Land of the Silver Dragon Read Free

were a child again, and Goda my horrible, bossy, selfish, demanding and cruel tormentor, I raced back to her bed and shouted, ‘I did my best! I was thirteen years old and you were nothing better than a bully! You were such a fat, lazy cow that it was no wonder you had a rotten time – it was all your own fault, and yet you made absolutely sure that I was the one to suffer for it!’
    For the first time in my life, I saw my sister shocked into silence. It occurred to me that I should have tried shouting at her before.
    There was a long pause – I fought to bring my ragged breathing under control – and then Goda said in a very small voice, ‘But, Lassair, I really do need you. Who else will be strong enough to drive away the horrors when I see it all happening over and over again?’
    Remorse flooded through me. My sister had witnessed murder today, and she had come close to being killed herself, yet the best I could do was yell at her.
    I knelt down in front of her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said humbly. ‘You’ve had a very frightening experience, and I shouldn’t have shouted at you.’ But some devil in me made me add, ‘I’m still not staying.’
    The ghost of a smile crossed Goda’s plump face. ‘You’ve grown up, little sister,’ she said, and I detected grudging admiration.
    The silence extended, but it was a more companionable one now. Presently I said, ‘Why don’t you tell me all about it?’ It might help her get over it, I thought, to relive the dreadful events while they were still fresh in her mind.
    She lay back on her pillow, and the hand in mine relaxed. ‘Not much to tell, really,’ she said. ‘Utta and I were out with the children, setting off to the place where the peddler usually stops, since he was due this morning. I bought a few bits, and Utta moaned because he was out of fine thread.’ A look of intense irritation crossed her face and she added angrily, ‘Lassair, you have no idea what it’s like living with that cranky old bat! She’s self-centred, lazy, she thinks the sun shines out of Cerdic’s arse and, according to her, the woman’s not been born who’s good enough for him!’ I thought Goda had tempor-arily forgotten Utta was dead. The tirade ended as quickly as it had begun, and Goda said, ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. The old cow went on moaning all the way home and, in desperation, I told her that if she was going to be such a misery, she could go on ahead, and I’d stop and sit with the children in the sun for a while.’
    I knew exactly what Goda was about to say, and I felt deep sympathy for my sister. I wondered if I should prevent her continuing, but, for one thing, it would probably do her good to express what was troubling her, and, for another, preventing my sister from doing virtually anything has always been a challenge.
    â€˜If I hadn’t been so impatient, we’d all have got home together,’ she said on a sob, her face crumpling into an expression of remorse, ‘and then Utta would still be alive.’
    â€˜But you and your children might not be,’ I said softly. ‘And Utta had already had a long life. If any of you had to die, better that it was the eldest.’
    Perhaps not my most compassionate piece of reasoning, but I know my sister.
    After a while she sniffed, wiped her nose and her eyes on her sleeve and said, ‘I suppose you’re right.’
    To encourage her away from her guilty thoughts, I said, ‘What happened when you got home?’
    â€˜There was this great hulking brute of a man smashing up my house,
that’s
what happened!’ Goda cried. ‘Utta was lying on the floor, and she wasn’t moving. The children were behind me, so I pushed them back outside and slammed the door. The giant was crashing round the room, picking things up, hurling them about, poking under the beds and into all