Will Sparrow's Road by Karen Cushman

Author:Karen Cushman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

As I went out to take a walk,

Between the water and the wall,

There I met with a wee wee man,

The weest that ere I saw.

"Sing with me, boy,” Master Tidball said, and Will did so, for he had learned the song at the inn:

Thick and short was his legs,

And small and thin his knee,

Between his eyes a flea might go,

And between his shoulders, inches three.

Fitz glowered at them as they passed. "That is Lancelot, to the life,” Tidball said, and he doubled over with laughter. "Oh me,” he added, catching his breath, "oh me, he does make me laugh, the ugly, disagreeable little clown.”

"Is that why you put up with his arguments and his bad temper?” Will asked. "Because he makes you laugh?”

"Aye. And because I thought to show them together—the wild girl and her tiny overseer. 'Twould have been a sight to see. once she did as I bade her, but now she won't, and if she won't, he won't.” Tidball smacked his knee and grumbled, "Sea-monster skeletons and three-legged chickens are not attraction enough. I must have something spectacular: a dog-faced man, perhaps, or a giant, or an armless man who plays on a lute with his feet.”

He pulled a tattered piece of paper from his sleeve. "See this, young Sparrow—I have spent many years searching for such as this.”

Will looked. It was a broadside with a drawing of two infants—no, one infant—no, perhaps one infant with two heads? He peered closer. No, it was two infants, joined together at the belly. He shuddered. Could such a thing be so?

"Monstrous children.” Tidball sighed. "Delightful! If I could but find such as these, it would make my reputation and my fortune. And then Bartlemas Fair! I would have something extraordinary to show at Bartlemas Fair.”

Will looked at the picture once more before Tidball folded it and tucked it back in his sleeve. Were there really such monsters? What did it mean? Evil? Witchcraft? What became of poor babes such as these? In heaven were they still one, or could God make them two? And if he could, then why had he made them one at all?

By afternoon there were fewer villages and fewer trees as they found themselves in the fenlands. Will marveled at the sights, so different from the gentle hills and fields they had left. The low-lying flatlands pocked with misty marshes and mires of reeds and rushes were flecked with windmills and crisscrossed by dikes and drainage ditches. In places the water lapped at the side of the road.

Sedges, vetches, and grasses grew in profusion, and the air was noisy with the music of coots and cuckoos, whirligig beetles and dragonflies, and the drumming of the snipe. Tufts of solid ground rose above the shallow waters, and swans resting on those little hillocks looked to Will as if they were floating on tiny barges.

There was a scatter of cottages on the edges of the marshes and on small islands here and there. Pointing to a reed-thatched

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