Willow Read Online Free PDF

gagging, Burglekutt heaved himself to his feet. “You’ll pay!” he croaked. “Mark my words!” And he lumbered off to the road.
    “You shouldn’t be mean to him,” Willow said when he had gone.
    “Oh, I can’t help it!” Kiaya stamped her foot again. “The man is such a toad !” She leaned over and patted Bets, who was grunting happily. “Good Bets! Good pig!”
    Mims and Ranon appeared then at the top of the riverbank. They had managed to drag the little boat all the way up to the edge of the field. “Mama! Come see!”
    “What’s that, Willow? What do they have?”
    “A baby.”
    “A what?”
    “A baby, Kiaya. A girl. She came drifting down the river in that little boat, and it landed here. We’re going to send her on. We’re not going to keep her. Kiaya. Kiaya, did you hear what I . . .”
    But she was already running across the field toward Ranon and Mims and the small object on the ground between them. Willow hurried after her. “Don’t fall in love with her! Nobody fall in love with her!”
    But it was too late. Mims and Ranon were already laughing with the child, and when Kiaya saw her she clasped her hands and gasped. “Oh, poor thing,” she said, bending down and gathering the child to her breast. “Poor little thing! She’s cold and wet, Willow. And hungry, too. But look how good she is! Not crying at all!”
    “Kiaya, please put her back. Do you know what’ll happen if Burglekutt finds out?”
    “Oh poof! Burglekutt!”
    “Well he is the Prefect. And you know what’s happened whenever Daikinis . . .”
    “Babies don’t count.”
    “Of course they count!”
    “No they don’t! Babies don’t make wars. They don’t have enemies. Come on, children. We’ll feed her and give her a nice bath. Send the boat on, Willow. She won’t be needing it.”
    “Come up soon, Dada.” Mims smiled. “You can help, too.”
    Willow watched his family head toward the house, the children dancing beside their mother, jumping up to peek at the infant. He carried the little boat back down to the river’s edge and was about to launch it when he noticed a curious thing. None of the strips of cloth binding it together was tied. They looked as if they had been wrapped up in haste, and left loose. But they were not loose now. Willow tugged at one and found it stiff as iron. The same was true of all the other lashings; no knots, yet they could not be freed. Some power that Willow could not see had secured them there. Magic!
    Willow glanced around. No one else was on the river or the bank. He rolled up his sleeves. He spit on his hands. If magic had fixed those strips of cloth in place, then magic —his magic—could loosen them. He closed his eyes. He spread his hands over the boat. He prepared the only spell he knew for the loosening of things—the spell that might be used to hasten a late spring, or to free a pig’s leg if it got jammed between large stones: “Yawn tamath efforcut frume!”
    It was a dangerous venture, sorcery! Sometimes, if charms didn’t work, they recoiled. Sometimes the reaction was like laying your hands on a hot stove, and sometimes like being struck by lightning. You never knew. Still, if you wanted to be good, you had to take the risk. You had to practice.
    “Yawn tamath efforcut frume!” Willow declared again.
    No lightning, no explosion hurled him back against the bank. Had it worked? Cautiously, he opened one eye.
    Yes! But not quite as he had intended. The cloth lashings were still firmly in place; it was not they that had been loosened, but the boat itself. The little craft was moving across the mudbank and through the weeds toward the middle of the river where the swift currents flowed.
    Delighted not to have been struck by yet another failed charm, Willow laughed and followed it, running along the shore and then up the bank where he could see it better. Gracefully it swept along until it had reached the exact center of Ufgood Reach, the spot where Willow and his