Read Online Chains of Gold by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online Page A

at it and uncovered something that shone whitely—a turnip. I found a flat piece of rock and dug harder, with it and with my hands. There were withered stalks to be seen beneath the snow, now that I knew what to look for, and they guided me to more turnips and other things, I think they were parsnips, and orange roots such as I had seen in cattle mangers the night before—I did not care. If cattle could eat such things, so could I. On the instant I bit into one and decided it was tolerably good.
    Arlen had long since tethered Bucca and come to help me. He was finding roots as well, but he took his first handfuls to the horse before returning to eat himself. I had sat down on a stone and was eating heartily. He stared at me in wonder.
    â€œThat is someone’s foundation you are sitting on, I think,” he said. “This was their garden; see the furrows? The house was destroyed by fire or war, I suppose, and they were killed or perhaps they went away. But the root crops survived. Cerilla, you say you know nothing, but you saw this place when I would have ridden past.”
    â€œI saw nothing,” I said.
    â€œThen how did you know food was here?”
    â€œIt wasn’t me.”
    â€œOh? Who then?” He smiled, thinking I was teasing him again, but I did not answer. I shied from saying what was true: that I had been told about this place, voicelessly, by something not myself.
    Arlen gave up on getting any sense out of me, his gaze wandering. “Wait,” he exclaimed. “Are those apples on yonder trees?”
    They were, withered but still red and edible. We gathered as many as my mantle pockets would hold and we gave Bucca some. I am sure Arlen saw those apples on his own, without any strange prompting. But I had not so seen the fruits that lay beneath the soil.
    We ate more roots and held some in our hands and took to horse again. Before we had gone far, the peculiar summons sounded through me once more. “Wait,” I murmured to Arlen, “there it is again,” and I slid to the ground and walked. When I felt compelled to stop, I searched beneath the snow and found a flat rock. Arlen had come up behind me expectantly. I turned the rock up—a squirrel’s hoard of seeds and acorns lay beneath. We both broke into laughter. “No, thank you,” we declared in unison, and we went on our random way. I felt the odd presence no more that day.
    â€œShall we try again?” Arlen asked as evening drew on, meaning that we should again ask hospitality of an outlander. I acceded. It seemed to me that the problem of the previous evening might have been their oddity, those folks, not ours. So when we saw a prosperous-looking holding in the fold of a hill we rode toward it, found the gate in the stone wall, and entered the yard. A woman met us with a smile. But even as we dismounted the smile faded and she backed away from us.
    â€œGo on, go on your way. Please. It’s early yet.” she begged. And as we stared at her she ran inside and swung shut the heavy wooden door. We could hear her barring it and calling to her children to stay away from the windows, for the dead were riding by.
    So ride we did. “The dead don’t hunger,” Arlen grumbled. “We should have asked for food.”
    There was another, poorer holding farther up the valley; we could see it in the distance, and we reached it in the dusk. A man with a lantern was coming in from his work in the byre. He brought the light close enough to look at us, then shouted and lifted his stick. Arlen turned Bucca and sent him out of the yard at the gallop. We both fell silent, feeling like lepers.
    At least the night was clear; there was starlight to ride by. It was also cold. We took shelter finally in a sheep shed far up a long hillside, at the distance of a meadow from the nearest homestead, and we took pains that the folk should not see us in their sheep cot. It was a little, low stone building