Read Online The Mermaid's Child by Jo Baker - Free Book Online Page A

sleeping pub on my back; the straggling cottages, village green and schoolhouse were monochrome in the moonlight. He was there. Ahead, a hundred yards down the valley road, he had heard me, and stopped. He stood, half-turned, his eyes shadowed by his hatbrim. A slight misty trail of footdust slowly settled back to earth around him.
    A moment passed.
    Standing on the crossroads, looking out down the valley road at the stranger. Body feeling light and hollow and disconnected. Fingers fluttering lightly at my sides. Not the faintest idea of what to do. And then, moonlight caught white: he had smiled, I realized. And on such slight gestures are whole futures founded. I grinned back, then clattered up to him, fingers still fluttering uselessly at my sides. I halted some feet away. Now that it came to speaking, I was once more at a loss. Again, that faint whiff of mist and moss off him. I opened mymouth. And for some unfathomable reason, my voice sounding creaky and uneven, I said:
    â€œYou know me, don’t you.”
    A slight turn of the head, as if in acknowledgement. I swallowed.
    â€œWhen you come back,” I said, “with the Rain Machine …”
    The creases from nose to lip deepened. His eyebrows, in the shadow of his hat, seemed to rise a little, to tilt sideways. He looked down at me directly, his eyes bright and clear in the moonlight, and I realized that I had always known he was never coming back. My skin bristled again with that sweet and sudden thrill of transgression. He hefted his bagstrap up his shoulder, settled it there with the air of someone just about to go, and, once gone, be gone for good. I found myself stretching out a hand, placing it on his arm, noticing as I did so that my hand was shaking. The fabric of his sleeve was cool and soft, and beneath I felt the long smooth curve of muscle.
    â€œCan I come with you?”
    He looked down at me looking up. The lines on his face mapped out, I thought, a whole world of experience.
    A long moment passed.
    â€œWhat do they call you?” he asked.
    My mouth was dry. The word felt strange on my lips:
    â€œMalin,” I said. “Malin Reed.”
    â€œMalin.”
    He seemed to consider this a moment, to weigh it up. Then he said:
    â€œIt’s not what you think it is, you know. It’s never what it seems to be.”
    I nodded, alert only for a yes or no, happy to accept this, happy to accept anything. I told myself it would all make sense, when we knew each other, when we were travellingtogether, when I’d been to all the places he had been. I looked up at him, witless and tenterhooked.
    â€œAll right then, young Malin,” he said, and I felt a smile begin to broaden across my cheeks, “if that’s the way it is, you can come along.”
    For a while I was so dizzy with excitement that just following him required me to be conscious of each step as it was made, to concentrate on the flexing of each knee, the lifting of each foot, the necessary swing of each hip in turn. His easy lope, half a pace ahead, made me all the more aware of my ungainly eagerness. I couldn’t see his face. Above us, the stars were bright. A breeze, the first one that summer it seemed, caught at my hair. Clouds scudded, gathered above, tumbling across the stars. The breeze stiffened and grew sharp. The night darkened, the clouds thickening and curtaining the moon. At the road’s bend I turned to take a last look at the sleeping village, and thought of my grandmother. She’d said I was too much for her. She’d said Uncle George would straighten me out. Well he hadn’t.
    And as I stood there, looking back, something passed swiftly before my face, hit the road in front of me with a thwack. I glanced round at the stranger: he too had stopped and turned to look. Something fell again, just over to my left. Then something else, further off, towards the village. I squinted into the dark, at the outlines of the public, the