Read Online Falcon in the Glass by Susan Fletcher - Free Book Online

they’ll be discovered. You could hide easily enough alone, but with all of them  . . .” He’d lose his position. He’d have to give up the glass, forever. And Mama and Pia . . . “My family will starve; they’ll be put out in the cold.”
    â€œAnd what of my family?” She gazed at him, a flat, dead stare — as cold as the wading bird’s eye — and he heard the echo of his own words. As if it would be unthinkable for his own family to starve or be left out in the cold, but tolerable for these children. He felt a stab of embarrassment, of shame.
    â€œThese are . . . your brothers and sisters?”
    She hesitated. “They’re family .”
    He wasn’t sure what she meant. Not, he suspected, what he meant by the word. But in any case these children were nomads. This was the life they were accustomed to. It was none of Renzo’s doing.
    â€œThere must be somewhere else they can shelter,” he said.
    â€œThere isn’t.”
    â€œThere must be.”
    â€œThere’s only the marsh, and it’s colder by the day! Things’re happening now. Things that you, in your cozy little world, can’t imagine.”
    â€œYou know nothing of my world! You’re so full of your own righteousness, you think you’re so smart, but it’s you who know nothing.”
    A long, hacking spasm sounded from the storage room. Renzo peered through the doorway, lifted his torch to see. It was the boy, the one from the marsh. He was shivering. None of them had shoes, Renzo saw — just rags, like the marsh boy and Letta. Some few cloaks there were, but most of the children wore nothing over their tunics, patched and worn and tattered. Their limbs looked nearly as thin and bony as the legs of the birds perched on the shelves above. Tangled hair hung across the children’s eyes; grime splotched their faces; their noses dripped.
    The shutter flew open in a sudden gust of wind, banged against the casement. The torch guttered, sending black shadows flickering across the room. Needles of rain slantedin, tapping on the casement, on the floor. Renzo felt the chill creep inside, felt it thread in invisible currents across his body.
    â€œThey’ll take sick in the marsh,” Letta said. “They’ll catch the lung fever and die.”
    He breathed in, filling his chest with a sinking heaviness. Bad enough that he was sheltering the girl, but if anyone caught the children here, the children and their birds . . .
    â€œOnly in the storage room,” he said. “Only when you’re here. And they’ll have to cage their birds—”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThey must.”
    â€œWe never cage our birds. Not ever.”
    â€œWell, then you’ll have to clean up after them — every single feather and dropping.”
    She nodded.
    â€œPromise,” he insisted.
    â€œI promise,” she said. “For true.”
    But Renzo had a dark foreboding that he’d started down a path he’d soon regret.
    â—†Â Â Â Â Â Â â—†Â Â Â Â Â Â â—†
    For a while they honored his wishes. Sometime after midnight Letta would watch for Taddeo to leave. Then she opened the unlatched shutters and helped the children crawl in through the window to the storeroom. She settled them in and then went to work with Renzo. Every morning, before she left, she and a few of the older ones cleaned up droppings and feathers.
    Still, it distracted him — frightened him — knowing they were there. Knowing he could be interrupted at any moment. Imagining what would happen if someone came into the glassworks and found the children.
    Sometimes, just when he was on the verge of attaching a stem to a base, or perfecting the lip of an urn, a small voice would call out, “Letta?”
    She would say, “Wait!” and help Renzo finish what he was doing. But the rhythm had been broken;