Read Online The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff - Free Book Online Page A

be more food for the rest. Nothing in her face indicated whether this was her version of a joke.
    On one particular evening, the boys turned up with a bag they’d half carried half dragged from some distance away. Pell had disposed of her scruples and felt pleased at the thought of meat that night. But what they pulled out of the sack was wriggling and whining and glad as day to be free, with two pointed faces, a soft black and gray coat, and a body swinging wildly in all directions attached to two wild sweeps of tail. Once separated, the creatures looked ugly as skinned rabbits, all ribs and bony legs and long straight feet, and just two more mouths to feed as far as Pell could see. When she asked the boys what their plans were, and could she put the beasts in the pot for dinner, Eammon grinned, picked the male up by its scruff and handed it to her, saying, “He’s for you.”
    Well, the problem with creatures is how they latch onto you with their eyes, and the smaller and skinnier the creature, the bigger and more determined the eyes. “Take him back,” she told them, but they danced away and meanwhile the thing managed to scruffle its front half up onto her lap faster than she could push it off. She turned impatient with Eammon, who just grinned and said, “He likes you, all right.”
    What was left of her heart sank for being burdened yet again with attachment.
    The next quarter hour was spent digging the creature out of her sleeve or from under her skirt or trying to untangle it from around her feet, and Pell thought it had probably been stolen and missed some person at its proper home.
    But Esther looked at the animals dispassionately. They were not babies but scrawny adolescents, old enough to have lost their needle-sharp teeth and endearing expressions. “Whoever owned them didn’t much care for them,” she said. Which was a sentiment there was no arguing with, especially once Eammon explained that they’d found the animals already nicely packaged in the sack, with a large stone thrown in for good measure.
    The rest of the little ones snatched them away and took them off to worry till the poor things cried for help and quiet, and there was nothing to do but claim them both back and feed them bits of bread and milk till they curled up together, eyes closed and whimpering. Pell ate a meal not much better than the one she gave them, and when the time came for sleep, the children took the bitch and Pell pushed the dog away from her so that it curled up tight in a miserable ball alone beside her on the cold ground. And finally, half-asleep and wholly impatient, Pell pulled the shivering creature in beside her, where, with an almost human sigh of gratification, it placed its head against her heart and went immediately to sleep.
    The next day at dawn when she rose to light the fire, the animal followed exactly at her heel or under it. She looked down and, despite the appeal in its eyes, would not grudge it either bread or feeling. But Eammon and Errol saved her thinking about it further by whistling the pair off across the fields, and almost before the tea had finished brewing and the breakfast had been cleared, they were back with three fat rabbits killed clean, and the creatures happy with a carcass to chew in addition to whatever scraps of skin and bone didn’t go into the pot. After just a few good meals both animals looked less like ugly crows, and with rabbits in the pot Pell found herself accepting their presence more gratefully. Not that it mattered a whit whether she accepted them or not.
    In daytime, the two would join the muddle of children at her feet until she drove them away, and at night the bitch was banished to a place underneath the wagon, while the dog waited till Pell was asleep and crept round silent as a thief so that next time she woke it would be there, with its spine against the curve of her belly where she’d once kept Bean, and its head pressed as near as possible to the beating of her