The Witches’ Kitchen by Cecelia Holland

Author:Cecelia Holland [Holland, Cecelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
Published: 2004-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

Raef was glad to be with Corban, familiar as his own hands, who knew who he really was and still loved him. They walked around a while, looking at everything, came on a shop selling cloth, and bought some heavy homespun for a shirt for him. Corban brought out the little sack of silver bits Ulf had given him when they left the island and paid for the cloth, the while haggling with the shopkeeper over sewing it up into a shirt. The shopkeeper agreed on a price, and turned his head and called.

A girl Raef’s own age came out of the back of the shop. She had long yellow braids and bright blue eyes, and when she took the cloth and began to measure it against him he went into an agony of heat. Even through layers of cloth her touch was like a nettle over his skin; when she bent to measure his side under his arm, such a rich ripe flavor arose from the folds of her bodice that his legs went watery and he was afraid he would collapse. When she moved away with the cloth, he was sure everybody noticed how his old shirt suddenly stuck out in front of him. He bolted out the door of the shop onto the boardwalk, gulping air.

Corban stayed behind a moment, doing something with the silver, and when he came out he was smiling. He gave Raef a laughing look but he said nothing.

Raef said, “Where is the shirt?”

Corban started off down the boardwalk. Ahead was a place where some of the boards had broken, and they pushed into the narrow stream of people circling the hole. “We’ll come back later to get it. She has to sew it up.”

“You mean—back there?” His voice cracked. “We’re going back there?” Corban laughed, and kept on walking.

They took the little ship down the edge of the lake a few hundred yards, away from the big dragons, and walked back along the shore, sometimes wading in the water. Raef could tell Corban was gnawing on something in his mind; he fought off his own itchy feelings, trying to be stupid.

They wandered into the city. At a big open shop full of people they ate some bread and cheese and drank cups of ale, standing up all the while, as if they had to rush off at once. Everybody in Hedeby seemed to be going somewhere fast.

They drifted along the wooden walkway again, looking at cloth and bells and amber. He wondered if Corban was lost; they had come to the waterfront again. Then, as they walked along the broad street that went along the shore, Corban came suddenly up short, and Raef bumped into him.

As he staggered back, mumbling an apology, he looked down the boardwalk and saw there the roan-haired man with the hole in his face, Corban’s enemy, Eelmouth.

He clutched at Corban’s sleeve. Eelmouth was sitting on a pier, just above a stretch of sand where some big dragons were drawn up; he had not seen them.

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