Read Online Scarborough Fair and Other Stories by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough - Free Book Online

I see why now. I always hated all of the others—even hated her for loving them. But, you know, it took all of us to figure it out.”
    â€œYou’re too modest,” Mu Mao said. “You overcame your jealousy of your housemates to save their lives. You are evolving very quickly, my brother, and growing in enlightenment.”
    Brother Paddy licked Mustard’s ear affectionately and for once, Mustard didn’t mind. “Not only that but he’s smart. Mustard was always the smart one. Why, now he’s a real detective, just like in those books of Susan’s.”
    â€œOr on TV,” Blackie mumbled, stirring and sitting up. The other cats surrounded him, licking and purring and he responded with a weak purr himself.
    â€œThe Mystery series,” Sister Paka said. “That’s right. Oh, Mustard, you have to stay now, won’t he, Master Mu Mao?”
    â€œIf he wishes, of course. It’s entirely up to him. But it would add very much to our order to have our very own Brother Catfael among us.”

Whirlwinds
    by
    Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
    The old woman had carried Dezbah when she could no longer walk. The same one had told the frightened child stories of their people, of Monster Slayer, Born-for-Water, and Changing Woman, to make her heart strong. The same one had been the one to calm her when Dezbah was torn from the bodies of her murdered parents. This grandmother, this same one who had helped Dezbah on the twenty day forced march from Fort Defiance to Hweeldi, or Bosque Redondo as the soldiers called it, now ran naked and screaming toward the fort. The soldiers gathered outside their adobe houses to watch and mock and throw things.
    Dezbah was frightened, for herself as well as the grandmother. The soldiers weren’t shooting yet, instead they made bets and tried to hit the old lady with clods of horse dung. The dung of their horses.
    All the tame horses of the Dine’ were dead. Dezbah, who was more commonly called Horses Talk to Her, had heard them screaming, and the wild ones too—wondering why? The Dine’ treated them like brothers, like the valuable beings they were. Why had they died, and the other animals? Men who would do that to the animals, to babies, to elders, who would shoot a woman going into labor because she slowed the progress of the march, that sort of man would do anything.
    â€œAwww, for the luvva Jaysus, wouldja lookit yez!” It was a funny sounding voice that rang out so suddenly, from within the group of soldiers. Dezbah should not have been able to understand what it said, but she did. A man with hair as black as her father’s and skin almost as dark, pushed his way through the other men and stood with both fists on his hips. A blanket dangled from one hand and he turned almost absently and threw it to Dezbah.
    She caught a thought with it. The man’s face was a mask of disgust but his thought, urgent as it was, was kind. “Wrap it round her, girl, and away with you both.” Ah! She knew him now, though she did not think she had heard him speak aloud before he began scolding the soldiers. She had heard his thoughts before, but this was the first time she knew who the thinker was. Perhaps it was because she saw, as much as heard, what he thought, that she could understand him though he spoke none of her tongue and she had learned only some of the English the soldiers spoke during the Long Walk. He had been on the walk too. She had seen him before and taken no notice. When she heard his thoughts before, she realized she mistook them for those of a Navajo. Only the first time, she realized now, she would have known the thought for what it was, had she not been so sick from all of the other disasters striking like lightening into the canyon. Through all of the dying, his thought had fallen like a dead pine needle from among the soldiers lining the rim of the canyon like a dead lrsf. “My God, what are we doing to