Read Online Plenty by Ananda Braxton-Smith - Free Book Online Page A

By the greenhoods she stopped. There was a cool wind stirring and the smell of rain. Nana stepped behind Maddy.
    “Who are you?” she asked Grace with suspicion.
    “It’s just Grace, Mrs Spyrou,” said Grace.
    Lots of people would have been scared when Nana Mad went mad for real. Not Grace. Grace kept talking in this soft, light voice like she hadn’t noticed anything. Her hands moved as she talked, and sometimes her long fingers accidentally brushed against Nana’s hand. Nana was hypnotised by the soft voice and her eyes followed Grace’s circling hands like they were faraway birds – and then she let herself be led quietly home.

    Nana had left her house wide open and the gas stove still burning. The kitchen ceiling was spotted with slow circling blowflies. Sometime in the morning she had got up and walked out.
    Maddy turned off the gas and rang Mum. There was a pause and Mum said she’d be right there.
    By now Nana was a bit better. She remembered Maddy, and knew her house.
    But she was still confused about Grace. She stared.
    “You’re a black one!” Nana said, peering into Grace’s face. “A dark horse, eh?”
    Maddy felt herself flush to the soles of her feet. Her parents always said never –
never ever
– mention a person’s skin colour. It was
rude
and it was
never necessary
. Nana hadn’t heard that rule.
    But Grace snorted like a horse, and it made Nana giggle.
    “It’s just me,” Grace told her again.
    “I have a horse in Cyprus,” Nana told Grace then, like it was important. “In the morning she put her face in my window. Like an alarm clock.”
    “Lucky,” said Grace. “I’d love a horse.”
    “I was lucky then,” Nana said. “Really, really. The horse was black. Her breath smell like apples. She come when I call, like a dog. Her mane was long, long. Down to the ground.”
    Nana’s hair was stuck to her face like seaweed and she was wrestling her feet out of her gumboots.
    “My feet,” she said and flopped back. She was almost crying.
    “Here, Nana,” said Maddy and bent to tug off the sticky boots.
    “The soldiers took her,” Nana whispered to Maddy.
    Outside, there was a faint squeal of tyres and the sound of breaking gnomes. Moments later Maddy’s mother rushed in. Nana’s eyes snapped opened.
    “I’m here, I’m here,” Maddy’s mother said and sat gently next to Nana.
    Then Mum collected Nana Mad into her arms. Long shadows formed outside the front window and slowly the sun sailed over the house but still Mum held Nana. It grew dark but nobody turned on the light.
    “Why did she call you Elenaki, Mrs Frank?” asked Grace.
    “
Elenaki
just means ‘little Ellen’, in Greek,” Mum said. “I wasn’t always Ellen Frank, you know. I used to be Eleni. Eleni Spyrou.”
    “Mrs Spyrou was telling us about her horse,” Grace said. “The black one. With the mane.”
    Maddy’s mother smoothed the hair back from Nana’s sleeping face.
    “It’s not important any more,” Mum said. “She forgets things. Unimportant things.”
    She was looking and looking. Like she was looking for all those things, thought Maddy. Those unimportant things.
    “But,” said Mum, “it was my horse, actually.”

Chapter Fourteen
Ex-Kakopetria
    When trouble came to Eleni Spyrou’s island of Cyprus in the turquoise Mediterranean Sea, she’d just had her eighth birthday. She still chased donkeys and picked wildflowers, and ran in a gang through her town of Kakopetria where she and her family had always lived. She loved wild roses, deep-fried cheese with jam and her little black mare, Stonewall.
    On Eleni’s birthday she brushed Stonewall until she shone. She tied her mane and tail with ribbons. Her friends climbed the horse like a mountain and tried to ride her in groups. But Stonewall never kicked or bit or tried to wipe the girls off against a post like some horses.
    It had been a beautiful day. The kind of day you remember, shimmering and sweet. Then the next day, deep in the