Read Online Someone Else's Conflict by Alison Layland - Free Book Online

asked.
    â€˜What’s in there?’
    â€˜Just tobacco.’
    She surprised herself by believing him. ‘Go ahead. I don’t mind at all. Most of it’ll go up the chimney anyway.’
    She watched him intent on the job of filling the smooth wooden bowl, collecting up every crumb of spilt tobacco.
    â€˜You don’t see many of those these days. Surely cigs are easier?’
    He rolled his eyes theatrically. ‘Commonplace. Anyway, you can’t beat this.’ He crumbled a flake of tobacco between his fingers and held it out for her to smell. ‘If you’re going to do a job do it well, I say.’
    He produced a Zippo from the pouch and disappeared momentarily in a cloud of fragrant smoke. She breathed in luxuriously, suppressing one of the rare moments of regret she’d felt since giving up. Something else she’d determined to change about her life when she and Matt split up.
    â€˜If I ever did settle it would probably be somewhere like this,’ said Jay out of the blue. ‘Woods, trees. A mighty forest. The kind of forest travellers get lost in. For days. Wandering round and round, trees looking the same, each clearing a relief until you realise there are more trees the other side of it… Until you come to one with a house. A house not unlike this one. Like the house the children came to.’
    â€˜The children?’
    â€˜In the story.’
    Story? After a day in which her world, or the Stoneleigh part of it, had literally been turned upside down, not even the idea of listening to a man she hardly knew telling stories in her own living room seemed strange. It was good not to have to think for a while. Let him do the talking.
    â€˜They’d been walking for days.’ He waved the pipe in a gesture that encompassed days, weeks, months. ‘They’d lost everything – homes, friends, families – just the three of them left there were, two boys and a girl. They’d also lost their pursuers. Outrun them, outwitted them. Outraged them. And now they were free. They didn’t want freedom; they wanted to go home. But their homes no longer existed, so freedom was their only choice. They had no food, it was cold. Then they came to a house in a clearing. They were afraid; they’d learned to fear everyone they didn’t know. But where else could they go? The oldest boy knocked, and an old woman answered.
    â€˜â€œCome in, I’ve been waiting for you.”
    â€˜She invited them in to the warm fire and fed them with a hot, wholesome broth. As the younger two were falling asleep in the cosy cupboard bed at the side of the room, the oldest boy asked: “How did you know about us?”
    â€˜â€œThe forest told me. If you hadn’t arrived I’d have come to find you.”
    â€˜She led him to join the others under the warm blankets. As he drifted off to sleep he half-opened his eyes and thought he saw a huge raven circling the room before it flew out through the window. He called out to the old woman once in his fear but there was no answer and sleep soon overtook him.
    â€˜The next day the children were allowed to rest, but after that the old woman had them working for her. The youngest boy swept the house, the girl gathered and prepared the food, the oldest boy tended the pigs and collected firewood. The old woman slept by day as they worked, but every afternoon she woke up, looked over the work they’d done and gave them a hearty meal from the ingredients the girl had prepared. Every night they ate the food she gave them and fell asleep straight away afterwards in the cosy bed, grateful for the new home she’d given them. Sometimes, the oldest boy thought he saw the raven leaving the room, or returning before dawn, but mostly he was too tired to give it a second thought, and by morning he’d forget. One day, the oldest boy looked at the girl as he fed the fire while she sat spinning.
    â€˜â€œWhat were we