From Across the Ancient Waters Read Free Page A

that she had been born in her mother’s country. That connection with her unknown origins, and with a mother she had never seen, made the sea a living thing in her soul.
    Inland from the girl at a distance of some five or six hundred yards, two riders on horseback trotted slowly down the road toward the village. The gray and the red they rode were well groomed and exquisitely outfitted. The two young people were themselves dressed in riding habits that none of the local peasantry or miners could have afforded for their sons or daughters. Their two hats alone might have cost a month’s wages for half the working men in the village.
    “Hey look, Florilyn,” said the older of the two, a youth who had just turned eighteen. He had seen the girl walking along the promontory as they came onto the plateau. “There’s the witch-girl! How about some fun!”
    “Like what?” answered his sister, younger by two and a half years.
    “To see the little scamp try to outrun a horse!”
    “Go chase her yourself, Courtenay,” said the girl called Florilyn. “She gives me the shivers. Besides, she’s afraid of no animal. She would just stand there and let you charge straight at her.”
    “Then I’ll run her down!” Her brother laughed.
    “And have Rhawn’s father to answer for it!”
    “He wouldn’t do anything to me. Father wouldn’t let him.”
    “You might be right. But I have no intention of making the girl angry. She’d probably put a curse on us or something. Suit yourself, but I’m going to see Rhawn.” She urged her mount forward down the incline.
    A few seconds later her brother followed. Bullying is not a sport enjoyed in solitude. He wasn’t quite brave enough to upset the strange child by himself.

T HREE
    Unknown Ancestry
    H aving no idea she was an object of conversation between Lord Snowdon’s son and daughter, the girl they had been watching rose and continued on her way. After some distance, she turned toward the great blue expanse below her and suddenly disappeared over the side of Mochras Head.
    At this point along the promontory, she
was
allowed within three paces of the edge. For between the northern and southern extremities of the rocky face, the cliff had worn inland through the eons, creating a slope seaward from the plateau noticeably more gradual in its descent. Down it a well-worn path crisscrossed back and forth until it reached a sandy beach. The inviting narrow strand was approximately forty yards in width at high tide between water’s edge and the bluff and stretched away in both directions under the shadow of the lofty headland.
    Down this sloping trail the girl now made her way. She bent occasionally to pluck a wildflower from amongst the rocks beside her or kick at a pebble beneath her feet. Three minutes later she ran down the final winding slope and emerged onto the white sandy shore, bright almost to brilliance as it lay between the blue green of the sea and the gray-black of the rocky promontory. Her descent was not unlike that of the wide-winged sea birds—whose antics she glanced up at now and then with hand to forehead. She never tired of watching as they played on the currents and breezes between the cliff and water, occasionally dropping from great heights to the sea, almost paralleling the very trajectory she had herself just taken.
    The joys of exploration and discovery of late afternoon were no doubt heightened by the fact that her days were not entirely filled with happiness. School was a painful ordeal for Gwyneth Barrie. She was slow of speech and insecure among the other children who were quick to make her the object of their derision. That she never defended herself and silently accepted the teasing of other children in the village as the natural order of things, invited their jeers all the more.
    Her stature, too, tempted cruelty. As it has in all times, the smallest and least aggressive in the animal kingdom are singled out by others of their kind for intensified