Bone Magic Read Free Page A

need." She
glared at him, and he grinned.
    "Breakfast."
    "Pardon
me?"
    His grin
widened, and he leaned forward, patting a bulging sack tied in
front of his saddle. "I've got bacon, a small loaf of bread, a sack
of beans, some salt, six of last year's potatoes, half of a ham,
and an onion. Oh, and a cook pot, too."
    She stared at
him, her determination fading with every passing second. "You
should really go home, son."
    He shrugged.
"It's too late now. After I stole all this stuff?" He patted the
sack. "Ma would skin me. No, I've got to come back covered in
glory, with those children in tow, or else I better not come back
at all." His voice quavered a bit at the end, but his face showed
nothing but stubbornness.
    "The road to
glory is littered with corpses, son. You're apt to be one of
them."
    He shrugged.
"Nobody lives forever."
    Tira grinned in
spite of herself. "All right, you win. Let's go."
    Tam's face
split in an ear-to-ear grin, and he wheeled the pony around.
"Fantastic! Which way are we going?"
     
    Ultimately they
headed back up the same road Tira had used to reach Raven Crossing.
There were half a dozen farms on the far side of the village, Tam
explained, and none of those farmers had seen a thing. Beyond a
two-mile circle around the village the forest had never known an
axe, and while cross-country travel was not impossible, it was
difficult at best. With three uncooperative children in tow it
would be a nightmare.
    "Who are you
people?" Tira asked. "Why do you have a village in the middle of
nowhere?"
    "It's a town,"
Tam said, a bit defensively.
    "I've seen
towns. Believe me, it's a village. What's it doing in the middle of
a forest, on a road that gets almost no traffic?"
    He shrugged.
"Maybe the logs?" When he saw her confusion he elaborated. "Every
spring when the river runs high, the log drivers bring a load of
logs down from Carmody. This is the only place the river crosses
the road for, I don't know, a hundred miles? They buy supplies, and
Mr. Carver in the town buys some timber, and a trader comes through
every summer and buys the logs from him." He paused, looked at
Tira, and frowned. "What's wrong?"
    "We're being
watched," she told him. "I can feel it." Her eyes scanned the trees
on either side. She had seen or heard something without realizing
it, was only aware of it as a prickling sensation on her neck. She
closed her eyes and racked her brain, trying to figure out what the
clue had been.
    The flap of
wings made her open her eyes. A raven came winging out of the
trees, flapping lazily as it flew along above the road.
    Birds. That was
it. She had noticed a pattern in the birdsong around her. A patch
of woods where the birds were quiet, because they had noticed a
hidden watcher.
    "Come on," she
said, wheeling Daisy around and heading for the side of the
road.
    Tam hurried to
catch up. "Where are we going?"
    "I don't know.
But keep up."
    They rode down
through a low ditch and up into the trees. At first the undergrowth
was quite thick, but away from the road, where the summer leaves
would form a thick canopy overhead, the underbrush thinned. The
hooves of Daisy and the pony were silent on a carpet of last
autumn's fallen leaves. The sunlit road was a bright strip behind
them, the shadowy world around them filled with a hush that made
Tira think of a temple.
    There was no
one in sight, and no sign that anyone had been there. Tira stopped
when she could no longer see the road, and doubled back. Finally
she sat perfectly still in Daisy's saddle, just breathing, letting
every detail of the scene soak in. Tam was beside her, clearly
struggling to restrain his curiosity. She ignored him.
    Motion caught
her eye.
    She swung down
from the saddle and walked through the old leaves that filled the
spaces between the great trunks around her. The same tiny movement
caught her eye again. She took a couple more steps and dropped into
a squat.
    "What is it?"
Tam asked.
    Tira pointed to
the stalks of grass in front of her.