Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) by W.R. Gingell

Author:W.R. Gingell [Gingell, W.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W.R. Gingell
Published: 2015-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

The line of villagers had dwindled to nothing by early afternoon. The earliest callers had been the serious ones, mostly complaining of field work that needed to be redone– power loss, some of them called it. Others said no, it was as if their spells were routinely being pulled sideways by something that they couldn’t trace. Poly began to think that she hadn’t been wrong about the faint skewed feel to the village’s magic, and Luck’s eyes became narrower and greener with each supplicant.

Most of the later callers were young, presumably marriageable females, much to Poly’s amusement. They came, bewitching smiles in place, for reasons as varied and creative as cursed shoes to charming away a single, nonexistent freckle. Poly gave full marks to the freckle girl–who, to her appreciative wonder, sat with an upturned face to Luck’s close scrutiny and blinked heavy-lashed eyes dewily at him–but she would have been better pleased if the young girls had not also been accompanied by a fair assortment of males, who were becoming less tongue-tied and more persistent in their attempts to catch her attention.

Perhaps it was due to the lingering effects of the freckle girl’s purple eyes that Poly was able to slip away shortly after, towing Onepiece and his resident gremlin. If so, she was very grateful.

When she passed Michael’s storefront, hoping to catch a glimpse of him again, she was further pleased to find that she would have his escort instead: it was Michael’s half-day.

“So we’ve managed to abscond with you at last!” said his voice. There was a flurry of movement as Michael leapt the front railing, apron over shoulder, and landed with a flourish and a bow. He was trailing threads and tiny triangular off-cuts of blue cotton.

“Did I impress you, Miss Poly?”

“Oh yes, I’m terribly impressed. I don’t think the man behind the counter thought much of it, though.”

Michael grimaced comically, ducking out of sight of the store-owner’s glare. “He’s merely jealous of my physical prowess.”

“Oh, is that what it is?”

“It must be: who could be angry at this face? Hurry along, Miss Poly, or he’ll be after me to clean the dust from his front window.”

So Poly hurried along, giggling at Michael’s nonsense while Onepiece perched on her hip and made popping noises in her ear. Before long they had arrived at a small, clean-scrubbed cottage that Poly recognised without Michael’s unnecessarily flamboyant gestures, by the simple fact that Annie was in the front garden planting seeds.

Annie looked up at their approach and said with a smile: “I thought I heard trouble. Welcome, Poly: I hope Michael hasn’t been wearing your ears to nubs?”

“Only one of them!” protested Michael as Poly laughingly denied it. She liked Michael’s chatter: it made a vast change from Luck’s mostly silent, magically charged presence.

“Did you manage to sneak away or did Luck give you a half-holiday?”

“Luck’s out repairing a few spells. He says there’s something nattering at the steady magic around the village, and that it’s giving him a headache.

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