Read Online Tidings of Great Boys by Shelley Adina - Free Book Online Page B

the tour of the house, they were so distracted by everything that I think they forgot.
    “There are bedrooms in this tower! I’d love to sleep in a round room.”
    “You wouldn’t survive the cold, girlfriend.”
    “Look. They used to shoot arrows out of these little windows. That’s why they call them ‘lancets.’”
    “Why do the stairs go counterclockwise?”
    “So you can hold your sword in your right hand and it has room to swing. Honestly, don’t you pay
any
attention in Medieval History?”
    “There are angels on the ceiling. Guess you wouldn’t get far if you tried to sneak a guy into your room. Guilt much?”
    “You’d know, Lissa.”
    “Wow. ‘Long Gallery’ doesn’t quite do this justice. Five hundred people could dance in here. How many are we inviting for
     New Year’s Eve?”
    “Not that many. And we’ll be in the ballroom, not up here.”
    “There’s a ballroom?”
    “Are these portraits all your relatives?”
    “I don’t think I
know
that many people, much less be related to them all.”
    Outside, one or another kept stumbling because she’d turn and gawk up at the looming mass of the tower walls. Finally, I steered
     my little tour group round the Eithne tower (“Yes, they’re all named after the first earl’s daughters”) and into the relative
     warmth of the south side.
    A century ago the lady of the house had had a kitchen garden in the square formed by the south wing and the orchard wall,
     but in the sixties and seventies it wasn’t much more than a place to chuck old furniture and trash.
    Then my mother had come to the castle, and new life flowed in the wake of her money. The kitchen garden had been her special
     project, and while the box maze was now leggy and overgrown, and tall grass and weeds ran riot between clumps of briars and
     the stalks of delphinium, I could still see the bones of careful organization. I could also see a hill with what looked like
     rotting pumpkins in front of the henhouse.
    Dad sat in a plastic chair on a clear space in front of it. “Hullo, ladies. Finish the tour?” The half-dozen Buff Orpington
     hens surrounded him, their necks craned toward him with keen-eyed expectation until he scattered the handful of seed he carried.
     When they’d finished cleaning up the bigger bits, he whistled, a five-note stave.
    “Why is your dad whistling the theme from
Close Encounters
?” Lissa wanted to know.
    I half expected birds to come descending from the sky, but no. One moment the briar thicket that had been Mummy’s roses was
     bare of anything but thorns. I blinked, and the next moment the canes had sprouted brown balls of fluff. Twittering in happy
     disarray, a flock of sparrows, juncos, and titmice fluttered to the ground and began cleaning up behind the hens.
    “How did you do that?” Carly said on an awed breath. “My
abuela
has chickens, but she’s not a hen whisperer. Are you some kind of St. Francis?”
    Dad shook his head, and a junco hopped over his boot as though it were nothing more than a stone or a molehill.
    “Are they, like, trained?” Lissa asked. “They have people who do that for movie crews, you know.”
    “How do you get them to come to you?” Gillian asked.
    “Trust,” Dad said simply.
    Gillian stepped out of the doorway and the birds fluttered onto the branches above her head. She froze, and Dad whistled again.
     The brown brigade resumed its foraging as though nothing had happened, though one or two kept a close eye on Gillian, just
     in case she tried something fishy.
    “They watch me feeding the hens and holding them,” Dad explained quietly. “I suppose, with avian logic, they believe that
     if the hens don’t fear me, they shouldn’t either.”
    “Or it’s just that you have the food.” Talk about logic. Gillian never failed. “Someone who feeds them isn’t going to eat
     them.”
    “Perhaps. But it’s rather amazing, isn’t it? That something so small can give you its trust.”
    The girls