Awaken Read Free

can hardly move from his bed. Seems the least I can do to cheer him up.”
    Curious now, as well as embarrassed, Myrina crossed her arms and leaned a hip against the kitchen table to ask, “What happens—after you show him?”
    “Nothing.” Elawen took a piece of twine and began to secure the bundle. “He says his cockerel doesn’t crow anymore, but he still likes to see a bit of flesh every now and again.”
    “Silly old man,” Myrina pursed her lips, still trying to figure the whole thing out, “to tease himself thusly.”
    Elawen shrugged, tying the last knot and giving the package a little pat. “I won’t complain. If he wants to sit there, randy as an old goat with no chance of a swive to give him ease, I don’t care. I just take my penny and go.” She gave Myrina a saucy wink as she took off her apron and hung it on a hook. “I know where to show my wares if I want someone to handle them.”
    They were still laughing together when Elawen’s mam, Goodwife Harbottle, came into the kitchen, a basket of vegetables on her hip.
    “So, there’s time enough for laughing in the day, when the work goes a-begging.” With a little grimace, Elawen rushed to take the burden, as her mother continued. “While the rest of the world toils, ye can feel happy shirking your lot.”
    “Eh, no, Mam.” Elawen put the basket on the table with a thump and gestured to the bundle sitting alongside it. “I was just going to deliver Woodsman Gottreb’s provisions, honest.”
    Myrina reached for the cloak she’d hung on a peg near the door, hoping to slip away before she too got a taste of the goodwife’s sour temper. But there was no escape.
    “Stay right there, Myrina Traihune, for it makes no sense to rush away now I’ve already seen you idling instead of fetching the eggs and going home to your poor sick mother. And as for you,” she turned her scowl on Elawen, “you’ll be going nowhere farther than this kitchen, my girl.” The goodwife reached for the recently abandoned apron and held it out to her daughter. “There are vegetables to peel and dinner to be made, and I wager you’re just the one for the job.”
    Elawen scrunched her face into a woebegone mask, pointing still to the bundle. “But what about the poor old woodsman, Mam? He’ll go hungry if I don’t take him his loaves and cheese and ale.”
    “Ha.” Goodwife Harbottle turned her back on the two young women and reached for a bowl. “Myrina has to pass near there on her way home. She can take Gottreb’s bundle.”
    Elawen stuck out her tongue at her mother’s back, and Myrina had to bite back a laugh before she could reply, “I’ll be glad to, goodwife.”
    Myrina set the woodsman’s bundle in the bottom of her basket and the eggs for her mother atop before swinging her wool cloak around her shoulders. The goodwife was still muttering and grumbling, but paused as Myrina reached the door to say, “Be careful in the woods, Myrina. Stay on the path, especially in the old forest.”
    “Yes, goodwife,” she dutifully replied, but inside she dismissed the remark as the worrying the elderly are so very wont to do. After all, she was no green girl, stupid enough to wander away after posies. And hadn’t she walked through the woods a hundred times without even a hint of trouble?
    Pausing at the door for a final goodbye, she had to bite back another laugh as Elawen mimed silently behind her mother’s back, “Show him your tits!”
    If she did, Myrina mused, it would be the most excitement she’d had in who knew how long. Nothing strange or unusual ever happened in the village of Kessit, nor in the country around.
    “Really,” Myrina muttered to herself, crossing the Harbottles’ dusty yard toward the south-bound road, scuffling through drifts of fallen leaves as she went. “I think ’tis the most boring place in the entire world, especially since Jecil left.”
    Just the thought of her old sweetheart filled her with melancholy. He was the