from the market, past the high red arcades of the Customs, when I heard a clip-clop and the clatter of wheels. There along