The Feral Child Read Free Page A

are you going?” she yelled at his back. “Why aren’t you going to find that boy and that weird cult he’s probably hanging out with? We need to do something!”
    “Time enough for that in the morning. I’m sure he’s long gone by now.”
    “Are you at least going to call the police?”
    “No point,” said the old man. He turned to look at her. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting, Maddy? You got into a fight with another child, and now he’s a member of a cult? This is Blarney. I think we would notice if something like that were going on.”
    “So you know who that boy is then?”
    “I know of him,” he said. “There’s no need to involve the police.”
    She glared at the old man. “You don’t believe me. You think I’m lying.”
    “Maddy, don’t be starting another fight. I really could do without it tonight.”
    “Fine, be like that!” Maddy started running, ignoring Granda’s shouts. George chased after her as she ran down the lane toward the row of terraced cottages that framed one side of the village square. The little one-story houses were lit up, their warm yellow lights puddling on the tarmac of the road. The chip shop on the side that faced the castle was lit up and packed with teenagers. The night lights of the supermarket next to it cast sharp shadows on the grass of the square, while the side that faced her grandparents had the comforting presence of the Garda Siochana station, with its blue light above the door, and the Blarney Hotel, where the bar was doing a good trade tonight. They all looked so inviting, standing against the dark and silent castle, and Maddy’s legs went weak with relief as she realized she was safe.
    Until she saw her grandmother standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. She looked really, really angry. Maddy slowed to a walk. If she could, she would have reversed.
    “It doesn’t take much to guess where you have been all this time while your supper has been getting cold,” she said as Maddy and George tried to squeeze past her. “You have been told a million times if you have been told once, young lady, that you are not to go into the castle on your own. And that fool of a dog not even on a leash—what would happen if a car came?”
    Maddy knew it was not a good idea to be a smart-mouth, but by now it was a reflex action. “Duh—he’d be killed.”
    Her grandmother was not amused. She drew herself up to her full height—all five feet and one inch—and pointed into the house. “In. That dog is to go out to his kennel right now, and you’re to get yourself washed before dinner. And look at the state of your jeans, covered in muck. You have me ashamed of my life, going around the road like that . . .”
    Her grandmother’s scolding voice drifted after Maddy as she walked through the house. She let George out into the garden. There was a metal chain attached to his kennel, and she clipped the free end to his collar. Granda’s two big hunting hounds, Pedlar and Bewley, poked their noses out of their kennels and huffed sleepily. George whined and licked Maddy’s nose.
    “Sorry, boy,” she whispered. “We’re both in the doghouse tonight.”
    “Maddy,” piped a high voice. “Maddy, Maddy, Maddeeeee.”
    She smiled and looked over her shoulder to the garden wall. Straining to see over it was a three-year-old boy with a plastic dinosaur gripped in one fist.
    “Hi, Stephen,” she said.
    “Maddy, Maddy, what do-a?” he asked.
    “Not much,” she said.
    “Come play!”
    Maddy really wanted to chill out with a DVD, but the cynic in her looked at Stephen’s golden-blond hair and big blue eyes—he would make an excellent buffer between her and Granny.
    “Ask your mom first, and then we can play in my house,” she said.
    “Mammy says ‘yes,’” called a woman’s voice. Mrs. Forest, Stephen’s mother, was smiling indulgently at her son from the kitchen doorway. “Just for an hour, and then he needs to get to bed.”
    Maddy