Read Online The Pig Comes to Dinner by Joseph Caldwell - Free Book Online

least a few more moments before she’d lead her husband into a territory from which there might be no return. Without much difficulty, she found it. “ I was going to do the planting, you the digging.”
    â€œI’m competent in both.” He brushed his hands against his thighs.
    â€œI never questioned that—nor will I ever. It was an observation only.”
    â€œOf course.” With the toe of his boot Kieran slid some earth from one side of the furrow to cover the seed, then some from the other side. “More trouble with your Tullivers?”
    â€œThat, always.”
    â€œAnd I’m no help.”
    â€œAs it has to be.”
    â€œBut you’ll let me know.” He looked at her and cocked his head to one side. “But there’s something else I can help with? Is that it?”
    â€œWhy do you say that?”
    â€œLook at you and ask it again. You, shuffling your shoes like a woman not knowing where she wants to go. Will you tell me now, or should there be more talk of cabbages?” Direct as his question was, there was no trace of accusation or impatience in his voice. There seemed even a note of amusement.
    Kitty herself shoved a bit of earth over one of the furrows, but without tamping it down. The time had come. She raised her head and shook it lightly from side to side to make sure her hair fell reasonably straight onto her shoulders. That much she could do to bring order into the world. Kieran, his gaze unchanged, waited for her to speak. What she would say would be pure and unadulterated truth. But first she would take him up to the turret, to confess to what she’d seen and to tell about Brid at the loom and Taddy at the harp. Then let him judge if she was mad.
    â€œCan you come with me? Something I want to show you. Something to tell you.” Kieran waited, then nodded.
    It was when they were crossing the gallery that led to the stair that they heard from somewhere high above them the sound of a harp. They stopped. Each turned toward the other. Kitty raised her right hand level with her ear as if she were going to cover it. Kieran took in a slow breath and exhaled even more slowly. Neither of them moved. How many moments passed was beyond telling. The harp continued, a plucked melody so plangent it seemed to plead for stillness even as it filled the entire hall with its sorrows. Rising, falling, the harp bespoke a yearning that reached out into the great world in search of some fulfillment of its longing, of the return of something lost and never to be found again.
    At that moment, the harp seemed to have summoned the lowering sun from behind a cloud. The hall was flooded with rose-colored gold, making amber the dark stones, burnishing the dull iron of the many-candled chandelier, and transfiguring both Kitty and Kieran, allowing each to see the other made radiant, suggesting that each was being given for just this moment a vision of the other’s true self, the world’s first glory, a gift no mortal could hope to deserve. The music rose higher, the yearning now an ache beyond bearing but instilled with the promise that it would never cease to be, that its sorrows would be nobly borne beyond the farthest reaches of time, even past the silence where all things die.
    Unable to sustain this vision of each other, both Kieran and Kitty turned and looked out over the courtyard. As if in mercy, the song stopped, midchord. And the sun, having done its mischief, retreated. Some remaining rays thrust themselves out above and below, striking the hills, sending one last shaft into the courtyard beneath them.
    And there, staring up at them, was the pig, complete with the brass ring passed through its snout to make uprootings impossible now that the garden was being planted.
    â€œThe pig,” said Kieran.
    â€œYes,” said Kitty. “The pig.”
    At their words, the animal turned its hams to them and bounded away to its trough. Sounds permitted only