Read Online The Girl With Borrowed Wings by Rinsai Rossetti - Free Book Online Page B

He stopped.
    “I was . . . ?”
    Mumble.
    “Was
what
?” I demanded.
    “Warm.”
    That did it. I began to inch away. I hoped that maybe, if I did it slowly enough, he wouldn’t notice.
    “What?” Sangris protested. “It isn’t
dirty
. I was comfortable, and I still hadn’t recovered properly from the souk, so I thought, a few more minutes, and when I woke up it was almost dawn.”
    “Argh,” I said. It was the only way I felt I could fairly sum up the situation.
    “I should’ve stuck with the story about the dog, huh?”
    “Mm.” I hesitated. “That one was a lie, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah.”
    Good. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle any more revelations.
    “We should probably head back,” he muttered, pulling himself up to his paws, “if you want to be at school by three forty-five.”
    “I don’t want to be, I have to be,” I said. “My father’s going to pick me up. If I’m not there . . .”
    “Pity,” he said. “You sure I can’t just drop you off at your house? We could get around your father.” Sangris had a way of saying things as though his suggestions alone were enough to solve all the problems in the world.
    “My father,” I repeated. The word sounded strange here, with the open sky and the purple-gray grasses, the green hills, and the black line of the forest just clinging to the horizon behind us. But it was as powerful a sound as ever, the strength of the rising
fa,
then the graveness of the
ther
bringing it back down to earth. Sangris didn’t seem to understand that
want
was irrelevant beside the word
father
.
    Without having to be prompted, Sangris changed back into his feathered dragon form. I climbed up gingerly. What if he was thinking of more embarrassing phrases?
The taut instep of each tiny fairy-like foot . . .
or worse,
the orchid-petal smoothness of the skin on her palms was . . .
    “You’re freaked out, aren’t you?” He didn’t say it as if he was looking for reassurance. He said it in acknowledgment of a fact.
    I said, “No more secretly describing me in your head.”
    “It’s called
thinking,
” he said.
    “Are your thoughts usually that flowery?”
    “No, but I was trying to find a way to describe . . . You know how sometimes you just need to find a sentence that . . . Oh, all right. Fine.”
    He gave up.
    But when we were safely in the air, another flush of warmth spread up through me, from the pit of my stomach this time. I thought,
The throat of a swan?
And I ran the phrase through my head once or twice to make sure I had it memorized.

CHAPTER SIX
    In Which My Father Tells Me About Pfft
     
    Sangris lowered me back into the desert. Even though my eyes were closed, I could tell when the oasis began to crowd around me again, because of the heat. But it was more bearable now. I’d had my gulp of fresh air.
    The daze of flying sank away and I set my feet down once more on the pale cracked stone behind my school. My watch read three forty-three. The sunlight was almost solid around us in walls of blinding white gold.
    “Are you glad you went?” Sangris asked. Attentively. Like a chef taking the finished plate away from a diner whom he’s not sure he has impressed.
    There was no question about it. I said, “Yes.”
    With a talon, he picked up his stolen school uniform from where he had dropped it before. A film of fine sand had settled into the creases, and the fabric had already begun to bleach. “Ah,” he said, “you might want to—” I swiveled around to stare in the opposite direction while he changed, and when I looked back, a very dusty and rumpled-looking boy was grinning at me. The white sand had stuck in his hair. “All right, what’s next?” he said, rubbing his hands together.
    “I’m going home. My father is picking me up.”
    “Okay, I’ll wait with you.”
    “What? No.”
    He looked amazed. “Why not?”
    “Because I don’t want my father to see you.”
    “I’m a secret?”
    “Of course.”
    He