Read Online Never Trust a Dead Man by Vivian Vande Velde - Free Book Online

this far for nothing—to have her send him back, saying, "Do it again, slower." So he counted more slowly on his own, pausing between each number.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
    Except she had said, "Count." Now he suddenly wondered,
Did she mean count out loud?
    Sure he was going to be the death of himself, Selwyn counted out loud. His pace was faster than his second mental counting, but slower than his first. "One, two, three..." By the time he reached "four," he was out of breath, the air gone out of him in the same bubbles that carried his voice. He just barely managed "five," then sat up, gasping, hating himself, hating Elswyth, wondering how she talked him into these things.
    He got to his feet, leaning on the stick, which—surprisingly—didn't break under his weight, and which—amazingly—was tall enough to support him even standing. He looked down and saw that it had become a thick, smooth walking staff. His clothes had changed, too: Shirt and breeches had become a brown rough-spun robe, and under his hand the square of wool had changed shape and material. He lifted it and found a straw hat.
    "Get out of the water before you get soaked," Elswyth yelled at him.
    And, incredibly, he realized that the part of him that was out of the water was totally dry. He made his way to the bank, and the water that had covered him ran off, the way water runs off metal.
    "I thought you said you knew how to count to five," Elswyth berated him. "You stayed in there so long, I thought you'd drowned."
    She didn't, he noted, say anything about being worried, or about coming in to get him. He didn't explain that he'd become confused about her instructions but only said, looking at the hat and staff, "I didn't understand about the cloth and the stick."
    "Magic can't make something out of nothing," Elswyth said. "That's why I said I couldn't give you gold. What—did you think I was just being difficult?"
    Selwyn decided it was safest not to answer that question. He saw that the hair on the back of his hands was thick and dark, and that his hands were much broader than they had been. The dunking she had inflicted on him had changed his appearance, as well as his clothes, making him stocky rather than just small, and darker, and—he felt his face—hook-nosed. He said, "Thank you. This will work out well."
    "I doubt that," she snorted.
    Farold landed on his shoulder. "The pilgrim and his bat are ready," he announced, "and doesn't that make a foolish-looking picture? A pilgrim and his dog makes much more sense."
    "Six months for a dog," Elswyth said, making the offer to Selwyn—since he was so lucky—and not Farold. "And it will be a small dog."
    "A bat is fine with this pilgrim," Selwyn said.
    "Then I will see you," Elswyth said, "in seven days. Actually, now that you've wasted so much time, six and a half."
    She didn't even wish him luck.

NINE
    Elswyth went, and finally there were no more reasons for Selwyn to call her back. He wavered between relief and alarm: relief because he no longer needed to protect his head and arms from her attacks and because he was in no more immediate danger of bargaining away more years of service to her; alarm because he was on his own. Being with Farold was no discernible improvement over being alone.
    He gathered what wild berries he could find in the dark, which left him still starving but no longer faint with hunger.
    "What are you doing?" Farold demanded in his irritating little voice as Selwyn began to look for a comfortable place to sit—to, perhaps, catch a little sleep.
    "Looking for a place to rest until morning," Selwyn said. He'd spent the last two nights in a mass grave, sleeping fitfully when exhaustion got the better part of terror, so he wasn't fussy; he settled down on a grassy area and tossed away only a couple sharp-edged rocks.
    "Oh, that makes sense," Farold told him. "Pay the witch by the hour, then first thing you do is take a nap."
    "Excuse me," Selwyn said. "You've been