Foretold Read Free Page A

argued over it till the red-faced boy in question had to speak his wishes plain, and maybe it was neither girl at all!
    Pippin didn’t know what to believe. She
hoped
, was all, but when those voices came clearer and she heard what they were saying, she got a sad insight into the nature of boys, and more than a spark of a doubt as to phantoms.
    “I’ll have Ava Gentry, all three of her,” said one with a lecherous laugh.
    “No, you won’t, little brother. If anyone will be seeing Ava Gentry with her corset undone it will be me. You can have the giantess for yours.”
    It was the Breed brothers—those two thick quarry boys, Thane and Colin, and they were out in the orchard dark laying naughty plans. Quiet as quiet, Pippin moved closer to see, and she spied them rubbing flour into their hair and faces.
    They grumbled more over Ava, but in the end it was settled, and trailing flour-dust, they went off, making ghostly noises and taking glugs of whiskey, to play at being phantoms.
    Pippin bit her lip. She would have to follow them, of course. Her friends’ fathers weren’t at home, their doors weren’t locked, and the Breed brothers were stupid, strong, and drunk—a woeful combination if ever there was one. But … if she didn’t get home now, she stood to miss Matty’s phantom if it called.
Well
, she thought,
I’ll just be a minute, and any phantom too impatient to wait for me would make a poor enough husband!
    Leaving her cake where it was, she tiptoed after the Breeds.
    The boys parted in the darkness between the two cottages, and Colin went to Elsie’s door and Thane to Ava’s. As Thane reached out for the doorknob, Pippin took a deep breath and prepared herself to call out, feeling a thrum of fear to be interrupting the two big boys at their mischief.
    I’ll be breaking the spell if I speak
, she realized, and she faltered, but she had only to think of her friends in their beds with their hopeful toes curled, and these two falling at them drooling. “If you two are phantoms then I’m a hat” is what she declared, stepping into sight.
    They both froze and swung to see her. Then, as one, they burst into gut laughter.
    “Pippin girl, out phantom hunting?” asked Colin.
    “Sure the only way you’ll see one is if you catch it on its way someplace else!” added Thane, all grinning spite, and that pierced Pippin not a little, because she already feared it was true. “Maybe you should wait a year or three and see if you don’t grow a chest on you.”
    “I hear there’s a tonic for that,” said Colin. “You got to rub it on every night.”
    “I guess Ava’s been using it a while, then,” added Thane, and the boys got off laughing again.
    “I’ll tell,” Pippin said, keeping herself strong. “You go in there and I’ll fetch their fathers.”
    “Run and fetch, then. By the time you get back we’ll be done and gone, won’t we, like the phantoms we are.
Oo-oooooo!
”
    “Then I’ll have to ring the fire bell, I guess.”
    Maybe that sobered them a little, and maybe it didn’t. They were still laughing, but Colin glanced to where it was—the tall post with its bell and rope, part of the signal system used throughout the orchards for warnings. Two short pulls meant come quick. They all knew how to do it from the time they could toddle.
    “Pip …” Thane sauntered toward her. “You want a kiss, is that it? Just ask, darlin’.”
    “I guess we can spare a minute or two for you,” Colin contributed, following his brother. “The night is young and the bottle’s empty.”
    Pippin took one quick step away and that was all there was time for. Behind her, from back the way she’d come, spoke a voice.
    “Leave her be,” it said, oh the beautiful, beautiful sound of it!
    “Blackgrace?” asked Thane, squinting past Pippin.
    For Matty it was. He came to her side and never was there a sweeter sight—though just now he didn’t look sweet so much as furious.
    “What are
you
doing here? Are