Read Online Percival's Angel by Anne Eliot Crompton - Free Book Online Page B

have been…”
    â€œLady! Shush!” Ivie swiveled frightened eyes toward the dusky bower entrance.
    But Alanna could not shush. Whispers and murmurs spilled over from her rising fountain of fear. “You know, I have sometimes wondered if they might want to steal Percy. They do steal babes, that is known.”
    Watching the doorway, Ivie agonized. “Lady! Hush!”
    â€œAnd I have wondered if they might come in the night, any night, and cut our throats while we dream. But as yet we have seen no hair, no whisker—”
    â€œI have!”
    â€œWhat?” Alanna stared through deep, indoor dusk into Ivie’s wide, fear-glinting eyes. “What have you seen?”
    â€œI think. Yesterday.”
    â€œIn Mary’s holy name! What?”
    â€œAs I brought water from the river…”
    Alanna leaned nose to nose with Ivie. She breathed, “Speak, girl!”
    â€œAt the steep place in the trail…no breath left in me…I thought I saw…something…” Ivie made a graceful, bounding hand gesture. “Like that. Cross the trail ahead of me.”
    Hopefully, “Squirrel? Hare?”
    â€œTwo legs.”
    â€œAaahh…”
    â€œBrown breeches. Tunic. Cap.”
    â€œHow big?”
    â€œMaybe like a…wolfhound.”
    â€œMary defend!”
    A few days passed; then Alanna, standing carefully among prickly blackberry vines, felt…watched.
    She had grown used to this feeling in the forest. Eyes watched, always and everywhere—bird eyes, mouse eyes. Maybe wolf eyes.
    But this time, she paused in her work. With purple-stained, bleeding fingers she dropped three plump blackberries into the reed basket slung from her neck. Then she stood like wooden Holy Mary, feeling the forest around her.
    Sunlight slanted down between giant oak trunks into the blackberry clearing. Birds chirped and hopped in branches high and low. A dormouse perched on a blackberry tip, still as herself, watching her. She looked back at it. Thought, It’s not you. Not you I feel…
    The watching came from…she felt it most strongly on her left side.
    Quickly, abruptly, she turned her head.
    And saw only green and golden light; orange and brown oak trunks.
    She looked lower.
    There.
    Alanna breathed in, and not out again.
    Down among blackberry vines, knee-high to Alanna, brown eyes gazed up at her.
    The eyes were set close together in a small, brown face; the curious, interested gaze reminded her of the fox in the peas.
    Black braids poked from under a dun skin cap to brush frail shoulders. Mouth and chin were purple. With dried blood? No. Blackberry juice.
    The mouth gaped briefly. Fox-sharp incisors peeked out.
    Alanna struggled to breathe.
    The face vanished.
    No leaf moved.
    Alanna let go her breath and gasped in huge, new breath.
    The face was gone. But its image hung still in her eyes, branded upon her mind. Again she saw juice-dark mouth, foxy eyes and teeth.
    Was only curious. Meant no harm. This time.
    Alanna drew breath again. And remembered—
    â€”Percy! Holy, blessed Mary!
    Percy was back at the bower with Ivie. Probably in his basket. Probably outdoors. Probably cooing and gurgling so the woods around resounded. Ivie would be trying to work—scrape a skin? braid reeds? pull a weed? Ivie might turn her back!
    Alanna crossed herself.
    Frozen life flowed again up and down her body.
    Heedless of clinging prickles, she tore herself out of the vines. Ran straight into an oak where she expected a trail. Spun around. Found the trail. Bounded along it like a hare.
    Wrong way. Wrong trail. Have to go back to the blackberry clearing with the little brown thing…
    Mary and Martha, they’re all around! Makes no difference. They’re laughing at me now.
    She clung to a birch, seeing this. Understanding. Accepting.
    Breathless, she ran back up the trail to the blackberries.
    Found the right trail. Trotted home gasping, hands pressed to aching