Read Online The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey - Free Book Online Page B

else wanted to venture out into the October rain and leave the warmth of
the cottage. Marina was supposed to be reading Shakespeare—her uncle was
making good his threat to paint her as Kate the Shrew and wanted her to become
familiar with the part—but she sat at the window of the parlor and stared
out at the rain instead. Winter had definitely arrived, with Halloween a good
three weeks away. A steady, chilling rain dripped down through leafless branches
onto grass gone sere and brown-edged. Even the evergreens and the few plants
that kept their leaves throughout the winter looked dark and dismal. The air
outside smelled of wet leaves; inside the foyer where the coats hung, the odor
of wet wool hung in a miasma of perpetual damp. Only in the foyer, however.
Scented candles burned throughout the house, adding the perfume of honey and
cinnamon to counteract the faint chemical smell of the oil lamps, and someone
was always baking something in the kitchen that formed a pleasant counter to
the wet wool.
    And yet, for Marina at least, the weather wasn’t
entirely depressing. Water, life-giving, life-bearing water was all around her.
    If the air smelled only dank to the others, for her there
was an undercurrent of
potential.
She sensed the currents of faint
power that followed each drop of rain, she tasted it, like green tea in the
back of her throat, and stirred restlessly, feeling as if there ought to be
something she should do with that power.
    She heard the door open and shut in the entranceway, and
Uncle Sebastian shake out his raincape before hanging it up. He went straight
to the kitchen, though, so there must not have been any mail for her.
    She didn’t expect any; her mother didn’t write
as often in winter. It was probably a great deal more difficult to get letters
out from Italy than it was to send them from Oakhurst in England.
    Italy.
She wondered what it would be like to spend
a winter somewhere that wasn’t cold, wet, and gray. Was Tuscany by the sea?
    I’d love to visit the sea.
    “I don’t suppose you remember Elizabeth
Hastings, do you?” asked Margherita from the door behind her. She turned;
her aunt had a letter in her hand, her dark hair bound up on the top of her
head in a loose knot, a smudge of flour on her nose.
    “Vaguely. She’s that Water magician with the
title, isn’t she?” Marina closed the volume in her lap with another
stirring of interest. “The one with the terribly—terribly correct
husband?”
    Margherita laughed, her eyes merry. “The
only
one with a ‘terribly—terribly correct husband’ that has ever
visited us, yes. She’s coming to spend several weeks with us—to
teach you.”
    Now she had Marina’s complete interest. “Me?
What—oh! Water magic?” Interest turned to excitement, and a thrill
of anticipation.
    Margherita laughed. “She certainly isn’t going
to teach you etiquette! You’re more than ready for a teacher of your own
Element, and it’s time you got one.”
    The exercises that Uncle Thomas had been setting her had
been nothing but repetitions of the same old things for some time now. Marina
hadn’t wanted to say anything, but she had been feeling frustrated,
bored, and stale. Frustrated, because she had the feeling that there was so
much that was just beyond her grasp—bored and stale because she was so
tired
of repeating the same old things. “But—what about Mrs. Hasting’s
family?” she asked, not entirely willing to believe that someone with a “terribly—terribly
correct husband” would be able to get away for more than a day or two at
most, and certainly not
alone.
    “Elizabeth’s sons are at Oxford, her daughter
is married, and her husband wants to take up some invitations for the hunting
and fishing seasons in Scotland this year,” Margherita said, with a smile
at Marina’s growing excitement. “And when the hunting season is
over, he intends to go straight on to London for his Parliament duties.
Elizabeth hates hunting and