Read Online A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge - Free Book Online Page B

newly woken trap decided there was no food to catch after all and slowly dimmed its light. Darkness descended, and the dripping water covered the sound of one solitary
figure snuffing into her mask.
    The Great Outside that had filled Neverfell’s thoughts had noticed her and judged her. It had found her wanting. No, worse than that, it had screamed in horror and disgust and fled from
her. Her neck was bruised, but far more painful was the thought of kind-big-sister Zouelle hitting out at her.
    Wincing a little, she picked herself up and felt herself over for lumps and cuts. Then, still snuffing with misery and pain, she limped off after the cart. Neverfell had never taken rejection
well. In fact, despite plenty of practice, she had never learned how to take it at all. Aside from anything else, she still had a rabbit to retrieve.
    A few minutes later, her persistence was rewarded by the sound of a deafening crash.
    Neverfell ran towards the noise as quickly as her bruises and the near-absence of light would allow. Peering round a corner at last she glimpsed her quarries’ lantern and
discovered the reason for the cacophony.
    There had been very good reasons for the cart’s previous sedate pace. The way was scattered with fallen rocks large and small, and occasional foot-deep potholes just waiting for a careless
wheel. To judge by the tilt of the cart, its pell-mell flight had run its left-hand wheel straight into one of these holes.
    Both girls had dismounted. The pony-boy, with some hushed verbal instruction from Zouelle, seemed to be trying to heft the cart out of the hole again. Borcas was acting as lookout, which
appeared to involve a lot of whimpering and hand-wringing as she gazed back the way they had come.
    When Neverfell stepped out, legs trembling, hands raised to show that she was harmless, Borcas gave a wail and pointed at her.
    ‘The demon! It followed ush! It’sh come after ush!’
    ‘Argh!’
    A shower of inexpertly thrown rocks clattered around Neverfell, chipping pieces off the walls.
    ‘I . . . stop it! You nearly – ow! Stop it! I won’t hurt you! I don’t want to—’
    She might have explained in more detail, but at this point the rabbit decided that it had had quite enough of all the screaming, and made a break for a fissure in the wall. Neverfell promptly
abandoned her placatory pose and sprinted towards the cart to the terror of its passengers, and then past it, ending her run with a pounce at full stretch. Her body hit rock, her hands met fur, and
she had it, flattened to the ground, terrified, maddened, tensed for action but still. She scrambled to a crouch, held it between her knees, ripped off her doublet, and a few moments later was
cuddling a kicking, wild-eyed rabbit bundle.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she babbled helplessly, ‘I’m sorry, I had to get my . . . It kicked the bucket and ran and I squeezed out after it and I’m here . . .’
    Her voice sounded so ugly and unused next to theirs, and the welling of tears was making everything worse.
    ‘I won’t hurt you.’ She rose unsteadily, and took a few limping steps back towards the cart.
    ‘What do you want?’ Zouelle’s voice was strident but tremulous. She was holding the whip out towards Neverfell in a very shaky hand.
    ‘I just . . . I just . . . needed some cheese . . .’ In spite of herself Neverfell started to sob.
    The three strangers observed her rigidly, then exchanged brief sideways glances.
    ‘Does anybody have any cheese?’ whispered Zouelle to the others. ‘If we give it cheese, will it go away?’
    ‘No . . . it’s not just any cheese. The . . .’ Neverfell collapsed to her knees, hugging the rabbit while it tried to bite her. The conversation had gone wrong. She tried to
explain everything, her mistake in sending the cheese to Madame Appeline, her desperate need to recover it, but the words sounded clumsy and stupid even in her ears. When she finished, she was
scarcely sure that the others were