The Patron Thief of Bread by Lindsay Eagar

Author:Lindsay Eagar [Eagar, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536219951
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Another winter. The world, white. Icicles dangle from my fangs. Below me, the river is a silver zigzag.

Every word out of the east-side chickens’ mouths creates a little cloud as they yap in the frigid air, and every pigeon is wearing an extra layer of feathers as insulation against the cold.

Down in the city, every person walks the snow-sprinkled streets with a bounce and a grin, and every door is freckled with holly berries. The smell of piping-hot ham and spiced wassail is everywhere, and no matter the hour, someone in some godforsaken corner of some building is singing a jolly carol for Christmastide.

And it makes me want to hurl.

“I heard the tanner got the laundress three yards of the most beautiful silk for Christmas,” Goathead discloses to the others in a snickering tone that does not betide holiday cheer.

“And what’d he get his wife?” Harpy presses.

“Pregnant again!” comes the reply, and they all cackle.

“Wait until you see what I give you, you great clucks,” I call across the roof. “Here is a hint: It’s not the north wind; it’s better out than in—”

“We’d love to give you the gift of a big push,” Harpy snaps back. “Now keep quiet, ugly. No one likes you.”

Quiet — the one thing I wish for every year but never get.

Soon it is Christmas Eve. A heavy snow falls all night, blanketing my horns and head. It chokes my throat and piles into my ears, and for this one glorious evening, everything is perfectly and completely still. Silent.

We gargoyles are coated in the stuff, and the snow hides the cathedral so perfectly that if someone were to look up at our stones, they might not notice us at all. So this is what it would look like if Odierne did not have us. So this is what it would feel like to be wholly forgotten.

I am so cold, I cannot tell if it is everything I ever hoped it would be. I cannot tell if I have broken a little inside or if that is just the frost splitting another one of my claws.

I cannot tell if I am broken a little inside.

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