The Volume of Possible Endings by Barbara Else

Author:Barbara Else [Barbara Else]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927271384
Publisher: Gecko Press
Published: 2014-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

WORK IN THE DARK

Dorrity didn’t want to be Queen—it was impossible! What could she do? Who was there to help? Not Mr. Coop—nor Officer Edgar—not Miss Honey or Mrs. Freida. At the last town dance there’d been five hundred people, but she didn’t think any of them would help her if they knew about this.

One thing was sure. Owl Town was dangerous now.

She crept from the boat shed and through reeds and undergrowth. Gidibirds shrieked. Starlings shrieked louder. Could she stow away on a riverboat? She heard townsfolk on High Street and outside the Owl and Pie. She crouched and listened. Gossip about the Royals again. It seemed they were definitely coming…possibly…maybe…

Farmer Ember and his dwarf farmhands were loading rolls of fencing wire from a boat onto their steam cart. Dorrity sidled up to hide beside the truck till the plaza was empty.

“I thought the last lot wuz bad enough,” one of the farmhands was saying. “Forty big fellows with forty crates of equipment each, if I counted right.”

“You can’t never count right,” said the other farmhand.

“Sometimes I can,” argued the first. “But I couldn’t see clearly because of the dusk.”

“And it being in the Beastly Dark,” said the second. “Which makes dusk dusker.”

“Grumpy, they were, in their glossy black coats,” said the first farmhand. “I’d be grumpy too, if I’d had to travel down through the Dark carting all them crates.”

Dorrity thought she was well hidden, but Farmer Ember gave a chuckle.

“Hello, Dorrity down there,” he said. “Want a fivepence?”

She managed a laugh that she hoped sounded normal. “No, I want a dollero.” It was a joke she often had with Farmer Ember. She beckoned him so she could whisper. “Those forty big fellows. Do you mean somebody is already working at Eagle Hall?”

“For the last week,” said Farmer Ember. “One of my sheep strayed that way. When we reached the hedge, we was threatened. The sheep never came back. Maybe it was et.”

“Et?”

“Chops,” said Farmer Ember. “Casseroles with olives and rosemary. Not to mention roasts, fall-apart perfection with herbed potatoes. Possibly someone even used the sweetbread and kidneys in fritters and fry-ups. But,” he continued, “being threatened by guards, we kept well away. We’ll mend that fence so it keeps an army out, or keeps one in. And we spoke to our nine remaining sheep very severely.”

“Ha ha,” Dorrity said to keep him sweet. “But I’ve heard the Royals are still planning to work on Eagle Hall, not that they’ve started. There’s been nothing definite in the papers.”

“We just read what’s in front of our eyes on the land and on the edges of the Dark,” said one of the farmhands. “It’s too gloomy further in to read much at all.” He heaved the last roll of fencing wire onto the truck.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.