Spindle's End - Robin McKinley by Spindles End

Author:Spindles End [End, Spindles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-12-24T00:11:26.995000+00:00

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Chapter 15

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Autumn was a season of storms, when the winds shouted bestiaries and the genealogies of kings and queens under doorsills and down chimneys, and chimney pots, after such storms, were found to have taken up residence on other roofs of their own choosing, and sometimes in trees, and several times at the bottom of the town well, which they did not want to leave, saying it was peaceful down there, the presiding element disinclined to air-frenzies like wind, and that fish were pleasanter companions than humans. There were too many storms, and people grew weary of them, and the dull fevers of the spring and summer became sticky, hacking coughs.

It had been raining off and on, cold, obdurate, needle-tipped rain, with often a hard frost overnight, weeks of this, till the ice got into the ground and discouraged the winter crops from growing, and the tracks were sloppy and rutted and treacherous, and the sky low and dark and menacing. Foggy Bottom was less foggy than usual, for the nervy winds that had blown all year were still blowing, in haphazard gusts from all the points of the compass; the strange fevers that troubled the Gig backed and blew and came and went like the disagreeable winds; the fog-sprites huddled under people’s eaves and shrieked like banshees, especially in the middle of the night; and none of the fairies’ weather-guessers worked.

And then the storm descended in a lash of sleet and hail. Rosie was soaked to the skin running across the square from the smith’s and home to supper. There were only four of them that evening; Joeb was taking his day off at Grey’s farm where he was courting the dairymaid in any and all weathers, and Peony was with her aunt and uncle. Jem, Gilly, and Gable were all asleep upstairs; Katriona’s last baby-magic boarder had gone home three days ago. “We won’t hear if anyone howls, in this wind,” said Katriona.

“Jem will come and tell us if anyone does,” replied Aunt.

They all listened, but for nothing they knew to expect, and started in their chairs when an especially savage wind-fist drove at the shutters. Rosie thought of Narl sitting over a small solitary fire, and wondered if he ever wished for company. Katriona had occasionally inveigled him across the square to supper; she said they owed the master of Rosie’s livelihood something, and he had refused any other payment. “She’s done me a favour,” was his only explanation. He talked little more at the supper table than he did during the day at the forge, but he wasn’t a difficult companion; and he and Barder were old friends. Barder could translate Narl’s grunts better than anyone else in the village, save Rosie. But Narl had not come to supper in the last six months.

There was a bang on the kitchen door, the door to the yard. It was so substantial and purposeful a bang that while everyone wanted to assume it was only, once again, the wind, they all knew it was not.

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